Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 30, 2018 - Crossover Part 1

Episode Date: January 30, 2018

Michael Kist. Benjamin Solak. Mark Schofield. In the first of two crossover episodes for Super Bowl Week, the three discuss their expectations for when the Patriots have the football.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning, welcome on into Lockdown Patriots for Tuesday, January 30th, 2018. Mark Schofield back with you, keeping the content train rolling. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work over at LockedOnPatriots.com. Putting up piece after piece right now. We get stuff on Doug Peterson, stuff on Jim Schwartz, stuff on how teams have run the ball against Schwartz's defenses.

Gonna have some stuff going up later, how teams have thrown the ball against them. We're doing just nerdy scheme football stuff all week, leading you right up until Super Bowl 52. Today's show, a little crossover action. We're going to do two crossover shows with my good friends Michael J. Kist and Benjamin Solak over at Locked On Eagles.

This first one, we're focused on what happens when the Patriots have the football. Check it out here at Locked On Patriots. And we are here with mark scofield i am michael kissed benjamin solak with me here on this crossover edition of the super bowl preview guys mark we'll start with you how you doing brother dude i'm alive okay and you guys know what that means i think some other people probably know what that means but mobile man that's a fun town we'll just leave it at that i'm good now we're getting ready for the super bowl. Can't be better. Are we going to Veets tonight?

We're at Veets right now. Live from Veets. The entire world is just at Veets perpetually. It's a constant state of being, Mike. Yeah, I would not be able to live there. Ben, how you doing, brother? Every day is a good day to be alive. Not every day, however, do you get to be preparing for the Super Bowl. So that is something special. Yes. Yeah, I mean, Mark knows the feeling since it happens all the time. Spoiled Patriots fans. Mark, first question. What is up with the Russian conspiracy rumors surrounding Kraft and the Patriots organization?

Also, what is with the biochemical warfare happening? Because we have had two Eagles sick already. I believe it was Timmy Jernigan is sick and Kenyon Barner is just getting over sick. The Eagles should not be opening their own mail. They should be vetting their waiters at restaurants for sure, for sure. If they can even get into restaurants in the Minneapolis area. Yeah, this seems like uncharted territory for the Patriots as far as the lengths they're going to to sabotage the Eagles.

Mark, what do you got to say about that? Well, I mean, this is my friends. There's photographic evidence of Vladimir Putin and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, they're buddies. Putin has a Super Bowl reign, a Patriots Super Bowl reign that we'll just say he procured from Mr. Kraft. We'll just put it that way because I believe there was some subterfuge into his acquisition of said Super Bowl reign. But let's put it this way, folks, you get to the Super Bowl, look, if you're not cheating, you're not trying, right? I mean, and I read on a piece today that there's evidence out there that Tom Brady has been

cheating because he's trying to get the ball out of his hands quickly. So, I mean, that's lock solid evidence. So, look, there's photographic evidence. There's evidence on the stopwatch that Tom Brady might be getting the ball out of his hands quickly that he's cheating. So, let's put it this way. The fact that we're talking about it means one thing and one thing only. There's two of you.

There's one of me. And I'm already renting space in both your heads. You guys are already up in it. You're twisted. You're worried. And it's just Monday night. We've got a long week to go until Super Bowl kicks off. And you guys are already starting to freak out.

I can feel it. I can see it on your face, guest. Or maybe that's the waitress behind you at Viet's. No, that's just the cumulative hangover finally hitting me from Mobile, Alabama. Look, we're going to be previewing the Patriots offense against the Eagles defense this show.

Later on this week, we're going to be doing another crossover where we flip sides to the Eagles offense against the Patriots defense. Some things that we're looking for. Obviously, we're going to do our formal previews on our own shows as well throughout the week. There's a lot to talk about with the X's and O's. Not much going on outside of it, which is fine because we are football guys.

