Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 31, 2018 - Timeline Takes: Super Bowl Edition

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

Mark Schofield reacts to some of the takes from the timeline during Super Bowl Week. Plus, how you can be a part of the special Super Bowl Saturday Edition of Locked On Patriots!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning, welcome on into Lockdown Patriots for Wednesday, January 31st, 2018. Mark Schofield here with you in the big chair as I am actually more than five days a week this week getting you ready for Super Bowl 52. Going to be doing some timeline takes today and here's the reason why. Look, media night just wound down last night because I'm recording this on Tuesday night. We're getting into that sort of period of Super Bowl week when the takes really start flying because we're getting to the point where you're almost running out of things to talk about.

Now we won't run out of things to talk about here. We're going to be doing a lot of scheme stuff throughout the rest of the week. I'd recommend checking out LockedOnPatriots.com. We've got all sorts of scheme stuff up right now about what the Patriots might do on offense against that Eagles defense later in the week. Flip the script a bit. Talk about that Eagles offense and what the Patriots might do up against it. Also, check out the work over at InsideThePylon.com. Follow me on Twitter, at Mark Schofield.

Also, we're going to be doing a Saturday show. Figured, why not, right? Saturday show is going to be starring you. That's right, you, the listeners of the Locked On Patriots podcast. Going to give you guys a chance to be rewarded here yourself and your takes on the show. Here's how you can do it. Phone number here.

Write it down. 240-670-6016. I'll repeat that again. 240-670-6016. Call. Leave a message. Drop the takes name

twitter handle whatever you want to go by you can even text as well I'll make them part of the show on Saturday if you leave a voicemail I will just drop it

into the show you can drop your takes whatever you want you want to yell at me you want to talk about the game you want to talk about quarterbacks whatever you want to say I'll include it unless

it's absolutely abusive and then i'll think about it so yeah check that out that should be a little bit of fun do something on saturday to kind of unwind before the super bowl kicks off but as i said timeline takes and you know i was going to go scheme heavy again on this wednesday show because look super bowl you want to take it serious, right? But then I wake up and do what I do each morning. What's the first thing we all probably do these days? Reach for the phone, right? You fire up Twitter because you know the takes are flying already.

And the first thing I see is a take from Good Morning Football, the morning show over on Football Network, posing their question of the day. Which Super Bowl career do you want? Tom Brady's or Eli Manning's? This is a good time to remind everybody that today's show is brought to you by the number five. I mean, are we serious with this?

You know, I saw somebody, he's that Dave, at that Dave Brown on Twitter. He covers the Patriots for the Concord Monitor, I believe. Who basically said, would I rather have $5 or $2? I mean, it's that simple, right? Is this really a hard question? Because Tom Brady lost two Super Bowls, you'd rather have Eli Manning's two Super Bowls? I mean, Tom Brady has lost as many Super Bowls as Eli Manning has won.

Tom Brady has played in seven Super Bowls, about to play in his eighth. Would you really rather have Eli Manning's Super Bowl career? So, yeah, it was that take that made me think, okay, time for some timeline takes. Let's change it up. Let's go a little light on the Wednesday show. Next take, Jeff Howe, at JeffPHow on Twitter,

covers the Patriots for the Boston Herald. This was just basically part of one of his pieces, making the point that, look, Rob Gronkowski, he is on pace for a Super Bowl start. And I think we all sort of expected Gronk to be able to go. I think we all sort of expected that, you know, given the two weeks, given the extra week, I think that Gronkowski was going to be in good position

to get cleared from the concussion and go on the Super Bowl. As we know, it's important, almost vital for the Patriots to be able to win this game, having Rob Gronkowski back in the starting lineup, having him both in the run game and the pass game. You know, because obviously with the Eagles and their defense, we've talked about the numbers both on this show and the crossover show about how, you know, according to at least DVOA, you can make some hay against this Eagles defense by targeting the receiver,

the tight ends in the pass game. You know, go back to the numbers, go back to the DVOA. Eagles, 17th in the past game. Go back to the numbers. Go back to the DVOA. Eagles, 17th in the league. So they're basically average at best against tight ends in the past game. And that's juxtaposed with their 7th best in DVOA against wide receiver 1s, best in the league against wide receiver 2s.

