Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 29, 2018 - Deciphering Doug

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

Mark Schofield outlines some of the themes and schemes he identified when studying Doug Pederson in the NFC Championship Game.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning, welcome on into Locked On Patriots for Monday, January 29th, 2018, dropping this on Monday morning. We are going full out for Super Bowl 52. Mark Schofield here in the big chair as I am five days a week. And over 200 shows without calling anyone, let alone a young child. A little pissant. Just throwing that out there. What we're going to do today, we're going to talk about deciphering Doug.

I took a look back at the NFC Championship game. Broke it down. Broke down Doug Peterson, the offensive mind behind the Eagles, big outburst against the Minnesota Vikings. I came away with some themes from what Doug Peterson did schematically. I want to talk about those, reference some specific plays, some things that Patriots defenders, Bill Belichick, Matt Patricia, and Patriots fans themselves want to keep an eye on

come Sunday night. As always, follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Follow the work over at LockedOnPatriots.com. Follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com as well. We're going to dive in now.

Doug Peterson, his offensive play calling in the NFC championship game. And look, it was a 38 to 7 route. The Eagles amassed 456 total yards. Nick Foles completes 26 of 33 passes for 352 yards and three touchdowns. Obviously a good game plan against one of the best defenses in the league. And where I want to start is this, attacking the strength of the defense. We hear all the time as Patriots fans that, oh Bill Belichick, what does he do as a defensive game planner? He identifies your strength and takes it away from you. We've heard it recently about Matt Patricia as well. He wants to identify your two best receivers in the passing game, take those away from the quarterback,

make the quarterback find other guys when he drops back to throw the ball. And what stood out initially watching how Doug Peterson attacked that great Vikings defense was this. He found Harrison Smith, arguably the best Minnesota defender this year, and found a way to both neutralize him at times and attack him at other times. And Smith has been an incredible safety over the past couple of years. And he was one of the best safeties, if not the best safety, in the league this year. His versatility truly stands out when you

watch Harrison Smith. He can play a half-field safety in a cover-two, cover-four type look. He can play free safety if you want to drop him back into play man-free. He can be your free safety. You can drop him down in the box and run support. You can

use him in man-covered situations. Have him cover tight ends. Have him cover tight ends. Have him cover running backs. Even have him cover wide receivers at times. And if the matchup this week was going to be Minnesota against New England, we would be spending a lot of time talking about Harrison Smith versus Rob Gronkowski. But we're not talking about that. And a part of the reason why we're not talking about that is because Doug Peterson identified Smith as the guy

that you want to both neutralize and then go after at times and try to sort of take him out of that game. Here's the main reason how he did it. Obviously, any defense going against the Eagles right now, you want to try to stop the run, right? Stop the run, take the run away from them, try to make Nick Foles beat you with his arm. And now as a defense, one of the ways you try to do that is you drop down extra defenders

into the box. It's something we talked about in the lead up to the AFC Championship game. It's something we saw early in this game as well. And who was the guy they were dropping down into the box? Harrison Smith. Because of his prowess as a safety, dropping down into the box, helping out and run support.

The way you sort of neutralize that, run pass option plays using that sort of box count that we talked about in last night's show. Open and play of the game. Smith drops down into the box. Eagles have a run pass option play called where they show outside zone to the left.

Everybody blocks it like it's outside zone. Everybody flows to the left. The entire offensive line flows to the left. But Foles meets the running back at the mesh point, keeps the ball, rolls to the right, and now he's got a sort of boot action flood concept that he can throw to. And you take Smith out of the play by dropping Smith down into the box and then running a run pass option play

where you have the quarterback sort of boot away from them. Smith's now neutralized. You take the best defender, you take him away. That's something we saw throughout this game. Smith would drop down into the box. Suddenly, they're throwing the football. Usually off run pass option looks where Foles again does the things that maybe Blake Bortles didn't do in the AFC Championship game. Take advantage of the numbers. If you're going to crowd the box. If you're going to take one of your best players. In both the run of the pass game. And drop them down into the box.

We're going to find a way to throw against those kinds of looks. So that was one of the ways. That they sort of neutralized Harrison Smith. Another play that really jumped out. When I saw it. Right before halftime. Eagles get the ball back. They do have all three timeouts, but they're in their own territory. They only have 29 seconds to work with. But Doug Peterson, he's been aggressive all year. Didn't see a reason to

play conservative at that point. Obviously, Patriots fans, Jaguars fans might make the argument that if you play conservative, you're playing to lose. As we saw with Jacksonville Obviously Patriots fans Jaguars fans might make the argument That if you play conservative you're playing to lose As we saw with Jacksonville Right before halftime of the AFC championship game They kneel Go to the locker room with a small lead Philadelphia however

With all three timeouts 29 seconds They throw a screen pass A sort of drive starter Get some good yardage there On the next play, clock was stopped, running back had gotten out of bounds. They run a switch concept where they have Zach Ertz as a slot receiver with Harrison Smith across from him.

