Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots May 30, 2018 - QB Top Five

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Mark Schofield mistakenly wades into the topic of the top five QBs in the NFL today... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning, welcome into Lockdown Patriots for Wednesday, May 30th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair. We're going to do things a little bit differently today, but before I dive into today's menu, I want to remind you to check out the work over at InsideThePylon.com, where I'm one of the lead writers. You can check out the work over at ProFootballWeekly.com. Got a new piece up over there that just dropped yesterday looking at Carson Wentz to Sean Watson, some route concepts and designs that worked for them last season, and some designs I expect to see them run in this year to help sort of enhance their development. Some areas where those two quarterbacks need to work on.

Also, you can check out the video work, youtube.com slash Inside the Pylon. As always, you can follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield, where I'm more than happy to interact with you as best as I can. And that's kind of where we're going to start and focus today's show. Now, I know we've been doing storylines. I know we've been doing top 10 countdowns. We did top 10 offensive plays. Now we're doing defensive plays. I know we've been doing football and film.

And I hope you've been enjoying those. But we're going to hit pause on that just for one day and dive into quarterbacks. Because, as I teased sort of in yesterday's show, our good friend, host of, co-host, excuse me, no disrespect to our boy Trevor, but our good friend, the co-host of Locked On NFL Draft, John Leggard at Leggard NFL Draft on Twitter, he put up a tweet on Memorial Day itself where he asked for people, not ranking them in any order, but just to give them their top five QBs in the NFL right now. And I initially wasn't going to chime in.

I kind of ducked it, even though, hey, I am a QB guy, you know? And the reason being, look, I ranked all quarterbacks for Bleacher Report as part of their NFL 1000 project last year, where I was their quarterback scout. I watched every throw these guys made, every sack, every interception, every turnover, all that stuff. I covered it all. I wrote about it. I ranked them. It was what it was. I graded them on a scale, on a trait-based scale, which is how I do it. And I ducked it, but John called me out. So I chimed in and I chimed in with my five. And as you might expect, some blowback. And so I want to work through it now. I want to sort of elaborate a bit on the five names that I listed. And

at the outset, let's remember, any sort of ranking like this, it does get into sort of subjective areas, what traits you sort of value in a quarterback. And I talked a lot about this in sort of the run-up to the draft. I talked a lot about traits, which traits I value, which ones I place high importance on. And this is just me. You know, it's not like we're, you know, breaking down seven times five equals, you know, that's objective. You know, it harkens back to my days as a lawyer when I was doing, you know, civil litigation stuff and you

would go through medical reports and, you know, you've got somebody that's being sued, a doctor, or somebody that caused a car accident, and you look at the injured party, the plaintiff's medical records, and you see the difference between objective and subjective complaints of pain. Objective are when a doctor puts a test on you that checks your range of motion, and you can only move five degrees. That's an objective finding. A subjective complaint is, I still hurt. Well, what has hurt me? My pain level today is a 10. Well, 10 for you might be a six for somebody else. So that's more of a subjective finding. It could vary from person to person. And so any sort of rankings like this, it comes with it sort of a subjective nature to it. Now, I think we can all sort of agree and looking around Twitter, looking around at where other people have their top five quarterbacks. I think the three names that people agree on most,

and I think we can easily get in and get out on these guys, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers. And I think that's a pretty fair assessment of the top, say, three quarterbacks in the NFL right now. And those are my top three guys over at Bleach Report. I'm pretty sure they were. If not, they were definitely all up there. Brady was my top guy. And look, they're all playing at an extremely high level.