So you're going to need Rob Gronkowski in the past game. But I think you're also going to need him in the run game, and here's why. I've talked about sort of the difficulties. I've written about sort of the difficulties running to the edges against this defense, this wide nine alignment. I'm going to give a Twitter shout-out here to Adam Spinks,

who is at TheRBScout, at TheRBScout on Twitter. He does some great stuff when it comes to running back charting and one of the things he does and i know i've mentioned before is you know defense russian yards allowed by gap and i had asked him the other night you know what's the info on philly because i was curious if the numbers bear out the fact that it's tough to run to the edges but at least in terms of average yards allowed per attempt to one gap or the other. Right end is actually where the Eagles have been weakest. 58 attempts, 276 yards, 4.8 yards per carry to the right end.

That means you might need Rob Gronkowski on plays like that. So I think Gronkowski, his availability for Super Bowl Sunday is huge. And the fact that the Patriots expect to have him back bears, you know, great tight ends of joy for the Patriots and their chances in Super Bowl 52. Up ahead, more timeline takes on this Super Bowl edition of Timeline Takes here with me, Mark Schofield and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you for a Timeline Takes edition of Locked On Patriots. And listeners to this show know that I like to talk about movie quotes, TV quotes. I've talked about Top gun quotes a lot. I even wrote an article over at insidethepylon.com

that went up this past weekend that you should check out where I use top gun quotes to basically break down the senior bowl quarterbacks and the performances they put forth down in Mobile, Alabama at Ladd People's Stadium. Here's the thing with this, okay? Here's where I'm going with this. I got to do something right now. I can't – I still can't believe I got to do this right now.

Steve Spagnuolo, former Eagles defensive coach, former Giants coach the Spygate takes they're back and you probably expect that the Spygate takes would come back given that the Patriots are in a Super Bowl and here we go again they're back and there's a quote from Spagnuolo talking about Super Bowl 39.

Basically says this. He believes that the Patriots had the Eagles' blitz signals in that game. And his reasoning is, when you go back and look at that tape, it was evident to us, we believe that Tom Brady knew when we were pressuring him because he certainly got the ball out pretty quick. And that's allowed people to sort of run with the Spygate takes again. A couple of things. Anybody that's watched

the Patriots over this Brady-Belichick era knows that getting the ball out quickly is kind of a hallmark of what they try to do offensively. Part of it is because sometimes the playbook on Brady reads, you've got to get pressure on him.

So what do you do? You get the ball out quickly. There's a piece up on LockedOnPatriots.com right now talking about how the Patriots can do that this week against an Eagles defense that sometimes uses off coverages. You can throw those quick slant routes, out routes, hitch routes. And as a former quarterback, you look for blitzes all the time and you have hots that you throw to in those situations. If you get blitzed, it doesn't mean that you sit there in the pocket and wait. Sometimes the protection, the play call requires you to throw

the ball before you even finish your draw. You know, so, you know, just because you get blitzed and get the ball out quickly, it doesn't mean that you know that it's coming. You know, so, you know, just because you get blitzed and get the ball out quickly, it doesn't mean that you know that it's coming. You know, and the other thing on here is, you know, since it allows the sort of Spygate takes to get revved up again, I suppose it's worth talking about this. The issue with Spygate was that they recorded the signals from the improper place. There was a league-wide memo that said you can't record them from this spot. And the Patriots ignored it and still

recorded them from that spot. It wasn't the fact that they were recording them. It was the fact of where they were physically recording them from okay I mean ask anyone, ask Louis Riddick who's been talking about it this week John Madden himself

there's a video clip out there talking about recorded signals everybody does it everybody did it you know and as Belichick himself stated finally years later does it. Everybody did it. You know, and as Belichick himself stated finally years later, you're in an open stadium with 80,000 people.

You know, people are going to see. The Patriots disobeyed a league-wide memo, and that was the Spygate thing. But it always gets ginned up every time the Patriots are in a big game. And you know, there was even

a poll out recently among Eagles fans. What are they most worried about? Brady was the number two concern. Number one was cheating. You know, and look, it is what it is. Okay? Because of the Spygate stuff, because of the Deflategate stuff, obviously there are always going to be those that believe that everything that the patriots do is

tainted and fine whatever okay that's the way it is we move on such is life just here we are another super bowl and the cheat intakes are flying let's get away from that for a minute because i want to shout out somebody who is one of the best people to follow on Twitter and just a genuinely genuinely nice guy. Last year down in Mobile, got to spend a lot of time with him.

This year he wasn't down in Mobile because his team is in the Super Bowl and that's Fran Duffy. He's the production manager. Does a lot of work for the Eagles. Works for the Eagles. You have to follow Fran on Twitter. At FDuffy.

