Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots November 23, 2017 - A Special Thanksgiving Edition

Episode Date: November 23, 2017

Mark Schofield presents a special Thanksgiving edition of Locked On Patriots. In this episode some listeners and colleagues share their Thanksgiving and/or football memories.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Charlie Brown, oh Charlie Brown. I can't believe it. She must think I'm the most stupid person alive. Come on, Charlie Brown. I'll hold the ball and you kick it. Hold it? Ha! You'll pull it away and I'll land flat on my back and kill myself. But, Charlie Brown, it's Thanksgiving. What's that got to do with anything? Well, one of the greatest traditions we have is the Thanksgiving Day football game. And the biggest, most important tradition of all is the kicking off of the football.

Is that right? Absolutely. Come on, Charlie Brown. It's a big honor for you. Well, if it's that important, a person should never turn down a big honor. Maybe I should do it. Besides, she wouldn't try to trick me on a traditional holiday. This time I'm going to kick that football player to the moon! Ah! Isn't it peculiar, Charlie Brown, how some traditions just slowly fade away?

Good morning and Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Mark Schofield here for a special holiday edition of Locked On Patriots. The intro today, a little bit different, provided by Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt from a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. I thought it was quite fitting. As I teased, what we're going to do today is share some memories. Some football memories, some football Thanksgiving memories. Solicited some listener input on this. Got some great things to put together.

Some stories to read, some takes to share. Then I'll have some thoughts of my own sort of near the end about Thanksgiving and football and things like that. But we'll start with some lighthearted stuff at the outset. And this is one from Jeff Farrer. Jeff is one of the writers and talented people behind InsideThePylon.com, a site near and dear to my heart, of course. And Jeff is a Green Bay Packers fan. And when I sort of solicited some takes about Thanksgiving Day and football and things like that, Jeff had one right off the outside.

And we'll tee that up here in a second. But this is Jeff Faire's sort of Thanksgiving football memory. Garrett. Going deep for Urban. Flag on the play, but a touchdown, Dallas. That flag was the play but a touchdown dallas that flag was way away from the touchdown catch a flag on the play here too emmett smith that's why emmett smith is so good 33 defense

touchdown michael urban because the packers came on a blitz on that play, Pat, and Emmitt Smith stepped up and picked up the blitzer. Watch Jason Garrett's touchdown throw again. Here's Emmitt Smith. We talk about the thing that he does. Here comes a blitz. Emmitt Smith steps up here, gets a blitz, knocks it down, and that lets Jason Garrett, gives him more time, or lets him throw the ball.

See, Johnston goes in motion. Boom, right up there. Those are the things that Emmitt Smith can do. It's not only run, and it's not only catch, Thanksgiving Day 1994 Green Bay Packers at Dallas Cowboys. Dallas Cowboys were without the services of not only starting quarterback Troy Aikman, who was out with a knee injury, but backup quarterback Rodney Peete, who was sidelined with a thumb injury. That meant that the Cowboys had to turn to their third string quarterback titled his memory, Jason Garrett Made Me Cry, Thanksgiving Day, 1994. Jeff, a Packers fan, told me about how this was Garrett's only career 300-yard game. The Packers had an 11-point lead in the third quarter.

Brett Favre throws four touchdown passes, four touchdown passes four touchdown passes to Sterling sharp but it's Garrett who leads the comeback it's Garrett who completes 15 of 26 passes for 311 yards two touchdowns one interception that touchdown you heard was the second to Michael Irvin and that came early in the fourth quarter to give Dallas a 39-24 lead. So I want to thank Jeff for sort of sharing that little memory. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at JeffFairer,

F-E-Y-E-R-E-R. Next memory is another Thanksgiving Day game. And this was a memory shared with me by John Ledyard at Ledyard NFL Draft. He is the host of Locked On NFL Draft. He is the host of locked on Steelers. And he has a memory from the Thanksgiving Day game in 1998. No surprise that the Pittsburgh Steelers were involved.

They were on the road at the Detroit Lions. And it's a coin toss. Each team receives two timeouts. The first team to score wins the game. We'll have a toss to determine who receives, who will call it from Pittsburgh. Number 36, heads, tails, tails, heads. Call it plays in the air. Heads. He said heads. It is a tails. He said tails. He did. Look at Jerome Bennett.

What's going on? He changed. He changed in the head. Which way? Which way? He went down. Oh, man. Detroit has won the toss.

We're safe. Jerome Bennett said tails. Oh, man. Detroit has won the toss. We're safe. Jerome Bennett sent tails. Oh, my. Well, we'll find out. Now we're about to start getting all the officials out there for the coin toss to see what's going on. Let's go back and listen to the coin toss. The argument continues on the sideline in front of Bill Cowher.

