Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots May 3, 2018 - Timeline Takes

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Mark Schofield chats rookie QB Over/Unders, rookie RB opportunities on the "No Diggity" scale courtesy of @outlawdeke, Jason Witten, Ryan Shazier and Witcher 3. Yes, Witcher 3. It's truly the off-season people.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning and welcome into Locked On Patriots for Thursday, May 3rd, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair. Going to do some timeline takes today. Before we do that, a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. You can follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com as well as Pro Football Weekly. You can get our new piece over at PFW that's going to be dropping in the next couple of days. Talking about some nerdy football stuff. Got to dive into some old playbooks and show some designs that the first round quarterbacks should be running if they see the field as rookies. Also, you can check out the video work over at youtube.com slash insidethepylon.

I've got three first sound videos for the 2019 class coming up. Going to be doing some more probably over the weekend. Easton Stick, my friends, we're going to get to do it all over again with another North Dakota State quarterback. I've been studying Easton Stick the past couple of days. And back when Carson Wentz was going through his draft process, you heard a lot. Well, if he was so good, how come he didn't beat out Brock Jensen, who was the quarterback before him? The first person that drops the take that, well, if Easton Stick was so good, how come he didn't beat out Carson Wentz? The first person that drops that take, man?

I'm just saying. They might have to get dragged on the timeline. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. But like I said, timeline takes today. We're going to talk a bunch of different things. We're going to talk about rookie quarterback, rookie running back opportunities. We're going to talk Jason Witten.

We're going to talk Witcher 3. Yeah, that's right. It's the summer, my friends. But first, we're going to start with rookie quarterback over-unders. That's right. Bovada has set lines for the number of starts the rookie quarterbacks will make in 2019. This is a tweet from at Joe Marino, my good buddy Joe Marino, part of NDT Scout and one of the better draft minds out there. If not, perhaps the better draft minds out there. If not, perhaps the best draft mind out there.

There are a lot of good ones. Joe is certainly among the elite. He tweeted it out. Over-under for Baker Mayfield, 9.5. Sam Donald, 5.5. Josh Allen, 10.5. Josh Rosen, 8.5. Lamar Jackson, 0.5.

Let's work our way through these. My initial thoughts on these are, there are four of these which are really good because they're tough to sort of pin down. I'm leaning towards the under on Baker Mayfield if for no other reason that Cleveland's been pretty clear. Hugh Jackson has been clear so far, that they don't want to ruin Baker Mayfield. They've done some soul searching. They realize that they pressed

some guys into action a little bit too early as rookies. They don't want to do that. And you've added Tyrod Taylor in for a reason. And the reason was to bridge the gap from where you are now to your next quarterback. Now, that might have made a little bit more sense when you were going to draft Sam Darnold, which is what people like myself expected when this trade was made. And there's also already been some sort of post-mortem revisitation of that trade. And as I said at the time about the Tyrod Taylor trade, if in your mind it's worth it to give up a third round pick, the hit rate on which isn't that great to begin with, to help put your rookie quarterback in a better position to

succeed is worth it. No matter what you do at the quarterback position, no matter who you draft at one, it's worth it. So I'm leaning towards the under on Mayfield. But again, as I've been saying about Mayfield all along, if there's going to be a guy that really pushes you to get him on the field, it's going to be Baker Mayfield. So that one, I'd shy away from that one. Sam Donald 5.5. Leaning towards the over on this one, I think he gets on the field probably midway through the season i'd imagine that look you look at this jets roster right now the defense does look to be improved they were good last year as well added some guys they add adams the safety who i like you know they add marcus may another safety who i like they They add Marcus May, another safety who I like. They've added Nathan Shepard this year, a defensive tackle that some people, Travis Sikma included, had in his top 20 players.

But you do wonder about the receiving core. They have some additions there. Terrell Pryor, of course. Andre Roberts. Trey for Jermaine Curse last season. Trey McBride, my boy, from William & Mary. But, I mean, you do wonder sort of where this team's going to get a lot of wins. So it would not surprise me that Sam Donald takes over

maybe midway through the season, maybe a little bit later, but that 5.5 leading towards the over on that one. Josh Allen, 10.5, the highest over under in this group. I'd almost say over on that. That's a tough one, but look at this Bills offensive line. And here's a rather morbid way of thinking about it, but look at this Bills offensive line right now. Do you feel confident that AJ McCarron,

if he starts week one, is going to see week five, week six? It doesn't look to be the best group right now. Now, it could come together. It could gel. Brian Dayball and company could get him coached up. Little bit concerned about that one. And that's if Josh Allen doesn't win the job outright. Are you confident in McCarron?

