Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots June 11, 2018 - Gronk Rumors, a Deflection in Pittsburgh, and "North Dallas Forty."

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

Mark Schofield is back to address Gronkowski rumors, break down a deflection from the Gods, and "North Dallas Forty." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Monday, June 11th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair after, well, somewhat of an exciting weekend you might say over at Patriots Nation. Before we dive into whatever it is we might have to talk about, a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work over at InsideThePylon.com where I'm one of the lead writers. Got a couple of pieces in the works to go up over at ITP in the next couple of days. Updated Check With Me piece.

Going to talk on some early thoughts on the 2019 quarterback class as a whole. Also a piece breaking down some of Kyle Schumer's work against the University of Georgia. Schumer, the Vanderbilt quarterback and yes, son of the new Giants head coach. So look for those pieces coming out shortly over at ITP. You can also check out the work over at profootballweekly.com and video work over at youtube.com slash InsideThePylon. And of course, I'm proud to be a part of the Bleacher Report NFL 1000 Project as their quarterback scout. On today's program, we're going to dive back into our countdown of the top 10 defensive plays of the Patriots 2017-2018 season. We're going to break down play two. I think people know what the top two plays are.

It's just a matter of what order I'm going to put them in and that might surprise you. Also, we're going to talk a little bit football and film at the end. We're going to talk about a movie that perhaps set the stage for a lot of the films that we've actually talked about on this summer series, Breaking Down Football on the big screen. But first, let's talk about Friday. Fridays in the summertime, they're always kind of nice for me, into my world. Fridays are a fun day because, well, a couple of reasons. Usually my parents come over. That's right, my parents come over because that's a day that my daughter, Simone, is not in daycare. She's in daycare four out of the five days a week.

Fridays, she's either home with me or home with my parents. Grammy and Grampy get to come over, have a day with Simone. Unfortunately, their day with Simone on Friday got cut a little bit short. They had a little bit of car trouble they had to take care of, so they got to come over for a little bit. Then they had to go get that taken care of, which allowed me to take Simone to her ballet class. And a ballet class with four-year-old boys and girls is just as adorable as it sounds. But I was somewhat distracted that Friday afternoon. Couldn't give it my full attention because Twitter was melting down. And the reason why Twitter was melting down was this. You

probably remember the Julian Edelman suspension was quote quote unquote, broken by a Reddit user on r slash Patriots. And quick plug, I was just on a podcast with those guys, the Patriots subreddit, excuse me, their official podcast. You can check that out. I've tweeted that link out a couple of times. It was about a 45-minute show. It was a really good time. But a user on that subreddit basically broke the Edelman news, the Edelman suspension, a couple of days before it really was broken in the media.

And he was teasing, that user was teasing something else that was going to go down around five o'clock Friday afternoon. He had a Reddit thread basically saying people can guess. It's not a retirement or a suspension. You got to think outside of the box. But people can guess. If somebody hits it right, he'll say what it is, but if not, he's going to release it Friday at five o'clock. That got everybody into full-on hyperdrive speculation mode. People such as El Presidente over at Barstool was basically saying he was hearing it was a

Gronk trade. A lot of people were talking Gronk trade. Jerry Thornton, also at Barstool was basically saying he was hearing it was a Gronk trade. A lot of people were talking Gronk trade. Jerry Thornton, also at Barstool, formerly a member of the Boston media himself, basically saying what he was hearing was true. It was basically a 9.5 on the Richter's day out. Something basically stunning in the whole sense of what the Brady and Belichick era has been all about. And so everybody kept coming back to Gronk trade, Gronk trade, Gronk trade. And then a little bit of cold water got poured into that fire by one of Gronk's brothers, basically calling it fake news.

And then shortly around 5 o'clock, that Reddit user came out and said, well, it was nothing. I was just trolling you all. Do better, media. That was basically his message. But that didn't stop the stories. Adam Kirchhen, friend of the show, formerly of the Boston Herald, put out a tweet on Friday afternoon that read as follows. And I'm quoted here right from the tweet word for word. From multiple sources, here's what I have regarding the Gronkowski rumors. Told Belichick wanted to trade him. Offers on the table with both the Titans and the 49ers. He and Robert Kraft had a closed door meeting to discuss. Tom Brady threatened to retire if the deal went through. Kraft nixed it. And as you might imagine, that touched off a rampant firestorm of speculation.

Now, it's been denied by Patriots media. Adam himself reached out to the Patriots in a follow-up tweet. I'm quoting again from Adam's Twitter feed. He's at Adam Kirchhan. At Adam, A-D-A-M-K-U-R-K-J-I-A-N on Twitter. Statement from Pat's PR head, Stacey James. I would say with the utmost

confidence that none of that is true. None of it. And he was directly quoting from Stacey James. But that got everybody into full meltdown mode. And parts of that were at least confirmed in part by Tom Curran over at NBC Comcast in Boston,

basically saying that, yeah, they inquired with some teams about Gronkowski and seeing if a deal could be done. And it also was in line with what Curran was saying. It fit with what we've seen other stars go through in New England. You know, some discomfort, some angst, and then they get traded. And the thought of trading Gronkowski is something you can see the Patriots doing. I was on WGR in Buffalo on Saturday afternoon, and of course I was asked about this.

And think back to how the Patriots have handled star players when they're approaching sort of a contract year before. Sometimes they move on and get what they can. Would it be beyond the realm of possibility that the Patriots would at least entertain the idea of trading Robert Gronkowski? I don't think so. Especially when, since Super Bowl 52 ended, myself and others have been saying that this is all a posture and move

for Robert Gronkowski. The number that matters to him right now is 24.4. That's the percentage of his contract that's guaranteed. There are like 38 tight ends, something ridiculous. You can look it up yourself on over the cap or sport track, but there are like 38, maybe even 40 tight ends that are paid more in terms of guaranteed money as a percentage of their contract at the tight end position than Robert Gronkowski. If you're Gronk with your injury history, with your age, with the mileage and all of that, you probably want to maximize your next contract because it could very well be your last. And is it beyond the realm of possibility that the Patriots and Gronkowski's people have tried to at least hash out some numbers?

They're far apart and the Patriots said, look, we could at least explore options right now in terms of getting what we can for them. And so it's entirely possible that at least the Gronkowski part is entirely, entirely, entirely, entirely true. As for the rest of it, look, I know Adam. Adam's a friend of this show. If Adam's got this, he's got it. He's not going to stake his name and his reputation if he doesn't

have this from multiple sources, which he said. A lot of people got on and they said, this couldn't have all happened right now. Belichick's out in New York. But when I first read the tweet, I read it as, oh, this was probably something that went on for a period of time, not just in the past couple of hours. I think everybody gets so caught up in that Reddit user's 5 p.m. deadline that they're assuming that this all happened in one day and that's how they read Adam's tweet. But that's not how I read it at all.

And so where do we sit now? It's all being called fake news. Gronk himself has called it fake news. Everybody says it's fake news. Everybody loves that phrase now. It's, you know, when we get to the end of the year and dictionary.com has their, you know, word of the year or phrase of the year, fake news. Everybody loves that phrase now. When we get to the end of the year and dictionary.com has their word of the year or phrase of the year,

fake news will probably be it. But if you take a step back and just re-examine things, again, I don't think it's entirely outside the realm of possibility that the Patriots would entertain trading Robert Gronkowski. As for the rest of the stuff,

it fits with all of the angst we've been talking about and all of the unease and the unrest that we've been discussing since that Super Bowl ended. And if Adam says that he's got it

from multiple people, I believe him. It's been a fun offseason, hasn't it? Just fantastic. But those are just my brain dump, as it were, on everything we heard and discussed

and yelled about on Friday afternoon and why I couldn't get to see all of my daughter's ballet class because I was furiously, furiously refreshing Twitter to see if there was any truth to it. And I was reaching out to anybody I could and everybody I reached out to

said they didn't know. They had no idea. And so, that's it. What do I know? What do we know? We know what Adam said. He's got it from multiple people. He's not going to go on the record if he doesn't.

As Foxborough returns, my friends. Up ahead, we're going to get into play two of our countdown of the top ten defensive plays from last season, as well as the movie that perhaps really set the stage for a lot of the other films that we've talked about this summer. That's all ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now, and it's time for the top two defensive play of the 2017-2018 Patriots season. And perhaps you've been following along, perhaps you haven't. So

by means of catching those up, here are the first eight plays that we've broken down on our countdown to the top 10 defensive plays. Play number 10, series of pass breakups by defensive back Jonathan Jones against the New Orleans Saints in that week 2 matchup. Remember, the Patriots lost their opener. You don't want to drop to 0-2. That was usually a bad omen for teams trying to make the playoffs, but the Saints did drop to 0-2. They still made the playoffs.

