Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots June 4, 2018 - NFC East Storylines, A Blitz from Harris and "The Grey Ghost"

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

Mark Schofield talks about "Three QBs and a GM" in the NFC East, breaks down the latest play in the countdown of New England's top defensive plays from 2017-2018, and chats about "Everybody's All-American."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning, welcome into Locked On Patriots for Monday, June 4th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair after a lovely early summer weekend. Hope you all had a fantastic weekend out there, you loyal listeners to the Locked On Patriots podcast, your favorite or one of your favorite Patriots podcasts. Reminded to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com where I'm one of the lead writers. You can follow the work over at ProFootballWeekly.com.

Follow the video work, YouTube.com slash InsideThePylon. A couple of things on tap today. We're going to get back into our countdown of the top 10 defensive plays of the Patriots 2017-2018 season. We're going to talk about a mid-third quarter play against the San Diego Chargers. Excuse me, the Los Angeles Chargers. Still, still not used to saying that. We're going to continue football in film. Another sort of later, you know, older movie that we're going to talk about. More movie about relationships than football itself.

But still a football movie. Still one of my personal favorites. So we're going to dive into that. But first we're going to get back into storylines. We're going to talk NFC East. We're going to talk three quarterbacks and a GM. Let's start with that general manager talking, of course, about Dave Gettleman of the New York Giants. And here again in the storyline series, we're just agree on, it was Dave Gettleman Wright. Was Gettleman Wright when he made the decision to pass on a quarterback with the second overall selection and draft Saquon Barkley, the running back out of Penn State?

You've got Eli Manning on the back nine of his career. I don't think there's really any question about that. You have a chance to draft perhaps a Josh Rosen, perhaps a Josh Allen, perhaps a Sam Donald. But instead, you go running back. Now, when you look at the totality of the draft, or really their first two picks with Saquon Barkley, with the guard Will Hernandez, who I think is going to be a fantastic guard in the NFL. You look at the acquisition of Nate Solder. You can see how this can kind of work, at least on paper. This team still has some weapons at the skill positions. Obviously, Barkley is a nice addition. You have Evan Ingram, a tight end who I loved coming out of Mississippi.

More of a big wide receiver slot tight end type. But I think he can do some things for that offense in the passing game. Obviously, Odell Beckham Jr., Sterling Shepard, another nice slot receiver. One question mark is that other receiver in the spot. Looking at their lineup right now over at least at ourlads.com, Sterling Shepard is penciled in as the third wide receiver, but I wouldn't be surprised to see maybe a Roger Lewis sort of emerge as the next wide receiver across from Odell Beckham Jr. Those are some skill players. The addition of Soler Hernandez, that locks down the left side of the line. They could do some things offensively.

So was Gettleman right when he banked on a couple of more years of Eli Manning and building around him? That's sort of the big question mark for the New York Giants. For the other three teams, and this isn't just a quarterback guy saying it, although I know it's probably going to come off that way, but you have to look at the quarterback situations. With the Eagles defending Super Bowl champions, Carson Wentz and the status of that knee looks good so far. Can he hold up? Can he be back for week one?

Can he hold up over the course of another for week one? Can he hold up over the course of another 16-game season, another 17-week season? Will his playing style be different? Wentz, very tough player, willing to put his body on the line, made a number of throws in and outside of the pocket, extended plays under pressure, escaping from pressure. We all remember sort of the touchdown in their opening game against Washington when he sort of scrambled and escaped. Some of the throws he made against, for example, the Carolina Panthers in their Thursday night game under duress with guys in his face. Will the knee injury impact his style of play? Should it impact his style of play?

Should he be more careful with his body? Those are some question marks about Carson Wentz as he looks to come back from that knee injury. And if he does sort of alter his style of play, will that impact the performance, the output, the production? I'm as big a Carson Wentz fan as you can get for a non-Eagles fan. And I certainly hope that he's back to the player he was that we saw from him last year, because I think he's one of the emerging young quarterback talents in the National Football League and would be great for him. I think it would be great for the Eagles and great for the league if he's back to where he was. There are some additions. There are some changes.

Torrey Smith is gone. Mike Wallace in from Baltimore. So there's a change there, of course. But the rest of this team, at least on the offensive side of the ball is pretty set and this is a team that looks to be on paper ready to go back and make another run of the Super Bowl but a lot will depend on that knee for Carson Wentz. Washington Redskins out. Kirk Cousins in. Alex Smith and Smith is one of those quarterbacks that just continues to sort of confound people in strange ways. Last season with Patrick Mahomes breathing down his neck, it seemed like he was getting some pressure and he seemed to respond, at least early in the season, seemed more aggressive, was more willing to challenge those downfield throwing windows that

plagued him in the past when he gets sort of the knock on him was that he was too conservative with the football, that he wouldn't take those risks, that he wouldn't challenge those throwing lanes and throwing windows that other quarterbacks would be willing to challenge. And when you've got Patrick Mahomes breathing down your neck, I mean, there isn't a throwing lane on the planet that scares that man. And so Smith responded early, but then down the stretch at some points, including their wildcard game against Tennessee,

you saw sort of that safe, conservative nature come back and perhaps end their season. Now he goes to Washington. The interesting thing about his fit sort of with Jay Gruden is Gruden did a very good job with Kirk Cousins sort of scheming stuff open, mirrored passing concepts where we have the same route concept to both sides of the field, you give the quarterback easier reads, easier pass and progression structures. That should help him. That should help him sort of maintain that aggression. And then subset to this, who's he throwing to? Josh Doxon and Jamison Crowder are talented wide receivers, but they let cousins down at times. They bring in Paul Richardson from Seattle. Those look to be your top three receivers right now. They made some additions at the receiving core.

They add Trey Quinn, slot-type guy from SMU in the draft. They bring in Simi Cobbs, who caught some real buzz sort of early in the season when he had a fantastic sort of first half in Indiana's season opener against Ohio State sort of as Indiana's offensive woes began to set in as that first half became a second half, and they went on through the rest of their season. Cobbs' draft stock took a little bit of a dive, but that opening night, he looked fantastic. Sort of a bigger-bodied guy that can win in sort of contested catch situations, so perhaps there's some interest there as well. So will Alex Smith pan out? Will he be able to stay aggressive? Will he be

the Alex Smith we saw early last year or will he be the Alex Smith we saw late last year as well as the Alex Smith we've sort of come to know and understand over the course of his career? Finally, the Dallas Cowboys. A lot of drama and off-season sort of player personnel drama with the Cowboys over the past couple of months. Des Bryant out. Ezekiel Elliott back from the suspension. Obviously, he came back from the suspension later on in the season last year. This is Dak Prescott's team now. They've made some additions. They've bring in Alan Hearns. They've bring in Tavon Austin, Deontay Thompson from Buffalo. Some new names at the receiving spots.

Terrence Williams still there. Michael Gallup, third-round pick. Cole Beasley, a slot receiver whom I love. I think that if you're going and looking at this roster and thinking, ooh, Tavon Austin is going to take touches away from Cole Beasley, I would not buy into that too quickly here. I think Cole Beasley is one of those slot type guys that is always open. When I was studying him a couple of years ago for Bleacher Report,

I came away very impressed with how effective a route runner he was. Other additions, Cedric Wilson in the sixth round of this draft, nice player out of Boise State, basically a vertical threat, deep ball type guy. They had Mike White from Western Kentucky in the fifth round. All these additions, they're all great. It comes back to Dak Prescott. I've been on the record. I revisited over at Inside the Pylon a couple of weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago, why I was so down on Dak Prescott coming out of Mississippi State. Obviously, he had a fantastic rookie season, but he seemed to sort of regress last year, whether it was scheme, whether it was the players around him. We don't know right now, but now a lot is going to be on his plate now.

This is his team. Can he respond? Will he be the Dak Prescott we saw his rookie year or the Dak Prescott we saw last year when he struggled at times to put things together? So those are your NFC East storylines. Up next, we're going to talk about a play against the San Diego Chargers from last season as we continue our countdown to the Patriots' top 10 defensive plays of the 2017-2018 season. And a little bit later, I'm going to revisit one of my sort of dark horse contenders for top 20 football movie of all time.

But before we do that, I want to remind all our friends out there that, as you know, from listening to the show, from reading my work and things like that, you know I'm all aboard team help you guys out. Whether it's helping your quarterbacks out, helping your receivers out, helping people out, right? I do that here as well. I try to help my listeners out. And guys, I'm here to help you out again. I'm here to get you ready to go when it's most important in your lives. I'm here to help you increase your performance and get that extra bit of confidence you need in the bedroom where it matters.

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Mark Schofield, back with you now. We're going to talk about a play from the Patriots game against the San Diego Chargers. This was an interesting game to sort of revisit as I went back through and looked at some of the Patriots' bigger plays, some standout defensive plays, and I almost went with the last play of the game. The Chargers were basically knocked on the door with a chance to tie the game. It was a 21-13 game. Chargers had time for one more play, and then when I studied that play again, Patriots basically just put everybody in the end zone. I think they had eight defenders in the end zone. It turned into, even though it was a 25-yard play, it turned into basically a Hail Mary type situation with Jonathan Jones coming down with an interception. But then I

remembered and I revisited the play from the third quarter. And this comes when it was still a very close game. This play comes, it's a second to 11 with 12 minutes and seven seconds left in the third quarter. And the Patriots, they have the lead. Again, it's 15-7. So again, an 8-point game. Chargers are driving. Second and 11 at the New England 30-yard line. And the Patriots and David Harris step up with a blitz play.

Where they cross the linebackers, Harris and Alandon Roberts. Gets Harris isolated on running back Melvin Gordon, and he blows up the young running back, pressuring Phillip Rivers, and well, let's listen to the rest of this play to sort of break it all down. Deep drop. Rivers, oh, he loses the football! Goes back to get it at midfield,

and a huge loss for Los Angeles. 20 yards. He padded the ball and knocked the ball out of his hand by padding it. Fortunately for him and the Chargers he got back down on it. Melvin Gordon got blown up by David Harris on the blitz.

Right up the middle. Watch 45 Harris just run right over. Kevin Harland, Dan Fouts there on the call. And as you heard from Fouts there at the end, it was Harris on the blitz. Right up the middle. It was a cross-dog blitz with him and a Landon Roberts that really sort of applied the pressure. Harris basically runs over Melvin Gordon there in pass protection. Rivers is forced to retreat, and as he does, Roberts then comes off his block, as does Lawrence Guy, the defensive tackle. They keep

pressuring and flushing Rivers to his right. Quarterbacks retreating, and he actually pats the football, as Fouts pointed out there, and he loses it. He eventually does fall on the football, but it's a loss of 20 yards. The Chargers go from a second and 11 at the New England Patriots' 30-yard line to a third and 31 at midfield. The pass attempt on third down falls incomplete, and the Chargers go from being in field goal range to having to punt. And given the way that rest of this game sort of turned out the Patriots did tack on another touchdown to take a

21 to 7 lead but the Chargers didn't get back into that game they got another score they failed to convert the point after so it was a 21-13 game but this could have been different and at that moment in time this was a very big play and it makes it good enough for the fifth best defensive play of the Patriots 2017-2018 season. Again, a season that was filled with some less than stellar defensive play. But we get some really good ones left in the top four, so to speak. So we're going to get into those over the next couple of days. Up ahead, next movie in our football and film series. That's next with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.

What are you talking about? It ain't no goddamn big deal. I don't want to get upset. Well, just tell me what you... I just need a little inside shit. Just to help, that's all. Game plans. Injuries.

Just enough to give me a little hedge. Get some bets down, make a little money. I can't do that, you know that. No, not alone. Nobody will ever know. Just me and you. That's all. I just need one sweet thing. Just one sure sweet thing. Cut it out, all right?

Go to sleep. It was goddamn fun tonight, though, wasn't it? It made you laugh. Yeah, you never fail. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Monday edition of Locked on Patriots. And what you heard right there was John Goodman and Dennis Quaid Yeah, you never fail. This tells a story about Gavin Gray, played by Dennis Quaid, 1950s star athlete known as the Gray Ghost at Louisiana University. And basically it was LSU. I mean, they filmed it at LSU. It looked like LSU.

This was basically LSU. And it's a movie with the backdrop of football. Obviously, it follows Gavin Gray's career from his big college days as the big man on campus through his pro career and his downfall in his pro career. But it's also a movie about relationships, the relationships of Gavin and his fan base, the relationships of Gavin with his cousin Donnie, played by Timothy Hutton, and his teammate Ed Lawrence, played by John Goodman, who you heard there. And of course, his relationship with his wife Babs, played by Jessica Lane, who was a beauty queen. They were the hot it couple. He,

the big football star, her, the beauty queen. You can watch the trailer for this and it talks about how Gavin Gray was the guy that men wanted to be and women wanted to be with. And they were the it couple. Everybody wanted to be them. Everybody wanted to know them. But it's a movie about those relationships set against the backdrop of football. And Gavin is the star of the Sugar Bowl. He forces a fumble, which he returns for a touchdown that wins the game. He gets drafted in the first round by the Washington Redskins. His buddy Lawrence, played by John Goodman, was one of his offensive linemen, opens up a sports bar in Baton Rouge, but he finds life in the NFL a little bit rough. He's a good running back, but he's hardly the big man on campus that everybody expected him to be in the NFL. Lawrence, as you heard there, has accrued some gambling debts. There he's asking Dennis Quaid and Gavin Gray to give him some

information. He ends up murdered by unidentified attackers based on his gambling debts and his money troubles. And that creates a bunch of stress for Gavin and Babs and their relationship because he's struggling in the pros. She's trying to earn more money because Gavin had invested in Lawrence's business and they lost money that way. She ends up having a brief affair with cousin Donnie and Gavin's facing retirement at this point. He retires briefly, comes back, accepts a comeback offer from the Broncos, but the NFL has basically passed him by. And the scene that always sort of sticks in my mind is when he's forced to accept that. And there's a scene where he's playing in the snow, sitting on the bench, just his hands folded in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees.

And you can just tell that the game's passed him by. He's no longer the guy he was. And in a sense, he never was the guy he thought he was going to be. He never really lived up to that gray ghost nickname that was given him in college. And as I said, it's a movie about relationships set against the backdrop of football. And as we've seen with a lot of these movies that we've talked about, it sort of gets into sort of the dark side. Not so much the glory, but the pain and the angst that this game can sometimes cause people. And it's interesting that this was actually,

the movie ends with Gavin and Babs struggling to keep their marriage together. Gavin is basically, at the end, mending his relationship with his wife as he's just looking back on his glory days. And it's a downer of an ending, but it's better than the book. In DeFord's book, Gavin commits suicide after trying to take his wife's life. Now that's a real downer of an ending, but it's better than the book. It defords book. Gavin commits suicide after trying to take his wife's life. Now that's a real downer. So the movie, a little bit more upbeat, but still, you know, a little bit of pain there at the end. Speaking of pain, filming was stopped for weeks when Quaid had his collarbone broken by, and here's your Patriots tie-in, former Patriots cornerback Tim Fox, who is helping

out as an extra. He played for the Patriots, the Chargers, and the Rams from 76 to 86. And then obviously a couple of years later was helping out with the filming of this. Footage of Quade rolling in pain on the sidelines of the snow game, that Denver game I was talking about, does appear in the film. So he literally used the footage of him breaking his collarbone, or at least the aftermath of that incident in the movie itself. Other trivia, some really good trivia tidbits. They filmed a lot of this, like I said, at LSU, at Baton Rouge, at Death Valley. Some of the football scenes took place during halftime of the 87 LSU Alabama game,

and the producers wanted to keep shooting after that game, so they requested that the LSU fans remain in the stands after the game so they could finish the scenes. Only problem? Alabama won in an upset. Ten minutes after the game, all the fans were gone except for the Alabama fans. Producers were forced to shoot the rest of that stuff after the game the next week. But Everybody's All-American didn't get sort of critical reviews. Reaction to it was mixed. According to Rotten Tomatoes, a 45% rating based on only 29 reviews, but still. But to me, it does sort of speak to that

expectations of glory when you're younger and how life rarely matches up with that. And I think it does a really good job delving into that. It does a great job covering those relationships like I talked about. So for consideration of the top 20 football movies of all time, another movie to submit, Everybody's All-American from 1998. That will do it for today's show. I will be back tomorrow for a Tuesday edition of Locked on Patriots. We're going to get into some of the real good defensive plays of the 2017-2018 season. Having struggled our way through the first six or so,

we're going to do another football on film movie, probably some storylines, maybe another quarterback. Who knows? I'll see what I feel like talking about tomorrow. But until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.