D-U-F-F-Y 3. The number 3. I wish more and more. The Patriots do this too. The Patriots do a lot of X's and O's stuff. You have the Belichick breakdowns. The Belistrator and all that. But the way that Fran does work for the Eagles do a lot of X's and O's stuff. You have the Belichick breakdowns, the Belistrator and all that. But the way that Fran does work for the Eagles,

breaking down the X's and O's, he does amazing stuff week in and week out. And he's got a thread up on Twitter. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I kind of want to walk you through. And it's interesting to see some of the concerns that he has, you know, as the team he works for, the Eagles, get ready to play the Patriots in the Super Bowl. First thing he talks about, you know, a tweet from him,

in my opinion, the most disruptive player on the Patriots' front line is defensive end Trey Flowers. Literally lines up everywhere along the line of scrimmage and wins with his heavy hands and long frame. Will be a big test on Sunday night. And he has a mashup clip that's about 49 seconds long of Flowers just being disruptive up front. And that's going to be a huge part of this game. But as Fran talks about in this tweet, in the video he puts together,

you see him on the edge, you see him down at three technique, you see him down as a zero technique, head up over the center. The Patriots will use him everywhere, and I expect to see a lot of that on Sunday night. Then Fran talks about Malcolm Brown, how he can both one gap and two gap. You can put him down, make him one gap and occupy two defenders. He can play head up and then two gap up front. So Brown and Flowers seem to be the two players that, you know, at least from Fran's Eagles perspective, that the Eagles have to worry about. The other thing Fran notes in the third tweet of this thread,

the bare front, and we haven't talked a lot about bare front a lot, but I've noticed that, you know, the Patriots shift in late into those bare front looks, where they're starting basically your normal alignment, and then late in the play, they shift down into what's called those bare front looks where they're starting basically your normal alignment and then late in the play they shift down into what's called a bare front which is really sort of a tight interior alignment where you have that zero technique head up over the center and then you have the other two defensive tackles each sort of on the outside shoulder of each guard and then you can put if you want outside linebackers down on the edges. It almost looks like, if you play Pop Warner,

a 5-2 defense, that's kind of what it looks like. So the bare front is something the Eagles and Fran are expecting. Finally, one thing Fran talks about, Patriots and their blitz packages. He mentions that if they do blitz it's going to be out of their diamond dollar their six defensive back

or seven defensive back sub packages that's going to be important I think for the Patriots too because we've talked about the Eagles and sort of their

RPO stuff if the Patriots can get them into second and long third and long you don't have to worry as much about that then they can bring on these sub packages thoseages, those diamond, those dollar packages,

and use some of those pressure schemes, blitzing with defensive backs in those situations. Anyway, I saw Fran's thread. I wanted to mention it. It's really, really, really good stuff. Highly recommend that you follow Fran, not just for this week, but year-round, because he does great work over there with the Eagles. Up ahead, we're going to dive into some final takes here in this

Timeline Takes edition of Locked On Patriots. We're going to talk a little bit more about Danny Amendola. We're going to talk about some of the Super Bowl storylines, and we're going to end it with maybe a depressing thought for the listeners to this show, but hey, you know, we call it like we see it, right? If Nick Foles wins, is that

the greatest Super Bowl story of all time? That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you for this Timeline Takes Edition of the Locked on Patriots podcast. I'm going to give a shout out to our friend Adam Kirchhen, friend of the show. Remember, you can follow Adam on Twitter, at Adam, A-D-A-M, Kirchhen, K-U-R-K-J-I-A-N. Please do follow Adam on Twitter. There's great work over at the Boston Herald. I tweeted this out earlier.

I'll retweet it again. His sort of Eagles notebook, capturing some of the big storylines from Minneapolis. One of the things he mentions in there is how sort of Minnesotans have made it quite clear they do not appreciate what happened in the NFC Championship game. You've seen the shirts. You've probably seen them on Twitter. Look.

They're Viking shirts, purple, gold lettering. Go Patriots. Kind of funny to see those. It's strange. And I'll admit to being sort of concerned when you saw that there was a chance that the Vikings would host a Super Bowl. I was really wondering what that environment was going to be like. Now I imagine it's going to be more of a 50-50 crowd.

Adam also talked about some of the stuff you see at media night or opening night as they're calling it now. One of the things Adam notes in this column is how Doug Peterson has a unique perspective as a coach who played in two Super Bowls but never really saw any time. He was a backup quarterback with the Green Bay Packers, backed up Brett Favre, backed up Brett Favre in two straight Super Bowls.

