Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots November 7, 2018 - Take Wednesday

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

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Hey there everybody, welcome on into a Wednesday edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield sliding into the big chair on this Wednesday morning, November 7th of 2018. As I said, we're doing things a little bit differently this week. We're going to have our crossover show with the guys over at Locked on Titans out for you on Thursday, Friday, your game day edition. But today, going to be a little bit of a take Wednesday show. Got some questions I'm going to get into

as well as a little bit later in the show. I'm going to talk about the Titans, give our first look at them. We're going to talk wide receiver class, Chris Hogan, Adrian Claiborne, and more. But before diving into all of that, a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield.

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. If there's an outlet out there talking about football, chances are I'm talking about it for them. Let's get started. And I want to first address some of the stuff that Bill Belichick said in a recent press conference. He had a phone call with the media yesterday, November 6th. And I want to talk through some of the stuff that he outlined about this team and about the Titans game going forward. We're going to kind of work backwards to forwards. First, we got a question from Ben Volan from the Boston Globe. How difficult is

it for the offensive coaching staff to put together game plans not knowing the availability of Rob Gronkowski? Do they need to have one plan that includes him and one without? If his status is undetermined, headed into a particular Sunday, given his large role in the offense when healthy? Belichick's answer is a great one.

Look, it's part of the game. That comes up pretty regularly. It can come up at any position. Obviously, with a position like Rob's, who you said is on the field a lot and a key part of the game plan, it's a little bit harder. But number one, the coaches do a good job of that. Josh and the staff do a good job of that. So do the players because it affects the players as well. If we change a play or add a play or delete a play, they're the ones that are really effective. It's relatively easy for a coach to look down on a sheet of paper and call one play instead of another.

For the players to be able to make those adjustments and go to a new set of plays or go to a different adjustment on a play because of the way the players are positioned due to availability, that's harder on the players and there are some other effects too. Without Rob, as you said, Dwayne Allen plays a little more on offense, which then Dwayne maybe is playing a little less in the kicking game, which then affects somebody that would play in his spot there and so forth. So you go through it every week. Every team goes through it, but those adjustments are one of the challenges that you face every week. And I'd say

every week there's usually, but there's usually one or more guys that are really close to game time decisions. Maybe it comes down to Friday or Saturday, or even the day of the game as to how they're feeling, what they'll be able to do and how effective you think they'll be. So you have to really be able to go both ways on those because truly a lot of them are 50-50 calls. Finally, at some point you have to make your active list and just go with it. Those are adjustments for the players as well as the coaches, but the coaches have done a great job with that. However, it comes out it's something we'll be dealing with every week, but so will every other team. Every coach I talk to has all that pop-up.

It's the same thing. It's no different on any other team. The other question and answer from Belichick that I want to get into, and it's going to lead us into a question from our great friend, Miguel Benzon at Patscap on Twitter. Do you get excited trying to find and best utilize matchups with Adrian Claiborne and Trey Flowers on the same side of the line like we saw in their half sack of Aaron Rodgers in the fourth quarter the other night? Is there an extra level of confidence when a player scheme like that is executed the way you intended?

Belichick's answer, sure. I mean, I have confidence in all of our rushers and we just have to take advantage of the opportunities that we have. On that particular play that you're referring to, the center went to the other side. So on a four-man rush, if the center goes one way, then that side is three on two. The other side is two on two. Claiborne and Flowers were two on two there on the defensive right side on Lane Taylor and David Bacardi. There was a play early in the game. I think it was in the second quarter when the center slid the other way. He would have slid into them, and Adam Butler had a spin move and came inside, so he was on the single side with Dietrich Wise, and Aaron Rodgers ended up flushing out of the pocket and throwing the ball away.

It was a similar type of situation. I guess the answer to the question is yeah. You have to have a balanced pass rush. If they overload the protection on one side by burning the center or keeping a tight end or having a back over there or however they do it, then wherever you get the singles, that's really your best opportunity to win. And that's where you need to do a good job on the singles. Really, everybody's going to do a good job.

Everybody's going to be ready to win their matchup because with five blockers and potentially more with a tight end or a back to at least chip or get in the way before they go out on their route, not everybody gets a clean shot. So the guys that do, those are the guys we're counting on to win. I think that's a fantastic answer from Belichick, sort of distilling the issues that come when you're rushing four pass rushers against five or even five plus, as Belichick puts it, when you keep a tight end in or you have a running back in the chip. But as Belichick said, and as we talked about on the show, both looking at Claiborne and Flowers over the past couple of days and in the Glorious Victory Edition podcast, the

Patriots have done a good job here and there getting some of those one-on-one matchups and winning some of those. He mentioned the Butler spin move. That's a play I highlighted in the Glorious Victory Edition podcast. Obviously, the half sack split between Claiborne and Flowers. You get them on the same side. Flowers kicking inside, and you use that sort of tackle and exchange stunt. And so that was a big play in that moment.

Obviously, getting pressure in those one-on-one situations with a stunt to sort of help. That leads us to a question from our great friend Miguel Benzon at Patscap on Twitter, who asked me about Adrian Claiborne. What, if anything, has changed in Claiborne's play? And I think at the first, at the outset, we've seen sort of an ability to get those one-on-one matchups. When you kick flowers inside, you get Claiborne matched up one-on-one matchups. You know, when you kick Flowers inside, you get Claiborne matched up one-on-one.

That gives you two very good pass rushers, you know, on that one side of the field that gets you perhaps those one-on-one matchups and two guys that have shown an ability over their careers, you know, Claiborne a little bit longer than Flowers, to win in those sort of pass rushing one-on-one matchups.