But back then, people were worried. A little unease to start the season. So that was play 10 play 9 eric lee's goal line interception on the opening drive of that game against buffalo play number eight some symmetry with our countdown to the offensive plays again a play from super bowl 52 the stefan gilmore breakup deflection on a pass intended for alshon jeffrey that was intercepted by deron harman play seven malcolm butler's interception late in the first half of that first Jets game. That was a game where the Jets were driving.

They were up 14-7. They could have gone to a 21-7 lead at the half. A lot of people might have been a little bit nervous, as Sir Alex Ferguson once termed it. Might have been squeaky bum time, so to speak. But Butler, with a big pick there, kind of changed the tide of that half and perhaps changed the tide of the game.

Play number six, defensive stop on third and one against Houston in their meeting that allowed the Patriots a chance to hold Houston to a field goal, giving Tom Brady and company a chance to drive down the field for the game winner. Play number five, a David Harris blitz against the Chargers that forced a loss of about 20, put the Chargers into a third and 31 situation. That was a big play at that moment in that game. Play number four, the third and fourth stop against the Pittsburgh Steelers

that got the Patriots the ball back and a chance to drive down and take that lead late in the game. In play three, those back-to-back sacks against the Tennessee Titans and Marcus Mariota in the divisional round game. And you probably know the two plays that are left, right? Perhaps the two most defining defensive plays of the entire season. The interception against Pittsburgh and the Stephon Gilmore pass breakup in the AFC Championship game.

Which was number two? Which is number one? Well, from my talent of it, here is play two. Here it goes. Third down play. Fakes the spike. Still has it.

Now fires. And it's intercepted. It's intercepted to save the game by Harmon. And the Patriots are going to win it. Absolutely amazing. You have to throw a fade right there, Ben. There's too many people inside.

That was Rowe who batted it into the air and Harmon who grabbed it. Rowe comes up with that right there. And Rowe's the guy who gave up the long play. And to come back and make that play and save the game so there you have it my play two is that interception against the Steelers to ice that victory down in Pittsburgh in mid-December and while it was a fantastic play by Eric Rowe getting a hand in there on the attempt and slant route and obviously Harmon coming down with the interception off the deflection part of the reason why I have this as two instead of one is this. While this is a great example of the Patriots showing situational awareness,

you certainly cannot say the same thing about the Pittsburgh Steelers. Let's put the situation into context. Steelers are down by three. They have one timeout left when this drive begins. Their first play, Roethlisberger hits Juju Smith-Schuster for a nice gain of 69 yards down to the Patriots' 10-yard line. They're down three. They use their timeout, their final timeout. They have a first and goal at the 10, down three. So you don't have timeouts left, but you've got 34 seconds and you've got multiple shots to get

this in the end zone. Just be aware of time. Get out of bounds. Throw it away if you have to. You're at worst case scenario looking at a tie in overtime with a field goal. On first down, there's the pass to Jesse James, which everybody in Pittsburgh thinks is a touchdown. It gets reviewed. There are three minutes and 20 seconds of real time, according to Pro Football Talk, in an article that they wrote after this game, where the Steelers could have gotten their offense together

and gotten themselves ready for the next two plays just in case it gets overturned. You need to do that. You can't just sort of assume that it's going to be a touchdown. You have to be ready. It's overturned. Now you have second and 10, second and goal at the 10-yard line with 28 seconds left, and they weren't ready for what

happened next. Roethlisberger throws a quick out in the flat to Darius Hayward-Bey. He can't get out of bounds. Malcolm Butler tackles him inbounds. That's a huge play because that forces him into a third and goal at the seven with the clock running under 10 seconds to go and the ball is snapped. And they come up with this fake spike slant route, which if you're Ben Roethlisberger, if it's not there immediately, you throw that into the 15th row of the end zone seats. Period. End of discussion. Because as Tony Romo says there at the end, so many bodies in the middle of the field. Unless you fool them right away with the fake spike, you throw it away and you take the three points. But he didn't. So there's the two mistakes there. There's the Roethlisberger mistake on the decision and there's the way that they handled that end of game situation. It's just poor situational awareness all around. That's why for me, it's two. Other people probably disagree,

and that's okay. But for me, it's two because the Steelers really just did not comport themselves well in those closing seconds. But again, it's just my call, my decision. But I have this powerful thing in front of me called the microphone microphone so I get to say what I want. Up next, we're going to do one of our final movies here in the football and film series that we've been talking about. I am kicking around the idea of either football on TV or

a Locked On Patriots book club, but we still have some more movies to talk about and then you guys can decide our top 20. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Now we win this game you're all invited to spend a weekend with your wives and families

at my private island in the Caribbean. Oh shit. And remember the eyes of Texas are on you. Lock that off. The eyes of Texas are on you. Knock that **** off! Monsignor. Dear Lord, I ask your blessing on these brave boys as they venture out to battle. Take off your *******ing hat!

Sorry, my dear. We ask not for victory, not for glory, not for fame. We ask only for the preservation of our bodies and of our minds. Bless also the entire Hunter family, who have so unselfishly given us everything we need for victory except our efforts in the spirit of sportsmanship with thy guidance, thy kingdom, power, and glory forevermore. Amen. Let's go, Cubs!

Before any given Sunday, before Playmakers on ESPN, before First and Ten on HBO, which I'm going to have to do something on this summer because I need to re-watch that series. It came to me at a formative time in my life, let's put it that way. There was North Dallas 40. What you heard right there was the

pregame talk before their game against Chicago, which was the focus of the movie. And North Dallas 40 basically was, like I said, before all of these movies and TV shows that tried to show basically the dark side of pro football. There was North Dallas 40, a 1979 movie with Nick Nolte as basically the main character. He's wide receiver Phil Elliott, who was thought to have the best hands in the game, but he's grown older. He's being benched. He's relying on painkillers. He and the quarterback live a hard, hard life away from the field as well. Elliott wants to walk away, but they need to win one game. They need to beat Chicago in the final game of their season to make it to the playoffs. And they end up losing. And the team wants to move on from him. They want

to move on from Phil Elliott. And they've done an investigation. They hired a detective to follow him. They turn up drug use and a sexual liaison with a woman who wanted to marry the brother of the owner. And so they're going to kick him off the team. They're going to suspend him without pay, pending a league hearing. This is how the movie ends. Even though the quarterback was doing the same exact stuff, they turn an eye to his behavior and focus on Elliot, who believes that they're just trying to cut him to save money on

his contract. So he just walks away from the game. And that was actually similar to another movie that we talked about. That was written by a former athlete You know It ends with Phil Going to live on a farm With his girlfriend But she's been murdered

You know that's a pretty dark ending But they didn't do that They did it You know this sort of Happy ending with him walking away. And it's sort of, it's that movie of the one guy versus the entire machine kind of aspect to it. The importance of this movie, though, not just in trying to show the sort of the dark side of the NFL, was in how football movies were made. Because before North Dallas 40,

most of them used newsreel-type footage. They didn't really show you up close on the field type of stuff. That's what they did here, and it really sort of changed how football was shown on the screen, whether big screen, small screen. And it really sent us in sort of a new direction for how these movies were made. So a lot of the films that we've seen now So a lot of the films that we've seen now,

all the films that we've talked about, not just in terms of the content and showing the dark side, the underbelly of the sport, but in how the movies are made themselves, owe a lot to North Dallas 40. And so I think it's worth checking out if you haven't seen it. It's worth diving into it, revisiting it. Definitely worth including it on a list such as this

where it ends up. Well, that's all up to you. As I said, once we get done, we got a couple of movies left to do. Once we get done, I'm going to figure out how to put a poll together, let you guys rank them. If there are movies that I missed,

shout out to my boy Murph who wants me to include MASH. As he told me, it is a football movie. So, you know, given how we roll over here at Locked on Patriots, I guess I'll be included in it. But as I said, I'll figure out a way to do a poll. We'll put it up over at LockedOnPatriots.com

and try to rank these things. But that will do it for today's show. I will be back on Tuesday. We'll probably get back into some storylines, actually talk about some on-the-field stuff. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.