We are X and O guys, and that's kind of how we like it outside of the whole Russian conspiracy thing. I'm going to kick it off with a real quick question. So, Mark, with the Patriots offense, obviously a big feature is going to be Rob Gronkowski and how the Eagles are going to cover him. Malcolm Jenkins is probably going to be the guy to follow him around. Let our listeners kind of know how the Patriots deploy him, where they line him up, what type of routes they want to utilize him on and how he kind of affects the entire offense. The main issue is they'll use him anywhere.

You know, they'll go wide, isolate him, try to get you to sort of tip your hand coverage-wise, whether you run a linebacker out there, whether you run a corner out there, show man versus zone pre-snap. They'll put him in line. They'll put him in the wing. They'll put him in the slot. They will put him anywhere on the field, and they'll use him on a variety of routes. Obviously, against the Jim Schwartz defense, you're going to see a lot of single high looks,

cover one, cover three. They're going to try to get him up the seams. They're going to try to bracket the safety, whoever that is. Maybe it's Jenkins in those zone coverage looks. Try to get them up the seam on those. They like to use them on wide cross. They'll do a ton of stuff with that as well. Red zone fades, they'll pretty much use them in anything. And the thing that I'm interested to see this week is if Philadelphia can do what the Jets did in week 17, where you got linebacker safety, bracket coverage on him, and then pay man across the board. If they can slow Gronkowski down that way, then they're going to have a really good shot at slowing down this

offense. When I look at this Eagles roster, and seriously, guys, correctly if I'm wrong, but I don't see somebody that I can just point to and say, just put him on Gronkowski. He's going to slow him down. There are few people on the planet earth that can do that. But I think bracket coverage, linebacker safety over the top, the Jets held Gronkowski without a target at week 17. Part of that might be designed because you don't want to get him hurt at week 17, but still that's an eye popping statistic. And so that's been, could be my expectation. Linebacker safety over the top bracket him that way. Yeah. What I would love to see, and I think philadelphia will do it because they always put jenkins over tight ends and i think jenkins who has some success against tight ends i agree with you isn't a gronk eliminator he's not a

gronk eraser i think that gronk will handily win that matchup they play jenkins down at the sand they play him over the strength usually defined by the 10 and for that reason i'd love to see nigel bradham be able to sink underneath Gronk. I would like to see Bradham. He typically plays more of the Sam when they have Jordan Hicks in, but because he's injured, he's moved to the middle a lot because they have to keep Kendricks at will

because Kendricks can't take on blockers at all, which is one of the big liabilities on this defense. And the Eagles listeners know a lot about that. I'd love to see Bradham on Gronk because like you talked about with that bracket coverage you you move malcolm jenkins right you let him cover the slot wide receivers which is the other unspoken big issue that you kind of get with this this new england passing attack but if you get bradham he's excellent bradham is instinctually as a cover man he's one of the best cover linebackers the nfl he does an excellent job uh sniffing out play action understanding releases very well and he

understands how to drop into his short zones to affect throwing lines really, really well. And that's one of his great strengths. If you put him underneath a Gronk route, I think that's where he's the strongest as far as his coverage goes. That's what I'd love to see. I don't think they'll do it very often. The only way I think they get there is if slot wide receivers are killing the Eagles, which actually brings me to my next question. The game plan for the Pats coming in against the Jaguars we kind of thought was going to be keep a lot of tight ends and backs on the Eagles, which actually brings me to my next question. The game plan for the Pats coming in against the Jaguars,

we kind of thought was going to be keep a lot of tight ends and backs on the field, keep their linebackers on the field, and then attack the linebackers in coverage. That's what we expected going in. That's kind of what we saw. A lot of slot wide receivers lined up on Jacksonville linebackers. Pats took advantage of that mismatch. Given that the Jaguars and the Eagles have a similar weakness at middle linebacker, Paul Fosbosny for the Jags and Danell Ellivie for the Eagles.

