Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots November 21, 2017 - Tape Tuesday Edition

Episode Date: November 21, 2017

Mark Schofield has a Tape Tuesday  edition of Locked On Patriots. He looks at New England's field goal drive before the half, as well as Brandin Cooks on both the deep route and the comeback route.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a 3-3 tie, first half, second and eight at the Chargers, 21. They are going with the win. Junior right on the line of scrimmage. He's backing off, though, not coming on the blitz. Brady has a million time. All day to throw and dies in the end zone. Touchdown. Touchdown, Terry Glenn.

Fourth catch of the day in his first game of the year, his first touchdown. Good morning, everybody. Welcome into Locked On Patriots for Tuesday, November 21st. Mark Schofield here in the big chair, as I am five days a week, bringing you Patriots news and analysis and a bit of a more melancholy open to the show. Obviously, Patriots fans by now probably have heard the news. Terry Glenn, former wide receiver for the New England Patriots, passed away at the age of 43 after a motor vehicle accident down in Texas.

The footage that you heard at the outset of the show. Tom Brady's first touchdown pass to the one and only Terry Glenn. Outpouring of tributes throughout the football world coming in for the former Patriots wide receiver. Perhaps the most heartfelt, and I'll tweet this out from his first NFL quarterback, Drew Bledsoe. He posted a eulogy on SportsIllustrated.com, which is rather lengthy, but it's incredibly well done and heartfelt.

But Bledsoe also took to Instagram shortly after the news broke. Put up a picture of Terry Glenn as well as a quote. Loved this man. My son asked me a decade ago who my favorite receiver ever was because he wanted that jersey for Christmas. He got a Terry Glenn jersey from Santa. T.G. overcame horrible adversity

to become a really good man. May your soul rest in peace, my friend. So obviously our thoughts, prayers, and wishes to Terry Glenn's fiance and his family. We'll move on now to our Tape Tuesday show. What we're going to do here, we're going to look at two different things. First, I went ahead and looked at the entire game again when the All-22 came out. But I want to focus on two things today. First, New England's drive right before halftime.

Because I talked about it a little bit sort of in the instant analysis show that came out Sunday night, Monday morning. But I want to dive into how New England put that together. Just, again, great play calling, design, execution just across the board from the Patriots. To basically get from your own, inside your own 10-yard line into field goal range with 33 seconds left on the clock. Just a tremendous job across the board. Then I want to revisit Brandon Cooks. I did a show on him a few weeks back on Brandon Cooks usage. I want to come back to that. Because obviously Cooks had a huge day for New

England. So I want to revisit both the deep shots that they connected on as well as just some of the other ways they're using one round in particular, the comeback round. So that's sort of the road map for today.

This week also got some good stuff planned out later in the week. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going to be doing a special holiday show on Thanksgiving football memories. I've already gotten some submissions, which have been great so far. If there's something you want to, you know, a memory you want to share, you can send me, you know, something written that you want me to read. You can even record a clip of yourself talking about your memory, send it in. Hit me up on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. I'm excited to get some more stuff from the listeners

because I've been getting some great stuff so far. And I'm really excited how that show looks to be coming together. But let's sort of start here with that drive before the half. Because I think it's just fascinating how that drive came together. And remember, this was all set into motion by the job by Marquise Flowers to force the Seth Roberts fumble. Patriots recover. They take over.

First and 10 on their own. 15 again. 33 seconds left in the half. And, yeah, they have all three timeouts, which is a great way to sort of start it. But it's a situation where you're probably thinking you're going to run out the clock here. But you run a play on first down to sort of feel out the situation.

You know, I talked about it on the recap show. Maybe you bust off a nice run, get a big gain, and then you can rethink how you're going to approach the drive, and that's exactly what happens here. New England comes out 22 offensive personnel, two running backs in an I formation, two tight ends, and a wing to the right. I formation behind Brady, Brady under center.

We're going to get a little, just lead handoff to the right side of the offense. What happens is they catch the Raiders slant into the inside. Right before the snap we see number 97 for the Raiders he's gonna slide inside right before the snap as well as number 51 who is the outside linebacker so Mario Edwards Bruce Ervin they slide to the inside right before the snap.

