Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots June 14, 2018 - AFC North Storylines, "Check With Me" and M*A*S*H*?

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

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Good morning, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Thursday, June 14th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Follow the work over at Insidethepylon.com where I'm one of the lead writers new check with me peace out today I'm going to touch on that briefly during today's show you can also follow the work over at pro football weekly video work as always youtube.com slash inside the pylon as well as on Twitter posted a video yesterday of Riley Neal quarterback from Ball State very much an under the-the-radar prospect right now.

I'm going to touch on him in this show as well. Also on tap today, we're going to close out football and film with a little bit of an outside-of-the-box selection for our final movie in the football and film series. But first, some storylines. We're going to go to the AFC North, which has no shortage of storylines headed into the 2018 football season. And what better place to start than the Cleveland Browns? Obviously, first overall pick in the books,

Baker Mayfield, Tyrod Taylor, an addition there as well. Also, can't mention the Browns without shout-outs to my boy, Jeff Lloyd, host of the't mention the Browns without shout-outs to my boy Jeff Lloyd, host of the Locked on Browns podcast. You can follow that at Locked on Browns. Jeff does a great job over there. Also, shout-out to one of the very loyal listeners to the Locked on Patriots podcast, a Browns fan, at Jack Duffin,

at J-A-C-K-D-U-F-F-I-N. Comes to us from the other side of the pond, but a loyal listener. It's always nice to give Jack a shout-out. I appreciateF-I-N. Comes to us from the other side of the pond, but a loyal listener. It's always nice to give Jack a shout out. I appreciate him listening to the show. And let's talk about Jack's Browns for a second because this is a team that, look, obviously they finished winless last year, okay?

Currently, I'm seeing right now, over or under wins on them, 4.5. So here's the storyline. Are you buying the Browns this year? And by buying the Browns, are you going to look at that over on that win total of 4.5? And I think sitting here right now, obviously, it's June. Obviously, OTAs, that stuff doesn't truly matter. But we're hearing all the good things right now.

NFL.com is putting out polls. Do the Browns have the best receiver core in the National Football League? Josh Gordon, Corey Coleman, Jarvis Landry. Those are three nice pieces, certainly. We're seeing Baker Mayfield buy it in on the mentality and having to earn his stripe. Tyrod Taylor showing off the mobility in practice. John at the defenders when the whistle blows early saying that they weren't

going to be able to tackle him anyway. Are you buying over on four and a half wins? Sitting here right now, again, don't put this in pen, don't put it in stone. This is a pencil type situation. But right now, I'm buying over four and a half wins for the Browns. Maybe it's five. Maybe it's six. I just feel like the mentality has changed in Cleveland. I know that sounds crazy, but I feel like Baker Mayfield is a part of it. I feel like in a sense the catharsis of the 0-16.

The parade. Let's leave that behind now. Hugh Jackson jumped in Lake Erie finally. They're going to move on from that. Does that translate into wins? Maybe a couple. And that might be enough to get them some confidence to steal a couple of games down the road as well

and get them over that four and a half. So it's a pencil situation. It's not a stone situation or a pen situation or anything like that. But I'm buying the over on that four and a half win total. Let's go to Baltimore right down the street from me. And I think you're going to look at the Flacco-Lamar Jackson situation. I was lucky enough to be on my good friend Matt Waldman's podcast. We talked about a couple of different things.

We're going to be doing another one a little bit later. It's going to be coming out a little bit later. But we talk about the Lamar Jackson-Joe Flacco situation. And listeners to this show know that Flacco had almost a historically poor season as a quarterback last year. You look at any number of statistics, and they will tell you that Flacco's 2017-2018 season was bad. Adjusted net yards per attempt. I'm more and more and more believer in this statistic. He was 29th out of 34 qualifying quarterbacks. He posted a 4.71

adjusted net yards per attempt. The only quarterbacks who were worse, C.J. Beathard, Tom Savage, Trevor Simme, and Brent Hundley to Sean Kaiser. Quarterbacks who were worse, C.J. Beathard, Tom Savage, Trevor Simmey, and Brent Hundley to Sean Kizer. Quarterbacks that were better included Jay Cutler, Brian Hoyer, Eli Manning, Mitch Trubisky, Jacoby Brissett. Guys that you wouldn't really sort of expect to have better years than Joe Flacco. It was a bad season. And he's 32 now. And obviously they've made two moves at quarterback this year. They bring in RG3 and they draft Lamar Jackson. And if you're Joe Flacco, you have to look at this situation and realize that those two guys bring a different sort of style of play to an offense than I do.

