Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots May 14, 2018 - Josh and Dante Meet the Media, Brady to Hogan in the Divisional Round and Quicksand

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

Mark Schofield has some of the comments from Josh McDaniels and Dante Scarnecchia from Friday, breaks down Play 6 in the Top Ten Offensive Plays from 2017, and revisits one of his favorite movies, The Replacements.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome into Locked On Patriots for Monday, May 14th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair to kick off this Monday edition of Locked On Patriots. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com, YouTube.com backslash InsideThePylon for all the video work. We're rolling through some 2019 first sound videos over there, starting to look at the 2019 quarterback class. I know some Patriots fans already checking those videos out.

Also check out the work over at profootballweekly.com. Did a piece late last week on what fans of the Titans, the Raiders, and the Panthers might expect when their quarterbacks get under center with a new offensive coordinator. We're going to do part two of that series

a little bit later this week. As I said, Monday edition here. Hope you're all rested and recovered after a nice, fun weekend. Hope you took care of your moms this weekend. Belated Mother's Day wishes to all the moms listening out there, especially at Carol Scofield, my mom, one of my biggest, perhaps my biggest fan and listener of the show. Happy Mother's Day again, Mom.

A couple of things on tap today. We're going to continue our series on football and film. We're going to look at play six on our countdown of the Patriots' top 10 offensive plays of the 2017 season. But first, some actual news. Patriots minicamp got underway this weekend. Patriots coaches were available for the media on Friday. We're going to dive into that. Also, Patriots releasing Antonio Garcia, the second-year offensive tackle out of Troy with a non-football injury designation. You do wonder if his blood clot condition and his lungs has resurfaced. Obviously, we wish Antonio all the best going forward. You do wonder about the Patriots' plans at offensive tackle and offensive line.

I and many others assumed that Garcia was going to be in the mix perhaps for a starting spot on that offensive line, but the Patriots seem to have moved into a different direction. Obviously, one of the people people were most interested in hearing from was Patriots offensive coordinator

Josh McDaniels, fresh off a somewhat tumultuous offseason from the Patriots OC, who had accepted the Indianapolis Colts head coaching gig, but then decided to change course and stay with the New England Patriots. As McDaniels said, and this is a quote, these things are not easy decisions to make.

A lot of us have had to make decisions. What we feel is best for ourselves, our career, our family and I'm thankful to be here. This has been a great place for me. It's benefited me and my family. We're grateful to have an opportunity to work for Mr. Kraft and his family, to coach for Bill and to be with the staff every day. And the players we have an opportunity to work with every day. It really is an opportunity that you have to cherish and be grateful for every day, and I certainly am. Another interesting quote from McDaniels that came out

during his time with the media on Friday dealt with his perhaps future with the New England Patriots. Many, myself included, assumed that when McDaniels decided to remain in New England, he must have been promised the job as head coach here in New England at some point in the future. But McDaniels kind of quashed that rumor on Friday. Another quote from him, I mean, my role is the same. Look, I think if you're here, you have an opportunity to work with and for some of the best people in our game, maybe some of the best people who have ever done these things in our game. I feel like it's a great opportunity to be here in my role. I think all

of us feel this way. I've been here for a long time. There's a lot you get to build on and try to get better at your profession. Whatever happens in the future is going to happen. I'll be happy with whatever that is. I just know I'm grateful to have the opportunity to be the offensive coordinator here, coaching quarterbacks, working with the offense, and working for the people I work for. Last bit of sort of news out of McDaniels. Not really news, but he did touch on the Brady sort of absence from involuntary workouts. McDaniels quoted as saying, I have no doubt that he's doing what he thinks is right for him and his family. I completely respect that. I know he'll be ready to go. I know he'll be in good shape, good condition. I'm sure he's working really hard. I'm not really worried respect that. I know he'll be ready to go. I know he'll be in good shape, good condition. I'm sure he's working really hard.