So Edwards basically slides into the B gap between the guard and the tackle. And Irvin, who's lined up over the tight end, he comes inside as well. And that just makes it such an easy play for the Patriots to block here because Gronkowski, for example, who's the tight end, one of the two tight ends to that side, with Irvin sliding down, he just rides him down the line of scrimmage. It sets up an easy blocking angle for him. And to the outside in a win is Dwayne Allen

and Carl Joseph, the strong safety he cheats down over the line of scrimmage as well but he comes to the outside so what happens is a huge hole opens up and James Devlin the lead blocker he hasn't even gotten to the hole yet he comes through the hole he takes on the linebacker who's sliding over. So he takes on Navarro Bowman in the hole, which means Deion Lewis has clear sailing basically to the secondary. He ducks around and under Carl Joseph, the safety, but not before he gets dragged down for a 20-yard gain.

And so the decision by Oakland to sort of slant their defenders because they're anticipating, like everybody was, everybody's thinking here that New England's going to look to sort of run out the clock here, run the ball, get to halftime. They slant everybody inside, expect a run to the inside, and it just sets up so perfectly for what New England's doing. So that's the first play.

Next play, you've got 26 seconds left because the clock's stopped. New England lines up. Because they took a timeout. New England lines up. 20 seconds left in the half. They put Brady in the shotgun. They used 21 personnel, two running backs, Burkhead and James White.

They have two receivers to the right, Gronkowski in a wing, and you have Cook split wide to the right, Philip Dorsett wide to the left. And they run basically a levels concept type look. Where you get an in-cut from Gronkowski and then a deeper in-cut from Dorsett outside. Oakland shows cover four before the play. Cover four is where you've basically got four defenders across the board,

each covered a quarter of the field deep. But what happens is they rotate it at the last second. They rotate it to a cover three robber look, which means one of the safeties sort of drops down into a hole underneath with the rest of the linebackers. And the reason why they do that is they want to get extra coverage on Gronkowski. Now Brady sees this and with the three

defenders now deep, it opens up that deeper route for Cooks as he comes inside. And Brady just misses it. We talked about this play during Sunday's show. Brady just misses that route. We need a better throw from Brady there.

He knows it. But that route was wide open. That's a nice example of what Gronkowski means, even without getting the football, because they rotate their coverage to get an extra safety down into Gronkowski's area. And what it does is now instead of two safeties in the middle of the field, you've got one.

And so if you run that play against cover four, it's a much narrower throwing window. You're going to have safety, and then you'll have the cornerback right over Cooks, and then a safety much closer to him. So when he cuts inside, that safety is going to be there. But now when there's only one safety in the middle of the field there's more room to make that throw but brady misses it it brings up now second down and 10 patriots have 21 seconds left they're on their own 27 yardyard line. They use 11 personnel now.

One running back, three receivers to the right with Gronkowski to win. One receiver to the left in a tight formation. And this is another example of Tom Brady in the pocket. Because New England, again, they run another sort of levels look. With Amendola and Cooks running those routes coming to the inside. Cooks is deep. Amendola is short.

And that's where Brady wants to go with the ball. But again, we see from the Raiders a coverage that starts to take that away. They show cover four again and it's rolled again to this cover three Robert look but this time it's a different safety that rotates down. Brady looks to the left initially then comes back to the right where he's trying to find between Amendola

and Cooks who's going to be open but here this time the safety that rolls down has rolled down over Amendola and Cooks who's going to be open but here this time the safety that rolls down has rolled down over Amendola so Amendola is bracketed Cooks is bracketed again Brady thinks about checking it down to Gronkowski in the flap but then some pressure gets to him so he pulls it down again similar that good no throw that I talked about on Sunday's show. We see it here because he checks it down, ducks away from pressure, rolls to his left. Amendola does a great job staying in his quarterback's line of sight.

Works across the field. So he starts on the right, comes all the way across the field, doesn't stop his route, Doesn't cut his route short. Brady buys time. Finds him along the sidelines. Amendola ducks out of bounds. Now you get first and 10 at the 45-yard line. Great job by both those players.

But now you've got only 11 seconds left. You're on your own 45. You have the one timeout remaining. But you're still going to need some more yards. Even though you're kicking your own 45, you have the one timeout remaining, but you're still going to need some more yards. Even though you're kicking at altitude, you need another 10 yards or so to get into reasonable field goal range. What do you do? You look for Rob Gronkowski. Gronkowski lines up in a wind to the right, gets a chip on Mack,

runs a simple little curl route. That's all it is. So if you think about what Gronkowski does on this play, he gets the chip on Mack to help waddle, curl route, easy throw, easy catch, gets him to the 45, which is all the yardage that they need. So I just loved how that drive sort of came together, and it starts with the fortuitous break that you get on first down. Defense decides to sort of stunt inside. Get that run. Changes the way you approach the drive. So that was that New England drive.

