Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots November 15, 2018 - Take Thursday

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

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Hey there everybody, welcome on into a Take Thursday installment of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield sliding into the big chair on this Thursday, November 15th, 2018. We are just one week now away from Thanksgiving. Gotta be excited about that. Not too excited about the weather in the D.C. area. Our first little bit of rain, ice, snow, our typical sort of D.C. type snowstorm, which kind of means that, you know, probably the kids are going to be home because, you know, that's just how this area rolls.

What we're going to do today, our Take Thursday show, we're going to have two, well, three listener questions for two of the listeners to the show that we're going to get to. We're going to talk draft quarterbacks because people always want to talk about that. We're going to talk about disappointing defensive players. And we're also going to talk about Brett Rippon because

people like Brett Rippon. People like quarterbacks. So that's what we're going to get into. Before we do, we've got to dive into some Tom Brady stuff. But before we do that, a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. A reminder to check out the work at places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, Big Blue View, part of the SB Nation family of websites. As I've said before, and I'll

say again, if there's an outlet that's covering the game of football, chances are they've got me covering the game for them. Now, this is our sort of Take Thursday show, and I'm going to actually start with a take from Tom Brady himself. Some of you may listen to the Patriots press conferences. Maybe you don't. Maybe you should. Maybe you won't. But during his Wednesday address to the media and his meeting with the media, friend of the show and Patriots beat reporter Evan Lazar, who covers the Patriots for CLNS media, you got to follow Evan on Twitter at E-Z-L-A-Z-A-R. You can follow CLNS media at CLNS media on Twitter. Evan asked Tom Brady if he had noticed any sort of change in his mechanics. And Tom Brady said, I feel like it might look like my normal self out there.

And as Evan tweeted out, Brady told me he looks at his mechanics every day, doesn't see a difference. And I thought that was interesting and kudos to Evan for asking the question. And it's funny because believe it or not, Evan and I have spent a lot of time over the past couple of days talking sort of offline about his mechanics. And that really sort of got me thinking and you heard me talk a little bit in the postgame show as well as the tape Tuesday edition about Tom Brady's mechanics. And I said that it looked to me like on some throws, particularly the throw, say, to James White in the left flat, that his left hip was coming open too soon, that it was sort of firing open too soon. And that's one of the things you see from quarterbacks when they do that.

The passes tend to be low and outside, especially when you throw into the left. The pass will go wide towards the left and low because it throws off the whole throw and chain, so to speak. You want it all to be in sync, and when it's not, that's when you see sort of a disruption of you know ball placement but Brady says that he looks at his mechanics all the time and that they're good and I thought that was interesting to say the least given some of what I've seen from him over the past couple of weeks and so what I decided to do was go back a year and so I went back to week 10 of last year. That was that game, the Sunday nighter in Denver. It was week 10 of last year. And I was looking through that game and I actually found a throw that was very similar to one that Brady also missed on. This is a throw that sort of comes

out and I'll tweet out some comparison videos here, But it's a throw that comes at the 334 mark of the first quarter. And it's an 8-yard slant route on a slant-flat combination to James White. And this throw comes to the left. And I look at Tom Brady's mechanics on that, and they seem pretty much flawless. The left hip turn is perfect. The footwork is perfect. He's sort of on the ball of his left foot.

He's got a good knee bend throughout that throw in motion, including in the front leg. And one thing that I did notice was the release point, which we'll get to. And then you come to Sunday. You've got to throw the 549 mark of the first quarter. So not only do you have two slant routes, because the 549 mark of the first quarter, that's a slant route to James White that he misses on.

So you have two slant routes, both to James White, one to the left, one to the right, both in week 10 of the season, both are road games, both are late first quarter. I thought it was very interesting to find two such similar plays to the same player on the road, at the same place in the season at the same time. And so I spent, I kid you not, probably a good 45 minutes split screening these things on my laptop, as I'm still doing right now, staring at both of these throws and trying to come up with what is different

because there's something about Brady's mechanics that just don't seem right right now. You know, and Evett has, you know, been talking a lot about the lower body with me offline and I agree with him that the lower body seems off, but something about the lower body with me offline and I agree with him. The lower body seems off. But something about the upper body seemed off too. And then it finally hit me looking at these two throws. Now throw from Sunday Brady's release point

is right over the top. It's very much, if you say 12 o'clock is directly over your head I'd say it's like 11 maybe 11.30. It's very much over the top. You look at the throw from last year, and this was a throw that he hit perfectly.

