Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots June 28, 2018 - Mailbag

Episode Date: June 28, 2018

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Hello everybody, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Thursday, June 28th, 2018. Mark Schofield finally back in the big chair. More on that in a second. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can check out the work over at insidethepylon.com as well as some other outlets, which I'll be announcing over the next couple of weeks or so. You can also check out video work, youtube.com slash inside the pylon. A couple of things today that we're going to take care of. We're going to do some listener questions. I put out the clarion call for some questions on Twitter yesterday

afternoon. Got a couple that I'm going to dive into. Going to keep it a nice and tidy show. But first, at the outset, I want to take care of some housekeeping things. Number one, an apology from your boy here. You see, I like to tell everybody that, look, this is your show. I'm just the gatekeeper of Locked On Patriots, your favorite daily Patriots podcast. But I whiffed on a show yesterday. And I know it's summer. It's almost July. It's almost the 4th of July weekend. But I whiffed on a show and here's

the reason for that. You see, your boy's currently in week two of what we like to call around these parts Daddy Day Camp. My son Owen, out of school for the year, he doesn't start his summer camp until after the 4th of July week. And so for these three weeks in between, it's been two weeks of daddy day camp plus next week where the family's on vacation. So I've been running around. I've been doing things. I've been playing a lot of mini golf. I've been in a lot of batting cages.

I've eaten more meals at Dave and Buster's than I care to admit right now. And one of the things that's, let me just say, I love living where I live, Montgomery County, Maryland. I absolutely adore it. But one of the things that can be a drawback at times is there's a local ordinance where you have to have calorie counts on menus. And trying to carve out a lunch at Dave and Buster's when you're trying to drop some LBs because DadBod has fully set in, that's a tough task. But that was what I've been facing.

I spent most of today at the Dulles Air and Space Museum that's out by Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia. Running around looking at the space shuttle and a Concorde. And also, it's just, if you've never been, it's just a massive hangar out by Dallas Airport where they just have a ton of planes. It's like the air and space on steroids without the big crowds. We saw, my son and I saw an IMAX movie about aircraft carriers and it was a fun day. But I've been running around.

And as such, I haven't really been able to carve out all the time necessary to do a show. I was hoping to do a show yesterday. I didn't. My apologies. Also, by means of housekeeping, next week, as I mentioned, I will be on vacation, but I will be re-racking the five Super Bowl victory episodes revisited. I did a series of five shows, one on each Super Bowl win with guests

walking through basically play-by-play type stuff. Those were really cool. I loved putting them together. They ran in the middle of the season, so they didn't get a ton of listens and they didn't get a ton of run. So I'm going to re-rack them now. It might be some fun summertime listening for all of you.

Last thing to do here in the opening segment is this. A moment of, I'm going to be a proud dad or older brother or uncle here for a minute. And some of you may know the name Joseph Ferriola. He was on this show shortly after the Senior Bowl, breaking down wide receivers. Joe put a tweet out just in the past day or so. He's at NFL Draft Joey.

And I love congratulations, Twitter. And he put a tweet out that basically let everybody know that he's accepted a position with the NFL Next Gen Stats, NFL Media, NFL.com, as a researcher. And I'm going to be a proud guy for a minute because Joe came to us over an ITP a couple of years ago, shy, quiet, reserved, was a little uncertain of his ability. He had done the scouting academy with Dan Hatman. We could tell he had a great football mind, but he wasn't sure of himself. And over the past two years,

he's grown into something above and beyond which I could have even imagined when he first came to us. He's become a confident, determined, incredible producer of content. He has an incredible eye for football, not just the wide receiver position, every position. He's got a great mind for the analytical side of the game. He's got a great mind for the salary cap aspects to the game.

And watching him grow and develop over the past two years has been amazing to see. And now he's parlayed sort of this end of college slash his time at inside the pylon into a gig at NFL.com on their next-gen stuff where he's going to be doing just fantastic work. And what's interesting to me is that he's stepping into a position that was recently held by Ethan Young, who was also with Inside the Pylon.