But he's got sort of the perspective of going through the experience and sort of the distractions, things like media night and opening night and the ticket requests and all the stuff that the Super Bowl can create for you, the distractions away from the field. So I think that sort of helps the Eagles. It's not new for their head coach. It might be new for the Eagles. It's not new for their head coach. It might be new for them, but it's not new for their head coach. So I thought that was a sort of interesting perspective. Adam also notes at the end of this little piece here,

Fletcher Cox being asked to put on the dog mask. Didn't do that at media night. You wonder though, Eagles may be playing with house money. House money wins money? Maybe. I guess we'll see Sunday night. Also a friend of the show, Nora Princiotti. She's out there covering the Patriots for the Boston Herald, just like Adam Norr, crushing it this week, doing some great stuff. I want to recommend a piece from her about Danny Amendola. She went back. She talked to Mike Leach.

She talked to a bunch of other people that Amendola. She went back, she talked to Mike Leach, she talked to a bunch of other people that Amendola's come across. Just a fantastic piece that Nora put together. I tweeted it out. Highly recommend you read that. Plus, you get quotes from Mike Leach. Anytime you get quotes from Mike Leach, you get good copy.

Leach, one of the most amusing people in all of football. You know, I love studying Leach's offense. He tells this story about in practice one day, Amendola catching a touchdown and in a moment of excitement, punting the ball

through the uprights and it landed in the parking lot next to the field. So, Leach ordered Amendola to get the football. And Amendola takes off running, climbs 12 feet of fence, flips himself over the top, sprints to get the ball, sprints to come back and asks to get in the next play.

And according to Leach, as he says, quote, everyone was sort of stunned because one, he was so good at climbing over that fence. How great is Mike Leach? You should follow Mike Leach on Twitter to be fires off takes on just about everything including the fact that candy corn is trash so you get a respect Mike Leach for that hoping to get both Adam and Nora on later this week they're as buried as you might believe being out there in Minneapolis for the Super Bowl. But hoping to get them on, get some time in there, even if it's just for a few minutes.

Get their perspective on what it's being like out there for Super Bowl 52. Finally, going to end with this. We're going to end where we began, and that's with good morning football. Another question that they posed was this. If Nick Foles manages to pull this off, is that the greatest Super Bowl story ever? I believe the way they phrased it was, no, they said if Nick Foles manages to win this game, it is one of the greatest stories we've ever seen. Forget Super Bowl stories, one of the greatest stories we've ever seen. I'm going to dial it back a bit and say, would it be one of the greatest Super Bowl stories

we've ever seen if Nick Foles wins this game? Maybe. Is that too wishy-washy a take to say maybe? I think you can look back at some other sort of backup quarterback or quarterback-related stories and talk about those being better stories. I think Namath, Super Bowl III, just because, look, AFC hadn't won yet. Huge underdogs, comes out and guarantees it. Other backup quarterbacks, you know, Hostetler. I think that's kind of a big story. Even Tom Brady. I mean, let's not forget that Tom Brady was a backup quarterback

that won a Super Bowl in somewhat dramatic fashion. So I think there's some credit to be given there too. Now look, as somebody that was a big believer in Carson Wentz coming out, that views it somewhat bittersweet that Carson Wentz isn't in this game because it would have been great to see him in this game. Although at the same time, I think the Eagles would have had a much better chance of winning it. I do think that it would be a very good story if Foles is able to come out and win this game. Especially when you look at how the Eagles were sort of viewed as underdogs because of Foles. How everybody wondered, could they even win the divisional round because of Foles?

And here they are with Foles playing okay in the divisional round, but playing lights out in the NFC Championship game against a very good defense. And Foles, somebody that was ready to walk away from the game, basically. And so, is it one of the great stories? Yeah, I mean, I think there are greater ones. The Namath one, the Brady one, Doug Williams. Let's not forget that. Doug Williams and his Super Bowl win,

not just for the moment that it was on the field, but for what it meant away from the field, too. I think that was a great story. So I think it would be a great story. It would be among the great stories. The greatest, I don't think so. But that's been sort of your timeline takes edition of Locked on Patriots for this Wednesday, January 31st.

We'll get back into the scheme stuff. We'll do some more crossover stuff. Again, fire off your takes. 240-670-6016. That number, 240-670-6016. Fire off your takes. You can text me. Leave a message.

Let me know your thoughts. That will be for Saturday's show. I'll be back tomorrow, I believe, with a crossover show. Maybe we've been working some extra stuff as well. Who knows? Going to do as much content as I can to get you ready for Super Bowl 52. Until next time, keep it locked right here. To me, Mark Scofield.

And locked up. to get you ready for Super Bowl 52. Until next time, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Scofield, and Locked On.