Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots March 22, 2019 - Kraft, Pro Days and Scheming with Schofield

Episode Date: March 22, 2019

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Hey there everybody, welcome on in to a Friday installment of the Lockdown Patriots Podcast. Mark Schofield in the big chair for today, Friday, March 22nd, 2019. Going to give it a nice, quick, tidy show. It is Friday after all. Let's face it, odds are you're just either blown off work today, you're watching college basketball, your mind's probably elsewhere. Maybe your brackets are already busted. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But what we're going to do today, we're going to catch you up a little bit on the Robert Kraft situation. We're going to talk

quarterbacks and pro days. And a little later, we're going to debut a new segment on the show, Scheming with Schofield. Maybe I've even used that phrase before, but we're going to talk quarterbacks and pro days and a little later we're going to debut a new segment on the show scheming with Schofield maybe I've even used that phrase before but we're going to do something fun with that it's a nice little off-season thing but before we do anything a reminder to follow me on twitter at Mark Schofield check out the work at places like insidethepylon.com pro football weekly where I'm going to be doing some draft stuff here in the next couple of weeks the score Matt Waldman's rookie scouting portfolio, a bunch of SB Nation sites, Bleeding Green Nation, where I co-host the QB Sko Show with Michael Kist, Big Blue View, and of course, Pat's Pulpit, where I'm going to be doing some quarterback profiles as we get ready for the draft. I'm going to be talking about, hey, these are the quarterbacks that I think the Patriots might be interested in. So you can read

those and then laugh at me when a guy I don't profile, such as last year in Danny Etlin, actually gets drafted. Let's get caught up, though, on a fair craft. Obviously, we have a court date coming up March 28th, where he's going to have to appear on the solicitation charge that he faces down in Florida for the incident that apparently took place in the days leading up to the AFC championship game where he was apparently on camera as these events took place. And that is where I do sort of want to start. There's another part of this story that we're going to get to in a second, but Kraft joined a motion that was filed by some of the

other defendants seeking to sort of prevent that video from becoming public. And this has become an area of discussion. So I wanted to talk about it for a moment. Because in cases such as this, when there is evidence and there is a public interest, you might see news outlets, newspapers, TV stations, and the like, file a motion asking for that stuff to be sort of unsealed. They want to see it. They're going to argue that the public sort of has a right to see this information. He's a public figure. And so these defendants, including Robert Kraft, want to prevent that from happening. And the judge in this case is going to have to make a determination. How big is the public interest in seeing this video, these videos? Do these defendants have sort of the right to keep this under wraps? It's not a situation, as we'll talk about in a second,

where they're going to keep it out of the trial, but it's just they don't want the public to see this. And so the judge in that case is going to have to balance the public's need to know versus the defendant's sort of right to privacy in a sense where are they entitled to this being kept under wraps or does the public interest in this and the public's right to know about this case outweigh that privacy interest. So that's one aspect to this. Another thing to keep in mind here is this would not be the only motion, I'm sure, that will be filed with respect to these videos. I can almost guarantee that there will be a motion to suppress those videos from being entered into evidence, and that's an entirely different thing. Prior to any trial, whether it's a criminal one like this one or a civil situation, there are

either motions to suppress or motions in limine however they're termed civil or criminal and basically what they mean is this it's a motion that is filed by one or sometimes both parties about different things saying there were some things that were discovered in the build-up to this case that we do not think the eventual finder of fact or finder of law, sometimes it's a judge, sometimes it's a jury, sometimes that's bifurcated between the two, we don't think the ultimate decider in this case should be able to consider this information. Let's take, for example, when I was a civil lawyer, when I was doing sort of medical malpractice defense, in the buildup to trials, we might file 15, 20, 25 motions in limine, trying to prevent

certain information from being introduced to the jury, or in some cases, prevented a witness from testifying to a certain fact. Like we might file, for example, a case where I worked on, I filed a motion in limine to prevent the jury from hearing about how one of the defendants, certified registered nurse anesthetist, was on her phone prior to the incident at place where a patient in an operating room died. I would file a motion to prevent the jury from hearing that bit of information because it had no bearing on what happened, but it's pretty prejudicial. Or in a criminal case, you might file a motion to suppress a bit of evidence saying, look, the police discovered the smoking gun or the bloody knife based on a search warrant, but the search warrant was obtained improperly. And therefore, under a doctrine that's called the fruit of the poisonous tree, everything that stems from that initial improper search warrant is not allowed to be heard by the judge or the jury.

And so I am sure at some point we will hear about a motion to suppress these tapes anyway, not just to keep them from the media hearing about them, but to keep them from the judge or the jury, whoever decides this case, from even seeing them because they might say, you know, the search warrant was improper. It was improperly, you know, granted. You know, the police didn't follow proper procedure here. And therefore, it doesn't matter what you found, you can't use it because the underlying search warrant was improper. And so you're probably going to hear about that at some point if this gets closer and closer to trial. And it does seem like this might get closer and closer to trial because we're now hearing that

earlier this week, there was a story or report that Robert Kraft was offered some sort of deal by which he would admit that there was enough evidence to convict him. However, however, they were going to drop the charges. That's the situation that we were told might be going down. Doesn't seem to be the case. Robert Kraft is apparently going to keep fighting this. And so you will hear about more motions and pretrial movements and things like that. These are all sort of normal procedures. You know, there's sort of an expectation that because Robert Kraft is Robert

Kraft and he's a rich, older, white guy, that he's going to get away with stuff. And people might be thinking, you know, I saw some tweets out there when this motion to keep the video sealed. Oh, you know, he's just trying to abuse the system. If you've got a lawyer, it doesn't matter who you are. These are the kinds of things that you would be filing. It doesn't mean they're going to get granted. I would imagine, again, not that anybody would ever want me to be a judge. Let's be upfront about that one. But if I were the judge hearing these two different motions, one, the motion to keep the video sealed, I would probably grant that one. I don't think the public has that compelling of an interest to see these videos. Now, on the other hand,

from everything we've seen about, you know, the pretrial reports and things like that, they had video, they had, you know, personal surveillance, human surveillance, human sort of intelligence on what was going down here. So I'm pretty sure that the search warrant that they applied for and were granted to install the video surveillance cameras and such. It does seem like that was proper. And so a week from now, two weeks from now, a month from now, when you hear about Kraft filing the motion to suppress, which I am sure is coming, that will probably be denied. If it were me, based on what I've seen, I would deny that because it does seem like the police did this by the book and they had more than enough reasonable cause to go get that warrant and to have that video surveillance equipment installed. And so that's probably where this is going.

Again, I don't want to turn this into law and order SVU or anything like that, but we got to talk about it. And so that's sort of an update on the craft situation. Next thing I want to talk about is our new partnership with a fantastic podcast app, Himalaya. They're a new podcast app, relatively new on the market, but they are so user-friendly. You got to check them out. You can subscribe to shows. For example, you can subscribe to the Locked On Patriots podcast.

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Mark Schofield back with you now on this Friday installment of the Locked On Patriots Podcast. And I'm going to do two things today. A little bit later in this segment, we're going to have a little bit of a confession on my part. But first, we're going to talk again about pro days. And we're hearing a lot about three pro days right now from quarterbacks. Dwayne Haskins, who had his on Wednesday. Drew Locke and Will Greer, who had theirs on Thursday. Now with Dwayne Haskins, they had the whole shebang in place. You had ESPN, you had the NFL Network, everybody was there. Bucky Brooks was there. Louis Reddick was there. Everybody was there, breaking

it down. And Dwayne Haskins looked to have a very good protein. It was clear some of the things that they were working on with him. Footwork, right? Seeing how he could handle pressure, respond to pressure, things like that. There were a lot of simulated pressure type throws. And he looked very good. He looked very

good. Now thursday you had drew locks pro day and will greer's protein nick acero was in morgantown for will greer's pro day we're hearing that patriots are going to meet with him you know whether it's after the pro day or whether it was the night before or whatever they're going to sit down with him and we're hearing that excuse me well greer's pro day was just lights out, fantastic, blew the doors off, all that kind of stuff. Conversely, Drew Locke, reading the timeline and seeing some of the videos,

yeah, he showed off a bit of the arm talent, but I believe it was Daniel Jeremiah who said ball placement was a bit iffy, seemed to be all over the place when it comes to accuracy and things like that. And so you're probably going to hear over the next couple of days, people saying, oh, well, this guy really helped himself with his pro day and things like that. And so you're probably going to hear over the next couple of days, people saying, oh, well, this guy really helped himself with his pro day and things like that.

And there might be a little bit to that. However, I'm here to sort of caution you about sort of buying into a pro day too much because there are scripted, simulated type of events. You can't move a guy wildly and say a guy that, oh, you know, he was a third rounder. Now he's a first rounder because he had a great pro day. Well, if he was a third rounder going into the pro day, that means you had a third round grade on him based on his tape. And what really matters more? I mean, it'd be like saying, look, Mark's not a great lawyer. You know, he struggles at trial. But man, when he does the mock trials

and he does his mock opening statements, he knocks it out of the park. So now we're going to say he's our best trial lawyer at this firm. It's not how it works. And again, I talked a lot about the law in the first. So again, I actually, believe it or not, friends, and those of you who have been longtime listeners to the show, you know that I, you know, during my life as a lawyer, it wasn't the best sort of experience

for me. There was a lot of struggles with mental health and the like. I, to this day, still have nightmares about practice in law. Believe it or not, I had one Wednesday night. I had a nightmare. My weird nightmare, and we're getting far afield from protease here, but I keep getting rehired by the last firm I was at. And it always ends badly. It's the strangest thing to the point where now this nightmare,

this recurring nightmare that I have has evolved to the point where every time I'm in there meeting with these people to get rehired, I keep telling them up front, look, we all know how this is going to end. It is going to end badly, but yet they bring me back. It's the strangest recurring nightmare, and I literally have it probably once a month. Maybe at some point I got to do some research and dreams or something like that, but it's very weird. Anyway, let's try to focus here. I know it's Friday. We're all tired. The issue with pro days is you can't wildly move somebody based on how they do at a pro day. Now, the three quarterbacks we were talking about here, Dwayne Askins, Drew Locke, Will Greer,

they all have some things that they do on film which are kind of nice. However, resist the urge when you're studying these guys, when you're thinking about whether the Patriots might draft one of these players or not, don't read too much into the pro day situation. The fact that Cacero was at Will Greer's probably tells you that the Patriots viewed him rather highly to begin with. You know, they're not going to send Cacero out to a pro day to take a look at a guy that they're probably not interested in drafting. You know, and for those of you wondering, did they have anybody at Missouri's to watch Drew Locke? Yeah, they probably did.

But it wasn't Bill Belichick. He was out at UCLA. So that probably tells you how they're looking at Drew Locke versus Will Greer. And it might be a situation where they recognize that Drew Locke's probably not going to be there at 32. Will Greer might be. Will Greer might be on the board for both of their second round picks, or at least the first one. And so maybe that's why they're doing their due diligence on him.

They realize Locke is not a guy we're going to get a crack at. If he somehow falls to them, they'll have done their homework anyway, but you'll want the big decision makers to really see these guys up close. And so pro day stuff, it's fantastic. One more thing to talk about during this entire process,

but don't wildly overreact to pro days. Now, I said there was a confession of sorts coming your way. And since we're airing some stuff out today, I'm talking about my recurring nightmares and stuff. A confession when it comes to the NCAA basketball tournament. These used to be some of my favorite days of the year. I used to live for this. I remember back in high school, we would do this pool with me and three other friends where we would have a draft.

We would each draft 16 teams. You'd have points by round and stuff like that. That's kind of how we did it. We didn't really do brackets or pick brackets like that. We would have a draft and pick 16 teams. I remember one of the years when I think Purdue got bounced early. I made them one of my first picks. I still remember that. And so I used to love this. Until I started doing this, now March is basically draft

time. And while everybody else right now is sort of watching games and talking about how Minnesota just beat Louisville and things like that. I haven't watched a minute, a minute of college basketball this year. And it's like that every year now. People are talking about Zion and stuff. I saw that he ripped up his sneaker and got hurt when they were playing UNC, but I wasn't watching the game. I saw it on the timeline.

And so that's sort of my confession. I know a lot of people are very excited about brackets right now. I haven't watched a minute of college basketball. I didn't fill out any brackets. I don't think I could tell you the number one seeds. I think Gonzaga got one. I know Duke got one. But I know people are mad Michigan State didn't get one.

I know people are picking brackets all the time. But that's my little March Madness confession here. It is very much off of my radar. Now, what does that mean for you guys? It means that I'm not distracted while doing this show. I don't even have a TV on watching the games. And so, you know, I'm keeping it real here. I'm doing what I need to do to keep you guys informed.

So up next, a new segment suggested to me by one of our favorite listeners who always gets an email when he can for some listener questions. we'll debut that next here at locked on patriots mark scofield back with you now to quickly close out this friday installment of the locked on patriots podcast and we're going to sort of debut a new segment here called scheming with scofield. And basically what we're going to do here is talk about one sort of concept, route, blitz, coverage, whatever, that people should probably know about as we look forward to the next football season. And this was an idea thanks to my great friend

at Reluctant underscore Trade and Mac on Twitter, who asked this week, any chance you could do a two-minute weekly teaching slot on the different concepts newer fans should know to appreciate the game? And it's a great idea. And it's probably one of the things that I love most about football and doing what I do is the opportunity to sort of educate people about different aspects of the game, X's and O's, schemes, et cetera, et cetera, et etc., that will make it more enjoyable to sort of watch the game.

I've always talked about how I would love more than anything else to see people or hear people say, yeah, I was watching the game with my friends and I saw that and it made me think of an article you wrote or something you were talking about on the pod. So that's what we'll do. We'll have like, you know, a couple minutes to talk about a specific plan. I figured one of the things to talk about,

since we talk so much about the air raid, is one of the staples of the air raid offense, the mesh concept. And actually, the timing of this is great because there was a great piece written over at CoachTube.com about best mesh concept plays. I tweeted it out. If you follow me on Twitter, at MarkSkofie,

you probably saw it. And the mesh concept is something that, yes, is most associated with the air rating of a college game. But every NFL team has a variation of Mesh. And if any NFL team offense runs this at some point, including the Patriots, they love to run Mesh in the red zone. And at its core, the Mesh concept consists of this one main element. Two underneath receivers from opposite sides of the football crossing underneath, typically like anywhere from like three to five yards underneath. I mean, not underneath, over the football. But it's two underneath crossing routes, one from the left, one from the right. That's the mesh. That's the mesh part of it. And the beauty of this play,

although we'll get into it in a second, it has to have an evolution of sorts, is that you can run that concept against man or zone and get somebody open. Against man, it's easy. You run away from man. You run from man. That's a typical sort of route design rule option routes and things like that you run from man you sit versus zone so you have those two crossing routes if you're lucky enough to get man coverage perfect those guys keep running you might rub one of them off or pick one of them off you're going to get somebody open if the defense is playing zone coverage at least underneath then what you need to have happen are those sort of receivers that are crossing underneath sit down between the linebackers, between the underneath defenders.

Run versus man, sit versus zone. Now, as teams have sort of started to feel out and identify mesh, there's been an evolution of sorts. I mean, the mesh concept in the Air Raid was started by Hal Mumm, the godfather of the Air Raid offense. And in his basic mesh concept, you had the mesh concept in the air raid was started by Hal Mum, the godfather of the air raid offense. And in his basic mesh concept, you had the mesh underneath and then you had other routes. You had the outside receiver, say, to the left running a quick out. The outside receiver to the right, say, the opposite side.

He's running a route that could convert, whether it's an out, a corner, or a post, depending on the coverage. A lot of air raid coaches like to have one of these routes be a post route. So if you get covered two and you don't like the zone look underneath, you have that post route to split the safeties. And so that's sort of how moms would look at it. Then you've got Mike Leach who added some different things. Sometimes he would have sort of outs on the outside. One of the things that Leach loves to do is have a post route

and then a wheel from the running back and leach himself did a fantastic presentation on the mesh concept i believe it was in 2014 where he talked about the wheel and he basically said about the wheel it's there for show to stretch the defense your quarterback's going to love to throw it but it's a hard route to throw if you watch the 2018 Eagles, they hit a lot of plays on mesh throwing that wheel route to the running back out of the backfield. Patriots like to do that too. They love wheel routes to the RB. And then another coach branch of the Air Raid tree is June Jones. He never really ran this until he worked with Hal Monder in his last year at SMU. He loves it as well. He likes to pair it with sort of switch verticals on the outside. So you'd put two receivers to one side, you'd run switch verticals with them, and then the mesh underneath.

But the main aspect of the mesh is this. It's those two routes underneath. And again, the beauty of it is, at least on paper, if you get man, you run. If you get zone, you settle up. You find grass. That way, quarterback knows it doesn't matter what the coverage is. As long as you can differentiate between man versus zone, you're going to have a route to throw. And that's why it's a very easy thing to run in college, even in high school. But the design is such that you can still run it in the pros and be successful. You just need to pair some stuff with it. And so that's the mesh concept for you. I hope you enjoyed the little scheming with Schofield segment. We're going to do some stuff each week,

each Friday. It sounds like a good Friday thing to close out the week. And speaking of which, that will do it for the week. I will be back Monday, mock draft 6.0. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the games. You know I won't be watching, but hey, if you love it, you'll love it. This is March, after all. Until Monday, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriot. We'll be right back.