Are you confident in Nathan Peterman holding him off? I know we've all dogged Josh Allen throughout this process and we all sort of wonder about the fit there. If Dable runs sort of his traditional Aaron Perkins type scheme. I just, I don't know, something tells me over there. Josh Rosen, 8.5. I think you go over here too.

Similar situation to Buffalo as we see in Arizona. Some question marks about, you know, where this team's going to get offense. Obviously, you do have Larry Fitzgerald. Obviously, you have David Johnson coming back from injury, but you've got talent there. After that, you're relying on Christian Kirk. You drafted in the second round. Chad Williams, a lot of people liked him last draft cycle out of Grambling. He was a third round pick for Arizona where's this team getting points

where's this team getting production obviously Fitz is going to see a lot of rolled coverage his way might see some stacked boxes against David Johnson as well so you might see basically an eight man box with double coverage on Larry Fitzgerald and defense is saying beat us some other way defense is okay

they've got some pieces but again again, similar situation to Buffalo. You do wonder about Bradford and his injury history. Is Mike Glennon really the answer? He couldn't hold off Trubitsky last year. That Chicago Bears offense was anemic at times with him. And so I think Rosen's going to see the field a fair amount. And finally, Lamar Jackson, 0.5. That means he just has to start one game.

And kids, this could go a number of different directions. The Ravens, maybe they struggle this year. Maybe they lose games. They turn to Jackson at some point. Maybe they're good this year. This was a team that was on the cusp of a playoff berth last year. Maybe they lock it up by Week 16 and give Jackson that week 17 start. Who knows?

But I just think one game, one game, they're not going to get him on the field for one start. A lot of people are saying this is the easiest over-under in recent times, and I'm inclined to go with that. So I'd say, look, take the over on that Lamar Jackson, one start. That's the way I would lean on these.

But this is, of course, obviously for recreational purposes, right? Unless you live in the state of Nevada or you get to travel to the state of Nevada anytime soon. Up ahead, we're going to dive into some other stuff, some other timeline takes. We're going to talk Jason Witten.

We're going to talk rookie running back opportunities from a fantasy perspective. And yes, we're even going to talk Witcher 3 because, friends, it's the summertime. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now, working our way through some timeline takes. And I'm going to start with a humorous tweet. And we're going to phase into a discussion about rookie running back opportunities, but I really have to set the seed for this. At Zanna, at Z-A-N-N-A-H,

put out a tweet. I'm recording this Thursday morning, so it was late Wednesday night. The tweet read, this is the scale that I will be using for everything from now on. And it was a screen grab from a recent episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which yes, it's still on. It's in syndication on like daytime TV. The numbers, the monetary values are different now, but it's still on. And the question was, boasted a guest verse from Dr. Dre, what classic 90s R&B hit features Blackstreet Sin in I Like the Way You Work It? And again, remember the caption on this tweet was, this is the scale that I'll be using for

everything from now on. The choices were A, no diggity, obviously the answer. B, hardly any diggity. C, a fair amount of diggity. And D. An overwhelming surplus of diggity. That's a fantastic tweet. That's a fantastic caption for it. That's a great question with a list of answers. I want to steal that. Someone outstole, a follower of mine who now should be somebody that you follow, who is the Outlaw Deke Patton,

who is at Outlaw Deke on Twitter, at O-U-T-L-A-W-D-E-K-E. I ranked top six rookie running backs opportunity using this grade scale, and he goes on. Saquon Barkley, no diggity. Darius Geis, hardly any diggity. Roland Jones, hardly any diggity. Royce Freeman, a fair amount of diggity. Sonny Michel, a fair amount of diggity. And Nick Chubb, an overwhelming surplus of diggity. Is that not an incredible tweet? Go follow Outlaw Deke at Outlaw Deke on Twitter right now. I love

that tweet. And I'm actually going to use that to talk about these rookie running backs. I think it's great. And I kind of agree with use that to talk about these rookie running backs. I think it's great. And I kind of agree with all of them. We could start with Barkley. No diggity was the grade scale. And I don't know. I'd bump this up to hardly any diggity, I think. Because I think you look at the additions to the Giants on the offensive line.

You can run him behind Nate Solder and Will Hernandez on the left side of that line and get some opportunities. Barkley is a three-down running back who can contribute in the pass game. You're not taking him off the field. So I think I'd bump it up over Deeks. No diggity to hardly any diggity. Darius Geis, hardly any diggity. I agree with that.

I think that stems from the fact that Jay Gruden has basically said he's a two down back now. You're taking him off the field on third down. And if you're talking about PPR leagues or half PPR leagues, where you might see running back cash it in some receptions on third downs, the fact that he's going to be off the field, I think that sort of hurts you from a fantasy's perspective. And so I agree with Deke there. You know, a hardly any diggity grade makes sense for Darius Geis. Next up is Ronald Jones, the USC running back who goes to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who they do have a need at running back. You know, you look at the other running backs in that roster, Jaquiz Rogers, Charles Sims, Peyton Barber. You know, and so Outlaw Deke gives that a grade of hardly any diggity.