It's more of a three-quarter release. It's more at like 10.30. So it's a bit lower. It's not directly over the top. And so that brings us back to the mechanics issue. It does seem, watching Brady over the past couple of weeks, looking at these two similar throws from the same time, the same point in the season, same point in that game in the season,

same slant route just to different sides of the field, that the release point is different as well. And so this is just sort of a long-winded way of saying that while Tom Brady believes that his mechanics look the same, I'm not convinced. I think there's a mechanical issue here. And now whether it's related to an underlying injury, or if he's just let his mechanics go a bit, whether it's related to pressure or what, I don't know. But I do think that the mechanics are off. And I think that that is also contributing to some of the ball placement issues we've seen, some of the

lack of production that we've seen. I've had many people in my DM saying this bye week could not have come at a better time. And I totally, totally agree with that. And perhaps more than anything else, it would give Tom Brady a chance to sort of refine those mechanics and maybe fine-tune things as we look ahead to potentially, and hopefully, a stretch drive. So those are some thoughts on Tom Brady's mechanics. Up next, I'm going to be talking about disappointing players, or one player in particular that some of us might be disappointed with

on the defensive side of the ball. And a little bit later, some draft quarterback talk. But before we do that, a reminder that, look, we've got a big Thursday night game. We've got Seattle. We've got Green Bay. We've got an interesting slate of games. And maybe you're thinking, look, I took a bath last week listening to you, Mark, talking about the Titans and the Patriots

and how the Patriots are going to win that game. So I've to remake that. I got to make my stack back here. I need to have a better week picking some games here. And maybe we will. We're going to talk a lot tomorrow and tomorrow's show, since we don't have a Patriots game to talk about. We're going to talk a lot about the Slater games. Maybe you'll learn a little bit more. But the thing you need to know most is where to place your bets. And that's why I'm always telling people to bet with my bookie. Trust me, guys and girls, they are your best bet this season. They've been in business for years. They have great reviews online.

And their mobile site is so easy to use. They have the best user, the most user-friendly platform in the business. Now, I would only recommend a service to my listeners that's been good to me. And that's why I'm urging you to make your way to my bookie when they play. And that user-friendly service that I'm talking about, that user-friendly platform I'm talking about, in-game, live betting, over-unders on fantasy points scored, that's just fantastic stuff. Now, look, they're slammed with new bettors thanks to all you listeners to the Locked On podcast, but they still want to give everybody the best service possible. If you can deposit after 7 p.m. Eastern,

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That's M-Y-B-O-O-K-I-E. Use promo code LOCKEDON or LOCKEDON25 if you're doing it after 7 p.m. and get that extra $25 free. My bookie. You play, you win, you get paid. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Take Thursday edition of Locked on Patriots. And we got sort of a two-part question here from our great friend John Lombaracus, who is a bit under the weather.

He's been batting a little bit of strep throat. Let us know about it in the Locked on Patriots Slack channel, which again, if you'd like to be a member of, even though it was a little morose on Sunday afternoon, you can hit me up for an invite at Mark Schofield on Twitter or mark.schofield at insidethepylon.com. And he asks a two-part question. I'm going to deal with part one here. We'll deal with part two in the final segment of the show.

But part one is, which member of the secondary has taken the biggest step backwards in 2018 from 2017? My nominee is Patrick Chun. And I would wholeheartedly agree with that take. And I think it's, you know, Patrick Chun plays a difficult role in the New England Patriots defense because let's go back a couple of weeks. What we were talking about with Patrick Shum, we were talking about basically playing middle linebacker. I mean, I talked so much about that 3-2-6 dime package

that the Patriots were using against Indianapolis. I thought we'd see it a lot against the Chiefs, and we did see it a fair amount against the Chiefs. But they were basically relying on him to play middle linebacker. But they also asked him to be their sort of tight end killer. You know, the guy that goes out there and is tasked with, if you're going to cover one, unless it's somebody we're totally terrified about, like Travis Kelsey, you're covering him one-on-one.

And that's a big ask in a Bill Belichick defense, because Bill Belichick views, you know views versatile tight ends that are weapons in the passing game as the most disruptive force an offense can put on the field. We've talked about that a lot on this show. So think about what they ask Patrick Chun to do. They ask him to do a lot. They ask him to play basically some kind of a linebacker hybrid type role. They ask him to be the tight end killer. That's a lot to do. They ask him to be active in run support because if they're going to play these multiple defensive back packages, they're going to need somebody to run downhill, fill run lanes, fill gaps,

things like that. It's all very tough what's put on his plate and he still plays at a pretty high level for the most part but there have been some slip ups this season there have been some mistakes this season he it's easy you know recency bias the missed tackle on Smith that could turn into a big game you know but he's been beaten at times and now not all of these plays came against him but when you look back at some of the tight ends that they've had to face, and New England has had to face some tough tight ends this year too. We've talked so much about the mobile quarterbacks that they've had to face,

you know, the Mahomes, the Trubisky's, the Watson's, the Mariota's and stuff. They've had to face some tough tight ends this year too. I mean, going through it, you know, Austin Safarian-Jakins back in week two, maybe he's not, you know, the toughest tight end in the world. But five targets, three receptions for 23 yards and a touchdown. I know one of those catches came against Devin McCourty, for example, on a crossing route. But still, you know, Patrick Chun is tasked with going after the tight ends. We're going to look at what tight ends have done to this team so far.

Eric Ebron, that Colts game, 15 targets, nine receptions, 105 yards, two touchdowns. Again, one of those touchdowns came against Devin McCourty, which might point us into a dark horse candidate for this question, but I digress. Travis Kelsey, remember what they were doing with Travis Kelsey. They were rolling two, sometimes three people over the top of him to bracket him. Kelsey still had five catches on nine targets for 61 yards. Was held out of the end zone, which might have been the ultimate goal. Trey Burton, 11 targets, nine catches, 126 yards, and one touchdown. The touchdown, though, did come against Jonathan Jones.

It was a YISO formation when they also had Tariq Cohen shade into that side of the formation, which if you check out my work on Pro Football Weekly, you know that I believe that is Chicago's most dangerous offensive formation. Why Iso with a Cohen shaded to that side of the formation? It'd be kind of like going why Iso with Gronkowski being Gronkowski, back to form, and James White to that side of the formation. What do you do as a defense?

Those are two difficult matchup players to match up with, but I digress. Jimmy Graham, that Sunday night game, six targets, four receptions, 55 yards, and a touchdown. And last week we had Smith, three targets, three catches, 45 yards, and a touchdown. And again, these all don't come against Patrick Chun. But his role is part tight end killer, and a lot of these plays did come against him. A lot of these plays did come against Patrick Chun in coverage. And so I do think that while he does have a lot on his plate, maybe he did take a step back.

But you heard a name in there a couple of times, and that's Devin McCourty, and I think it's something similar. We expect so much from both of those two players in the roles that they're tasked to fill. Because Devin McCourty is tasked at times to be sort of a jack-of-all-trades type guy. They bring him down on the line of scrimmage. They trust him to cover guys like Travis Kelsey as well. We've seen him in one-on-one situations as well as other type situations with tight end type guys like Eric Ebron on that touchdown pass on that

Thursday night game. So I think it's partly because, and it's maybe similar to what we were talking about yesterday with Tom Brady. We expect so much from those guys. Bill Belichick expects so much from those guys that if they have basically about average or above average type seasons, it seems like they're in decline. So I think those would be the two answers. Chun, maybe to a lesser extent Devin McCourty. And it's not that they're bad players. It's just that we expect a ton from them. A ton gets put on their plate

and sometimes it doesn't work out. So that would be my response to that question. The secondary players that have let us, you know, maybe taken a step back, would be Chun and Devin McCourty. But again, I still think that they're very, very good players. It's just they're asked to do a lot. Up next, draft quarterback talk.

Because what else is there to talk about a week before Thanksgiving than draft quarterbacks? If you're me, nothing. I could talk about this every single day. I basically talk about it 365 days a year. I talk about draft quarterbacks to somebody. Maybe just my cat, but I talk about it to somebody. year. I talk about draft quarterbacks to somebody, maybe just my cat, but I talk about it to somebody.

That's ahead on this Take Thursday installment of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now to close out this Take Thursday installment of Locked on Patriots. And this is the second part of John Limerakis' question. Again, please follow John on Twitter. He is at John, J-O-H-N-L-I-M-B-E-R-A-K-I, excuse me, at J-O-H-N-L-I-M-B-E-R-K-I-S. That's his handle on Twitter. Please, please, please give him a follow. Always getting questions in.

And the other question that John asked was this. What makes Brett Rippon a good fit for the Patriots offense? And he knows to ask that question because I've been saying it for a while now that I believe that Brett Rippon, out of perhaps all of the quarterbacks in this class, is the best fit schematically for the New England Patriots offense. And it has to do with time and rhythm, anticipation, and being a veteran-savvy player. I think, and I alluded to this video that I did recently of him,

a first sound video over at InsideThePylon.com, YouTube.com backslash InsideThePylon if you want to check it out. I've been tweeting it out as well a couple of times. I took a look at his game against San Diego State, which was a bad game. His worst game of the season. People were telling me. Kyle Krabs over at the Draft Network, when I saw him at the Maryland game, basically told me, look, man, that game's bad. It's a bad game.