Loved the way it came together. Up next, I'm going to take a look at Brandon Cooks' usage. That's next here on Locked on Patriots with me, Mark Schofield. But before that, I want to remind everybody, our great friends over at mybookie.ag, and listen. People ask me all the time, you know, where they should put their money each week. Should it be on the Patriots?

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mybookie.ag, you play, you win, you get paid. So now that we've taken a look at that drive, I want to take a look at Brandon Cooks again. Okay, so now we're going to take a look at Brandon Cooks, and I want to start with the two deep shots that they hit to Cooks. The first one, the 52-yarder that doesn't go for a touchdown, but it's still a great play, and it's worth taking a look at to see how this one comes together. It's a first intense situation. The Patriots have a 7-0 lead.

The ball is on their own 20-yard line. And they come out and they show run from personnel formation and alignment. They use 13 offensive personnel. One running back, one right receiver, three tight ends. All three tight ends, Allen, Gronkowski, Martellius Bennett, are on the right side of the formation. Brady's under center, Rex Burkhead in the backfield. You've seen this.

Oakland stays in their base defense. They look at this formation with 13 offensive personnel. They stay in their base 4-3. And that's sort of the first step towards this big play. And what they're going to run is they're basically going to run the Yankee concept. Something we've

talked about here with a deep post route and dig route underneath that. Only this time, it's Gronkowski on the dig underneath and cooks on the post route over the top now the next play to sort of focus on is called Joseph the safety who's towards cooks his side of the formation they're gonna run cover four here Which I've already talked about on this show Which is four defenders deep And so

Joseph should be in position to help on this route On this post route from Cooks But what happens is because of the 13 personnel Because of the run look From New England Joseph cheats down towards the line of scrimmage At the snap When the ball is snapped

He's almost in a linebacker's depth, and he's flat-footed. Brady carries out a run fake to Burkhead, but that's not what gets Joseph down towards the line of scrimmage. It's everything that happens before the ball is snapped. The 13 personnel. The formation. Brady being under center.

It's first and 10. You expect to run. So he sort of cheats down just a couple of steps. But when the ball is snapped. His eyes go right to Cooks. Because that's the guy that he's trying to help. He's trying to help his cornerback on Brandon Cooks. But those couple of steps make all the difference in the world on this play.

Because he slowly starts to backpedal. But then when Cooks starts turning on the Jets to run his post route, Joseph doesn't have a chance. He turns to recover. But Cooks is already past him. Easy throw, easy catch from Brady to Cooks on this one. And it all comes down to what happens in those few precious seconds before the ball is snapped.

Joseph just cheats down three or four steps, and it's all the difference that the Patriots need. So just think about that for a second. Three or four steps before it's all the difference that the Patriots need. So just think about that for a second. Three or four steps before a play begins and that's all Tom Brady needs to hit a big play. A 52 yarder to Brandon Cooks.

But it wasn't the biggest connection between those two guys on the day. Obviously we had the 64 yard touchdown pass. And what we get here is just two things. You know, the Patriots come out with 12 offensive personnel,

two tight ends, two wide receivers, one running back. And they put Cooks to the right side, and he's working against Obi Mellon Fonle. A rookie, toolsy kid out of the University of Connecticut. They're using him as a cornerback. And they run cover

three on this play. They show cover three before the snap. They run it Carl Joseph the free safety. He's about 20 yards deep in the middle of the field and The Patriots used three vertical routes on this play we get an out and up from Danny Amendola and a seam route from Rob Gronkowski That's over on the left side of the formation On the right side of the formation. On the right side of the formation, Cooks runs a quick little double move. He starts vertically, takes two steps towards the outside like he's going to run an out route, and then breaks up the field.

Melon Fonwu, for his part, does a poor job at getting depth there. He's responsible for the deep outside 30. He has to stay over the top of whatever Cooks wants to do. If he wants to run an out route, you got to stay over the top of that. But as Cooks takes those two little steps towards the outside, he sort of breaks to the outside with him. Cooks then comes underneath that vertically. So Cooks has already beaten Obi-Mellon Fonwell.

Now that part of the play is over. It's the next part where he gets a little bit of help, and that's the help that he gets from his quarterback because Kyle Joseph is in the middle of the field. He's playing sort of deep middle. And he's going to be bracketed by two vertical routes. He's got Gronkowski up the seam in the slot. And then he's got Cooks on the outside.

And so what Brady does here is key to the play. Brady takes the shotgun snap. It's actually a bit of a wide snap. Brady does a very good job at sort of catching it. And then he freezes Joseph in the middle of the field with his eyes. Joseph is sort of stuck between two vertical routes. We've got Rob Gronkowski, who's an all-world type tight end. And you've got Brandon Cooks, who's Tom Brady's favorite vertical target.

You've already hit him once in the game. And it's a matter of who's going to blink first. Can Brady get this guy to move to one receiver or the other? Now Brady is holding the advantage here because he doesn't really need to get the guy to move. If all Brady does is hold him in the middle of the field, that's going to make the difference because either Cooks or Gronkowski are getting depth on their routes. And that's what happens. Brady basically just freezes Joseph in the middle of the field. That's all he needs.

He then takes the deep shot to Cooks. Because Joseph is frozen in the middle of the field, he can't rotate over. He can't really provide any sort of meaningful help. Again, easy throw, easy catch, easy touchdown. So those were the two sort of deep shots that the Patriots hit to Cooks. I wanted to sort of break those down because I thought they were well-executed plays

from New England. And just, it's two great examples of just how those little things, either freezing a safety in the middle of the field or just a couple of steps pre-snap can make the difference between either an incompletion or a huge play for the offense. So I thought it was worthwhile

to take a look back at those. Before we go, I'm going to take a look at two more plays from Cooks and what the sort of vertical routes and his prowess as a vertical receiver helped to set up for the New England Patriots. That's the comeback route. We're going to talk a little comeback route here up next with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots.

So now we're going to close this out with a quick look at Brandon Cooks and the comeback route. Just going to look at two plays. The first is a second and 18 late in the first quarter. Cooks is split wide to the left here. He's going to face man coverage, press coverage look here. Defender in his face at the snap, Sean Smith. And what we see on the comeback route, and it's why Cooks is such an effective player at this,

it's the ability to sell the defender on the vertical route. You know, that terrifies defenders, whether you're in zone, whether you're in man, the thought of getting beat deep. You know, we had already seen Cooks catch a big one earlier in this game. So the fear of getting beat deep, it's in a cornerback's mind all the time, whether he's playing man or zone.

And so when you're a wide receiver and you get the chance to run that sort of comeback route, you've got that working in your favor. On this play, we get an outside release from Cooks, and he sells the vertical route. You know, he pushes it up the field to about 18 yards, full sprint, making it seem like he's going up the field. And then just stops on a dime. And Smith actually does a pretty good job at staying with him.

He mirrors the route pretty well, stops. Again, his momentum carries him a bit up the field, and this is another thing working in the receiver's favor here because you know when you're going to stop. The defender has to read and react to that. So it's always going to be an opportunity to get some separation. But Smith does a pretty good job to get back to him and mirror that break.

But Cooks has another advantage. He's playing with Tom Brady. And Brady, for his part, the ball is out as Cooks starts to make that break. So the ball is already on its way and Cooks does a really good job of sort of driving

back to the football. Not letting the ball come to him. Drives back towards it. Again, it's a second and an 18. He gives up some yardage, but he makes sure that he makes the catch. It's a gain of 14, turns second and 18 into third and four. Not the ideal way to get into a third and four, but looks the same on the score sheet. So, you know, that's one quick example. You know, there was another one later in the game. Again, he's split to the left.

This comes in the third quarter, and this time the receiver is using more of a zone look. It's a cover three type coverage, but it's the same type of principle. That defender is responsible for the deep outside third. So he can't get beat deep over the top. Cook sells him on the vertical, stops on a dime, comes back to the football. He starts with a cushion, which is great for him. Given the zone coverage look, he starts with a cushion cushion but extends the cushion through the course of the route

because, again, you're selling that defender on the vertical route and then breaking back towards the football. So that's just a sort of a quick look at Brandon Cooks on the comeback route. Really impressed with the way the Patriots have been using him more and more going forward. It seems like he and Brady are really sort of developing a relationship, which is great to see. But that's been your sort of tape Tuesday. Look at the

New England Patriots. Look at that game against the Raiders. We broke down that drive before halftime. Looked at some Brandon Cook's usage. Tomorrow, tomorrow's show, Porta Soria pre- Thanksgiving edition of Locked on Patriots. We'll do some timeline takes. Both Patriots related and sort of look around the league as well.

Then we're going to have that holiday edition again. Send some stuff my way if you want. Also, don't forget, check out mybookie.ag. Use promo code LOCKEDON when you sign up. That would do it for Tuesday's show. I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, keep it locked here, everybody. To me, Mark Schofield and Locked On Patriots.