Outside receiver goes vertical, and Ertz runs an out pattern. And you think in that situation, you might want to try to get to the sideline, get out of bounds, conserve those timeouts, right? Well, it's an out pattern. And you think in that situation, you might want to try to get to the sideline, get out of bounds, conserve those timeouts, right? Well, it's an out and up. And Harrison Smith sort of bites on that out route. Ertz then cuts vertically, falls, makes a nice

anticipation throw, doesn't wait, gets it out of his hands, and Ertz pulls off a big gain. They run one more screen pass, They only use one timeout and they kick a field goal before halftime. I thought that was a magnificent quick little three-play drive that showed you just how aggressive Doug Peterson is and how, look, if he's your best defender, I'm going to use sort of his nature against him. Get him to sort of bite on that out route and then throw the ball upfield. It was a perfect play call, great execution from the Eagles. And that's some of the stuff that they will do as a

defense. So now let's spin this ahead. If you're the Philadelphia Eagles, if you're Doug Peterson, who might you want to try to sort of neutralize, take away in this game right now? You can make the argument that the guy you want to sort of eliminate, the guy you want to try to neutralize, might be Devin McCourty, who might be the best sort of overall defender. Or maybe it's a Trey Flowers. But that's something to think about. Doug Peterson, his penchant for sort of finding your best defender and trying to find a way to neutralize him.

They're going to scheme up some stuff. Maybe they do a lot of things where they're running guys off. Maybe Nelson Aguilar, Torrey Smith, maybe they're used on a lot of vertical routes to sort of take away Devin McCourty over the top and then free up guys like Jeffrey, guys like Ertz, guys like Trey Burton on those quick intermediate routes. I know that sounds a little bit like an oxymoron there. Or those quick routes and or those intermediate

dig routes. Neutralize McCourty, get him away from the flow of the play and then attack elsewhere. So that's something to think about as we look ahead to Super Bowl 52. Up next, some of the other themes I came away from when studying Doug Peterson's job and what he's done in the NFC Championship game. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots.

Mark Schofield here with you, talking about some of the themes I took away from studying Doug Peterson in the NFC Championship game. Another big theme. I'm not going to beat it to death now because we've talked about it a lot on this show already. Run pass options. I broke them down again in the Sunday night show because it's a theme, a bit of terminology we're going to hear a lot throughout this week, throughout the game. They're not all different.

There are read RPOs. There are box count RPOs. But the basic premise is this. It gives the quarterback a built-in run option and a built-in pass option on a single play. And you don't have to change a lot it's just really the decision that the quarterback makes it's not like calling two plays in the huddle running a pass and hoping everybody's on the same page when the quarterback makes the call at the line of scrimmage but what i want to talk about just for a quick minute here we know peterson

is going to call them. How do the Patriots try to neutralize them? I've talked about it a lot already. Cover two man, keep two guys deep. Maybe you drop down one into the box late to sort of switch up those box count, those ratio reads that the quarterback might make pre-snap. But I think cover two man gives everybody sort of man responsibilities underneath while keeping two high safeties in case there's a breakdown up front. I'd expect to see a lot of that early.

That's probably the way the Patriots come out to try to neutralize these. But RPOs are a big theme of what Peterson's done throughout the season. And, you know, it's interesting. There was a lot of discussion. Maybe they're going to do more of this with Nick Foles. And they were doing a lot of RPO stuff with Carson Wentz. And when you hear RPO, it's not, you know, the quarterback run is a small portion of the RPO game.

It's really just an extension of the run playbook in conjunction with the passing game that an offense has to offer. But RPOs are going to be a big part of what we talk about this entire week. They're going to be a big part of the Super Bowl itself. Eagles are going to run them. Patriots are going to have to stop them. More nerdy stuff now we can talk a little air raid offense

and if you read about the draft study the draft think about the draft think about college quarterbacks and how they might transition to the pro game you've probably heard that air raid quarterbacks

they probably can't transition to the pro game. You've probably heard that, look, Air Raid quarterbacks, they probably can't transition to the NFL because they run a playbook that's simplified. It's got simplified reads. The quarterback doesn't have to think a lot. Well, I'd like to point you in the direction of my good friend friend Ted Wynn. You can find him on football. FB underscore film analysis.

Does a lot of work for Inside the Pylons draft guide. When he was studying Patrick Mahomes in the run up to last year's draft, he pulled me aside and said, look, I know he's running an air raid offense. People are saying that it's a simplified offense. What he's asked to do in that offense is more complex than a lot of other quarterbacks that I've studied. And when he gets to the NFL, his NFL playbook might be easier. Air raid offenses have gotten a bad rap. Mahomes had a ton put on his plate. And if you watch teams now in the NFL, you're seeing air raid concepts all the time. One of the ones you're going to see from the Philadelphia Eagles is the mesh concept. That's when you have two inside receivers, usually when it's run at the collegiate level,

two slot receivers, one on each side, run cross and routes at a depth of about five yards and the way Mike Leach the head coach at the Washington State the pirate himself the way he coaches it up he wants those guys to be close enough where they can slap hands but they give each other low fives as they cross the middle well the Eagles do this and one of the more interesting ways they did it in the NFC Championship game was they ran it out of 13 offensive personnel, three tight ends. So first of all, you had a tight end on each side, and those two guys ran the mesh over the middle. That was the first component to it. Second, they had the third tight end run the big,

deep sit route, which is that deep curl that's over the top of the mesh. And that's a devastating design from a defensive standpoint because you have the two guys underneath that sort of, as they cross, it widens those underneath defenders. It pulls those underneath defenders away from the middle of the field, and it opens up a perfect throwing lane to that sit route over the middle. And there's, of course, other stuff you can build in off of the mesh concept. A lot of times you see a deep post over that.

A lot of times you'll see a wheel route to the outside where the quarterback looks deep first and then comes to the mesh. So for all this talk that, oh, air raid offenses won't work in the NFL, air raid quarterbacks, they can't make it work in the National Football League. Throw that out the window this week. Because Doug Peterson's dialing up some air raid concepts. He's been doing it this season. Did it with Carson Wentz.

Doing it more with Foles now. And the versatility that they use with it. You know, to come out in 13 offensive personnel, show the defense a run-heavy look, and then run an air-raid concept. That's interesting stuff.

And whether you're a Patriots fan or not, if you're a fan of sort of offensive scheme and offensive design, offensive execution, that's some nerdy football stuff that you want to watch hopefully in the offseason after the Patriots secure a Super Bowl title.

More nerdy stuff when it comes to Doug Peterson and his offense ahead with me, Mark Schofield. Hope you're enjoying this Monday edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield here with you doing some more nerdy football stuff, deciphering Doug Peterson, breaking down some of the schemes and the themes that I saw from his offensive game

plan against the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship game. Let's talk about your eyes. Let's talk about trusting your eyes as a defender, particularly at the second and third levels. Misdirection plays are a big part of any offense. And the way they usually work is to try to get a defender to either trust his eyes and make a mistake or neglect his keys and make a mistake. If you're a linebacker, you're often taught, ignore the guys in the backfield

because they're going to really lie to you. Watch the guys up front. Read the center. Read the guards. Those are your true keys. They're going to take you to the football, right? So now if you're an offense and you know that, you want to get your guards get your interior linemen to lie for you

if you go over to insidethepylon.com there's a piece I wrote back in the summer about Iowa the University of Iowa and their lying guards because they would do some things in the run game where they would pull guards away from the actual flow of the play the Eagles ran a play things in the run game where they would pull guards away from the actual flow of the play. The Eagles ran a play early in the NFC Championship game that sort of blew my mind. And I got to sort of break it down here.

It's a first and 10 play at the 457 mark of the first quarter. Eagles have the ball on their own 25-yard line. They come out with Foles in the shotgun. JGI standing to his right. They have six blockers up front. You're five down linemen and a tight end to the right. And it starts like a lot of the Eagles plays do with Foles and J.J. meeting at the mesh point mesh point and Ajay aiming for the left side of the offense. But up front, everything screams that this play is going to the right and that Foles is going to keep the ball and roll out because you get the left tackle blocking up to the

second level towards that linebacker over there, but he's working towards his right. The right guard blocks down's working towards his right the right guard blocks down going towards his right both the center and the right guard pull to the right now that means that the right tackle has to block down so he goes a little bit away from that he's blocking down to the left but it's so the right guard can pull to the away from that he's blocking down to the left but it's so the right guard can pull to the right edge and tight end blocks out to the right as well so if you're reading that as a linebacker you see everybody going one way the guards going one way they're all going to your left what are you going to do what are your what are your keys telling you

you're going to go that way as well, right? Well, Foles hands the ball off to Ajay, who's going to the left, away from every single blocker. And over there is Everson Griffin, a talented defensive end, who's left unblocked. But because of the run movement up front, because of the blocking movement up front because of the blocking action up front every other defender gets sold on Foles keeping the football all Ajayi has to do is beat