Do you anticipate a similar matchup coming in, a similar game plan, a lot of 21, a lot of 12 personnel trying to keep three backers on the field at all times? Yeah, I do. And I'll get to that in one quick second. But I do want to mention back in 2014, Pats played the Bills in the regular season twice, obviously, against a Jim Schwartz. Yeah. And, you know, in the first game, Gronkowski went

nine targets, seven receptions for 94 yards and a lot of 33. And I've looked at that briefly, and it did look like they used Bradham at times, you know, in kind of that situation on Gronkowski. I haven't fully charted that game out yet. I'm not done quite doing it, but yeah, I would start by looking back at that game back from October 2014 to try to get a sense of what Schwartz might do against Gronkowski. Now, to the other question, what's been interesting working through this postseason is seeing how the Patriots have gotten a little bit of an advantage because they've basically gotten similar type looks on both sides of the football from some of the teams they played. And to your point, Ben, it's the similar sort of situation. Last week, you're facing Ramsey and it's the similar sort of situation. Last week, you're facing Ramsey and Bouye, two sort of lockdown type corners. DVOA, I think the Jacksonville

Jaguars were one and eight in terms of versus number one and number two wide receivers. And the numbers are the same. It's basically two and seven this week between numbers one and two in terms of wide receivers. Obvious subjective component of that, but still. But now it's the same thing against number three receivers. Eagles Eagles a little bit weak against tight ends, against running backs, Eagles a little bit weak. So I'm expecting, yeah, I'm expecting games from Hammond-Dolab when they go 11. That's where they're going to look. I'm expecting a lot of maybe 21, 12 personnel. I'm even expecting some 13 personnel of the Patriots try to run the ball because there's stuff you could do schematically with three tight end sets against the Eagles in

that wide nine in the run game. So that's stuff that I'm looking for. There's one big factor for me. And if this factor doesn't happen to the extent that it needs to happen, I don't think the Eagles have a chance at slowing the Patriots passing offense and Tom Brady down. It comes down to pressure. Okay. So when you look back at what the Patriots were able to do against the Falcons last year, everybody knows it, 28-3. On the way to 28-3, the Falcons were pressuring Tom Brady at a 44% rate. After that, only at a 30% rate. You look back to the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl when they were able to get to Tom Brady a lot.

They pressured him right at around 40%. The Eagles pressured quarterbacks at 41%. They pressured Case Keenum 27 out of 50 times. What is going to help the Patriots as far as slowing down the pass rush? Because this is a pass rush that isn't fancy. I mean, every now and then we'll throw in a stunt. We like, you know, blitzing from cover zero on third down and in the red zone and all that good stuff.

But this is a team that I feel, unlike the Patriots, We like, you know, blitzing from cover zero on third down and in the red zone and all that good stuff. But this is a team that I feel, unlike the Patriots, can line up four and just straight up get after it. And that's kind of how you have to beat the Patriots. You can't be like the Steelers and blitz three and sit back with eight in the zone because Tom Brady is going to have all the time in the world and he's going to carve you apart. You can't blitz six. He's going to pick that apart, too. You've got to be able to get pressure with four. You have to get there consistently and you have to force him to get the ball out of his hands quickly and really muddy that first read for him. What will the Patriots try to do to either aid their linemen or via alignment or chip or whatever the case may be because they have to do something. The Eagles are coming with that defensive line. What are they going to do? Sam Monson over PFF Pro Football Focus. Average, this is a tweet that he put out today, average NFL passer rating this year is 87.

Tom Brady's passer rating under pressure this year, 96.6. So Brady is under pressure 10 points higher than the average quarterback is on any given down, any situation. So you can get pressure on him, but he's still very, very good and better than the average quarterback in the NFL, even in those situations. The thing that sets up well for the Patriots, I think is we know Schwartz,

we know the wide nine, we know the alignment, you get those guys outside, you speed off the edge. Eagles have such great depth this year up front as well. You got Barnett, you got lawn, you get guys you can rotate in and out for us.

Yeah. If the Patriots can stay sort of in plus situations, third and three and things like that, I think they're going to be okay. Because that wide nine, the way it sets up, it allows Brady space to sort of step up in the pocket, which is what he does. He's not a guy that's going to bail. He's not going to exit the back door either way. The worry for me is this. If we get into sort of third and eight situations where they can bring their more speed package, where they kick Graham down inside, matchup to me that I'm worried about is Graham on Joe Thune, the left guard for the Patriots. He's had some protection problems this year. He's given up some sacks. If we see third and eight and Graham over the left guard,

that's where I think the Patriots are going to get into trouble because Thune's not going to be able to block him, I don't think, sitting here right now. And that's how they're going to get that quick interior pressure. Plus when they do blitz, and you guys know this well, Schwartz likes to go cross dog up the A gaps. And that's, you know, if there is that sort of playbook on how to stop Brady, it's quick interior pressure up both A gaps. That's what Schwartz likes to do. All right. So what about the running attack for the Patriots? Is it, is it Dion Lewis? Is it a mixture? Like, okay, when they want to run the ball on first down, how are they attacking that? Who are they attacking it with?

Is it outside, inside? They use traps, pulls, like power running. Explain to the Locked On Eagles listeners that may not be so familiar with the Patriots what they like to do. Generally speaking, guys, they'll use just about anything. They like to go outside zone with Lewis, Rex Burkhead. They'll do it with James White. They've been using Lewis between the tackles a lot this year.

They'll go power up with him. They'll go inside zone with him. But again, it comes back to that alignment and how you attack that alignment in the run game because you're not really going to get outside zone against these guys because that wide nine alignment allows guys to set the edge automatically. So if you're going to try to run the ball to the edges, you're going to make as a running back sort of that band read and keep it between the tackles. But that requires you to get Shaq Mason up to the second level, to get Jill Thune up to the second level because your linebackers do such a great job, Bradham and

Kendricks, of scraping in those situations and getting off blocks and things like that. One thing I will say is some quick interior traps have worked against the Eagles this year. I've got a piece coming up over at Locked On Patriots that will drop later in the night, maybe early in the morning. I've got some quick trap stuff on the inside that you can do. Some 13 personnel stuff. The Cowboys did that a couple of times. Three tight ends, change the blocking surface, get tight ends blocking down,

pulling the center and the guard. That's had some effect. But this is all like hit or miss type stuff against this defense. This is a great run defense, best in the league by almost any metric. They're going to come out and try to run the ball a little bit here and there, but it's going to be Tom Brady against that secondary. That's where this game is going to be decided, at least in this portion of the show. Later, we'll talk about Nick Foles and how he's going to light up the secondary of the New England Patriots, but for at least this show, we're talking about the passing game because I don't think the Patriots are going to really try to establish the run. They're going to do some stuff to try to keep them honest.

Flipping it to me then, and, you know, one of the things in sort of looking at how to attack this, you know, this Eagles secondary is going through and studying this secondary. There are a couple of things that I've noted. And one is, look, this is primarily cover one, cover three team. But you guys use a lot of off coverage, a lot of catch man type coverage. Do you think that changes for the Super Bowl? Because I'm looking at, you know, if you're in New England, if you want to attack that, if you want to get Hogan and Brandon Cooks involved, quick hitches, smoke routes, like just quick things like that against off man coverage.

Then it sets up those sluggo routes, those slanting goes like the Giants hit him for back in, what, week 15. Are you expecting that to change at all? I'm not expecting it to change because Jim Schwartz is not much of a let's change the way we do thing sort of a guy. He's much more of a, you know, he's a hammer and he's going to, you know, try to do his fundamentals and his scheme and implement it as hard as he can. I think what you look at when you see Philadelphia in that catch man sort of a technique, it's

something that was a big strength of theirs in the beginning of the season, kind of fell off there at the end. And that was when things looked a little bit bleak in that secondary. But the playoffs has been a lot better. And that's tackling. We talked about earlier in the beginning of the podcast about getting pressure on Brady, but he's still above average compared to all quarterbacks when he's under pressure. And those quarterbacks are under no conditions, right? So what we often forget to talk about in the conversation around pressure is pressure plus tackling. Because pressure often,