So part of me is wondering if NFL.com is going to name this the InsideThePylon.com next-gen researcher position. Maybe they're going to get some sponsorship deal there. But back to Joey, I couldn't be prouder of the work that he's done. And I know he sometimes listens to this show. I hope he listens to this one. But if not, I still wanted to get it out there. Give Joey a follow on Twitter at NFL Draft Joey. He's going to be moving on to great things. This is just the next of many stops he's going to make along the way. I am so proud of him. I am so excited to see his journey. It's going to be

fantastic. And I think the world of him, I think the world of his work, and I'm overjoyed to see where he goes next. So those are some like housekeeping, apologies, sappy type things here at the outset. I'm going to come back, address some of your questions here. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now. Doing some listener questions here. I threw it open. Got some interesting questions.

Let's dive into them. And the first question I got from Robert Zielinski at Robert Zielinski on Twitter. Cake or pie? Yep. These are my listeners. Robert's good people. I know Robert.

He does work for Windy City Gridiron. He's done some work for Inside the Pylon, Pro Football Weekly, The Athletic Chicago. You can follow him on Twitter, as I said, at Robert Zelinsky. Cake or pie? Well, it almost has to be cake by default and I'll tell a quick family story here my my grandfather my mom's dad who's no longer with us who've I've talked about briefly on the show he was his d-day pen rests in our downstairs playroom my man corner of our house. You know, Ray Paradiso meant the world to me. I,

you know, can't speak. I can't say enough what that man meant to me growing up and still means to me today. And I do remember, I believe it was a Thanksgiving, you know, a couple of years before he passed away. I made a pie. And I screwed up on the bottom. It was basically a bottomless pie. And he called me out on it. This pie has no bottom. Just dunking on me at Thanksgiving dessert table.

And so by default, it's going to be cake since I can't really make pie that well. As far as what kinds of cake, look, I'm a cheesecake guy. Huge fan of cheesecake. Boston cream pie, which is really a cake if we're being honest. Big fan of that as well. Terry Masu. Now, perhaps this is a bit off track, but also, look, as you just heard, Ray Paradiso. I mean, he came over from living outside of Rome when he was in his teens. Came to this country and then fought for this country in World War II. So, yeah, Terry Masu, huge fan of that. So, to Robert's question, cake or pie, I'm a cake guy. Next question, Jared Thorne, who is at Planet Jared on Twitter.

Long-time friend of the show, long-time friend of the work. First time, long time. Considering the Patriots linebackers are mostly a pile of, and you can imagine which emoji was used at this point, and many safeties remain unsigned, some even good, do you think it's a good idea to sign one and use a base 4-2-5? And to that point, you know, here are some of the free agent safeties that are still available.

Kenny Vaccaro, who's 27. Eric Reid, who's 26. Trey Boston, 25. Quinton Depps, a little bit older, 32. Ron Parker, 30. Tyvon Branch, 32. So those guys are a little bit older. But Vaccaro and Reid are talented, talented, talented players.

You know, obviously, Reid, there's a question there. Again, I don't want to dive into it, but the Anthem issue, you got to figure that's playing a part here. Vaccaro, maybe he didn't pan out the way people thought he would down in New Orleans, but he's still a talented player. To Jared's point here, I think we've seen over the past year or so this trend from the Patriots to play a lot more 3-4 safety type looks. I mean, let's remember a play I've talked about countless times on this show. That stop on 3rd and 7 against the Steelers in that regular season game. Went on a pivotal situation. They went with a 4-0-7 look with seven defensive backs on the field.