Here it is. Let's take a listen. I believe Jerome Bettis said tails. That's the coin toss with Phil Luckett, the referee, and Jerome Bettis. Bettis swears that he says tails there. Luckett insists that Bettis gives it a little tails. It starts with heads before switching it to tails. Luckett determines that Bettis calls heads. Tails is the way it lands.

Lions, quote, win the toss. Receive the overtime kickoff goal right down the field. Kick the field goal. Game over. Obviously a bit of a blooper of sorts in Thanksgiving Day football history, but that was a memory shared by John Ledyard. Very interesting memory. But when it comes to bloopers and Thanksgiving Day football games, probably nothing tops the one shared by Nick Folletto from inside the pylon as well.

That brings us to 2012, an AFC East rivalry game between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots on Thanksgiving night and a play that will live on known simply as the butt fumble the football. This is what Reggie White used to do to people, forklift them and just lift them off the ground. Mark Sanchez not expecting it,

and it was the backside of Brandon Moore that knocked the ball out. On a broken play, Mark Sanchez, quarterback for the New York Jets, tried to make something happen, but he ran face-first into the backside of one of his own linemen coughing up the bone of in the process and the Patriots returned the loose ball for a touchdown my favorite part of that clip is color analyst Chris Collinsworth chuckling right when the play happens because he sees in the moment what everybody had seen as well. The play goes on

to be called the butt fumble. Obviously just one of those humorous moments in football that you'll never forget. I still remember watching that game live that Thanksgiving night on the couch sitting next to my wife just trying not to laugh so hard I woke up the kids. Just a humorous moment. But the butt fumble. And that was submitted by Nick Folletto. You can follow him on Twitter at Nick Folletto, F-A-L-L-A-T-O. Nick's a Giants fan.

That's probably why he submitted that one. But let's move into some of the more sort of I don't want to say serious maybe sentimental is the word for it this first clip that I'm going to share is a clip Luke Polglaze contributor to Inside the Pylon

also the running backs coach at Catholic University incredibly proud to know luke to work with him to see how his career is advancing in football he submitted a clip about his thanksgiving football memories and i'll play that for you now my name is luke polglaze and i've done a bit of work with the nfl draft both on draft twitter as well as writing for inside the pylon these days you can actually find me. I'm the running backs coach at the Catholic University of America.

We're a D3 football program in Washington, D.C., where I get to coach the running backs. It's an awesome opportunity to get to coach college football and really live the football that I've been talking for so long online. It's kind of a funny story how I really got into football. Growing up, I'm from Colorado. I am a Broncos fan, so I'm going to get that out of the way early. I was a huge fan of the Colorado Avalanche. And, you know, for hockey back in the late 90s, early 2000s, the Avalanche were huge.

So I was really kind of an Avalanche first, football second kind of person. And I remember it was a Thanksgiving back in the early 2000s when the Broncos were playing the Cowboys, and it was Thanksgiving night, so I'd just been downstairs with my family eating dinner. And I came up and I listened to a couple minutes of the game on the radio, and it kind of became pretty apparent that the game was headed just inexorably for overtime. So I popped in a cassette. Kids these days, they probably don't know what that is, but you could record off the radio using

a cassette tape, believe it or not, and headed downstairs with my family to watch a movie and just kind of let the tape run. Now, later on when I got back upstairs, I got to listen to the rest of the game, and I can tell you that I probably still know by heart the kind of conclusion of that overtime game. There was a long run by Ron Dane, the former Wisconsin running back. He popped off, I think it was a 56-yarder, and I can still tell you Dave Logan, the great play-by-play announcer for the Broncos for so many years, his direct call of that game, of that play, of just, you know, the Cowboys are in a run defense. Broncos are going to run with Rondane. Dane's got a big hole, 45 midfield.

And so from then, that kind of just, that excitement, the fact that I can still recite that today by heart, just the Thanksgiving memory of that particularly just stands out to me today still. And now I get to work with the run game. Now I get to work with young running backs and I get to kind of mold them into the next generation of football players. So happy Thanksgiving, everyone. And thanks to Mark for letting me share my memory. That's a great story from Luke. Absolutely loved that he shared that with us and it's amazing how memories like that might spur you to go down that path to become invested in this game and

Luke has certainly done that as he said he's now the running backs coach over at the Catholic University of America it's amazing the way his sort of career path has taken him through the game. It's awesome to see. You can follow Luke on Twitter, please do, at Luke, L-U-C, Polglaze, P-O-L-G-L-A-Z-E. We're going to have another great story here in a second from another contributor at Inside the Pylon. This is one submitted by Jessica Branch.

She's one of the contributors over at Inside the Pylon as well and it sort of gets to you know the fact that football and family Thanksgiving all kind of come together you know in her sort of memory it's not so much Thanksgiving but just football and family

it's Super Bowl 36 and it's interesting how many Super Bowl XXXVI memories were shared with me, but this is one. She's nine years old at the time, and she's playing the piano while the game is going on, and it's the final drive. And as we talked about, as I outlined, in this Super Bowl 36 recap show that I did during the bye week, John Madden's out there saying that the Patriots should play for overtime.

Jessica's family is watching the game, screaming. Play it safe. John Madden's right But Jessica She's just out done Playing the piano But she's there She's only nine years old She's yelling it out though I think Brady should drive

For a field goal I think they should drive For the field goal And the drive goes on Well what do you know They go down And they get that field goal And as Jessica

You know Told me You know That sticks with her, you know, believing in that team with all of her heart. It was her first sort of real sports memory. You know, and that's, as I'm going to touch on in a little bit here at the end, you know, that's part of the beauty of sports. You know, they can transport you to a different place in a different time and you have those memories

that you will carry with you forever and Jessica's moment with her family and Super Bowl 36 that's one of those type of moments and we all have them. Whether it's playing the game ourselves or whether it's as a fan of a team like Jessica's here.

We have those moments that we will never forget. And this is one of those for Jessica. And you can follow her on Twitter. At Jess, J-E-S-S-D-A, stats, S-T-A-T-S-M-A-A-M At JessTheStatsMan. So give her a follow. Another sort of Super Bowl XXXVI memory. Shared by Daryl Singh.

Now he's another contributor over at Inside the Pylon You can follow him on Twitter At DSNG At DSING You know and his is another Patriots memory Sort of fitting for the show But his is of Super Bowl 36.

But he was in Singapore. It was Super Bowl Monday. He didn't even watch the game. He was in Singapore. He was in his army dorm. He had returned to Singapore from Cambridge, Massachusetts for conscription. He knew the Patriots

were in the Super Bowl, but back in those days you couldn't follow the game remotely. American bars down in Singapore, they did open early to show the Super Bowl, but he couldn't leave his camp just to watch the game. So Darrell had just finished another round of training. He was wearing his PT kit

and he got a text from a college friend, another Singaporean who had been bitten by the Boston sports bug. Did you hear? The Patriots won. And as Darryl tells it, he held his hands up and triumphed in the dorm, let out a whoop,

only to realize that no one else in the 12-man dorm cared, and everybody else just continued with getting ready to hit the showers after their intense morning of PT. And that was Darryl's Super Bowl 36 story. And it's an incredible story to think about. We're lucky right now that in this day and age, we have sort of that instant access to watching a game, the ability to connect instantly with fans of a team all over the world. But it wasn't always that way. And as Daryl says, it would be another few years after that

until he found an online community of Pats fans to share those moments with. And that's the Sons of Sam Horn message board where I'm a member and was a member and that's sort of what where Inside the Pylon itself grew out of and what it wasn't always this way but again we have that sense of belonging you know that sense of community that comes from being a fan that it's not always that way but Daryl's story is great. I loved it, and I thank Daryl for sharing that. We're going to go with some family now, and I'm incredibly lucky in the sense that the support staff that I have around me, and I say

support staff, but the support web and net that I have around me between my wife, my in-laws, my kids, and certainly my parents, who I know listen to this show, have been so critical in this second career

of mine. And so I reached out to my parents, listeners to the Locked On Patriots podcast for their sort of Thanksgiving football memories. And, you know, I'll share my dad's first. You know, and his memories sort of start with watching football games as a family. And this is a sort of family joke,

but my father being incredibly negative to the point where we tease him joke, but my father being incredibly negative. To the point where we tease him now, but it's somewhat serious. That there would be times where Tom Brady would miss a throw in the first quarter and my dad would say that the game was over. Yo, and this got pretty hard during Super Bowl 51 because my parents were overwatching that game. And when it was 28-3, I mean, you had to agree with them. But then my dad sort of gets into the fact that when I started to play the game, my dad was always on the sidelines and he wasn't a coach.

He was always either videotaping the games or taking pictures because he was trying so hard not to try and be a coach. And these are his words. I was trying hard not to be a coach, especially when I knew a lot less about football than you did. Although he just says he has really learned a lot since reading and listening to the lockdown patriots podcast but that was sort of what my dad did and i still remember those moments i mean there's a picture that i love of one of my high school games my senior year and my dad

is giving me some advice on the sideline. And he's got the camera around his neck, and he's giving me some advice. He's helping me through something. I don't know exactly what was happening at that moment, but I have that picture, and I love that picture. Because even though he wasn't my coach, he was still there to help. And I always thank him for that.

For my mom, her first memory is Thanksgiving Day and watching a game with her dad, my grandfather, until he fell asleep. And with her, football was always about my grandfather at the beginning. But then I grew up and I started to play, and my mom still thinks about my grandfather in the stands after I throw a touchdown pass, jumping up and screaming, that's my grandson. Or one of the few times I threw an interception

and my grandfather would jump up and turn to my mother and say that's your son. And my mom ties it all to family. My mom is a huge football fan. But family and football, from Pop Warner, my brother and I playing through college, all the games my grandfather

came to, now as we will be today, the entire family over at my house. Watching the games, passing it on to my son and my daughter. That's what a lot of families do.

You know, that's what sort of Thanksgiving has kind of become. So I thank my parents for sharing that. And, you know, as we sort of wind down here, you know, we had some fun stuff, some heartfelt stuff, and now it's my turn. You know, and when I think about football and I think about Thanksgiving, you know, I think of my final high school practice, the Wednesday before my final high school game,

the day before Thanksgiving. We're getting ready to play Walpole. It was only the third meeting between Waltham and Walpole. We were trying to start this new rivalry. And, you know, it's my last practice before my last high school game. I knew it wasn't going to be my last football game

because I knew I was going to go play somewhere next year. But it was going to be my last high school game, I knew it wasn't going to be my last football game because I knew I was going to go play somewhere next year. But it was my last, it was going to be my last game with a group of guys who I had grown up with, who I had started playing the game with when I was nine. You know, guys whose names,

whose feats, and whose accolades are seared into my brain. Guys like Sean Feeney and Mike Eagerness, Mike Fratto, Mike Vare, Jeff LaValle, Royston English, Crystal Blank. Guys that I had been playing with for years.

This is going to be my last chance to play with them. And there's a certain level of emotion that goes into that. John Farrick. I'm worried I'm going to leave some guys out. And I remember for that last practice, it was a cold day in Waltham, and I'm running scout team. Yeah, I was the starting quarterback,

but I still ran the scout team offense against our first team defense because for whatever reason I wanted to give them a good look, wanted to stay warm. And I remember lining up for a play in Snow Star in the fall. And it was the first time in, you know, at that point, nine years of playing organized football where even just a practice I was playing in snow. nine years of playing organized football, where even just a practice, I was playing in snow.

And suddenly I wasn't Mark Schofield, senior quarterback at Waltham High. I was Brett Favre. I was at Lambeau Field. I was wearing the green and gold. I had a number four in my jersey. Because again, that's part of the beauty of sport the ability to sort of let it transport you to somewhere else

to be someone else to be in that moment and I'll never forget that. You know, obviously, I remember every little bit of that game the next day, which we lost. We shouldn't have. We lost 21-16. You know, I remember the feeling of, you know, walking off the field one last time with some of those guys that I've been walking off the field with for seven, eight years, nine years in some cases. But these are now guys

who I think about all the time. I interact with all the time even though I'm hundreds of miles away now. Because again, that's the beauty of the sport. The beauty of sport in general is the bond that you form with the men and women that you play with. You can strip away the wins and the losses, the glory, the failures. But it's those relationships that you've built over years.

Over summers and double sessions and cold rainy days in the fall. Wins and losses and all that stuff. And football and the lessons that that game instills as well. Football at its core is just a great, great game. It has its flaws. There are things that the game needs to fix. There are things that the game needs to address, whether at the NFL level, the collegiate level, head injuries, of course.

But it's a beautiful game. And the lessons that football instilled in me, that were instilled in me on those practice fields back in Waltham, I carry them with me to this day. Over 20 years later. And there are still times, I talk about how the game can transport you. There are still times in my daily life where I'm transported back to the pit. Back to that dirty, dusty practice field by Waltham High School. And whether it was trying to overcome one last sprint during practice or trying to get one play just right before the big game or whether it was just that last practice, and being a kid again.

You know, I'm 18 years old, or however old I was at the exact time. And I'm thinking about going on and playing in college, all that stuff, but the snow starts to fall, and I'm not Mark Schofield, I'm Brett Favre. I'm just a kid again, enjoying the game. And every time sort of the snow falls and the snow flurries start to fall, even now at a man who's 40 years old,

I'm still transported to that moment. And that's the beauty of this sport. And those lessons and those moments and all the associated things with it, they're still with me. They're still a part of who I am today. And it's just been a joy. It was a joy to play it.

And in my second career here, now covering the sport, I hope in some way I can just sort of pass that along. My joy in still being around this game to this day. I hope that comes through in each episode and in each piece I write or whatever. Because it is a beautiful game.

I hope you've enjoyed this sort of different look at football and Thanksgiving and memories about the game. I've enjoyed putting it together. I thank everybody who submitted something. Again, a little bit different, fair here, but I thought it was good for the holiday. I hope wherever you are, you are having a safe, happy Thanksgiving.

Hope you're enjoying it with your friends, with your family, and perhaps with the game of football. I'll be back tomorrow with your game day edition of Locked on Patriots. Until then, everybody, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Thank you.