in and of itself, it doesn't accomplish the goal of the defense, which is to stop the drive. Pressure plus tackling does. Because if the ball gets out and the ball is quickly facilitated, which we've seen against Philadelphia, you can still run an offense like that. What often happens is you accompany bringing pressure, ball comes out quickly with bad angles, with broken tackles, and you can still advance the ball down the field. There's a lot of yards after contact, a lot of yards after the catch. So when you see Philadelphia very often in that off style of coverage, they're asking their corners to come up aggressive and to make tackles. When you see that Philadelphia fails to do so is where you see they really start to get into a problem with these slants and these goes.

And so the hope for Philadelphia is that there's a lot of, you know, high motor gang tackling sort of a situation. You know, you always want, you know, first man goes makes the hit, but the second man's got to be there to clean up the rest of the mess. So that's the mentality behind that style of defense. I imagine if things get tricky if things get difficult then yeah you're going to see those corners come up closer to the line of skirmish to attempt to throw off some of the timing once you do that you need to have two safeties in the back

end because i don't think ronnie mcleod has the range that you're comfortable with like you get brandon cooks on a free release mcleod isn't going to make it eagles are in trouble once you get two safeties high now eagles are susceptible to the run and we talked about how the pages aren't necessarily going to establish the run but i think if philadelphia has to lighten the box to move their corners up then you're going to see philadelphia new england run it with some more success so that's kind of the game that gets played there i expect to see philadelphia still come out in off coverage and i don't really foresee them changing it unless things get really dire the other thing that i was noticing and sort of seeing what's worked against them in the passing game this year was there were times when teams come out,

you know, sometimes 21 personnel get Jalen Mills aligned in the slot and they've had success against Mills in the slot. Is that something you guys might be worried about? The new one comes out, they come out with 21 personnel and they try to get Mills aligned in the slot where he's not quite as familiar and as adept at playing sort of inside? Yeah, that would be a concern because Jalen Mills, as far as his athletic profile against somebody like Danny Amendola, who's I'm assuming is who he would be up against, would definitely be an issue. I'd much rather have Patrick Robinson on him. I would say that them picking on Jalen Mills is going to be a thing early. And if they have success with it, they're going to try to get him in a position where their route concepts match up with picking on Mills as much as they can.

He's got to show up early in this game. And especially with the tackling and the tackling has been like Ben Ben's alluded to tackling hasn't been the greatest. Mills has struggled a little bit with that. And then you get a shifty guy on them like a Amendola. And then maybe you get a mismatch with Gronk somewhere uh in the slot that would definitely be a problem you know the with the patriots running that that haas concept with the two hitches on the outside and get the seams in the middle uh depending on the formation if they get him aligned with something

like that mills might have a little bit of an issue but it's yeah uh mills would be the guy that i would pick on if i were the patriots and if you need to do that via alignment and get a favorable matchup i expect them to do that via alignment and get a favorable matchup, I expect them to do that pretty early. One of the things I took away from studying these guys, this Eagles defense, is, you know, Schwartz loves Malcolm Jenkins. He'll use him all over the place. Like Ben was saying earlier, he'll drop him down at Sam sometimes when you go 4-2-5.

He'll let him play free safety and cover three, cover one type of looks. And what I've noticed him back in that sort of deep middle free safety type role is, since he's so aggressive and so good against the run, there are times when you see him cheating down, you see him exploding down against the run. Are there any concerns that you guys have, Patriots got something dialed up for him when he's in the middle of the field, play action, deep shot to try to exploit that? As far as discipline, I would rather go after McLeod, who has more of a tendency to kind of sniff or bite on a dig or whatever the case may be over the middle. With Jenkins, the way I would attack him is by putting Gronk out wide and see if Jenkins will go with him.

And that's taking a very good run defender that the Eagles have out of the box and taking him out of that position where he's comfortable coming downhill. McLeod, if I were to attack his safety, I would definitely attack McLeod because he has those aggressive tendencies too, and he's not as disciplined as Malcolm Jenkins. Would you agree with that, Ben? Yeah, I would. I think that you obviously more often see McLeod because he is the free safety on the depth chart as the guy who's in that single high.

I'll tell you, if Jenkins is playing a lot of single high against the Patriots, we're already screwed. So play action, not play action. Whatever's happening is already bad. That's not a good situation. Because the thing about Cenk is he's smarter than he is fast. And so a lot of his production down the field, a lot of his interceptions, are not going to come because he made outstanding physical play.

It's going to come because he baited a quarterback into doing something stupid. And as far as quarterbacks that don't get baited into doing something stupid goes tom brady is like 1 through 80 on that list and so this isn't the sort of game where i i want jenkins to be you know playing a deep sort of a zone or like you know trying to read route concepts because i think well like i said he's a smart player but he's not a great he's not a very physically gifted player at least anymore at this kind of point in his career where he's nearing 30. That's not really his game as much as he's gotten older. And so I think that if Jenkins is already at the pre-safety, we're in trouble.

I prefer, yeah, when we talk about Jenkins on our show, Mark, we talk about Malcolm Jenkins, the linebacker. Because once Jordan Hicks goes down against, who was it now? Was it the Cardinals, I think it was? I don't remember. Once Hicks went down in the middle of the season, Jenkins became the Eagles' same linebacker as well. He's an overhang defender. And he plays that position really well.

He's got great processing speed. He's a fantastic tackler. What the Eagle defense wants is to not be forced to play Jenkins somewhere. Right? If you can get them to put Jenkins somewhere, if you can say, all right, the only way they're surviving is with Jenkins over Gronk, or the only way they're surviving is with Jenkins on Amendola in the slot, the Eagles defense loses tons of its versatility because it has very poor linebacking depth and very poor safety depth, right? So wherever they're not putting Jenkins, you got to put either Corey

Graham in there, or you got to put Danilo Ellerbe back in. That's a big weakness that can be exploited. And it will be exploited by guys like Bill Belichick and Joshua Daniels and Tom Brady. So the Eagles desperately need that versatility with Jenkins. If he's being forced to play the free, they're in some deep nonsense. Here's a fun one, Ben. We talked about Mills being attacked early. What happens when they put Gronk outside and Mills stays out there with him and they start picking on him?

Do you think the game plan changes a little bit at that point? I mean, so I'll put it to you this way. You can run that and you'll win that. But I don't know how often you can do that and sustain a game plan changes a little bit at that point? I mean, so I'll put it to you this way. You can run that and you'll win that. But I don't know how often you can do that and sustain a game plan. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Because if you're putting Gronk out there as as why I so consistently, unless you're

running that almost exclusively out of 13 personnel, Philadelphia is just going to start giving you a light box playing too high and then right either McLeod or Jenkins, which I'm fine with Jenkins as a too high. Like, that's OK. Yeah. The field and they're going to rotate him straight over that. Why I'd say, screw you beat us with a slot receiver and Patriots probably can like that.

Like, you know, that could very well be a game plan that they go for and something that they use. But like, you know, I don't think you can run an offense where you just, you know,

50, 50 ball to Gronk and Jalen Mills, 15 times a game. Like, you know, that you're, you're going to lose so much versatility on that offense that the defense is just going to play one thing, you know?

I mean, you know them. If they see a wrinkle and it works, they might go back to the well-enforced until we have to change it. I mean, that's the thing that Doug Peterson does when he finds a play. He'll go right back to that play just because tendency will show that, you know, that's not necessarily something that teams will do. So it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds. Mark, what are you most afraid of?