I'm inclined, this is a close one, I'm inclined to bump it up to a fair amount of diggity. You look at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last year. Jones is more of a zone type runner. I'd say the Bucs were probably 50-50, maybe 60-40 zone versus power gap blocking schemes. You watch that game against the Patriots last year. They did a lot of zone stuff, particularly when Doug Martin came back. Then you look at the rest of the running backs on this roster. I think Jones is going to get a fair amount of diggity.

He's going to get a fair amount of chances here to produce at the running back spot. Now, he might come off the field on third downs. Jaquiz Rogers might be your third down back there. So that might be the difference between hardly any diggity or a fair amount of diggity. I'm going to lean towards a fair amount of diggity on Ronald Jones, but I understand what Deke's coming from on this one. Royce Freeman, drafted by the Denver Broncos, reports are already that he's going to get a chance to win this job. Other running backs, Devontae Booker, D'Angelo Henderson, David Williams, who they drafted in the seventh round. Similar to Tampa Bay, this is a thin running back room, and you might see some opportunities there for him. Obviously, you add in Case Keenum as the

quarterback. You're looking at this wide receiver group. You still have Demarius Thomas. You still have Emmanuel Sanders. You've added Cortland Sutton. Those are probably your top three receivers. You can throw Deshaun Hamilton in the mix as well. I think Freeman's going to get some opportunities. And when you look at this, he's got a potential to be a third down back as well. So you might see some past game stuff with him. So I agree.

Royce Freeman, a fair amount of diggity. Sonny Michel also gets a fair amount of diggity grade from Outlaw Deke. I'd agree with that one. He's a three down back in the National Football League. He could be a three down back early in his career. Betting on Patriots running backs has always been a hit or miss proposition. Sometimes they do different things from week

to week. You might say, oh, this is going to be a James White week. And suddenly Mike Gillisley is in there for the bulk of that action. Oh, it's a Burkhead week. No, it's going to be a James White week instead. And sometimes I even wonder if Belichick's reading the tweets and saying, oh, everybody's going heavy on Gillisley this week, huh? Okay. He's inactive on Sunday then. Obviously I'm joking, but that's how it sometimes seems when you're trying to predict what Bill Belichick is going to do with his running backs from week to week. But with Sonny Michel, you're getting a three down back in the National Football League. I think a fair amount of diggity is a good grade on this. And Nick Chubb, who gets the

highest grade possible, which is an overwhelming surplus of diggity. I agree with it. Who else is in that running back room right now? Carlos Hyde? Okay, Duke Johnson? Eh. Nick Chubb. For those of you that listen to this show,

you probably know that I respect the work of Matt Waldman, the RSP film room. I think Matt's a very good player evaluator and he has a process which he sticks to each and every single year. We don't always agree on quarterbacks. And when I was on his show on the first night of the NFL draft a couple days ago with him and Sigmund Blum, Matt and I talked about how we don't always agree on quarterbacks. Sometimes we flesh these arguments out on shows like that. Sometimes we just do it behind the scenes when we chat or talk on the phone or whatever.

But Matt has a process and he sticks to it. And Matt put out a tweet recently that said, Nick Chubb was his highest graded running back in the past five years of doing this. And when you think about some of the running backs that have come through, that's pretty high praise. And when you drop them into an offense, which, you know, Todd Haley,

I've spent the past day or so researching his offensive schematic philosophy. He wants to run the ball. He really wants to run the ball. I mean, Haley's offensive philosophy is kind of all over the place because he's rooted in West Coast stuff, but he's rooted also in some downfield, Correal stuff. He wants to get vertical in the pass game at times. We saw that from the Steelers, but he also really likes to run the ball.

So it's like a mix of everything. But I think Chubb's going to get a ton of chances here to run the ball. And so I agree with Outlaw Deke. The Nick Chubb opportunity grade is an overwhelming surplus of diggity. A couple quick hitter things here. Jason Witten, retiring, handing him up. Going to move to the booth, Monday Night Football. Obviously, huge congratulations to Jason W whiton on a tremendous tremendous career

i'm interested to see how he'll be on monday night football and i think what's interesting and what's going to be interesting watching him sort of unfold as a you know color analyst as an analyst in the booth so doing this so close to tony romo's going to draw comparisons naturally. And you may be on one side or the other of the Tony Romo sort of as analyst debate. I think when he first came into the booth, a lot of people were overjoyed at hearing somebody talk about more X's and O's and schematics and bringing sort of an unbridled joy to it, which I think Romo still does. I think over the course of the season,

that got to be graded on some people. I still really appreciate it. And that might make some sense as a football nerd. It seems like Romo's a football nerd who loves sort of the X's and O's and trying to get into the quarterback's heads. He'll, you know, hold in a quarterback. Like I remember him crushing Andy Dalton

because he didn't anticipate a route. I like that kind of stuff. That's what I get paid to do too. You know, so I see something like that. I love seeing him. I wonder how he's going to measure Jason Witten to Tony Romo. There's going to be that immediate comparison.