They're all playing extremely well, high level they're all playing extremely well regardless of injuries I know Rodgers is coming back from an injury but still he's arguably the best quarterback in the game right now Patriots fans might disagree and that's okay but arguably Aaron Rodgers might be the most talented quarterback in the game right now playing at such a high level Tom Brady obviously listeners to the show believe that he's not just the best quarterback right now, but that he's the best quarterback of all time. And there's a case to be made for that too, sure. And with Drew Brees, the reemergence of him over the past year, he's always been playing at a fairly good clip to begin with. But you look at how he looked in that

offense, you look at what Alvin Kamara brought to that Saints offense and how that passing game looked, the added wrinkle that he brought to that Saints office. Drew Brees, second in the league in adjusted net yards per attempt of 7.71, behind only Jared Goff, who was at 7.72. When you look at the top five of that, Jared Goff, Drew Brees, Alex Smith, Philip Rivers, and Tom Brady. So, I mean, you could at least make an argument that those are your top five. I think people would hesitate to put Goff in there right now. I think people would hesitate to put Smith up there. Now, there's potentially a case to be made for Rivers, but we'll get to that. And so, I think at the outset, those are the three names that you can pretty much count on most people have. Not all.

I did see some people leave have. Not all. I did see some people leave Aaron Rodgers out. I did see some people leave Drew Brees out. Didn't see anybody leave Tom Brady out, but still, I think those are the easy three. It gets a little trickier at spots four and five, and we'll deal with the contenders for those spots, my picks for those spots, and the aftermath of my one tweet breaking this down. That's all ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you on this Wednesday installment of Locked On Patriots.

And as I said at the beginning, we are focusing just on quarterbacks today. I know. Shocker that the quarterback guy was going to do a show here at the end of May focused on quarterbacks. But hey, you get what you pay for, kids. You get what you get and you don't get upset, as the teachers in my four-year-old daughter's day class would like to tell you. Now, in the first segment of the show, I talked about the guys that I think are the three

easy ones, right? Breeze, Brady, Rogers. I think those are your locks for any sort of top five. Now, when you get beyond that, there are anywhere from like nine to ten names that you can see floated about for spots four and five. This is where it starts to get a little bit tricky. This is where the rubber meets the road.

Now, I mentioned Alex Smith. Now, obviously, statistically speaking, at least last year, at least in terms of A and Y, you can make a case that he's a top five quarterback. I wouldn't go that far. And at the outset, remember, all of my quarterback study, all of Rankin's and grading and all that stuff, it's all done on sort of a trait-based evaluation. I look at the traits that matter, at the quarterback position, the ones that NFL scouts themselves,

sort of look at these guys on and grade them on. And that's what I look through. So things like processing speed, accuracy, competitive toughness, ball placement, obviously arm talent, arm strength, velocity, those things. You put that picture all together. It's not just looking at numbers and saying, these are the guys. It's a trait-based, film-based evaluation. And all of the opinions that I draw, again,

just my opinions, they're based on me watching all of these guys and studying all of these guys. But for Smith, I wouldn't go that far. You can make a case based on one stat, sure, but I wouldn't go there. Other guys, obviously a case based on one stat, sure, but I wouldn't go there. Other guys, obviously Matt Ryan, who I think graded out for me as basically quarterback nine in last year's rankings. His stats did take a dip when he lost Kyle Shanahan, which we'll get to. But I can definitely see a case for Matt Ryan, even if you look at his 2016-2017 season as an outlier, which it was. He posted career-high numbers in a number of offensive categories for his statistics over his career. Even if you sort of go back to the norm, still a very, very, very good quarterback. And a lot of people would put him in their top

five, and a lot of people did. Cam Newton was my quarterback seven over a Bleacher Report. Tremendous velocity, tremendous athletic talent. Now, does he become someone that creeps into that top five group? Or is he more in that sort of 7 to 10 range? I mean, I look at him as more sort of that 7 to 10 range, but that's just me. And I really like Cam Newton. There are others that have him in the 15s, 16s, 17 type of range. But Cam Newton is certainly a name that people advocated for.

Carson Wentz got a lot of consideration for one of these last two spots, either four or five. And hard to find somebody that likes Wentz more than I do. I'm recording this right now looking at a signed Carson Wentz football card. I am a fan. Been a fan since I first started studying the kid, back in December of 2014 or whenever it was. But I think it's still too early

to put him up into, say, the top five. Just wrote a piece for him, like I said, over at Pro Football Weekly. Made some great developmental strides last year. Covered the slot fade concept, which is a concept that the Eagles ran a ton with him. And it's something that he ran a lot in college. And you've heard me talk about how

familiarity breeds success on the football field. And if you are running something you used to run in college, running something you used to run in high school even, it can help you be a better pro quarterback. Look at Alex Smith, who we were just talking about. Andy Reid sat him down, went through his old Utah playbook, pulled some Urban Meyer stuff out of it. They started running it.

And that's when we see the Chiefs get off to their gangbuster start. And so Wentz is definitely a talented quarterback. Can he get into that top five someday? Yeah. I wouldn't put him there right now. Ben Roethlisberger, a lot of people said Roethlisberger, and I can see that. You know, Roethlisberger was my QB5 over at Bleacher Report grading. You know, on the scale we used for that, he graded out my fifth best quarterback.

I wouldn't start to tease him with this now. I wouldn't put him there. I think there are some guys that I still give the nod to as we're going to get to. But you want to put Ben Roethlisberger in there? Sure. I'm not going to really put up a fight. A lot of people mentioned Phillip Rivers. Very talented quarterback.

Somebody that I think you do often have to wonder about how the Eli Manning and Phillip Rivers trade would have worked out if they landed in their initial spots. I mean, imagine how we'd look at Manning and Rivers if Rivers had won two Super Bowls with the Giants and Eli had put up the kind of numbers that he's had only without two rings. You know, I think when we sort of look back on this era

of quarterbacks, we're going to wonder about what could have been for Phillip Rivers. Speaking of what could have been, Andrew Luck got some mention. Andrew Luck got some votes. On talent alone, I could see somebody making the case that,

yeah, Andrew Luck is a top five quarterback in the National Football League. But then we get into sort of some of the issues with, he hasn't thrown a football in 300, 500, however many days it's been. He hasn't thrown a football. And so that's an issue. I do wonder about the health of his shoulder.

If he comes back gangbusters, he's going to be in a lot of people's top fives come this time next year. But we got to see. I'll throw in Deshaun Watson since I just wrote about him. I don't think we're likely to see sort of Deshaun in that top five anytime soon.

You know, we just got a glimpse of what he can be, and there's still areas where he needs to improve, like I wrote in that Pro Football Weekly piece, which you can check out over at profootballweekly.com. Needs to get better with his eyes, with his eye discipline, stared down a lot of routes, had a lot of throws that he really shouldn't have made.

A lot of times he led defenders to the football with his eyes. He needs to cut down on stuff like that. So those are the bulk of the guys that got consideration by other people that I could see some of them. Yeah, sure. You want to put them in their top five over the guys I picked for spots four and five? Sure. Once Watson and Smith, I'm a little bit more down on. Luck, a little bit more down on. But some of the other guys, if you want to put them in there, sure, fine. Again, no complaints with me. There are very few lists that I saw that really I'm like, well, that's wrong. Because this is, again, subjective. What traits you value at the position. A lot of people

just went by them playoff wins. Okay. I mean, if you want to make the QB wins argument, sure. But there were, it wasn't like I saw people like, you know, people dropping in Tom Savage or anything like that. So, those were all names that are worthy of consideration. My two, now, what are these guys nobody really raised its think about? The other people did. So, we'll talk about the non-controversial guy first. Russell Wilson, okay?

When you look at what he did for the Seattle Seahawks last year, what he meant to that offense, he was like 98% of their offense last year. You look at what he was playing behind, what he was playing with, I'm hard-pressed to find five quarterbacks better than him right now.

Does he get himself into trouble at times? Sure. Does he take some risks with the football at times? Sure. Does he bail from clean pockets? Yeah, but I'd venture that part of that is due to the fact that he's playing behind an offensive line that has him bailing from pockets all the time because of pressure.