You're in the trust tree here. You can tell us all your fears. What are you most afraid of, of this Eagles defense? I mean, I think I alluded to one, and that's sort of the potential matchup of sort of that third and eighth situation where you get that speed package on the field and you get, you know, a guy like Brandon Graham kicking inside matched up against guys on the interior that probably can't handle Brandon Graham on a lot of past pro reps. That's my concern, number one. My concern, number two, and I'm having flashbacks to the first loss to the Giants, is Brady getting flustered early. We saw that early in that first loss to the Giants. We took that intentional ground and penalty in the end zone.

You can just tell that the pressure up front, the speed of what was happening up front was getting to him early. It took him a long time to settle down in that game, and similar things could happen in this game. I mean, I could see a scenario playing out. Patriots' first possession, they get into one of those third and eights. You get that speed package on

the edge. Maybe they use that overload blitz that they did against the Falcons back in the divisional round, where you've got basically four guys outside the right tackle and you're wondering where everybody's coming from. Brady gets flustered, makes a mistake, and suddenly, you know, that momentum swings in a hurry. You know, I have a similar sort of nightmare scenario that we'll talk about later in the week, but yeah, that's the nightmare scenario for me. Yeah. Pressure, pressure, pressure. It's all about pressure for the Eagles. I mean, that's like I said, if there's no pressure, then's all about pressure for the Eagles. I mean, that's like I said, if there's no pressure,

then it's not happening for the Eagles. I got one more quick question to kind of get us out of here on this one. And look, guys, Super Bowl 55 is set to be played down in Tampa. And how differently will that game look when it's the same matchup between these teams, but it's Carson Wentz versus Kyle Lauletta for the New England Patriots? Yeah. Firstly, do not take my richmond spider's son from me

michael yeah or mark both of you he's all flustered now yeah no i dropped the la letta and you can tell he's stammering yeah it's too much for me right i i've been thinking about that and it's a very interesting sort of a conversation you know lion is patriots right now four and a half point favorites let's say cars Wentz never gets injured. They beat the Rams. They beat the Raiders. They beat the Giants. They drop to the Cowboys because they don't try.

They come in against Atlanta. They're obviously not home dogs, but they beat Atlanta 15-10. They come in against the Vikings, probably still on home dogs. They win 38-7. What do you think the line is for this game? Because I still – I almost say it's a pick-em. Yeah.

See, that's the thing. I still think it would be Patriots' favorite by a little bit. Maybe Pats by one. Right. Which to me means that like this, how many points is Nick Foles losing for the Eagles? Well, according to Vegas, a field goal and change. Yeah. It's very interesting to think about just as far as, you know, I've been spending a lot of time, you know, what if with Carson Wentz, you know. But, yeah, obviously, like, the Eagles for the Eagles, you know,

win or lose this to make it this far having lost Carson Wentz just gives the city a ton of stuff to be optimistic about moving forward, which Philadelphia doesn't really know how to be optimistic, but we're going to try our best. We're going to do our darndest. All right, guys. It has been great chatting. We're going to kick it over to – you know what?

Mark, you want to do this? You want to both hit our endings to the show? You want to wrap on this? A little joint end? A little joint end. Obviously, follow my friends over here. Michael, KissedNFL, Benjamin Solak. Follow them on Twitter. They're good people. Got to spend a lot

of time with them down in Mobile. We'll be back later in the week for another crossover action. Keep it locked on here on Lockdown Eagles. Fly, Eagles. Fly, Mark. Fly, Eagles. Fly, Mark.

Hit him with the caca. Hit him with the caca. Hit him again. Hit him again. What do Eagles sound like, Mark? In case you're wondering. I failed high school biology, man. I don't know what Eagles sound like.

Zoology. Excuse me. So there you go. A little crossover action. Me, Michael, Benjamin. First of two crossover shows we're going to do later in the week. We're going to talk about what to expect when the Eagles have the football. And yes, since this is Locked on Patriots,

I could not end the show in any good conscience with that little chant. Hope you enjoyed today's show. I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.