I'm not really worried about that. Another coach that made some interesting comments on Friday was offensive lineman coach Dante Skarniecki addressing some of the scouting decisions that went into drafting Isaiah Wynn, addressing some of the offensive line versatility up front. I'm going to play just two clips from his interview and talk about those. First up, you're going to hear a familiar voice, a friend of the show, Noah Princiani from the Boston Globe,

with a question about positional versatility on the offensive line. When you get a guy who you might ask to do something that he hasn't done in the past, whether it's in college or maybe he's in a pro career, how much of a sense can you get as to how he'll take to something new just by looking at him, looking at the body of work, and how much of it is just sort of, you try something, you see if it works out, you see how it goes. Okay, give me an example of what you're talking about. If you're asking someone who's played on the right to go to the left, maybe he hasn't done

it before, but can you look at him physically, or just look at how he plays and get a sense of whether it might take or not or is it just kind of you try i think that's a good question i think it's a fair question i think you look at a guy's skill set number one you look at his body of work in college and you know if he has been on both sides you know you can validate your suspicions or not and um but then i also think that when you get them here and i there's an old saying in this league that i learned a long time ago when you when i came in and that's the players always used to say the more you can do you know they when you'd ask them to do something they say yeah coach more you can do i never really understood it until i saw the meaning of it because they never finish a sentence.

The more you can do, the more valuable you are, the longer you stay, the more money you make. And so you have to make yourself valuable. And most guys are very, very much open-minded to doing multiple things. Like we took Joe Tooney two years ago and said, Joe, we're going to give you snaps at center and he never played center before but we worked him in the pre-season in training camp and then we gave him actually it was the last pre-season game against the giants when tom played quarterback in the first half of that game and tom wasn't crazy about joe starting out as a center but we had to find out and we found out and it worked out good, and no one said a thing. So I think maybe this is a long-winded answer to a short question.

You'll never know unless you do it, so why don't you do it? And the more valuable you can make those players, the more they're going to be happy with it, and the more flexibility you'll have within your group to, oh, man, we lost the right guard, but that guy's played right guard, get him in there. So that's the approach we take. Again, that's Patriots offensive line coach Dante Skarnecchia

with Nora Princiotti, friend of the show from the Boston Globe, asking a question again about positional versatility up front and whether it's an issue of you can see something on tape, see something when you're evaluating and studying a guy that tells you that he can translate from one side of the offensive line to the other, or whether it's just a simple question of putting the guy there and seeing if it works. And as Dante said, you won't know until you try. And it is a difficult transition. It's not easy to go from, say, left tackle to right tackle. I've seen members of offensive line Twitter, such as Duke Manny Weather and Jeff Schwartz, among others, say that it's a pretty awkward thing. It's like

doing something with your left hand your entire life, and then suddenly being asked to do it with your right. Not something like right in or anything like that, but just an everyday task, like cutting food, using a steak knife, for example, suddenly doing it with your offhand. You can do it eventually, but it's going to take some getting used to, and there's that component to it. But there's also the fact that, did it surprise you to hear Dante Skarnacki talking about how it's valuable to a team and valuable to an organization if you as a player can be positionally flexible?

And so there's definitely that element to it as well. We're going to play one more clip from Dante's comments on Friday which I really liked it's about the evaluation process scouting left tackles and sort of the idea of does height does weight does that stuff matter does arm length really matter at tackle or does it really boil down to how well you play the position Gordon do you see height and length at tackle? Well, I mean, you know, Andy, we'd like to see them as tall and as long as they can possibly be, but, you know, does he have the skill to play it?

Does he have enough length to play it? What's long enough? So if my arms are 35 inches and every time I hit you, I hit you like that, my arms aren't 35 inches, are they? Measure it. 20? Okay. But if I have you here, then my arms are 35.

So you tell me a guy has 35-inch arms, every time he goes to pass block, he goes like that. His arms aren't 35. So what good are they? So my point is, you know guy's got 33 but he uses them as good as the guy's got 37 inch arms so i think that's way overrated i really do i'm not saying every tackle you have should have 20 inch arms but i'm saying maybe there are some minimums you know and you know we think we have the guys that we have that we're training at that position all fall within those standards.

Matt Light's arms are 33 inches, and he played 10 years in this league. Did you know that? Nope. You've got to look into that stuff. He's got 33-inch arms. Okay? No one knew that. Six-four and three-quarters.

Not six-seven. What's the standards? i don't know i just i gotta play it or can you not play it so i if you're referring to isaiah he's played left tackle in the best conference in america pretty good so we're gonna take a look at it and see how it goes again that's patriots offensive line coach Dante Skarnecchia. They're sort of getting into the arm length debate that raged pretty much throughout Isaiah Wynn's entire draft process. It's the reason why he was projected by some to be an interior player,

a guard at the National Football League, because he doesn't have sort of ideal arm length. But as Skarnecchia put it, it's not the length of your arms, it's how you use them. And I thought his antidote about Matt Light was tremendous. Light, obviously, as Skarnearnacki said, played 10 years as a left tackle in the National Football League, 33-inch arms. So the fact that Wynn doesn't sort of have

the ideal arm length that people point to, that doesn't mean anything. What does mean something is he played left tackle in the SEC and played it at a very high level. And so as I and others said throughout this draft process, you start him at left tackle and you see if he can do it. If he can't, he's got the overall talent to be able to kick inside. He showed that down in Mobile for the Senior Bowl. And so I think, again, this points to being a great draft pick for the New England Patriots. And you have to be excited about him pairing up with Dante Skarniecki. That's what I wanted to recap sort of from Friday. I loved the entire Skarniecki video. You can check that out, patriots.com.

That's where these clips came from. You can listen to the entire interview for yourself. Just great comments from him as well as some of the other Patriots assistant coaches. Up next, we're going to dive into play six of our top ten countdown, and then we're going to talk about quicksand as we get into football and film. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Monday edition of Locked on Patriots. Going to continue our top 10 countdown of the 10 best offensive plays from the 2017 Patriots season.

If you're just catching up on this, play number 10 was a touchdown from Tom Brady to James White in that regular season game against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday night. Play nine was a touchdown pass from Tom Brady to Chris Hogan on that Thursday night game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Those plays sort of came earlier in the season when we're still sort of figuring out where the Patriots really sort of stood as a team. Play eight, the one and only play we'll be talking about in this series from Super Bowl 52, the touchdown from Brady to Rob Gronkowski that gave the Patriots the lead early in the fourth quarter when we all sort of thought, okay, they've got this under control now, right? Well, unfortunately, that didn't quite pan out the way we all would have hoped.

Play seven from last week, Brady to Gronkowski again, and that first meeting between the Patriots and the Jets on that crossing route early in the third quarter gave the Patriots a touchdown lead in that game. Play six, we're going to dip back into the playoffs now. The divisional round game between the New England Patriots and the Tennessee Titans. This is a touchdown from Tom Brady to Chris Hogan on a third and goal around the two-minute mark of the second quarter. And if you remember that game, Patriots had a seven-point lead, 14-7, sort of midway through the second quarter. They took over possession of the football after forcing a Titans punt in a 14-7 game on their own nine-yard line. And after a quick pass to Amendola and then an incompletion to Chris Hogan,

the Patriots faced a third and five on their own 14. And Brady's pass in the direction of James White fell incomplete, and the Patriots were forced to punt. And that's a situation where you're wondering, look, you know, punting from your own territory, you know, Allen's going to be letting this go from about his own goal line, Tennessee might have good field position.

They could come down and tie this game up. Well, then you probably remember what happened next. You get a neutral zone infraction that was originally called on New England

and then sort of reversed after an official conference. That gives the Patriots a first down. Then you get an illegal contract on Jonathan Ciprian on an incomplete pass to Gronkowski that gives the Patriots another first down. Then you get an illegal contract on Jonathan Ciprian on an incomplete pass to

Gronkowski that gives the Patriots another first down. So the Patriots get some help on this drive. You also get an unnecessary roughness penalty on Eric Walden, you know, that helps give the Patriots a first and goal eventually at the Tennessee Titans' six-yard line. But after a short run from Deion Lewis and a pass in the direction of Brandon Cooks that fell incomplete the Patriots faced third and goal at the Tennessee four and given all the help you had gotten to that point in this drive if you're the Patriots you gotta get seven on this drive and that's exactly what they did on this play from Brady to Hogan registered a sack so now the 16th play of the drive third and goal to Hogan. Robert Kraft is excited. He put this whole thing together. Got to give him credit. Now watch this.

