Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots July 26, 2018 - Davis Webb 2.0, Patriots Timeline Takes and What I'm Reading

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

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Good morning, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Thursday, July 26, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for your favorite daily Patriots podcast. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at a number of places. Inside thepylon.com where I'm one of the head writers. Matt Waldman's RSP, Rookie Scouting Profile, where I might contribute over there a new piece and video up on Ben Roethlisberger talking about creating as a quarterback.

You can also look for work from Pro Football Weekly. Happy to be back over there doing some contributing over there. As well as Big Blue View, part of the SB Nation Network. I'm going to talk briefly in the opening segment about a piece I've got up over there. And as I've been teasing,

there are more announcements to come. I'll roll those out over the next week or so. Loaded show for you today. We're going to do some timeline takes at Patriots specific edition of timeline takes. We're going to do a new segment, something

new and fun here. What I'm reading, looking around the interwebs, the football media world. I've got three pieces that I think you guys would like, think you guys would enjoy checking out. But first, a couple of things. We recorded this on Thursday morning and as

we speak, Patriots are back on the field. Stephon Gilmore, the first player out according to Mike Reese onto the practice field this morning. Tom Brady are out early as well to a massive, massive ovation. And my favorite moment of training camp, honestly, is when you get the video tweet from Mike Reese. He always does this every single year, sometimes a couple of times a training camp. Gets out there early for when they open the gate and you have the running of the fans. You got the fans all like sprinting in to get their seats at training camp. It reminds me a lot, and I'm going to get super law nerdy for a

second, the tradition of the running of the interns at the United States Supreme Court. If you've ever watched the news when there's a huge Supreme Court case that gets handed down, they have this tradition of all the news justice correspondents, guys like Pete Williams at MSNBC or NBC that camp out in front of the Supreme Court building out there on their, you know, mobile, you know, outdoor camera ready to go, you know, ready to break the news of whatever decision is coming down. But obviously they can't be in the courtroom and then get out there or they'll be late. So you'd have these like news interns dressed in their suits or their dresses or their skirt suits and sneakers. And they're in the courtroom.

And when they get the decision, they sprint out to the reporter who's doing the live shot. Anyway, random tangent there. I know. But Patriots training camp has begun. More on that as we get into training camp into next week and stuff like that. What I want to do here is talk about Davis Webb. I know, strange, going in a different direction here. But did a piece over at Big Blue View talking about Davis Webb 2.0. And I've got a little bit of blowback on how I started the piece. The premise

I sort of started with was, and this is probably a factor of looking at it from a more national versus local level. Because whenever I did radio hits, whenever I did podcasts, I didn't do a lot of New York City or Giants specific stuff last draft season. It was all other outlets you know locally internationally whatever and the Giants quarterback question was always phrased as Eli or first round rookie and it seemed at least on a national level that Webb was kind of an afterthought now a lot of Giants fans will say no no no we were all really interested in Webb perhaps still being the guy, and that's why they'd feel comfortable drafting a Saquon Barkley or something. And so I understand that, a little national versus local dichotomy. But in this piece, I sort of talk about Davis Webb 2.0. And what I do, the way I structure

it, I talk about where he was as a rookie, where he was coming into the league. And then I break down some of what we saw from him and his admittedly limited, limited action when he was a rookie, all in preseason stuff, didn't see any regular season snaps. And then what I did was, I was able to talk to his quarterback tutor, Tony Rassapy, who is at TonyRazz03,

at T-O-N-Y-R-A-Z-Z-03 on Twitter. If you like quarterback stuff, if you like learning about quarterbacks, watching quarterbacks, seeing how they work out, follow Tony on Twitter. He is a quarterback guru, a guy that has lived the position. When he was in college, he was a Division III guy, just like myself. He was actually good. I, however, as I've admitted, was not. He was one of the top quarterbacks in all of Division III when he was playing, just a couple years after me at Rowan University.

Put up huge numbers. Was National Division III Player of the Year runner-up one of his last seasons in college. Went on to play a little bit in the European League and Indoor League, bounced around with the Jets and the Dolphins for a while. And now he's a quarterback coach, high school coach, offensive coordinator. He's done work at the Manning Passant Academy. He's tutoring tons of quarterbacks, and he spent seven months this offseason working with Davis Webb.