Everson Griffin around the edge and he does and it's a quick easy 13 yard gain to start a drive that's And it's a quick, easy 13-yard gain to start a drive. That's tremendous design and execution because you get the movement up front. The guys up front don't even really have to block anybody because the way they pull and react does the blocking for them. It gets those defenders to bite to the other side. It takes them away from the flow of the play,

gives them poor pursuit angles. And all Jai has to do is beat one guy, and he does. So if you're a second-level defender for the Patriots, Kyle Van Nooy, for example, Landon Roberts, for example, can you trust your eyes? You want to, but what it comes down to

at Sunday night can you because Doug Peterson's going to do some things to confuse you, to misdirect you, to get you out of position. So you need to be ready for that as well.

Also, motion and shifting. If you've listened to the show if you've read LockedOnPatriots.com you know that the Patriots use motion and shifting better than anybody Doug Peterson does it too the second touchdown pass that he threw to Alshon Jeffrey

was just a brilliant example of doing all sorts of things pre-snap to get a defense on its heels. Philadelphia faces a third and goal at the Vikings' five-yard line. They break the huddle with a 10-offensive personnel package. Four wide receivers, one tight end. But they initially line up in a jumbo offensive formation. They put seven guys on the offensive line and three guys in a T formation, in a strong I formation, excuse me, in the backfield. But up front, you've got Nelson Aguilar and Mack Hollins

as your, quote, tight ends. Aguilar on the left, Hollins on the right. In the backfield, Alshon Jeffrey lined up as the offset fullback. Zach Ertz as the fullback. Torrey Smith as the deep back. That's your jumbo offensive package. So as a defense, you see, you look over to the sideline, you see the card held up that reads 10, 10 offensive personnel. You're expecting a pass play now They come out and they've got this jumbo run look

So you start to adjust your mindset again? But then they shift again They put a you know a stacked bunch to the left. Where they put Smith, Hollins, and Jeffrey, the three receivers, over to the left. Ertz is the single receiver, the tight end to the right, and a little wide iso look. Foles drops to the shotgun.

And Aguilar is in the backfield. Now you're thinking, okay, now it is going to be the pass. Okay. Then they bring Jeffrey in motion from that three receiver bunch on the left. They bring him in motion across the formation. And nobody trails him. Now, as you know from listening to the show, Foles knows it's a zone coverage.

Eagles run a spacing concept. Quarterback finds Jeffrey for the short touchdown on a quick little post route. Six more points for the Eagles. Just great design, great execution, using motion, shift in personnel, all sorts of stuff pre-snap to get the defense on its heels

and allow Foles to identify the matchup, identify the coverage, and exploit it. Last thing I want to mention before we go, get Foles to the ground. I've said this before about some other quarterbacks. It's true this week as well. That first touchdown to Alshon Jeffrey, the Vikings got close, but they didn't get home.

And you can see the defensive back over Alshon Jeffrey. Expect the sack. Ease up for one second. Jeffrey then breaks vertically. Foles doesn't get down to the ground. He stays upright. Slides in the pocket. Spots Jeffrey breaking deep.

Big throw, big catch, touchdown. Up front, get him to the ground. In the secondary, cover until the whistle. This sort of nightmare scenario, of which there are many in this game, but one of the nightmare scenarios is Philly gets an easy sort of big touchdown Sort of gives themselves some momentum this game in a situation like that Where falls is has a pocket collapsing around him? But he does enough athletically with his feet to slide and extend like we've seen with Brady like Carson Wentz also does extremely well

before he got hurt Coverage lets up for a second and they get a cheap, easy, big one. Patriots need to get fullest to the ground. Defenders have to cover through the whistle. I know it sounds like football 101, but sometimes when you're in the heat of the moment, mistakes can happen.

That's been a look at Decipher and Doug, some of the things the Eagles do on offense. Tomorrow we're going to do a look at studying Schwartz, some of the things Jim Schwartz does defensively. We've talked about the wide nine a bit, but we're going to talk more about blitzes and stunts and coverages and the things that Jim Schwartz does conceptually, some of which the Patriots have had success against.

We'll get into that as well. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.