And so that got sort of baked into the cake, so to speak. But I think when you look at the body of work, when you look at the traits right now his ability to create his ability to make throws off structure off platform while those aren't typically the things I highly value at the quarterback position

I'm more of a traditionalist pocket passer type guy with anticipation and time and a rhythm you have to appreciate the genius and the beauty of Russell Wilson playing the game of football, playing the quarterback position. So for me, he's four, and I didn't get a lot of pushback on that. I did get a lot of pushback on my QB5, and that's Matthew Stafford.

And mainly the pushback came from the state of Georgia. Falcons fans, not too happy with me over the past couple of days. I've got some calls on Twitter to stop covering football, stop covering sports. And that's okay because look, disagreements about stuff like this, they're fine. When we get to the other side here in a second, I want to talk about why I picked Stafford, why I picked him over Ryan, some of the ways that I looked at sort of this exercise, and defend the take a little bit.

Ultimately, look, it's something fun to talk about here at the end of May. We shouldn't get all that worked up over it. Tell me to delete the count and stuff like that. I get it. It's part of it. It's the nature of the business. Believe me. It's much better than what I was doing before. But that's all I had with me, Mark Schofield,

and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield, back with you now on this Wednesday edition of Locked On Patriots, and just one sample of the comments I got on Twitter. I'm not going to name names here. Just to take note, maybe you don't need to have any more takes, period. Just quit trying sports at all.

That from an Atlanta Falcons fan. Very upset over my top five quarterbacks in the National Football League as we've been working through here today. And I get it. You defend your boy. I get it. Let me work through sort of again. I've talked about the evaluation process.

But when I look at the traits of the quarterback position, when I look at the traits that I sort of value, when I study Stafford, I'm impressed by a number of things that he does. Ball placement to all levels. Velocity to all levels. Process and speed in both the pre-snap and the post-snap phase. Manipulating defenders with his eyes and with his body, his shoulders at times, his legs at times,

how he can get defenders in and out of position, how he can beat a variety of different coverages, and his scheme diversity. And that's the one that really sort of rankled Atlanta fans because their argument was, look, Ryan's played at such a good level for a number of different offensive coordinators. How is he less scheme diverse than Matthew Stafford? And let me address that with a question. Josh Rosen played for basically the same, you know, offensive coordinator slash head coach

his entire time in college, Jim Moore. Now he played in two different sort of offensive systems. First, it was a little bit more spread-based, but then he moved to more of your standard, what we would call a pro-style offense. Kyle Lauletta played for four different offensive coordinators and four different offensive schemes, four completely different offensive environments. Now, you talk to Lauletta down at the senior ball or elsewhere, and he says, look, I was in four different offenses each of my four years.

Which quarterback is more scheme diverse? In my mind, it's Josh Rosen. And now for a lot of people, they hear that and they think four offense coordinators and they say, no, the guy that played for more offensive coordinators in different offenses, he's more scheme diverse. And I can understand why people think that way. But when I'm evaluating quarterbacks, I look at the different sort of offensive philosophies. I look at the traits that you need to be successful in them. And I look at the player himself. And I look at the traits that he has, the areas he excels, the traits where he's perhaps a little bit deficient. And I wonder, and I try to sort of project their current level of play at a trait-based level

and how it projects to every sort of different offenses. And if I can see it working because of those traits in a variety of offenses, I consider that player scheme diverse. It doesn't matter if you've played for just one offensive coordinator or 15 in your career. It's how you play the game

and how your traits show on tape, how those translate to the different offensive systems. That's scheme diversity. That's schematic diversity. And so the fact that Kyle Letta played in four different offenses, that's great. But when you look at him on tape, you look at him from a trait-based perspective, he's not somebody you can drop into a downfield passing game. You can do that with Rosen. And so that's where I came down to it. They're both schematically diverse. Stafford just a little bit more because he can fit more offensive systems. He has the process and speed to run a West Coast offense. He has certainly the downfield ability to run a more downfield passing game. He's even done a pretty good job on those timing and rhythm and anticipation throws.