And what's phenomenal, what Tony does on Twitter, why you should definitely follow him. He posts all these videos of Webb and other guys working out, telling you what they're doing, why they're doing it, why it's helpful for quarterbacks, why it's helpful for this specific quarterback. And so what I did was posted some of Tony's videos on Davis Webb with some of the stuff that he was working on. And, you know, I got a chance to talk to him a little bit and he told me the things that they were working on from Davis Webb from a mechanical standpoint, from a footwork standpoint, from a pocket movement standpoint.

And so the piece is up over at BigBlueView.com. You can check it out. And basically, the things that Tony was working on with Davis Webb were threefold. And he sort of broke them down for me first was the throwing sequence as Tony told me they want to clean up his throwing sequence making sure his shoulder closes on the step not getting the weight forward and keeping the back connected to the ground throughout basically what he means there is the weight transfer process for Webb was a bit of a mixed bag at times and I highlight one of the throws he made in a preseason game

where he almost used that left front leg against him. He straightens it out, kind of drives it into the turf, and it almost stops his momentum. Like if you think about, say, for example, a baseball pitcher, you want to be finishing forward, right? Well, imagine if a pitcher makes his throw, plants that front leg, and stops and almost drives backwards. That stops your momentum. It's like a car accident almost. It jerks you backwards. You want to finish forward. Same thing for a quarterback. And so weight

transfer was one of the things they were working on. You can see some clips where he's working on that. And he's also done some work with sort of some medicine balls. Take that short step, slightly left of the target. You close that shoulder. You stay balanced and transfer your weight fluidly. Footwork was another area that I stress in my quarterback evaluation to begin with. It was a concern I had about Webb. And they've been working on it.

As Tony told me, an area that they stress with him was the top of the drop. When you reach that end of your drop, say it's a five-step drop, when you reach steps four and five, you use your feet to get you balanced and straight to wherever you're going to throw on the field. I highlight a play from his college days where his feet are kind of a mess. He almost steps to the left while throwing to his right. And I and others always say that a quarterback's feet are kind of a mess. He almost steps to the left while throwing to his right. And I and others always say that a quarterback's feet are the window to his mind. If your feet are unsettled, your mind is unsettled. If your feet are nervous and all over the place, you're nervous and you're all over the place. And that's going to lead to poor decisions. It's going to lead to poor throws. It's going to lead to turnovers. It's going to lead to poor throws. It's going to lead to turnovers. It's going to lead to mistakes. And so that's something that Webb really needs to

clean up. And there are some clips highlighted that in the piece. You can see him working that sort of set and reset quickly. There is a great video with a show where he's reading the middle of the field, then resets to throw towards a boundary route. Very, very good footwork. Really drilling that in. And then finally, working on his pocket movement. As Patriots fans, we know that there's more than one way to sort of make a play outside of the pocket and extend the play. You don't have to be Lamar Jackson and run all over the place. You can just move and slide and climb, and that's also something they're working on with Davis Webb. Now, will he be the heir apparent to Eli Manning?

That remains to be seen. But if Tony, if it were up to Tony, let me tell you how he ended things with me. Davis was already a talented player, but after spending a year under Eli, learning the pro way of being a QB on and off the field, plus all the hard work we put in the offseason, he'll be a great player in this league.

Nobody worked harder over the last seven months to be prepared. So, hey, if anybody was wondering, what do the Giants have in Davis Webb? If you're at the bar this weekend or at a barbecue or a cookout and the topic of football comes up and Davis Webb's name gets dropped, boom, drop the knowledge on them. That's what I do here. You can say, look, I heard from his quarterback tutor this offseason. This is what they're working on. This is what they expect from him. Boom, drop the mic. Go get yourself another hot dog. Mission accomplished. You've dropped the knowledge.