And I think that that's going to be the trend that they're going to use because with safeties, you can have sort of schematic flexibility to respond to what a defense does, particularly if they go tempo. If they go tempo with 12 personnel and you've got multiple safeties on the field, your safeties can stay with those tight ends. And then if it's a situation where they go 12 and you've got multiple safeties on the field even if they empty the backfield you're still able to really match up perhaps without needing to you know put a linebacker in a mismatch type situation and so I think

that's what the Patriots want to do they want to have the positional flexibility the schematic flexibility that multiple safety looks afford them on a down-to- down basis and so that's issue sort of number one, that I think, to Jared's point, they're going to continue to see these multiple safety looks. Now, who those multiple safeties could be? I mean, this is a team right now that has Harmon, that has, you know, obviously Devin McCourty. You know, so they've still got the bodies to do it. Will they add some guys? You

know, perhaps, you know, Patrick Chun, Jordan Richards, you know, they've still got a core group, but given some of the talent that's out there, it wouldn't surprise me to see them, you know, add somebody else to that mix. And so I think it was a good question from Jared and something that I do think that they'll address. Your thoughts. This is from Hytham Winterbottom. Who's at Hytham, H-A-I-T-H-A-M underscore winters, W-I-N-T-E-R-S. And this is a question right in my wheelhouse. Your thoughts on whether we get a QB in free agency next year,

mentioned in AJ McCarron and Teddy Bridgewater, or whether we draft or trade for one. And it's the $64 million question right now. Taryn and Teddy Bridgewater, or whether we draft or trade for one. And it's the $64 million question right now. I think when you look at, as we've talked about on this show, the fact that the Brady era may be coming to a close perhaps sooner rather than we think. Perhaps that they basically punted on the quarterback decision this year. Unless Danny Etlin shows up and balls out,

I don't think people are really expecting him to be the heir apparent. But we're also hearing, and this will allow me to go down a road, a tangent for a minute. We're hearing that the 2019 class isn't that good. You know, Matt Miller over at Bleach Report just did a piece over at Bleacher Report just the other day that basically said you talk to scouts, you talk to everybody, they're already telling you, look, hope you got your guy last year because this next class is

not going to be that good. And I'm Mr. Development is not linear. There are issues with the next class. There needs to be development in the next class. But as we're going to keep talking about over the next couple of months, there are guys that can play.

Drew Locke, Jared Stidham, Justin Hebert, Brett Rippin, Ryan Finley, Tyree Jackson, the kid from Buffalo. These kids have traits that will translate to the NFL. And if they refine what they need to refine, Clayton Thorson, these guys could be good. This class might end up being better than people think. And what's good for this group of players is there are certainly low expectations. And part of it, as Matt Miller points out in his piece, is the fact that these guys, I expect it to have guys like, say, a Rosen

and a Darnold and a Jackson in this group. Those were guys that came out early. Can you imagine what people would be saying if those three guys were still in this group? And so it is sort of a $64 million question. I think, though, that we will see the Patriots address it in at least one way, and I expect it to be via the draft. I expect them to look long and hard at this 2019 class, and if I were to make late June 2018 predictions

on who those guys could be, I'd say keep an eye on Ryan Finley, the kid from NC State, and keep an eye on Brett Rippin, the kid from Boise State. Both of those quarterbacks sort of scream Patriots to me. Again, that's sitting here right now, but that's kind of what I'm looking at when we start to project into what the Patriots might do at the quarterback position coming ahead in the next couple of months here and into the next draft season.

Up ahead, I'm going to roll out with some more questions from all of you, which I love to get in. As always, you can reach out roll out with some more questions from all of you, which I love getting. As always, you can reach out to me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. If you go onto Twitter and you don't like tweeting, the DMs are open. You can do it privately. And I know some of you have reached out to me via email, which I always appreciate as well. Up next, we're going to talk offensive line.

We're going to talk about Sonny Michel a bit. We'll talk about one last question about who's getting the most yards from scrimmage amongst a group of players. More questions that I'll get to ahead with me, Mark Schofield in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now. Closing out this week, closing out this episode with some more

listener questions. We're going to start with a question from Pat Lane who, if you aren't following Pat, please fix that right now. You can follow him on Twitter at WTPLANE, Pat Lane. He's a host of the Weekend Warrior podcast, which I've been on. He was kind enough to have me on right before or after the draft. Again, it's been a long couple of months here. I forget exactly when.