It's a bad game. Even though Krabs and others are starting to really warm up to Brett Rippin, everybody was telling me it was a bad game. So I watched it, and I came away thinking, yeah, there is some bad stuff here, but there's also some really good stuff here too. And there was a play that he made where he diagnosed a blitz pre-snap, and he didn't need to look to the sideline. He didn't need to look to the coaches. He didn't need to look for help or anything like that. He just flipped the protection, slid the protection, brought his tight end into the formation to block

for him, stood in there in the pocket against the blitz, still took a shot, and delivered a throw on time and rhythm with perfect placement on a deep out route. That's NFL type stuff. And he does this all the time. And he's a perfect rhythm, time and based passer. If that sounds like anybody you're familiar with watching on, say, a week-to-week basis, that's because it's the type of offense that they run. It's predicated on timing and rhythm and things like that. And so I think he's a fantastic fit for the New England offense. And I walked you through a couple of weeks ago sort of the Parcells rules and how he checks all of those boxes, you know, senior, graduate, multiple year starter, one X number of games, you know, all the things that the sort of Parcells rules dictate, he checks those boxes. And if you think that, you know,

the Patriots follow those types of rules, given some of the quarterbacks they drafted. Like, for example, Jacoby Brissett. Then you might think that he's on their draft board. Now, I'm waiting to see the invite. I'm hoping he gets that invite down to Mobile. I think it would be fantastic for him. But we'll see. They've started rolling out some invites. We'll see if he gets one. I believe that he should. Our friend Bill Rossetti, the host of Locked on Panthers. He is at B-I-L-L underscore R-I-C-C-E-T-T-E, who, by the way, I believe is

the only person to post a Locked on Toto sign. Now, I can't, you know, I certainly cannot award him the honor of a daily retweet until the end of the calendar year because, again, the offer stood for doing it at BC game day before the Clemson game. Getting on

camera on ESPN. But, I will always show Bill love. Please follow him on Twitter at Bill underscore Vercetti. He asks basically this, who are some 2020 quarterbacks that we should be keeping an eye on? Or has anyone sort of caught your attention going into the next draft cycle? Well, here's the exact question. So with that, sorry for all the draft quarterback questions on here, but always interesting to ask you. So with that said, how much work have you done on the 2020 group, or at least has anyone's kind of caught your attention going into the next full

cycle? And answer the first part, I've done a lot of work in the next group, partly because a lot of these guys I think are going to go back to school. I think if you sort of look at this class where it stands right now, there are guys like Tyree Jackson, Jared Stidham, Brian Lewerke, guys that we were thinking about maybe might take that sort of leap this year that didn't take that leap.

They might stay. Herbert Haskins, if they stay, there's a big group of guys we were looking to for this year but still have eligibility. They might end up staying in school, which would make that next class even better. Guys that are purely 2020 guys. Obviously, Tua Tagliavia is at the top of that list.

I think he's going to get a ton of attention. Two quarterbacks with Georgia ties. You've got Jake Fromm, Jacob Eason. Eason is going to be eligible to play next year. He had to sit out due to transfer rules, but he's going to take over the starting job in Washington. I think he's a player that's going to get people excited if he plays well. He's a player to keep an eye on. Mackenzie Milton. I imagine he goes back to school. I don't think he comes out. Yes, he's undersized.

But I was very excited this year to see him sort of out of Scott Frost's shadow. And he's lived up to the hype. So he's a player to keep an eye on. If Shea Patterson, another guy that maybe comes out, probably goes back, he's a guy to watch. I think he's starting to really sort of find his groove in that Jim Harbaugh offense. That would give you the whole pro-style offense thing.. He's a guy to watch. I think he's starting to really sort of find his groove in that Jim Harbaugh offense. That would give you the whole pro-style offense thing. So there's a guy to watch.

I mentioned Tyree Jackson. I mentioned Brian Lewerke. There was a name that was just in my head and it's escaping me. Jake Bentley, the kid down in South Carolina. Not having the season he would have hoped for. Was technically eligible to come out given the three years since high school rule. I'd imagine he goes back. There's a player to watch. An interesting name, Case Cook is from northern Arizona.

He's a junior, but he's on track to graduate. Broke his collarbone, so he's basically missed this entire year. He was a player I was really excited to watch this year. That hasn't really panned out as well as he would have liked it, but he's a player to sort of keep an eye on for next year. Those are some early names on the 2020 group. I can't believe we're talking 2020 draft, but here we are. Anyway, that will do it for today's show.

Covered a lot of ground here. Maybe you could tell. Starting to lose the voice here, getting sick, because, of course, that's what you want to have right before Thanksgiving is to get a little under the weather, but it seems like it's starting to go around voice here, getting sick, because, of course, that's what you want to have right before Thanksgiving is to get a little under the weather. But it seems like it's starting to go around with the change of the weather and potentially snow bearing down in the D.C. area. But no matter what, I will be back tomorrow, Friday.

Not so much a game day edition, more of a, eh, let's talk about other stuff edition of the Locked On Patriots podcast. We'll talk about some of the other games, what I'm going to be watching for, stuff I'm curious about to see playing out on the stage. We'll probably have some thoughts on the Seahawks-Packers game as well. Until next time, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.