They know the safety is going to go double Gronk. Gronk's over here. And then Hogan goes right where that free safety was. And Brady looks inside. 40-year-olds don't bounce around in the pocket like that and throw to the back of the end zone under duress. Jim Nance, Tony Romo there on the call for CBS. And as Romo described it,

this is yet another example of the Patriots using alignment, motion, and shifting in the red zone to get an advantageous situation post-snap. Again, it's third and goal from the five. They put Brady in the shotgun. The ball is on the left hash mark, and he is alone in the backfield. James White, the running back, is flanked out to the left with tight end Rob Gronkowski inside of him, and the Patriots have three receivers to the right.

They have Chris Hogan on the inside, Danny Amendola in the middle of this trip's formation, and Brandon Cook split wide to the right. Patriots then bring White in short motion from the outside just closer to Gronkowski in sort of a stack. That's a signal to the defense that they're going to be running some sort of concept to that side of the field. And as Roman described it, the defense reacts by using the free safety who's in the middle of the field to then rotate over to Gronkowski who's going to be running that sort of fade to the outside. So that's the typical route that you use with the Gronkowski, that

fade to the outside. Patriots run a rub concept with White and then running a slant to try to create traffic. And because of that, the safety sort of drops to that side of the field. He expects to drop double Gronk, but what happens when he sees White coming over the middle, he then just squats on that slant route. All it does is free up space for Hogan running a slant from the other side. Middle of the field becomes open. That defender has no help. Once Hogan gets inside leverage on him, the defender tries to jam Hogan. Hogan beats it. Nobody in the middle of the field to help. Brady looks at the concept of the Gronkowski, sees that that's covered, comes late to Hogan for the touchdown. A big touchdown at a pivotal moment in that divisional round game. So that's play six on your countdown of the Patriots top 10 offensive plays of 2017. Up next, I want to talk about a movie that I love

as we continue our football and film series, The Replacements, starring Gene Hackman and Keanu Reeves. That's next with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. You all have concerns about this Sunday. But a real man admits his fears. That's what I'm asking you to do here tonight. Who wants to start? Fears, let's talk about. Fears, fears.

Hey, I'm scared to spy on this coach. Well, that's not what I meant. of spiders, coach. Well, that's not what I meant. Me too, coach. I'm afraid of spiders too, coach. Yeah. Goddamn spiders freak me too, fellas. Well, I didn't mean that, though. What I'm talking about... Fish in your bed, man. Ever get one of those fish crawling up your arm?

Maybe crawling on you, man. Damn. Well, thanks, Jimbo. You can just rock me to sleep tonight. Okay, that's great, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is what scares us on the field. What you mean, like spiders on the field? Can we get beyond the spiders, please?

Bees. Bees? Bees. Bees. I don't know about them bees. Anybody here afraid of anything other than insects? Huh? Come on.

Quicksand. Oh, shit, Jim. Hey, quicksand's a scary mother, man. I mean, first of all, it'll suck you right in, and even if you scream, you get all that muck in your mouth. I don't think that's what Shane had in mind, Frank. Huh? That's not what he had in mind, Frank. Huh? That's not what he had in mind.

What are you talking about, Dan Covett? Why don't you ask him? Hey, what's up, Shane? You're playing. And you think everything is going fine. But then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another.

And you try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move. You can't breathe. Because you're in over your head. Like quicksand. That's some deep shit, Shane. That's some deep shit. Anything else you're afraid of? Going back to the mini-mod.

The shipping yard. The auto plant? Prison. Yeah, alright. The truth is, you guys have been given something that every athlete dreams of. A second chance. And you're afraid of blowing it we all are but now our fear is shared and we can overcome it together let's lose that fear this sunday and put it into san diego

that's gene hackman keanu reeves and others from the 2000 movie the replacements which is one of my favorite movies not just saying favorite football movies, favorite movies. And the reason being, it touches on a theme that we've already hit upon in this football and film series, and that is that idea of being given a second chance as an athlete, a chance to do something again, one last shot at your moment in the sun. And the movie tells a story of a fictional football league that is facing a player strike sort of later in the season. But given the fact that the league's already nearing the postseason,

they decide to finish the season with replacement players. And this team, the Washington Sentinels, their owner turns to a former coach of his, played by Gene Hackman. And so Hackman decides to pull together guys that he's always kept an eye on. Among them, Shane Falco, played by Keanu Reeves, who was an early round draft pick out of Ohio State, who then choked in his final game, the 1996 Sugar Bowl. He's given the nickname Footsteps Falco because he was just rushed into action, sort of as I fear Josh Allen may be, and just busted. Now he's basically cleaning barnacles off of people's boats.

Other characters, Jon Favreau plays Daniel Bateman, who's a middle linebacker, who is a golf wall vet, who is just a crazed person. Let's just put it that way. Now he's currently on the D.C. SWAT team for the D.C. Police. The two Jackson brothers, the offensive guards, turned to bodyguards for a rapper. Clifford Franklin, played by Orlando Jones, who, fastest guy, can't catch anything. Brian Murphy, played by Daveave denman who people probably know

from the office of a tight end who would have been a first round draft pick heading up in barn deaf so he's playing down the street in dc at gallaudet university it's just basically a group of players that were talented but for one reason or another either they had like one trait where they couldn't put it together or just some other reason where it never clicked for them on the field. But Hackman, you know, who's playing the coach, Jimmy McGinty basically says that, you know, these are the guys that I've been keeping an eye on. These are the guys that I believe in. And he sort of puts them together. And that scene there, the sort of quicksand story, I turn to that still to this day when I study quarterbacks because it's something that does happen. It's something that happened to me when I was playing the game. You make a mistake,

you make another mistake, and soon you're just fighting against the tide. And mistakes come and they keep coming and they keep coming and they keep coming and you can't overcome it as a player. And that scene is after their sort of first replacement game where they had a chance to win. And Shane Falco at the end of that game, rather than make a play on his own, rather than attempt a pass, he calls an audible for a sweep to his running back from midfield rather than trying to throw it into the end zone. And McGinty hits him with, you know, the line, you know, you know, winners want the ball. But Falco said that he saw a blitz coming and had to audible out of it. But, you know, he choked.

And that's where this sort of fear and quicksand discussion comes into play. You know, I love this movie, again, because it gets into that idea of a second chance. It gets into that idea of redemption as an athlete. And it's something as a former athlete that, again, as I said last week, I still think about games that I played in. And so it hits me from that perspective. Also, there are just lessons in this movie.

There are lines in this movie that I still quote. There's a scene where Falco and the coach McGinty are talking and the coach McGinty talks about how he's just another duck on the pond. And what he means by that is calm on the surface, but below he's just paddling for dear life. And as somebody that those of you probably know who follow my work, listen to my shows, as somebody that has struggled with sort of mental health and depression and anxiety and struggled with that for years before making a career change and now doing what I'm doing now, for years, I was just another duck on the pond.

I was just, you know, by all outward appearances, I seem to have it all put together, but inside or below the surface, however you want to describe it, I was just paddling for dear life. You know, so there are a number of reasons why this movie hits home for me. But the football scenes are fun. Jon Favreau's character is great. You know, the Welsh kicker is great. The sumo wrestler turned offensive lineman is great. There are just a number of really good characters to this.

Keanu Reeves is Keanu Reeves in it, and it's fine. There's a subplot with him and the head cheerleader getting replacement cheerleaders, which I never quite understood why they would need replacement cheerleaders given that it's a player strike, but I digress. That's a fun little subplot storyline. The quote, you know, when they're at the pivotal game to get themselves back into the playoffs and their star quarterback has crossed the picket line to play, but he's not playing well.

And so, you know, Falco was home watching on TV. And as McGinty's coming off the field at halftime, the sideline reporter asks him what they need to win. And he just slaps his chest with his papers and he says, heart. Miles and miles of heart. And seeing that Shane Falco gets in his truck, gets to the locker room, leads the comeback. Just a fun little movie that does touch on some deeper stuff that I've always appreciated just as an overall movie,

not just a pure football movie. I think there's lessons in it that go beyond the game of football. The Replacements, one of my favorite movies. If you haven't seen it, definitely check it out. That will do it for today's show. I will be back tomorrow. We'll be doing some more stuff

from rookie minicamp. We'll be talking play five, getting into our top five offensive plays of the year and then another movie in our football and film series. Until then, keep it locked right here

to me, Mark Schofield and Locked on Paycheck.