But he was kind enough to have me on. I was overjoyed to chat with him. He does great work over at WTP Sports as well. So please follow Pat. He does really good work covering the Patriots. His question, who do you think the starting offensive tackles will be? You know, he's kind of looking at it, and he sees Cannon and Brown, but he's not quite sure, you know, which side, where it might be.

And as far as the two guys, that's kind of where I'm at too. You know, I think it's going to be Cannon. I think it's going to be Brown. But the question is, which one's going to be that left tackle? As we all know, look, left tackle, that's the blind side. That's protecting Brady. And you've got to make sure that you've got that locked down. And from what we've seen over OTAs and the mandatory stuff that was done,

they had Brown at the left tackle spot, Cannon at the right tackle spot. And I think that is probably where it ends up. Again, I could be wrong, but sitting here right now, I think that's where it's going to end up. You're going to have Brown at the left tackle spot. You're going to have Cannon at that right tackle spot. And I think that does make a little bit of sense. When you look at the success that Cannon had last year on that right side, I think that makes the most sense.

I think Brown's got a right tackle experience to him, but Adrian Waddell, I'm not so sure you put him at left tackle. I think if there's a dark horse, it's Isaiah Wynn. Perhaps slide it into that left tackle spot, but then that keeps Brown on the branch. So my gut is Brown at left tackle candidate right tackle we saw brown at left tackle and win at left guard you know during otas and stuff like that and i think that's kind of where it ends up going next question from at ru dog dawgg 59 he is number one Cyrus Jones fan page on Twitter that handle is again at R U D A W GG 59 I know I owe you my friend a DM about my gamer tag it is on Xbox I will get that to you as soon

as I remember to do so how is it that the storyline of Sonny Michelle having bone on bone in his knee just disappeared now that the Bill Belichick him. Should the fans be concerned about Sonny Michel's health going into this season? And it's a brilliant question. And what's amazing, in a sense, is the overall aura and power that Bill Belichick has over, I'd say, at least some segments of the media and perhaps some people in the NFL themselves. I mean, let's not forget, you know, Mike Freeman, you know, had something out right before the draft basically saying that whenever

Belichick does something or makes a move, he gets texts from people, you know, in the league, scouts, general managers, front office people say, what does he know? Because when Belichick does something, people think he knows something that nobody else does. And when it was reported in late April, back in April 26th, it was on Roto World that teams have concerns that Sonny Michel has a bone-on-bone condition in his knee. People's antenna went up.

The reason being it was Mike Lombardi who put that out there. And obviously there's a relationship between Lombardi and Belichick. There just is. And so people instantly said, there were instantly people out there saying, Belichick's putting this out there to get Michelle to fall. And then other people said, no, no, no, they're not going to go, you know, running back in the first round. Like they're not going to do that.

Well, what ended up happening? And so I think it's one of those situations where you look at the overall longevity of running backs to begin with, and yeah, you hope that they get to a second contract, but there's concern if he has this condition that he might not get to a second contract. That's's you know

one thing to look at also look jay had basically this that same kind of condition you know he's obviously fared pretty well the patriots after the draft said look we're comfortable you know with his medical situation you know nicks cassaro said look there's a lot of information this is a quote from him after the draft after, look, there's a lot of information. This is a quote from him after the draft, after that first round, there's a lot of information. So we sort through it. So in the end, whatever you have with the player, you take everything that comes along with it. So you're either comfortable or you're not comfortable with the player situation. So you take a lot of that information in. So in the end, we felt we were comfortable with the players. We went ahead and made the pick, you know, and it's still speculation.

You know, it was again, just Lombardi who noted that potential bone on bone condition. You know, there's never been any sort of confirmation of it. Now, Michelle does have a long list of knee problems with this left knee. His sophomore season in high school, he tore his ACL. He injured the left knee again in 2017 in the SEC title game against Auburn. There are also some other injuries. Sprained ankle, four games with a shoulder injury in 2014. Re-injured that same shoulder in camp in 2015.

Played with a slight fracture in a hand. He broke his forearm in an ATV accident. He sprained an ankle in 2017. But while he was doing this, he rushed 24 times for 165 yards and a touchdown against Kentucky the week after that fracture in his hand. And when he came back from that knee injury in the 2017 SEC title game, what did he do against Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl?

222 yards, four touchdowns, three rushes, one receiver on just 15 touches. And against Alabama in the national championship game, 14 carries, 98 yards. And Michel himself says, I'm healthy. I'm not so sure what's out there, but I've been playing with no problems. I don't have any injuries. I'm not sure what you guys are hearing. And so I guess, you know, the answer to the question, I don't think people should be concerned about his health.

There's a list of injuries, knee injuries and otherwise, but he's performed at a high level on the biggest stages, even with those. And so I don't think people should be concerned. Final question. I'm staying with Sonny Michel. Sonny Michel, Braxton Burrios, Jordan Matthews. Who's getting the most yards from scrimmage in 2018? This is from at underscore yawned at underscore Y-O-N-D on Twitter. Another brilliant question. Thanks for getting it out there. And I think we can go via process of elimination and do it this way. It's hard to bank on Sonny Michel, not because of the injury, but because of the fact that there's going to be competition in that backfield for time, for touches. You know, when you're talking

about something like this, like for fantasy perspective for fantasy perspective, opportunity is a big thing. The number of touches, the number of chances you're going to get is a big thing. And Sony's going to have to share the load with a bunch of other people, with James White, with Rex Burkhead, with potentially Mike Gilleslie, Jeremy Hill. And so there's a question of how many touches is he going to get? So that's issue number one. Issue number two is Braxton Berrios. I love him. You all know that.

Is he going to get the opportunity? Is he going to get the opportunity to contribute as much as he would to get more yardage than, say, a Sonny Michelle even? Now, he might have a chance if he makes the team, punt returns and things like that, but still. So I think that brings us to Jordan Matthews by default. We also have the Edelman suspension. If Edelman's on the bench for the first four weeks, Jordan Matthews is going to get a lot of opportunities. And when you look at this Patriots wide receiver room, I think even when Edelman comes back, Jordan Matthews is probably going to be seeing a number of opportunities to

contribute. And so by default, that's my answer, Jordan Matthews. And that will do it for this week. Hope you all have a wonderful week. Again, I am off next week. I am trying to go dark as much as I can. Look, when I left the practice of law, part of it was I was always staring at my phone, paranoid about emails and stuff like that that were going to come in from bosses. I've started to slip and stare at the phone again. Now it's just Twitter. I need a little bit of a break from that. So I'm going to try to be a little bit sparse over the next 10 days or so. Like I said, I've got the tweets preloaded for the shows and all that stuff. Listen to those episodes. They were a lot of fun to put together.

I had Rich Hill from Pat's Pulpit on each episode as well as guys like Matt Waldman, Danny Kelly, Michael Kist, Aaron Freeman, Bill Rossetti to talk from the other team's perspective about those games, about those Super Bowls.

They were a lot of fun to put together. You'll hear moments from the games. We'll talk about the stuff. We'll laugh. We'll cry. Kissed and I yelled at each other. It'll be fun and cathartic to listen to those episodes again, given the way Super Bowl 52 ended.

So check those out. Be safe over the 4th of July weekend. I'll probably still be around on Twitter. You can hit me up. I will get back to you at some point. Until then, have a wonderful Fourth of July. I wish you all the best. Have a safe and happy holiday.

Be well to each other. I'm recording this as we're hearing about a shooting at a newspaper in Annapolis, which is just 35 minutes from where I am right now. Take care of each other. Take care of your loved ones. Hug your loved ones tonight. The world can be a scary place right now. Hopefully, 25 minutes of Patriots Talk will help you escape from it for a bit because you know what? It helps me escape from it too. And if nothing else, this show is cheaper than therapy. Be well, everybody.

I'll be back. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on People.