People are going to say, oh, you know, Romo's doing this. Is he as good as Romo. There's going to be that immediate comparison. People are going to say, oh, Romo's doing this. Is he as good as Romo? So you do wonder about that. I wonder what sort of approach Witten will take. But if ESPN's already all in on him, they must have liked what he did during screen testing. And so we wish him all the best.

Finally, quick hitter thing here. Steelers have converted $8.26 million of Ryan Shazier's 2018 base salary, this is a tweet from Field Yates, into a sign-in bonus per source. Shazier, placed on the pup list on Wednesday, earns that money now. There are no capital implications, but it's a great gesture by a first-rate organization. And I agree with that. Obviously, we're all hoping for the best for Ryan Shazier.

We want to see him up and healthy and active. And if he wants to play again, fantastic. If he can play again, that would be great. If not, we wish him all the best for his health. And I'd have no doubt that the Steelers would probably get him into that organization as a coach almost immediately if that's what he wants to do. And so this is a great move by the Steelers organization. Up next, we're going to close things out with some Witcher 3 talk. That's right, friends. That's ahead with me,

Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you now on this Timeline Takes Thursday edition of Locked On Patriots. And just going to do one little quick thing here before we go to set this up. Those of you that know me and listened to the show and probably know that I have been a fan of Tony Kornheiser's radio show for years.

Now he's doing it in podcast form. But when he was doing the radio show, he would often say that, oh, you know, I hear people all the time. They say they want my job. They say they want to be on radio. They want to have a daily radio show about sports. And I always tell them, okay, what's your Wednesday show? And I've told this story before, but for the new listeners, it's kind of one of those situations where, okay, you can talk on Monday and Tuesday about what happened the past weekend. You can talk Thursday and Friday about what happens in the coming week, like whether it's football or whatever. What are you going to do on Wednesday? And now that I'm sort of hosting basically a daily

football show, if you want something like this, let me ask you something. What's your May show? What are your shows in May going to look like? What are your shows in June going to look like? Because we could start talking about the 2019 draft. We could start talking about schedules for next season and predicting games. We got all of July and August to do that. We get all of July and August to do training camp battles. So now we're into that period where it's like, what are we going to talk about, friends? And then I saw this tweet from Spartan117.

It was at S-E-A-N-Y-M-O show, at Shawnee Mo Show. Witcher 3 is the best role role playing game I've played in the last 10 years. I don't care. I don't care. And as somebody that, yes, I'm a man. I'm 41. But I still play games, man.

Video games are great. Especially when you work all day. You're on the grind. The film grind. The show grind. The podcast grind. Article grind. Until 9.30, 10 o'clock at night. It's a good way to blow off an hour or so. Just sort of decompress. That's kind of my, you know, routine. I'll play for like an hour and hang out with the rest of my wife and watch some TV before

we go to bed. That's kind of the routine. And, you know, this take here that Witcher 3 is the best role-playing game I've played in the last 10 years. It might seem like a spicy one when you've got games like, for example, Skyrim is one that people point to.

And Skyrim is a game that I love. But I will say this. I'm right now on my fourth playthrough of The Witcher 3. I've played through it three times. I'm still finding stuff in my fourth playthrough that I hadn't done one of the first three times. I got Far Cry 5 a couple weeks ago,

and it's a fun little interesting game. I pulled it out of the Xbox a couple days ago and put Witcher 3 back in to continue my fourth playthrough, and it's a game that I've played countless times. Skyrim, I love. And I've played that through probably five or six times. But the depth to Witcher 3,

the way that you can impact the ending by decisions you make throughout the process, the character development, it's just fantastic. decisions you make throughout the process, the character development. It's just fantastic. And then there's the other little mini game of it, that card game, Gwent, that you get to play in Witcher 3, which I remember the first time I played through Witcher 3, I spent so much time just doing that. I would like do one mission and then play Gwent for like a 30 minute stretch.

It's just a fantastic, fantastic game. So, if you're listening to this, if you're a video game person, if you haven't played Witcher 3, I can't recommend it enough. It's a fantastic game. AtShawneeMoShow on Twitter agrees with me. AtShawneeMoShow knows what he's

talking about. That's been your Timeline Takes show. A little bit of everything today. Again, look, we're getting into May and June now. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Friday, we'll be back. I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow. I'll think

of something. I'm sure it'll be great, just like this one was. Until next time, friends, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriots.