Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots November 29, 2017 - Covering the Patriots with Nora Princiotti

Episode Date: November 29, 2017

Nora Princiotti from the Boston Globe joins the show to break down the state of the Patriots. She breaks down the success of the running game, talks injuries, the ability to run the football on first down, contributions on the defensive side of the football from Elandon Roberts and Jonathan Jones, how the defense might look schematically going forward, her recent piece on the Solder Family and so much more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of Locked On Patriots is brought to you 29th. Mark Schofield here in the big chair as I am five days a week. We have a fantastic guest for you today. Really excited about today's show. I am joined by Nora Princiotti, a beat reporter for the Boston Globe covering your New England Patriots. Nora, how are you doing this morning? I'm doing pretty well, Mark. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. And

a lot of things I want to get to you today with. First, let's look back at Sunday. Big win over the Miami Dolphins. Lots of injuries. A lot of guys went down. Trey Flowers, Marquise Flowers, Calvin Noy walked off. Any sort of updates on injuries coming out of foxborough yeah so why don't we just run through the list so marty bennett's going on ir nate ebner is going on ir bennett it seems like and you can read more about this in the boston globe from our fabulous jim mcbride but the deal with bennett is that it seems like it's actually more his hamstring than his shoulder that's been acting up and that ultimately meant that he couldn't play on Sunday and just it seems like everything's just too much for him at this point you know he gave it a go after everything that went down in Green Bay and and how he ended up with the Patriots in the first place. But that has come to an end.

Nate Ebner also, you know, it looked like a sort of scary non-contact knee injury. There haven't been specifics on that, if it's an ACL or an MCL or whatever, but he's done, which is really tough, particularly for a special teams unit that's already working without Matthew Slater right now. And then Trey Flowers, it seems like there's a pretty big sigh of relief there. He hurt his rib, but he's considered week to week. Kyle Van Noy, sort of the same situation with a strain in his right calf. And then still waiting for updates on Marquise Flowers, Trevor Riley, and Le'Adrian Waddle.

Yeah, I feel like the Ebner injury is really going to hamper the special teams unit because as you said, and it's a great point, they're already down Slater who's their best special team player. Now you lose Ebner who plays a critical role, particularly on that punt team like we saw with the punt fake as well. I feel like this is an injury that is gonna pose a problem going forward yeah i mean we'll see how i think it was jordan richards who came in as punt protector for him um after ebner was out so we'll see you know that's a critical unit for them they get a lot of they get a lot of points from special teams and a lot of the time you know those can be those

momentum swinging i guess not really drives but when they get an extra when they get an extra seven points whether it's they just get possession back or whatever those big plays that often come on special teams you know that's often difference between an opposing team feeling like a game is sort of getting out of hand and changing their strategy, which often plays so much into the Patriots' favor. So that could be a big one. So three straight wins, fairly convincing wins coming out of the bye. I'm feeling like this is a more complete team right now.

Nora, do you share that opinion? Do you think this Patriots team is now sort of rounded into form? Yes, but with the asterisk next to it that everything is relative to, you know, rounding into form as far as the very weak afc is concerned right i i think if you know they've played three bad teams and they have had convincing wins and this is not normally a team that's built to blow other teams out and they've been doing that so that's encouraging and what's more encouraging is that they've been playing i think more the way that they would like to particularly because their secondary has performed a lot better than

than was happening early in the year and you know you can't you can't argue with the results i think they're they've held opponents to the lowest point total of any team in the NFL over the last five games. So at a certain point, you know, this is still such a cliche, but it's still an any given Sunday league. And there's a lot less distance between one and 32 than I think a lot, a lot of people assume or a lot of people feel like. So you can't just say strength of schedule for everything. But I do think that that's important because it's not like they've been, you know, they're not playing the Eagles.

They're not playing the saints and they're not going to, you know, unless they make it to the Superbowl. So I think there's still remaining questions. I wouldn't say everything's fine. They fixed every problem, but yeah, I mean,

it's certainly an improvement. Nora, let's talk now a little offense and obviously Tom Brady running the show, having another great year for Tom Brady. But talking about Tom Brady gets boring sometimes. I want to start with Deion Lewis and Rex Burkhead. They seem to be carving out a really big role for this team in the offensive backfield, both carrying the ball and catching the ball.

What are your thoughts on what they've meant to this team during this win streak and just basically overall this year? Sure. Wasn't it crazy that Sunday was Deion Lewis' first career 100-yard rushing game? I couldn't believe that. Isn't that insane? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that guy has been so – I mean, he's not totally – he's got Super Bowl race. He's fine. But he's had such an interesting career because this is one thing that I love to think about is maybe if he were just a little bit taller, a little bit bigger, I just wonder what perception of him would be. Because I think people still think of him as this, you know, third down, shifty little scat back. And one, he is a really good between the tackles runner. And two, you know, he's gotten, he has gotten hurt, but when he's on the field, he plays really tough and he's a really really really good every down running back I think and so yeah I think he's he's established himself as their lead running back and I think

that'll be the case going forward as long as he's healthy and then it also seems like Burkhead's taken over the short yardage goal line role um he had two touchdowns on sunday you know i i wonder if i wonder if maybe if if they could activate everybody on game day if gillisley might still be the preference there but he doesn't do as much for them in other facets of the game. So it seems like Burkhead's their choice there. I mean, he's been impressive too. He's really smooth in the passing game. And so, yeah, those two. It's interesting to me that Burkhead seems to be taking away from James White a little bit.

But those two have been really impressive. I think the point you made about the perception of Deion Lewis is such a great one because, yeah, if he were 5'10", 5'11", people would look at him as an every down back. The perception would be completely different. But as you said, Nora, he's great between the tackles and inside runs, which you look at him and you think this isn't a guy that's going to run between the tackles, but he does it incredibly well.

Yeah, he has that really low center of gravity and he's really strong. So it's not like he can't run like a guy who's bigger. And yeah, I would say that he's, you know, he's just as effective doing that as he is on the outside. So yeah, I mean, I think he's been just huge for them. I think he's a great player. Speaking of the running game, something that I've noticed is it seems like more than so many years past, the Patriots have been really effective at running the ball on first down. They're picking up chunk plays. Lewis, for example, had a 21-yard run against the Dolphins on a first down.

Have you noticed the same? And if so, how important has that been getting this offense on schedule and keeping it on schedule? Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, so Lewis on Sunday, I think he had 70 yards on 10 first down carries. And, you know, you wonder if even that can become more of a strength going forward if they're going to show the type of balance that they did on Sunday. I think against the Raiders, it was really important because, you know, you saw a little bit of difference between the Raiders game and the Dolphins game. Sorry if you can hear my dog barking. But you saw a little bit of difference between the Raiders game and the Dolphins game where Brady was getting the ball out so fast against the Raiders, which has been interesting to watch this year because they have used the deep passing game a decent amount.

So if they can get, you know, keeping him on schedule, especially if they're working with this sort of, you know, cobbled together offensive line, it's going to be really important because they were able to do that so consistently against the Raiders and he got the ball out so quickly that I think that combination was why you didn't see the holes in the offensive line come through when they kind of blow out or whatever. But you could see them pretty clearly against the Dolphins. And so those little things like that are going to be really important, I think, particularly if the injuries don't remedy themselves really quickly there.

And let's get to that offensive line because they took a lot of heat early. Brady was getting knocked around. He was on pace to surpass last season's sack total. Seemed to sort of sort itself out a few weeks ago, but then he got knocked around again. It was a lot of talk the past couple of days. Should they have taken Brady out earlier, exposed him to so many hits,

done things differently. What were your thoughts on how the o-line performed on Sunday do you think it's just a matter of the injuries mounting up do you think there's something more going on no I think it's the injuries I mean I just don't think that like the more surprising thing was how they played with a backup center and a backup right tackle against really good pass rushers for a couple weeks, or for one week in Karras' case, and it didn't really show. That was going to show through eventually, particularly at center. That's just such a tough spot to slide into seamlessly, and so I think really the more surprising thing is that it took a week to show up.

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Talking with Noah Princiotti here. We're going to get to the defensive side of the ball now. And two players that really sort of stood out to me on Sunday were Landon Roberts and Jonathan Jones. Roberts had a couple of sacks. I thought Jones was great covering those crossing routes, making quick tackles on Jarvis Landry, trying to slow down that yak game that the Dolphins love.

Did you see something similar? And how important have those guys been to this defense, given injuries at linebacker and defensive back? Yeah, totally. I mean, and Jones, the point you make about limiting yards after the catch is going to be really important for him because you know this is still a secondary that has malcolm butler and stefan gilmore so kind of no matter how well he plays he's still going to get targeted and so you know i think he allowed five catches for 46 yards and and that's really impressive i mean the last couple of

weeks he's been on the field the majority almost the entire time on defense and you know for them you start to wonder if in the future he kind of becomes malcolm butler insurance if if Butler doesn't stick around here because it seems like Bill Belichick loves him you know he's one of the fastest guys on the team and he's been good in the slot he's been good on the outside when they've asked him to do that too so I wonder what his future is with this team because it seems like he's a player that they really really like pass rush it's been a sort of constant concern for new england over the years not a lot of sacks early in this season but it seemed like they got to matt more a lot is the pass rush becoming maybe not a weapon but at least less of a worry right now so maybe i mean you can't argue with seven sacks but most of them came late in the game when the dolphins were just throwing the ball all the time and and you just asked me about a landon roberts

and i didn't answer your question um so there's kind of two things going on, I think. One, okay, so scheme-wise, they blitzed a ton. I think they blitzed 15 times on Sunday. And we haven't really seen that. We've actually seen a lot more kind of the opposite, where they keep six guys up front, they play a ton of cover two, particularly against the Raiders. I think they were just sort of begging them to run the ball, short passes, you know, just don't give them anything big and just take what they could get

in terms of getting to Carr and basically just focusing on containment. And, you know, with Roberts, it's been interesting to see him be asked for a little bit more in coverage. He's playing on a lot more passing downs than he used to. And that's never going to be his strength. You saw his strength much more on Sunday, where Matt Patricia just sent him on a blitz all the time. And that's what he loves to do. That's what he's good at. But, you know, Landon Roberts, and this is not all about Landon Roberts,

but I'm using him to make a point about how they're playing defense. Landon Roberts is not going to be a player that you, you know, decide your game plan based on having. And so what I'm really interested to see going forward is, you know, what do they do? Was Sunday, did Sunday show that they've decided that they should be more aggressive on defense and that that's the way that they want to play going forward? Or was that a factor of playing against a really bad and banged up Dolphins offensive line, playing against a backup quarterback, and they decided that matchup-wise, that's what gave them the best chance to win. But going forward, it'll still be matchup-dependent, but fundamentally, they still believe in more of this just keep the quarterback contained for the most part and

rely on the secondary and don't give up big plays but maybe give up you know give up some in the run game let them move the ball a little bit but you know lock down in the secondary as much as possible and not try to win games with the pass rush because they just don't really have the horses. That's a great question. And so I'll just turn it back to you, Nora. What do you think the answer is to that? Do you think they'll be more aggressive? Or do you think they'll sort of stay conservative, try to win towards the secondary. I mean, if you have $40 million allocated to a couple position groups, you need them to perform.

You need them to win games for you, at least some of the time. And I think playing a lot of man recently has played to Stephon Gilmore's strengths, but he's been really good for a month straight now. And, you know, Butler's been up and down, but we talked about John Jones. The safeties are obviously always,

always a strength for this team and they play so well together. So I would bet on those guys, particularly because now they're, they're the health questions with the guys up front. But, you know, I ask the question not just sort of as food for thought. I really am curious to see that. That's probably the number one thing that I'm interested in seeing going forward is do they continue to be more aggressive in the blitzing game and more aggressive on defense?

Ahead on this edition of Locked On Patriots, we're going to talk to Noah Princiati about her great piece, about Nate Solder and his family, as well as her experience covering the Patriots from Denver to Colorado Springs and down to Mexico City. That's ahead on Locked On Patriots. We're here with Noah Princi, talking little Patriots here. And Nora, I do want to ask you, the sort of Patriots on the road experience, game out at Denver, the team stays out in Colorado Springs, then you guys all head down to Mexico City.

What was that experience like? And I think back to that 2014 season when they stayed out in California after playing the Packers before playing the Chargers. Team said that really helped them bond. Do you think something similar took place over the past two weeks? Sure, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, they spend a lot of time together. Not that they don't spend a lot of time together normally. I sort of think it matters more in terms of the Patriots are really good at planning things. And I know that sounds like a small thing, but you know, I think there were a lot of just jokes on the internet and Twitter a couple weeks ago

when I think there was a Jared Goff quote that was something, and with me I promise I have a point um he said something like you know yeah he was talking about Sean McVeigh and he said something like oh he's so good in terms of just organizing everything and when we eat and where we stay or something along those lines and it was it sounded kind of funny because it was like, wait, the secret to Sean McVay being such an improvement in coaching is that he knows when the meal times are. But if you really think about it, you know, football teams are logistical nightmares, and that stuff matters. It really matters if you have all the equipment that you need on the road to recreate a fairly normal week. It matters if there's enough discipline ingrained in a team so that they're going to bet on time and you know they're using their free time appropriately it really matters in terms of players and not just players but team employees sort of taking the long view and and helping everyone get ready knowing when the ideal times of day to be practicing are, just all of that stuff, all of these little things that, you know,

you don't even think about, you don't even think could matter. I really do think that the more of those that are involved, and certainly there's a lot of them when you get into a 10-day road trip and a trip to Mexico, I think they give the Patriots an advantage over most other teams. And, you know, the Raiders were not following the same schedule that the Patriots were, and they actually probably had a few less logistics to deal with because they just,

you know, went to Mexico the day before the game, played it, went home. But I still think those things, and there's just a lot that goes into it, I think those things almost always just nudge things a little bit towards Bill Belichick and company. That's such a great point. And I'm reminded of one of John Madden's books, and he talked about how football players and football teams are like creatures of habit and if you're on a flight or you're on a road trip or whatever obviously madden didn't fly and the flight got delayed by like five minutes or something everybody would start to freak out and so you needed to tell them because those five minutes players would start wondering what the heck is going on and so even down to like meal times we could laugh about it on twitter but it does matter like you said said. Yeah, I think it's really an underrated thing because these teams are so big.

It's not one person just figuring out what time they're going to have lunch. They're just these behemoths. And we were staying in the same hotel that the Patriots were in Colorado Springs and you just notice all of these little things like, oh, yeah, they set up a place where they can get a soak in

a portable hot tub or cold tub just whenever they want in this Marriott. That's a big deal. That matters. So all of these little things add up. So I think that was the thing that really was my takeaway for being on the road for so long. Also also it was fun cool places i bet it was um shifting gears here you had an incredible incredible piece that came out in the globe sunday on left tackle nate soldar his wife lexi their young son hudson

he's battling a rare form of kidney cancer first i just i do want to say nor a tremendous work on that piece i've recommended it to listeners please please, please check it out. I'll tweet it out again. Nora, what was writing that piece like? And what were your main takeaways from the family when you got done writing it? Well, first, thank you. so there wasn't really anything that i wasn't expecting to learn but i would just say that my main takeaway is that they're just a really amazing family you know i i that's not a surprise to me but nate is in a lot of ways sort of the ultimate patriot and he doesn't you know he doesn't like to attract attention or put it on himself really ever and sometimes a byproduct of that is that you just don't really get to know people super well and so I would just say that you know they're really really close as a family and they're they're really positive

tough people you know not in a not in a sort of fakey like cheesy way but they're dealing with this really scary thing but they're finding ways to, you know, one, just give Hudson a pretty normal life. Um, he's like the cutest kid in the world and just totally like running around a hundred miles an hour and hysterical.

And, you know, I think one thing Lexi said to me was like, he takes a little bit to warm up but once he does he's just like a wild animal he's a maniac so I think you know it's funny because it's like half of it

is really just these like huge this huge scary disease and the other half is like yeah this is a family that just really loves each other and they have this great kid and two great kids um they have a baby girl too so i mean i think all of that is is kind of what you know what you figure is there but just to see a lot of examples of how they've been dealing with this and what they're doing. I just felt

really lucky to get to do it because, you know, it's revealing and we see these guys every day, but we don't always really know that that much about them and like that much about what they're really like. And I felt like this was a chance to do that. Yeah. I mean, something that the piece really sort of drives home is, you know, we watch these guys on Sunday afternoons, Monday nights, whatever. And we sometimes look at them as robots. People fire off the angry tweets on Twitter, which you did get into. And kudos to you, by the way, for just identifying and linking to that one troll that Lexi responded to on Twitter. I thought that was brilliant. So that was a great part of the piece. And the other thing, just this story about the trips that they take every Tuesday

from Foxborough, two hours into Boston to get treatment, how they almost look forward to that car ride, which they take as a family. I thought that was a really touching part of the piece. Yeah, I think it's really, you know, they take it really seriously to have all of them, you know, including their seven-month-old daughter there every single week. And I think one thing that was really poignant that Lexi said to me was she said, look, you know, someday we're going to look back on this and we're going to know we did it. And I just thought that that was, I don't know, that really struck me because they don't really know what their future is, but they're still, they're still planning for it, which is what they have to do. So they're thinking about, you know, this is what we want Hudson to know about our family eventually. And yeah, I mean, she's really funny. She's really cool. I mean, kudos to her for outing people on Twitter and that guy deleted

his account, which I'm not really one for, you know, collecting social media pelts to put up on my mantle, but that felt fairly good. I believe so. And it was, that was one I would mark on the mantle as well. Let's shift gears here in the closing, looking ahead to Buffalo, a team that's sort of struggling right now. They did have the win against Kansas City. Questions at the quarterback spot. What are your expectations looking ahead to Sunday? Patriots going up against another AFC East rival in the Buffalo Bills.

Yeah, well, so this is actually a really good test case for what we were talking about with the defense because Tyrodlor is a mobile quarterback so this is one where i'll be really interested to see you know how often do they blitz how often do they keep their inside linebackers in coverage, drop them into coverage a little bit. If Kyle Van Noy is out there, is he going to continue to really play the Dante Hightower almost exclusively edge role from this year? So I think it'll be really a good chance to see

what the strategy on defense is going forward, just because so taylor is the type of quarterback that the patriots have struggled against now i would not say that you know it seems like the bills are sort of becoming the bills that we thought they would be at the beginning of the season it's kind of funny because it seems like you know the the league backloaded all these division games to create this really competitive crazy ending stretch to the season and at least as far as the patriots are concerned it's kind of like no actually those games would have been more competitive and more compelling in in september and october but. Now we'll just do this.

So I think that'll be the biggest thing is just to watch how they play and how they try to deal with Taylor. I mean, you know, unless they send Nathan Peterman out there again. You never know. You never know what Sean McDermott's going to do. He might throw us another curveball. Nora, just an incredible job. It's been a joy talking to you. I'm going to turn the microphone over to you.

Plug some stuff. Let people know what you're working on. And please let people know where they can find you and your great, great work. Oh, thank you, Mark. So here's one thing I'll plug is that I have a story coming up about the value of the pass catching running back. And it's sort of the same thing that we were talking about with Dion Lewis and, you know, the perception and why the perception might be different than the production.

And I'm hoping that story is going to look sort of, you know, at the Patriots, but also league-wide. So look for that in the Boston Globe. And then I'm on Twitter. I'm wherever. Smoke signals. People can email me. Whatever. Fantastic. Please, please, please follow Nora

on Twitter. She's at NoraPrinciardi. If you're not following her, you're just doing the whole football thing wrong. She's at NoraPrinciardi. Please, please, please follow her. Seriously, thing, Ron. She's at Nora, N-O-R-A P-R-I-N-C-I-O-T-T-I. Please, please, please follow her. Seriously, it's been a tremendous pleasure having you on, and we'll definitely

get you back here anytime you want to come on, Nora. Awesome. Yeah, I hope my dog is, like, freaking out at me, so I hope that didn't just, like... It's probably my voice. I understand. It happens to people sometimes. No, I think she lost a tennis ball. Oh, understandable, understandable.

Everybody, that's been your Wednesday edition here of Locked on Patriots. I will be back Thursday with a crossover show with Locked on Bills. Please do, again, follow Nora. Do check out her work over in the Boston Globe. Look for that piece on pass catch and running backs. Until tomorrow on the crossover show, everybody keep it locked here to me, Mark Schofield and locked on