That's what I'm here for. I'm here to help you sound smarter this summer and all through the off season. Up next, some timeline takes on the New England Patriots. A little bit later, what I'm reading, a new segment here where I'm going to tell you, look, here's some cool stuff you might've missed on the internet. Some cool football stuff, some nerdy football stuff, where if you like reading or listening to me, you're going to like this stuff too. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you now. Going to do some timeline takes, New England

Patriots style here. And I'm going to be piggybacking off of a tweet from Zach Hicks 2, the number number two he's a lead writer over at Stampede Blue and a draft analyst over at a break in football he's a fun guy to follow on Twitter and he put out a tweet that basically said look for whatever your team is fill in the blanks and it had different categories breakout Breakout guy, comeback hit,

rising star, don't forget about, needs to rebound, dark horse MVP, and under the radar. And it's kind of spread through the football Twitter world like wildfire. A lot of people are doing this for their teams. A lot of analysts are trying to do it for every single team. Guys like Joe Marino, John Ledyard. Big fans of those guys and what they're building over the draft network. And they're just doing threads with everybody. And so I wanted to take a moment here and do this. Do my sort of picks here for this.

Other people have been doing it for the Pats. Evan Lazar at E-Z-L-A-Z-A-R. I busted his. I screwed up his Twitter handle the other day. Apologies, Evan. He is at E-Z-L-A-Z-A-R on Twitter. He did his. There's some overlap here.

He has breakout guy Derek Rivers, comeback kid Julian Edelman, rising star, Sonny Michel. Don't forget about Danny Shelton, needs to rebound, Malcolm Brown, dark horse, MVP, Stephon Gilmore, and under the radar, Dante Hightower, which is a good list. And there will be at least one name where we sort of overlap. But here we go. My breakout guy, and you'll see this is very offensive-centric. I know. My goal this summer was to learn more about defense, and I just, you know. Anyway, very offensive-centric here, but here we go, breakout guy. I'm going with Philip Dorsett, and part of the reason being is

he gets traded to the team basically after know, basically after preseason games. Not a lot of time to really get up to speed. I know it's a crowded quarterback room. I mean, excuse me. It's a crowded quarterback room too because they've got three guys. But it's a crowded wide receiver room in New England. So there are obviously some questions about snaps and who's going to get the bulk of work and things like that.

But a guy I'm looking forward to have sort of a breakout, as Philip Dorr said, he's now had an entire year to really get up to speed. I still think there's a good receiver in him. And so he's a guy I'm looking to that could perhaps make that little breakout that could perhaps really show you something over the next couple of weeks here. And of course, what that means is he'll probably get traded. Although the guy they're thinking about trading is Malcolm Mitchell, which would also, you know, lead you in a direction of, hey, you know, Dorsett might get some more reps. I'm not done with the wide receivers though. Comeback kid, Julian Edelman. We haven't seen him on the field since Super Bowl 51. And we're still going to wait to really see him in live action, you know, in games that count, because of the four-game suspension. He's going to be rested.

But I think what's interesting about Julian Edelman is I remember two years ago down at Mobile for the Senior Bowl, and I may have told this story, probably not. And I was sitting down at dinner with guys like Brandon Thorne at Veteran Scout on Twitter, John Ledyard, Alex Kizora, big friend of the show there, those guys. And we were having a debate over dinner about the top five wide receivers in the National Football League. And, you know, everybody sort of had the same sort of mix of four or five. Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, A.J. Green.

At the time, Des Bryant was in the mix. This was two seasons ago. And others. at the time Des Bryant was in the mix this was two seasons ago and others and I threw out as a dark horse for the fifth spot more to make the point than anything that Julian Edelman should be in that mix and what I was trying to say is

when you rank wide receivers you can't just rank them blanket you have to rank them by sort of position and usage remember X is your boundary vertical threat type guy. Z is your Antonio Brown that moves around a little bit more. Like if we're sort of putting together an all-star look at these guys, your X is your Julio Jones.

Vertical threat can do a lot of stuff. Z, Antonio Brown, does some stuff across the middle, over the middle, underneath, things like that. And then a slot guy. And if you rank your top five slot guys, you get to Julian Edelman pretty quickly. I remember when I was studying him for the NFL 1000 project, may it rest in peace, when I was studying the wide receivers, it just blew my mind how often Edelman was open.

And it's a little bit easier for slot type guys sometimes because you can move them around. You can get them into stack slots so they don't face jams off the line of scrimmage. But Edelman's open a ton. And so I'm looking for him when he gets back on the field. Big season from him. Rising star, Sonny Michel. I think this is kind of a safe pick

when people are talking about the Patriots and a potential rising star. But I just think this is a three down back as a rookie in the National Football League expecting big things from him. Don't forget about, and this is an interesting one, we're going to go back to that wide receiver group, and that's Kenny Britt. I feel like in, you know, obviously he's been a topic of, you know, the numbers game at the wide receiver position.

But similar to Dorsett, I feel like he's going to have, you know, more familiarity with the Patriots system coming into this season. And his skill set, his size, I think is kind of something that's been missing with the Patriots and their offense over the past couple of seasons, relying on guys like Danny Amendola and Julian Edelman and Brandon Cooks, more undersized-type receivers. Now you're getting Kenny Britt, somebody that's a little bit of a different mold of receiver. I mean, you look at Britt and his skill set, he's more of your along the boundary type guy, 6'3", gut speed to him though. I think he could be a nice piece to this group. So I don't forget about Kenny Britt. Needs to rebound, Derek Rivers. And I think it's a bit unfair to say he needs to rebound. He was hurt last year. But I think the Patriots would be in such great shape

on the defensive side of the ball if they get a great season from him, if they could put him on the edge consistently and do some stuff with him. Because we'll get into another guy here, Trey Flowers, who can potentially sort of kick inside at times. And if you've got a third and long, you know, third and eight, front four of Claiborne, and then either Shelton or Malcolm Brown,

Flowers, and Derek Rivers, and all those guys can get after the passer, or maybe you get Dietrich Wise in there. You know, you get three pass rushing specialists similar to what we saw from the Eagles last year and what other teams can do, and they can get after a quarterback without having a blitz, then you're going to be in really good shape as a defense. And so I think Derek Rivers is a big part of what I'm hoping to see from this defense in the upcoming season. So I'd love to see him contribute. Dark Horse MVP brings us to Trey Flowers. I think with Rivers, with Wise, with Claiborne, they have some pieces. I'm looking for Flowers to make a true leap this year. And if they can really start getting after quarterbacks without

needing to blitz or stunt or just winning one-on-one matchups, that will be huge for them. It's going to help Flowers to have Adrian Claiborne on the other side. If they get into these third-down situations, they can kick Flowers inside, let him work against some guards. I'm expecting a big year from him. And finally, under the radar, also on the defensive side of the ball, Marquise Flowers. We've talked so much about the second level and needing to get athletic at that second level and i think you have to remember how they were using marquise flowers he might be the guy that

they count on to be that athletic guy and the second level of a defense so there you have it sort of my twitter timeline takes a list of patriots and how i'm viewing them headed into this off season excuse me not headed out of this offseason, and into the actual season because they're on the field right now. Thank goodness we made it, friends. Up next, what I'm reading, a new segment here over at the Locked On Patriots podcast, some cool stuff I saw on the timeline that football nerds might want to check out. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked On Patriots.

Mark Schofield is back with you now and closing out this show, doing something new. What I'm reading, there's always great stuff out there. I've said before, I'll say it again, it's such a fantastic time to be a football fan because you get exposed to so much great information. So many people out there are doing such great work. I'm going to kick it off. This is also a chance for me, obviously, honestly, not going to lie, to highlight some work from my boys, from my friends, from the other men and women out there that I read whose work I respect.

If I see something here, I'm going to drop it in there, promote their work as well. I'm a big believer in the idea of a rise in tide lifts all boats. The more people that read great work, the more people come around and read my stuff, and it all makes everybody happy. I want to start with a piece from my buddy Michael Kist at Michael Kist NFL, formerly the host of Locked on Eagles, now the co-host of the Kissed and Solak show at Bleeding Green Nation, part of the SB Nation network.

It's going to be ugly when I'm writing about the Giants and he's writing about the Eagles. I mean, you know, it gets ugly as it is when we're playing PUBG at night. I've broken down. I'm playing PUBG. I never thought I'd be doing it, but I'm playing PUBG, and I've got to say I like it. It's fun. Anyway, Michael's got a piece up on Edge Football, EDJ Football. They're the people that now own Football Outsiders. They're an analytics company and they helped the Eagles

win the Super Bowl. And Mike has a piece talking about edge sports and what they do. And their mission statement, they say, they leverage more than two decades of play-by-play data and rigorous mathematical analysis to assess a team's game-winning chance, GWC, at any moment of the game. And what they do is, on a play-by-play basis, you know, going forward on

fourth down, punting, kickoffs, onside kicks. They have a model that basically says, you know, these are the types of decisions that you should be making. And the Eagles relied on this game, win, and chance formula. Edge football ran thousands of game simulations. They provided the Eagles with situational opponent-specific data. This data aided the Eagles in making in-game decisions based on the success rates provided in the simulations. For example, Philly Special, going forward in that situation, it was an easy one for them. On an Eagles 4-1

decision at their own 45-yard line, you know, they thought that that was the right decision by about 12 or 13 percent versus punt in that situation. Their whole mission seems to be convincing teams not to go, I mean, excuse me, not to punt. So that's a very interesting piece. You can check it out at bleedinggreennation.com. Another piece I want to recommend right now, if you, like me, want to learn more about defense, about defensive play,

about pass rushing, Nick Falato has a piece up over at Inside the Pylon right now that you should definitely check out. It's a series he started about the art of the pass rush. It's a fantastic piece. You can follow Nick on Twitter. He is at Nick Falato, N-I-C-K-F-A-L-A-T-O. And he breaks down different pass rushing moves. He's got tape to back it up. He's got the long arm in there. He's got the swim move in there. He's got the rip move in there.

All these things that you're going to see pass rushers doing. He breaks them down. And it's just the first part of the art of the pass rush. It's a tremendous, tremendous bit of work. One of the better pieces I've read in recent, particularly with respect to defensive line play,

edge play, you got to check it out. Definitely read that. And finally, a piece from at veteran scout, Brandon Thorne, over at USA Football. It's a piece breaking at veteran scout, Brandon Thorne, over at USA Football. It's a piece breaking down the coffee house stunt.

And we've talked a lot about stunts on this show. We've talked about the tackle and end exchange where the defensive end sort of crashes inside and then the tackle loops around behind him. We've talked a lot about it on this show. Well, there's something now called the coffeehouse stunt. And what it basically is, it's a fake tackle end exchange where they make it look like they're going to do that loop and then they just bounce back out and around. And what you try to do is you get the offensive tackle and offensive guard to sort of start to switch. Sometimes they collide. Sometimes they try to switch. And you just get the pass rushers around

them using this fake stunt. It's a tremendous piece. You can check it out over at blogs.usafootball.com. Also follow Brandon at Veteran Scout. That will do it for the final Tuesday. excuse me, the final Thursday weekender until who knows. But we are back to five days a week coming up next week. I'm really excited to really get back into it. Also, apologies, I misspoke. I thought we had a game this Sunday night, Bears, Ravens. That's not until next Thursday. So we'll be talking about that a little bit later, probably the week after,

because I will be out of town. I promised you guys five shows the same week I'm going out of town for a couple of days, but I will get it done. And here's how we're going to do it. I want some reader, listener questions. Hit me up on Twitter at Mark Schofield. I want your training camp questions.

We're going to do a training camp mailbag later next week. Thoughts on Patriot stuff, quarterback stuff for the next year's draft, any other team, whatever's on your mind, cooking recipes, gardening tips, lawn care tips, whatever. Hit me up on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can email me, mark.schofield at insidethepylon.com. Really wanted to get some insight from you guys now. We're going to be changing things up once we

get into the season now. There'll be more guests and all that kind of stuff. It's just we're back and it's exciting. Also, check out our friends at Nordic Track. Nordictrack.com slash locked on. Get $75 off. Get yourself in game shape. Use Nordic Track.

$75 off and use the promo code LOCKEDON. I will be back Monday. We'll be doing AFC East over Unders. We're going to go team by team now. Now we're into the AFC East. Obviously culminating in the New England Patriots. And my thoughts on their season will probably go game by game.

Breaking it all down. We're back. It feels good. Have a great weekend everybody. Shout out to all the listeners. Love you guys. Thanks so much for listening and tuning in and sharing the show. It a great weekend, everybody. Shout out to all the listeners. Love you guys. Thanks so much for listening and tuning in and sharing the show. It means the world to me.

As you can hear it in my voice, I'm just excited because we made it. I'll be back Monday. Until then, have a great weekend. Keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. you