Flacco certainly can throw on the move. They do a lot of stuff with him with boot action and things like that. But they're not running RPOs. They're not running sort of zone reads with Joe Flacco. They can do it with those other two guys. And so you can start to see the Ravens perhaps putting together a package, a series of plays for Jackson, for RG3, and running those guys out there, not just in the preseason. But it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Lamar Jackson taking live snaps week one,

even if it's just for a package of plays. And one of the things we talk about, Matt and I, one of the things we're going to talk about is the idea of getting rookie quarterbacks onto the field in limited situations to start building up their confidence. And it's important to remember, and I've talked about this before, when you're looking at rookie quarterbacks, you're looking at guys now being asked to in some cases be a savior such as a baker mayfield in other cases just to be the leader of a team when you're just adjusting to life on your own truly for the first time you know you're asking them to be adults on the field and off whereas before obviously they're in college a lot of the stuff is really

structured now they're really left to their own devices and so i'm big fan of, if you're going to be playing these guys, getting them on the field, getting some comfortable packages early, but also realizing that if you throw them out there to start, you've got to be smart with getting them off the field if things start to go south. But that's the storyline to watch in Baltimore, this Lamar Jackson, Joe Flacco situation. I think Flacco enters week one as the starter, but it wouldn't surprise me to see Lamar Jackson getting run out there.

A little bit further up the road for me, up in Pittsburgh, the Steelers. And I think you have to talk about, is there sort of some trouble in Pittsburgh? And Patriots fans might like to hear that, but obviously the Le'Veon Bell situation is one thing to look at. You know, currently it's being described as a stalemate between the team and Le'Veon Bell situation is one thing to look at. Currently, it's being described as a stalemate between the team and Le'Veon Bell in terms of a new contract.

He's saying that he won't sign for less than $14.5 million, which would be a market-setting record-type contract at that position. And so I think that would be a big amount of money to put on the table for a running back. And now we've also seen that Antonio Brown is a little frustrated. He had a situation the other day with the media where he was talking about he's under pressure all the time. He's constantly being hounded by the media. As he said, it's not freedom at all. He needs to get his mind right. He needs time to get his mind right.

He wonders if he's really free. So there's a little bit of frustration as well. So obviously you've got the three Bs, Ben, Brown, and Bell, right? And two of those guys seem unsettled. And then when it comes to Ben Roethlisberger, he showed frustration earlier in the year, earlier in this sort of offseason, when they drafted Mason Rudolph.

Those are your three big players. Each of them, some level of unease. And so that's something to watch. And finally, we go to Cincinnati. Is this Andy Dalton's last ride? I was really sort of surprised when the Bengals didn't full-on address quarterback in the draft. Now, they addressed it late with Logan Woodside, who listeners to this show know that I love.

Don't love his recent decision to get a DUI. That's not something you want to do, period. But especially as a seventh-round draft choice, he's going to be on a roster bubble perhaps. Even though I think Woodside, when you look at the rest of this quarterback room, Matt Barkley, Jeff Driscoll, Woodside could theoretically be QB2 in this organization. But you don't want to go out and do that.

Don't drink and drive, kids. Is this Andy Dalton's last ride? I'm going to talk briefly in a few minutes about this 2019 quarterback class, but I was surprised that they didn't address quarterback early. I do wonder if they start thinking about addressing quarterback in the next draft, because when you look at Andy Dalton right now, he's good, but you could upgrade. The interesting thing about Dalton is he is on a fairly team-friendly contract,

at least as far as quarterbacks go. I mean, it's a $96 million deal averaging $16 million per year, which is just a little bit more than half of what Matt Ryan's getting average per year. He's getting $17 million guaranteed, which is just 17% of his total contract. Average guaranteed per year is $2.8 million. Chase Daniel gets more guaranteed per year. Sam Bradford gets more guaranteed per year. And so he's on a team-friendly deal.

The numbers start to accelerate after this year. Next year, his base salary is $16 million. It goes to $17.5 million in 2020. But again, in terms of a cap hit, his cap hit this year is 16.3. Next year, it's 16.2. The year after that, it's 17.7. So these aren't big numbers. And so the way that they've structured his deal, they could keep him and develop somebody. Maybe that's what they're looking to do with Logan Woodside. And so it's interesting to see, is this Dalton's last ride? At least from on the field to play, you might expect it to be, but the way that they've structured his deal, maybe it's not. So those are some AFC North storylines.

Up next, we're going to get into Riley Neal, a quarterback from Ball State, as well as my recent Check With Me piece. It's up over at InsideThePylon.com right now. I want to talk about a couple of things from that. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Thursday edition of Locked On Patriots. Closing out the week here. Look, the Patriots, they're off until training camp.

I mean, I should be off until training camp, right? Nah, your boy would never do that to you. I like you guys too much. I love you guys too much. I'll be back Monday. Of course, you know, you guys know that I want to talk briefly here about a couple of different things. First, I want to talk about my recent check with me piece, talk about a couple of different things in there. Some of the stuff I'm not going to dive into. I talk about my summer plans in terms of what I'm going to be studying this summer. I'm going to be studying defensive playbooks. Your boy's going to try to learn some defense.

I'm tired of having to Google coverages. Although I got to say, Matt Bowen, formerly of Bleacher Report, now at ESPN. Get a chance to talk to him down at the Senior Bowl each year. It's always fun to catch up with him. But his coverage pieces that he wrote for Bleacher Report that are still on Bleacher Report's website, I swear I'm probably the only person that still reads them.

I probably read them like three or four times a week just to verify coverage because there are times when I feel like I'm not getting it right. And so I go to that for a resource. So summer defensive study, I'm not going to really talk about too much. The difference between accuracy and precision ball placement, I'm not going to dive into that here today. I do want to talk briefly about the 2019 quarterback class, just broad strokes here. And it's probably because of the star power that was present in the 2018 quarterback class that people are already looking

at this next draft class and thinking, eh, not too sure about this one. I'm not sure any of these guys are really good. And I just, as a quarterback guy, yes, I'm a quarterback card carried member of the quarterback union. So take this all with a grain of salt, of course, but I'd say pump the brakes on these early takes that this quarterback class is going to be bad. Pump the brakes on those. I've studied almost 40 guys already. I'm going to revisit a couple of these guys, a couple of plays from each of these guys, get a few more games in on the true seniors and guys that I believe will come out as we get into July and August. But now I've got anywhere from two to six games on these 38 players.

And there's potential here. There's serious potential here. There are guys in this group like Tyree Jackson from the University of Buffalo who might be what we thought Josh Allen would be. I know that's a crazy comparison, but big, athletic, incredible burst for a guy of his size. He's like 6'7", but an incredible arm as well. And he has a better understanding of touch despite worse mechanics than Josh Allen. So there's a name to throw out there. There are other guys in this class. Obviously, Justin Hebert, the kid from

Oregon. He's very good. Clayton Thorson from Northwestern. I think he took a nice little stride last year. Had a knee injury that he's coming back from, but he should be good to go. Will Greer, another Big 12 quarterback. Very intriguing guy. Got some arm talent to him.

Needs to learn to secure the football. He's running around like it's a playground game with that ball swinging all over the place. It's like Randall Cunningham back in the day. Needs to take care of the football better. Drew Locke, who everybody's already looking to as sort of your QB1 type guy. Put up huge numbers for Missouri

over the past couple of years. Very intriguing player. Ryan Finley, I've talked about him. I like him a lot. Easton Stick from North Dakota State, that's right. NDSU has another quarterback that's looking to get drafted. He's probably not going to go anywhere near where Carson Wentz went in the draft. Obviously, Wentz went second overall.

But Stick looks to me right now as Logan Woodside plus. And having liked Logan Woodside, you better believe that I'm probably going to like this kid Devlin Hodges from Samford FCS kid he stared down Georgia and gave them everything he had then he had a first round playoff game against the Kennesaw State I believe it was gave them everything he had throws the ball extreme well. Fun kid to watch. Daniel Jones from Duke. Very, very intriguing player as well. Andrew Ford from UMass. The lefty from UMass. Had a pretty good game against Tennessee until he got knocked out of the game. Fared very well against BYU. I like him sort of projecting to a West Coast offense. Jarrett Stidham from Auburn I think has the potential to make a huge leap. Auburn didn't put too much on his plate, but if they ask him to do more and he responds,

he could be a name to watch. DeAndre Francois, obviously he's dealing with an injury and some off-the-field stuff at Florida State. Nobody tougher in the pocket than him. Shea Patterson is going to be interesting to watch him move into Michigan. Lamar Raynard at North Carolina A&T. Very athletic quarterback, very raw, but has some nice traits to him. Player to watch who I

really like, Taron Christian from South Dakota State. I like those FCS kids. He's another one. Definitely keep on your radar. Kyle Schumer. Got a piece in the works on him at Vanderbilt. Had a great drive at the end of the first half against Georgia that really showed some nice traits from him. Manny Wilkins.

There's a piece on him over at InsideThePylon.com. You can check out. Brian TheWerke, McKenzie Milton, Case Cook is from Northern Arizona. Yeah, we're getting into some weeds here. Jake Browning from Washington. Obviously, the intrigue about Washington is Eason transferring over there, but Eason has to sit out a season.