Ryan can do that, but maybe not as well suited for a downfield passing game as Stafford. Maybe not as quickly as a processor as Matthew Stafford. So again, he could run those offenses. He could run a West Coast offense. He could run a downfield system. But I just think Stafford's traits translate better to each of those systems. And that's why I consider him more schematically diverse. Again, just because you played on a number of different systems

doesn't mean I consider you schematically diverse. Now, other people can feel that way, and that's fine. Other people can have that view, and that's fine. Other people can have that view, and that's fine. As I told a bunch of these Atlanta fans who were in my mentions all day yesterday, look, when you look at this, it's completely legitimate to disagree about all this stuff. I give credit. At Project Jax on Twitter asked me about it. I gave him a three or four tweet thread in response, and he said, of course, I'm going to

disagree with you, but legitimately glad you responded and explained your position instead of disregarding the responses. I'm not going to really duck from this unless you're telling me to give up my career. I'm not going to really duck from this because, as I said, it's totally legitimate to disagree about this stuff. I'm not going to change duck from this. Because as I said, it's totally legitimate to disagree about this stuff. I'm not going to change any Atlanta fans' mind. I don't intend to, and I shouldn't. Matt Ryan's a damn good quarterback. But a lot of this just ends up being subjective,

as people have different things that they value at the position. And I'm completely fine with Atlanta fans hopping mad at my mentions. I expected that. Because again, what else am I going to talk about right now? It's almost June. But that's how I look at this. That's how I view these guys. And the thing with doing rankings like this,

and I've learned this in my time in this career right now, you're going to get somebody mad. You're going to get somebody mad. You're going to get somebody angry. That's sort of the nature of it. You know, when we get done with football and film, I'm going to have some people that are going to be mad because I didn't include their movie or it didn't get ranked highly enough.

Okay, that's America in 2018. We can all hop on Twitter and have takes. That's completely fine. This is just one guy's opinion on it. You know, and to the person that asked me, do I really know anything about playing the quarterback position? Are you Coach Hauser?

Because that's what my college offensive coordinator and quarterback's coach told me every single day when I was trying to play quarterback in college. So maybe I don't, but as somebody that watches an ungodly amount of quarterback play, which is, it's basically all I do every single day, seven days a week, 365, I'm watching some quarterback and studying them. I've written one book about it. Teaser, I might have a second one coming.

It's all I do. And maybe I'm doing it all wrong. That's okay. Maybe I'm not doing it all right. Maybe I'm just doing, you know, maybe I'm batting 500. Okay. You know, but I'm out here and, you know, that's how I view the top five QBs right now. So again, Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Wilson, Stafford.

Those were my five. Those were my cases on them. As for Stafford over Ben, I had a lot of Steelers fans saying, look, Ben Roethlisberger was the second best quarterback in the second half of the season last year. Okay? Again, it's a trait-based thing right now.

And right now, look at these players as we sit here at the end of may in 2018 those are my five guys my team's on the floor and you can rip me you can shred the takes it's fine i mean you can disagree that's the whole nature of this embrace debate as they say so that would do it I just basically talked for 25 straight minutes on quarterbacks, which as you can tell from the tenor and the tone of my voice, is what I love to do. You know? And that's

probably why you're tuning in. Get some QB takes. What's better on May 30th than quarterback takes? I can't think of anything except one thing. Weezer cover in Africa by Toto. That was fantastic.

A huge day for the brand yesterday. Even though I was getting beat up by Atlanta fans, I had so many people sending me that video. It's a pretty good cover, I got to say. If you haven't, you can check it out. You can find it online. And what was great about that, we just talked briefly about America 2018.

You get some fans begging a band to do something, they go out and they do it. How cool is that? So that was pretty cool. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll probably do

another storyline segment. We'll do, you know, play six on our countdown of the top 10 defensive plays. We'll get back into football and film. I haven't decided

which movie yet. Figured I'd get this out there because it was good sort of material cover here at the end of May. That will do it for today's show. Until next time, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield.