Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 4, 2018 - A Locked On Patriots/Locked On Eagles Crossover Extravaganza

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

Mark Schofield is joined by Benjamin Solak and Michael Kist from Locked On Eagles for a...wide-ranging chat. Plus, their MyBookie locks for Wild Card Weekend.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome on into Lockdown Patriots for Thursday, January 4th, 2008. Mark Schofield here in the big chair as I am five days a week giving you all the Patriots news and analysis that you need to get ready for your day. Today's show is a little bit different. It's a crossover show with myself and Michael Kist and Benjamin Solak, the co-hosts of Locked On Eagles. Three of us thought that with both teams on a bye, it would be good to get together,

deal with some takes from the timeline. There's a wide range of discussion that I think you should check out. But before you do, just a reminder that you can follow my work over on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Follow my work over at InsideThePylon.com. Put on a new video yesterday on the debut of Patrick Mahomes for the Kansas City Chiefs. You might want to check that out. Also, of course, Bleacher Report, the NFL 1000 Project.

The friendly comments still rolling in thanks to the year-end quarterback rankings that came out. So you can check that out as well. Without further ado, the Locked on Eagles, Locked on Patriots crossover extravaganza. Okay, friends, as we have heard, a crossover edition of Locked on Patriots, Locked on Eagles. Mark Schofield, Benjamin Solak, Michael Kist. Friends, want to dive into some takes here?

Let's do it, man. I am so ready for this. Are you really? Yeah, I am. I am hyped. It doesn't seem like you're hyped enough for this. I'm jumping through the screen right now at you. Well, we're going to do that in a second.

Why don't we build up to a crescendo here? Let's start. We're doing this on heck what day is it wednesday night wednesday yeah sure josh rose and sam darnold both declaring for the draft obviously fan bases that listen to these two shows probably aren't that intrigued by quarterbacks at the top of the draft maybe patriots fans are, guys. Thoughts on these two guys declaring for the NFL draft? Yeah, I mean, Rosen is one of the more, you know, I hate the word pro-ready. That's so cliche.

But mechanically, his ability to mentally process things pre-snap and post-snap is one of the better grades that I'll probably hand out for a quarterback in recent years in, in those two aspects. And, he does enough with the deep ball accuracy, uh, Darnold, something about his game, man is so high variance and it swings so violently from the high end to the low end on,

on play to play. Uh, Ben, I know you've done a lot of work on these guys. What do you think? Yeah. Rosen obviously is a guy with whom I'm quite smitten. I'm very taken with Josh.

He's a fun guy to watch. You know, he does, he checks on the boxes. I really enjoy the way he plays, so I'm excited he's coming out. Darnold, obviously, the bigger of the surprises, I hadn't done any significant charting on Darnold because I personally thought he was going to go back to declare simply because there's been so much of a narrative around his declaration, around, you know, whether or not he wants to end up with the Browns or really the narrative is whether or not he doesn't want to end up with the Browns very actively. Right. And I really liked the way that he declared. I liked reading the piece that he wrote for his declaration, the letter there because I thought, you know, while it had its moments of kind of Josh Rosen bravado and I guess someone would say arrogance and I could kind of hear that as well. I think that he, I don't know, I'm very attracted to his, you know, shameless kind of bald-faced nature. I really like it. And we always talk about, you know, we get anonymous quotes, everything like that. One team's got to fall in love. That's all it takes. And, you know, I'm sure there'll be some GMs who are turned off by the way that rosen is but i really i think you know you're talking top three top five i think there's good odds at least one team is fine with it uh that they're even like i am they're down with it and that he goes that high i don't know from a talent level i think rosen's more better than darnell you know once you start getting into the uh the character

situation space of the franchise maybe there's a debate but you know i think that rosen's talent will be able to swing it i think it'll be a front office who's fine with him as well yeah i mean you know ben you sort of touched on there something that are we ready for what's gonna be just an insane draft season of not so much character assassination that's not the right word for it but oh it is it is you want to go down that road i mean i think you could go down that road because it just we've seeded already because in the past 24 to 48 hours we've seen that josh rosen anonymous scout just wants to play football for money which last i checked that's what college kids when you look to come out of school you look to maximize your income but whatever yeah speaking as a college kid i would love to do things for money in the future that sounds really great as

somebody who does not do things for money that sounds ideal yeah so there's there's been that there's been baker mayfield quote unquote crushing beers at the clippers game because he was seen having one beer so it's just this is going to be an insane draft process. And we haven't even gotten to what might be the big one, which is if and when Lamar Jackson decides to come on, that's when the takes are really going to get thermonuclear. What's interesting to me is people compare Baker Mayfield to Johnny Manziel. And I said this on Twitter the other day, there's a difference between swag and rehab. If you find a picture of baker mayfield coming out of vegas bathroom with a rolled up 20 bill which anybody who has been down that road

knows what a 20 bill rolled up entails if anybody finds a picture of that of baker mayfield okay fine i have room to be concerned a dude being a bro in college and drinking some beers not that big of a deal in my opinion opinion anyway. It's not even close. Is he more mature than Jameis Winston right now? I mean, is that an argument that we could have? I mean, I think it's certainly an argument we could have, but it's just crazy what's going to happen to these guys over the next four months. Because, you know, especially with Rosen Rosen there's a massive elephant in the room that I don't know if we want to go down that road right now but with Rosen there's going to be you

know some ownership group's going to look at him look at some of his comments and say look I just know if I'm not I just don't know if I'm comfortable taking this guy in the year 2018 and I'll just leave it there yeah no it's a it's a very realistic thing when it comes to Rosen. I think that we have, you know, we're all working in draft media. And that's also something that we do. I don't know. I'm going to take a shockingly optimistic kind of sunny, rosy sort of look at it. It's kind of the way that I like to do things.

I don't know. I'm very much looking forward to, like, providing good content. I mean, for the extent to which, like, all these anonymous scout quotes come out and they make things confusing and they distract away from the problems like you know while all that's going on mark scrofield's releasing first sound videos breaking down interceptions and we can give as much lip service as we want to these ridiculous quotes so we can share them and make our jokes about them and give them all a good impression. I've been doing a ton of work on the quarterbacks and charting everybody and precipitating a lot of data for those guys to come out and for us to be able to talk about these guys from a talent level.

I'm excited to talk about new-age college offenses, you know what I mean? If we don't like the way that all the anonymous scouts and the way that the media is kind of portraying these kids and breaking down their character, I think we're, to an extent, responsible for providing content on the opposite side of it. So that's what I'm excited for. You know, I'm just going to focus on doing the best that I can to break down these players, figure out who's good and who's bad. That's about it.

To take that in a next sort of step, do you think there's potential, Ben, Michael, for this draft season to sort of be a tip and point in how the draft is covered. You want to take that sort of optimistic view and say, look, there are people like the three of us and other sort of smaller outlets that do it in a completely different direction, don't rely on anonymous scouts, all that kind of stuff, and just, like, grind out content. Do you think that this could be a tip and point type of offseason where there's more attention paid to what we're actually seeing between the lines as opposed to what people are hearing at bars, at the combine and places like that? Do you think there's that potential? Yes, I do. And there's still space for it.

There absolutely is. If I'm going to draft a guy, I want to know everything I can possibly know about him. I'm not afraid of that. You know, and that's certainly, there's still like, you know, an area for guys who've been around the process for multiple years, getting a feel for players, sitting down and talking with them, just kind of trusting their gut. I'm not afraid of that whatsoever. I'm fine with that.

But I think that absolutely we're at a point where things are going to start to tumble a little bit. I think some, you know, some dominoes are going to fall. I think that when I look at tipping points as far as the draft process, and especially with quarterbacks, the biggest one that I see is the tipping point for how college and spread style quarterbacks are understood, you know, kind of using those umbrella terms that mean a lot of different things for a

lot of different people. I think that that's the biggest tipping point for me as far as, you know, when we get guys like Lamar, get guys like Baker Mayfield, who are coming out, who clearly don't fit the prototypical molds but have such incredible talent such incredible production and and captain such incredibly explosive offenses when we take those as well as the fact that the most explosive NFL offenses over the past couple seasons have really started to borrow from concepts that you would call spread you know we've really seen that onset I think once you start to recognize over the next few years

that these quarterbacks you know Lamar prototype, Baker's prototype can be successful. Once that domino starts to fall, I think that the way that quarterbacks are evaluated also has to switch. And all of a sudden, you're going to start to move away. It's never, you know, an instantaneous process. But you'll start to move away from he's big, he's tall, he's got a huge arm, and he's raw, and we can work with him. You know, like there's still a value for that. There still a place for that but things are going to have to shift necessarily i think all those you know a lot of those lines are connected and so you'll see it go that way back to your original point mark as far as like the inflammatory stuff that comes out and the

way that the draft media that is acting of course i have a history reference for that i would like to share with you guys beautiful Beautiful. So, all right. The Spartan regent Pausanias, he's the one that led the 479 Battle of Plataea, right? So after the battle that they win, they go into the Persian camp, Mardonius' camp, and they're shown all the luxuries that Mardonius has. And instead of maybe taking the flamingo heel and all this other luxurious food and making a feast out of that, he orders a spartan meal to be made for all the soldiers, which is like black broth and like crap like that. So there's a correlation there for me with the way that draft media and some of draft Twitter, whatever that really means, deals with these guys.

You can either be inflammatory with these anonymous scouts and reporting whatever quote that you hear, however credible it might be, however credible the source is, or you can take a different approach and you can be level-headed about things and you can take things at face value and you can trust your gut with your evaluations and not get on this hyperbolic side of things that get so much attention because it gets clicks i'm not here for clicks i'm not here for that type of stuff obviously i would like to make some dough and whatnot covering the draft but at the same time if it sacrifices your integrity i don't think you have anything left you know what i mean well said my friend thank you, I like where your head's at on that. I mean, it is sort of, you know, you get to it there.

You know, there's that double-edged sword that comes every draft season. And basically, you know, it's not unique just to draft Twitter or football Twitter or anything like that. It's, you know, the sort of trying to balance doing good work and finding an audience for it. And I think, you know, at least with respect to this type of stuff that I think the three of us try to do, there's an audience for it, whether that eventually grows beyond what it is right now remains to be seen,

which is why if you're listening to this, you should go to the respect of locked on Eagles and locked on Patriots, iTunes pages, and leave reviews to the shows. Tell your friends, let everybody know that you're listening to some good stuff. I think that would help us all out. Don't you guys yeah i agree i love the reviews that we have in our reviews i mean it's just the point that i just made a lot of the reviews that get left with us

are so appreciative of me and ben being so level-headed and honest in our in our takes and very uh insightful with things and we do our homework we don't just spout out off the mouth we do hours and hours of research into this stuff so that we can actually know what we're talking about and come through with very level-headed, football-minded takes. Yeah, and the fact that we blackmail and pay people off for all those reviews

really doesn't affect anything as well, you know? I mean, they all look the same on iTunes. Now, speaking of level-headed reason to take, since this is a crossover show between the Patriots and the Eagles, Michael, Ben, please inform the Patriots fans who are listening why Carson 1 should still

win MVP. Ooh. Oh, man. You're going to make us do this on our own show to our own viewers. I'm looking at Ben's face, and it doesn't look like he wants to take this one. it looks like he's seen a ghost I'll address a Wentz narrative we could flip it I'll make the Wentz case you guys can make the Brady case how about that okay okay you guys want to make the Brady case first

what do you want me to do with Wentz first I don't have numbers on Brady the way I've got numbers on Wentz. We have covered this before. I literally do not care about the MVP debate. I care if my quarterback is a quarterback that you can win because of. That is my stance. Carson Wentz is a quarterback you win because of. You guys can argue that out.

Do you want to move away from that and do coach of the year? Oh, we already know who that is. Who's that? Ben. Well, it's probably Sean McVay. I would like to be Doug Peterson. I'd probably end up being McVay. There's been about 1,000 articles written about McVay.

He's the popular choice in the media and everything like that. As Locked on Eagles listeners know and Locked on Patriots listeners can get a snippet of it, there's obviously a big tether between MVP and Coach of the year especially when it comes to Philadelphia just you have a successful offense you know top five in the league you're going to get you know both talks for quarterback and for and for coach of the year obviously obviously like with Los Angeles it's the running back is not the quarterback the reason I kind of took pause with with the uh Carson Wentz for MVP is because there's been a big narrative in philadelphia that is oh look at how bad nick foals is playing you can't tell me carson wentz isn't the mbp which just isn't the way it works you can't take a guy like that's that's that's not

foals being bad does not make wentz any more valuable to the offense than he already was you can't say that oh because wentz got injured and Brady didn't, we didn't see Brian Hoyer in the Patriots offense. Now, you know, Brady's not the MVP, it's Wentz. There's too much there for me. Wentz, to extend plays, make ridiculous throws, do his structure. At the end of the day, he was doing a fantastic job executing Doug Peterson's offense, which requires a good amount of skill because it's an NFL offense and he was doing it well. But he was executing a fantastic top of the NFL offensive scheme. And I'm sorry that that's my take.

I know we wanted to be all Wentz, but it was so much of Doug. And now you've got Foles there who's just struggling to execute Doug Peterson's scheme. It does mean that obviously Philadelphia needs Wentz to win. I guess it does make him valuable in that sense of the word. But we've known for years that most of the time it doesn't actually mean valuable. It just means who did really well this year. And it should be Brady every year if it means most valuable. It should be Cam Newton if it means most valuable, for God's sakes,

because there's nobody else in that offense. I don't think it's going to be Wentz. I don't think it should be Wentz. I apologize. Mark, make the case for Carson Wentz for our gentle, gentle listeners. Well, I was going to say that look at the Eagles offense the last couple of weeks. You can't tell me Carson Wentz isn't the equal. I mean, I think when you look at the drastic improvement in the Eagles, both as a team, just in the win-loss column, as opposed to the drastic improvement in the eagles as an

offensive unit from last year to this year it's hard to understate what carson wants his ability particularly on say third downs against the blitz in those sort of clutch moments when you need your quarterback to step up and make a play that's what once has been at his best this year his ability to sort of extend plays his ability to make defenders amiss, his ability to take third and long situations and transform them into third downs, either with his arm or sometimes like we saw in games like against Carolina when it looked like he was all but wrapped up, but he somehow escapes and turns it into a first down with his legs.

That's the type of things that make a team go from seven to nine to 13 and three and go from like third place to first place in a division it's that type of transformation which has made him not only perhaps you can make the argument that he was the most improved player this year but the most valuable player this year now whether the argument becomes is that more of a coach of the year argument, that Peterson should get more credit for that than anything else, I don't know. But I think when you take a step back and realize just how far the Eagles came over the past calendar year or so, a ton of credit to Leroy Carson once for that.

And the fact that he still finished second in touchdown passes, despite finishing in the final three games, I think also sort of gives credit to you know the fact that he still finished second in touchdown passes despite minutes finished minutes in the final three games i think also sort of gives credit to because as you said ben sometimes it doesn't go to what we call value but who played the best and who had the best sort of numbers and it's hard to devalue that so i'm looking at bleacher report.com right now and it's just not matching up with what you're saying mark because it looks like you have carson wentz ranked seventh out of quarterbacks uh can you explain and i know you're a big carson wentz guy he was he was like you're fine uh you were you were big on him before

anybody else uh as far as the eagles fan base though uh try to soften the blow of ranking him seventh out of quarterbacks because I get your points. They're going to need some elaboration, however. Sure, happy to do that. First, let's establish sort of the once bona fides here, if you will, because I was writing about this kid back in December of 2014 before anybody really knew who the kid was. Tell them.

And I was somebody that, you know, over the last summer was on shows such as this one telling people look let's be cautiously optimistic here because I loved what the kid did last year I loved sort of the way he finished that season last year and so when other people were sort of writing him off I was saying look you know I'm cautiously optimistic because I think there's a chance for a breakout type season and that's what we saw now with respect to sort of the bleacher report the NFL 1000 final season grades we're gonna understand here that we're grading these guys on four traits arm strength accuracy decision making and what they do against pressure in the pocket and when you sort of take a step back and like grade these guys on those four areas,

there are guys that are going to slide up perhaps in some people's minds artificially because those are the traits that we're grading. For example, Matthew Stafford. I think we could all sort of agree that Stafford has what we would call elite-type arm talent because of the throws that he can make from ridiculous platforms, adjusting his arm angle. That's going to push him up the board. It's the same thing that sort of pushed Cam Newton up the board.

And because of things like that, you're going to see guys that other outlets like PFF might have graded lower sort of slide up in a ranking system like this. Now, I think with Carson, there were things that I did sort of have to knock him down a little bit, the main one being sort of decision-making, because for me, there were times when, you know, he was locking on to receivers quickly. He was bird-dogging routes. That first interception he threw against the Rams, you know, that was a stick concept, basically, where he just stared it down the whole way and never looked anywhere else and allowed the guy to jump it.

You know, and that's's okay because we're still talking about a guy that made a huge developmental leap in his second year and i think sure you know you know when you do a ranking thing like this believe me my twitter mentions have been a nightmare the past 24 48 hours and you know it's one of those things where you rank 47 quarterbacks on 32 different teams and you're going to get 32 different fan bases angry with you because I've had Patriots fans wonder why Brady wasn't graded high enough even though he was a top guy for me but you know it's just one guy's sort of evaluation of watching every throw all of these guys made every single year every decision every interception every

incompletion every read and all that stuff and charted it out and then saying, okay, how do I now grade these guys and these four traits from 0 to 25 or 0 to 20, whatever it was. And for Wentz, he ended up seventh because they had to, you know, din him for a couple of things and other guys get bumped up above him for other things, and that's just where it is. And I think most Eagles fans, if they sort of take a step back and realize we now have the seventh best quarterback in the league at least in this ranking system from where we were you

know before the season started that's probably not question michael it would have been even better if you weren't happy if i had my mic on i did the seth cox from draft breakdown my goodness i was trying to lower the background noise i was saying that ben had touched on I did the Seth Cox from draft breakdown. My goodness. I was trying to lower the background noise. I was saying that Ben had touched on some of those things that you touched upon, which was bird-dogging some receivers, staring some things down earlier in the – wow, I am all flustered now. I had a very good point. I was throwing Ben under the bus.

It was going great. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a hard transition to some hot takes because i promised the listeners that we would have some hot timeline takes here's one for you i want your guys's instant reaction to this from david hsu at davis hsu seattle russell wilson is absolutely tradable has no sense on how to navigate the pocket or go through progressions and teams have figured out how to rush them and cover the routes he likes guys what do you think i'm gonna start here and i'm taking off my wedding ring and putting it down because i'm about to gesticulate wildly here and here's the thing i don't think you could watch seattle this year and come away with the piece that has to be moved is russell wilson because you can say that he can't navigate a pocket and can't make throws with a pocket and he's just sort of running around

without a plan back there but i think it was the wise duke mannyweather who said he's not just running around back there it's a matter of survival okay because that seahawks offensive line despite the talent that they do have there, I mean, they've got a former first-round guy playing left tackle. They've got other early draft picks along that offensive line. But it just didn't come together. And there were times that by the time the ball got to Wilson and he was starting his drop from the shotgun, he had somebody in his face.

And he had to do this. Were there instances out of the 600, 700 dropbacks, he had somebody in his face. And he had to do this. Were there instances out of the 600, 700 dropbacks that he had this year where he maybe bailed a pocket early? Sure, there were a couple of those. But when your internal clock gets rushed that quickly on so many snaps, you're going to start doing that. It just comes naturally. And let's look at one more thing.

38 touchdowns this year he was responsible for 37 of them you're gonna trade that sure go ahead and trade that away and braid it in i don't know let's just say josh allen good luck with that one yeah i mean wherever russell wilson goes is an immediate Super Bowl contender. I don't even care who the supporting cast is around him because the supporting cast has been touch and go for Seattle, and he's made them a playoff contender every year. Seattle's got one of the three worst offensive lines in the NFL.

To me, like, you know, all right, Russell Wilson's tradable. Sure, go for it. I'm down for Cleveland to get very good all of a sudden for no reason. Yeah. Here's the other hot take I wanted to talk with you guys about that I promised my listeners, our listeners, me and Ben, that we would talk about. This is from our friend.

I'm going to rib our friend over at Lockdown Cowboys, Marcus Mosier, real quick. I want to talk about this take. He tweeted this out right after Seattle eliminated the cowboys from the playoffs uh he says if we are being honest the quarterback is a major problem right now seems silly but they should have traded for jimmy g guys go for it does seem silly for sure okay i'm gonna do this way uh on the esteemed Mark Schofield's Bleacher Report quarterback rankings, I do believe Dak Prescott was 15th. Carson was 7th. For those of you playing at home, 7 is higher than 15.

That's a top 15 quarterback from the jump, and we know that his season ended quite poorly. And so top 15, not terrible for a fourth-round pick, not at all. It's also worth noting, and this also applies to Carson, three, I believe, of the six names aboveon are going to be out of the league within the next two or three years it's you know breeze brothasberger and uh brady as well right these guys are going to be eventually leaving and so you've got you know mobility just by virtue of you know if you hold steady the competition above you thins out because you're young and they're old

right and so dac Prescott still remains a very solid young quarterback in this class you know Carson after their second year performance absolutely I'm not sure if it's golf above Dak for me just yet golf had an excellent year uh in a very very favorable situation with McVay whereas Dak had a lot of stuff going around that was difficult for him and you know Dak has that creator's ability outside of the pocket that I still value. To say that the Cowboys, however, should have recognized quarterback as a need, no, because you have a lot of other very, very – your defense is not great.

And fix the defense before you ever start making moves with quarterbacks. I mean, that's not a very level-headed take. It's a take in emotion, I think, and that's okay. Like his team very level-headed take it's taking emotion i think and that's okay like his team was just limited from the playoffs after that high hopes for the season sort of frustrating season for cowboys fans with the elliot suspension i don't blame him for getting frustrated but dac had a bad end of the season but let's let's take a few chill bills yeah i mean i don't want to really put the lawyer hat back on but to make a sort of analogy here i mean that's a take of passion you know that's like a crime of passion and heat of the moment type thing from marcus there

little passion of the take i like that passion of the take for there you go uh i i do think though that there was room for criticism of dac this year because when Tyron Smith was out, when Ezekiel Elliott was out, we saw some regression, a regression back to more of what we saw when Dak was coming out of Mississippi State. Now look, in the next month or so, I'm going to have to take a big, big, big L on my Dak Prescott evaluation because he was like QB 17 for me. I just did not like him coming out. And part of the reason I didn't like him was ball placement. It just wasn't where it needed to be at times. And we saw a little bit of that sort of reemerge.

I mean, ball placement was shoddy over the past couple of weeks. So there was regression, of course. But development is not linear. I mean, let's remember that. There is going to be bumps and stumbles along the way for young quarterbacks. So I'm nowhere near writing off Dak Prescott. I think what the Cowboys need to do is address the defense. Like Ben said, I think they need to get an upgrade at the wide receiver spot.

I think that was an issue for them as well. Receivers struggle to separate at times, and that just added up to a bad situation. When you have a quarterback that's being inconsistent with ball placement, tied together with receivers that can't separate, what do you expect to see happen? Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that one. As far as, you know, it's fair to criticize Dak. I just thought it was, boy, to go back in time and trade for Jimmy G then, what would have Twitter been like on that day? You know, and to the Jimmy G part of this, because we're all sort of focused on the Dak part of this, you know, there's a lot of recency bias playing out with Garoppolo right now.

He's looked great, believe me. Don't get me wrong. He's looked great. But if he got traded somewhere else to a different situation, say Cleveland, say, you know, any other team you want to list, would he have been playing as well? Maybe, maybe not. Shanahan's offense, I think, is extremely suited for what Jimmy Garoppolo

can do as a quarterback. He fits in it well, and he's still through seven TDs and five interceptions in his time as a quarterback here. He's been good, but let's sort of pump the brakes just a little bit on the Garoppolo thin hair. All right, guys. What else? Do we have anything else for today's show? Do we want to throw out maybe something we're expecting to see wildcard weekend? We don't have to go to all the games.

You want to do a mybookie.az lock? Hey mark when you go to bed where do you go there's only one place i go my friends it's a place where i play i win i get paid and where is that it's at my bookie dot ag and let me tell you this my older brother died in a cinnamon mine right years ago if my bookie dot ag had existed back then where you play you when you get paid they got live in-game betting all that good stuff if they had had that back then i would have had a time machine would have gone back made some bets on my big my bookie.ag made it to where he didn't have to work that terrible terrible cinnamon cinnamon mine job and my older brother would still be alive today so my bookie.ag can save you lives That's what I'm telling you right now here on this show.

Do not, please, do not. I may actually take that literally. It does not save lives, but it will make you some money. So let's do a lock each for the playoff wildcard weekend. Let's see here. I'm just looking through the games here. I'm going to say that my lock is going to be the Jacksonville Jaguars. And I am actually fairly comfortable

taking the points i don't is mccoy going to play because he had that scare with his ankle and it looks like he's going to be pretty bad off right yeah i think he's going to play but you know they were talking about x-rays mris on that ankle he's going to be limited yeah and i don't trust blake borders that blake wardles at all uh but that defense with no mccoy uh facing tyrod taylor who is essentially a game manager and you know you can disagree with that but you're only disagreeing on either like one like very small side of that what about you guys what do you got uh i'll go ahead i like the over i'll take the points for carolina and new or Orleans solely because I know these

two defenses have kind of played well so far this year. But NFC South facing each other for the third time. And you've got Cam Newton and Drew Brees, two very high-powered offenses, two very high-powered quarterbacks. This is a personal game. This is a game that, like I said, is inside the division. So I always like to take the points on those games. And Cam, obviously, no good wide

receivers right there. I alluded to it earlier. I think he's at a point where he's going to be very comfortable just taking over the offense running. I think he's going to be very comfortable moving the football on the ground. Obviously, McCaffrey has been more successful there for Carolina recently. And then anytime I can get under 50 with the Saints, I'm okay with taking that because the Saints have been one of the highest scoring

offenses. It's 48.5. I like the over for Carolina and New Orleans. What's the number on Kansas City, Tennessee right now? Is it still 6.5? Yeah, you got a 6.5 point favorite for – wait, no. Excuse me. That's Atlanta. It's at 9.

It's at 9? Chiefs. Yeah. Well, I'm still taking – Yeah, it's at 9. I'm still taking Kansas City. I'll give those 9 because here's the thing. Looking at that matchup, people might start to look at,

will Kansas City be able to run the ball? You're looking at the Tennessee Titans in terms of DVOA, seventh-best run defense in the league. But here's a little fact that I uncovered a couple weeks ago. Titans can't cover running backs out of the backfield. They are dead last covered running backs out of the backfield in DVOA, 32nd in the league. We saw that in week 16.

Todd Gurley, two touchdown receptions, one on a quick flat route in the end zone, the other an 80-yard screen pass. I'm expecting a huge day from Kareem Hunt catching the ball out of the backfield.

I think Chiefs win. They cover those nine points. Guys, take those bets. Remember, where you bet is just as important as who you're betting on. Enter promo code LONFL. They will match your deposit up to a 50% bonus. Don't take my word for it. Go check them out yourselves. Go to mybookie.ag.

They're the only site I'd recommend. I'd recommend them over google.com. I'd recommend them over gmail.com. You don't have to check your Gmail. We already gave you the locks. You know the score. You know what's going to happen. You're going to make some money. You play when you get paid at mybookie.ag. Fred, is there anything else we need to cover before we call it a wrap on this

what has been a rather incredible, I think, crossover edition of Locked On Egos and Locked On Patriots? I'm just wondering over the past week I've been gone how Mike got so passionate about mybookie.ag. Look, I actually won some money on it. I mean just wondering over the past week I've been gone how Mike got so passionate about my Mookie.ag Look, I actually won some money on it. I mean, it worked. It worked. It really worked for me. And it would have saved my

older brother's lives as I covered. Can we talk about the cinnamon mod for a minute or is that too painful for you? That's really really painful. I tried to put it in a positive light, you know, and I may make a movie out of it. We'll see. I'm waiting on Netflix to give me a call back because they will approve literally anything don't give too much away but what's the work in title for that movie a lot of

eating spoonfuls of cinnamon to get the raw experience of what it was like to be trapped in that cinnamon mine for for over a month it was was... That's a long title. I just think The Cinnamon. Very easy to remember. Oh, you asked for the title. I thought you were asking for what I have to do to prep to get myself in the mindset. I just wanted the title.

But if you want to roll with that, I don't know if it fits on a marquee. Yeah, The Cinnamon Man. I like The Cinderella Man. Yeah, that works. I do like that. I do like that. All right, friends.

I think we could call it time of death on this one, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Mark. Yes, sir. Thank you, brother. Benjamin, Michael, pleasure as always. Friends, do follow these two guys on Twitter, at MichaelKissedNFL, at BenjaminSolak.

Did I get that right? S-O-L-A-K, yes, sir. At LockdownEagles. At LockdownEagles. And, hey, here's to perhaps doing one more of these before the Super Bowl. How about that? Sounds good for me, man. That would be nice, huh?

Always down. I mean, what I'm trying to get at is I hope to see you guys in the Super Bowl. Oh, we totally missed that. That's what I wanted to hear. Yeah. There we go. There we go. All right, friends.

All right, brother. Take it easy. All right, friends. All right, brother. Take it easy. All right, guys. There you have it, everybody. Like I said, a rather wide range of discussion covering a lot of topics. You also heard the lock of the weekend. Your MyBookie lock of the weekend.

For me, it was the Chiefs giving those nine points. I think they're going to carry the day against the Titans. I'll be back tomorrow for a Friday show. We're going to dive into the wild card weekend, what I expect to see. I'm going to give you one thing I'm watching in particular in each game. That will be on tomorrow's show. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield,

and Locked on Patriots.