This is still Jake Browning's show. And if Jake Browning had a little bit more arm strength, I think people would be really talking about him. And then we're going to get into the Ryan Neal, Riley Neal, who I like. I just did a video on him over at, on Twitter. You can check it out at Mark Schofield, staring down a blitz, really sort of interesting, safe, you know, pocket passer type guy, somebody to watch. And finally, the guy that I like the most, I'm not saying he's QB1 or anything like that, but a guy that I've liked for a while now

that I keep coming back to is Brett Rippin from Boise State. Really intriguing quarterback prospect. So this could be a very, very good quarterback class, but the issue is how well it'll develop over the next year, how consistent can these guys get. There's a lot of inconsistency to their games right now that I'm going to be watching for. So that's kind of an early look at this group as a whole. That's what I talk about in the Check With Me piece. Also, at the end of the

Check With Me piece, and I just want to touch on this very briefly. I know I'm going long here. Obviously, the past week or so has been a difficult one, you know, at least for many people, if not a majority of Americans, people worldwide actually, with the passing of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. And I've been very, very, very open on this show and in other places about my own struggles with mental health, with depression, with anxiety, with suicidal thoughts. And I write about this in the Check With Me piece. And as somebody that has gone through that, has been in that dark space and come out on the other side, thanks in large part to my career change

and having a platform like this, I view it as a chance for me to try to reach out. And if you follow me on Twitter, you've probably seen times when I've reached out just generally asking people, telling people if they need somebody to talk to to please talk to me. My DMs are always open and people do do that.

People have reached out. I've talked to people worldwide in the DMs and offline about some of their issues and their struggles. And I'm always here for you. And so if you're listening and you've had some struggles, you've been through moments like that, and you just need somebody to talk to, please reach out to me. Please reach out to me at Mark Schofield on Twitter. The DMs are always open if you want to email. Any way you want to reach out to me, my email is in my Twitter profile. However you need to do it, please do. But as I say in the piece, my little call to action is twofold because it's always easy to say, look, if you're having trouble, reach out. But when you're in that space, when you're in that darkness, the last thing you want to do sometimes is to reach out.

All you want to do is curl under the covers and leave the world behind. So here's my other point. If you know somebody that's like that, if you're a friend of somebody like that or a family member, reach out to them. You take that step. Give them a call. Send them a text. Invite them out to eat. If anything else, if Anthony Bourdain's lasting legacy could be that more people reach out and invite people to a meal and share stories and experiences over the bond and power of a meal, of food, how great would that be? If we could help people using the vehicle that he used to bridge worlds, to bridge divides. And so if you know somebody that you're worried about, reach out to them. Up next, we're going to close out football and film. We're going to talk something outside of the box.

That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Hey! Oh my God, they shot him! I've left you an incredible income, focus the end of the quarter. Mark Schofield back with you on this Thursday edition of Locked On Patriots closing out the week and closing out football and film with MASH the movie and I can hear you now wait

what? MASH has nothing to do with football. Well, first off, it does. Secondly, shout out to my boy Tim Murphy at TMURPH, T-M-U-R-P-H, 207. He's a fantastic Patriots and Boston sports follow on Twitter. He co-hosts one Patriots place with Steve Ballesteri. I've been lucky enough to be on their show. I need those guys to come on this show

throughout the season ahead. But when I was on with those guys last, we actually talked about the football and film series. And he said that his one take, the hill he will die on when it comes to movies, is that MASH is a football movie. And it is, in a sense. Obviously, MASH came out in 1970.

Talks about the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The 4077. And it's set in the Korean War. Obviously, it was a timely piece of dark, satirical comedy. Really trying to shed a light on the Vietnam War. Because it comes out in 1970. And the bulk of the movie has nothing to do with football, but there is a football game at the end.

The 4077 takes on the 325th EVAC hospital in a game where they wager a ton of money on it. They have rainers. They have a former professional football player come in. They bet a ton of money. The clip you heard there was just a funny moment for it. But football is a part of it. So as a shout-out to my boy Murph,

we're including MASH, the football movie, in with the rest of the football and film movies we've already talked about. That will do it for the show. That will do it for football and film. That will do it for the week. I will be back for football and film. That will do it for the week. I will be back Monday. Over the weekend,

I'm going to try to figure out how to set up a poll for everybody to chime in with their thoughts on these movies we've talked about. Maybe there are some that I've missed. If there are a bunch that I missed, let me know in the poll or on Twitter

and I will do shows dedicated to them. Work those in as well because what am I going to talk about for the next two months? I'll come up with something. I always do. Until then, have a fantastic weekend, everybody. As I said, again, if you or somebody you know needs somebody to talk to, needs somebody to listen to, I am always here. Find me on Twitter, slide into the DM, shoot me an email. If you want to talk on the phone, I will do that too. I'm here to help. You guys help me on Twitter. Slide into the DMs. Shoot me an email. If you want to talk on the phone, I will do that too.

I'm here to help. You guys help me by listening. Let me help you. Until next time, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Suhler, and Locked on Patriots.