But there was also a response to that question to me on Twitter from SonofBelichick, at SonofBelichick on Twitter, who you should give a shout out and a follow to. He responded, hard to say. I certainly can't pinpoint anything. He's just showing up more. Perhaps it had to do more with the coaches getting the line rotation down. And that got me thinking, so I looked back over the past couple of weeks. You go back to their week seven game. Claiborne had 33 snaps on the defensive side of the ball. Then in week 8, just 20.

And then last week, against the Packers, just 17. So I think the son of Belichick's point, getting the rotation down might be helping him as well because with a reduced number of snaps, he's fresher when he's on the field. That's going to give him a better chance to win those one-on-one matchups like Belichick was talking about. And so I think that's a very good point to sort of remember here. We saw a lot more Keonta Davis over the past couple of weeks. He was

getting a lot of snaps against the Packers. And so I think, you know, getting the rotation figured out, keeping those legs fresh, it certainly helps for pass rushers. One last thing I will mention about pass rushers in the defensive line. I don't know if you saw this article, but Dave Archibald in the Locked On Patriots Slack channel pointed out an article from NBC Sports Boston titled, Chess Match with Rodgers Helped Pat's Defense Grow. And there's a great sort of snippet from the article. I'm not going to read the entire article for you. I'd invite you to check it out. I'm going to tweet it out here in a minute, but there's a quote from our defensive line coach,

Brendan Daly, said it best on Saturday night. He said this, Enjoy this. There's not many times you'll get a chance to go against first ballot Hall of Famers. Elite of the elite among the quarterbacks to ever play. Enjoy it. You'll tell your grandkids about it,

but more important, be able to tell your grandkids that you won rather than everyone else who has to tell their grandkids he dropped 400 yards and five touchdowns on you. That's a fantastic little Saturday speech to give to a defensive line group that got pressure on Rodgers. Yes, he escaped at times, but they stepped up when they needed to. Flowers, Claiborne, and others had a huge night. So definitely check out that piece over at NBC Sports Boston. Up next, we got a question from our great friend, John Lamarakis from the Locked On Patriots Slack channel that I want to get into.

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on this Wednesday installment of the Locked On Patriots podcast, doing some take kind of stuff here. And I got a two-part question from a great friend, John Lamarakis, who is at J-O-H-N-l-i-m-b-e-r-k-i-s on the Twitter machine and his two questions are first after since the great take from Dave Archibald at Dave Archie on Twitter on Hogan how has he been fair and better and his second question is I have heard some things about the next wide receiver class that make it seem like it's not good. What are your thoughts on that? And is there anybody we should be watching? And let's start with Hogan. And it's true that Hogan has had, you know, a decent sort of run over the

past couple of games. If you sort of look at, you know, the production, we've seen a bit of an improvement there. I think if you sort of take a step back and look at how he's faring on tape, you've seen some improvement there as well. It seems like he's doing a little bit better job of sort of getting open, working himself open, being more of a part of this offense. Now, you know, in terms of pure production, you know, he started the year with one reception in week one game against Houston, three against Jacksonville, three against Detroit, just one against Miami. And then he had three catches against Indy,

four against Kansas City, six against Chicago, which is his biggest game of the year, and two catches on two targets against Buffalo. He was only targeted once in Green Bay, did not go with a reception. But the production has ticked up a bit, even though there was a step back last week. He did also have two touchdown catches against Jacksonville on those five targets and three receptions. I think what's happened with Hogan is a couple of things. One, the obviously return of Julian Edelman and the addition of Josh Gordon have allowed defenses to sort of move more coverage to them and away from him, which has freed him up at times, particularly against the Bears,

when he had seven targets and six receptions. You know, his best game of the year in terms of at least a target and a reception standpoint. So I think that is part of it. You know, another thing to remember is, you know, in games when Gronk hasn't been in there as well, that's also shifted some, you know, opportunities to him to sort of step up in the reception game. I think also if you look at him on film, there have been times when he has been open and for example, Brady missed him. The one sort of target that I think he should have gotten and should have had a reception on was that play we talked about in the Tape Tuesday edition

when Josh Cornyn did a great job sort of settling down in zone coverage against that cover two look. Hogan was running that sort of deep crossing route, and Brady just sort of missed him there. I think Hogan wasn't giving credit for the target there. I think actually Josh Gordon was, but I think he was trying to hit Hogan and he missed him. So I think that's been sort of part of it,

that you've had this sort of trickle-down effect with the addition of the other guys that's allowed them to sort of part of it, that you've had this sort of trickle-down effect with the addition of the other guys. It's allowed them to sort of allow defenses to sort of shift the focus to other guys and away from Hogan. So I think that is helping. Now, the second part of the question is the wide receiver class. And I think, you know, we've seen a couple of positions this year in terms of the 2019 draft class kind of take a step back, take a little bit of a hit. Quarterback, obviously, and wide receiver as well. But there was a great piece that I'll sort of direct everybody's attention to

over at the Draft Network from Benjamin Solak, who does such great work, debunking the myth of the weak 2019 wide receiver class. And he starts it out, I've read enough articles, heard enough podcasts, and happened across enough tweets that I figured it was time to fight back. I simply cannot get my head around the idea that this wide receiver class is weak. As is often the case with peculiar draft narratives, the myth was first spun by NFL scouts speaking with reporters. The issue with a quote from a scout is that it's not necessarily representative. One scout may say this class is weak, but not only

is that opinion particularly a singular one, the schema by which a scout determines the value of a class changes drastically from team to team. And I think that's a fantastic point. I think if you look at what one team might need at a receiver spot, for example, the Dallas Cowboys. And Ben sort of makes this point that maybe Dallas needs a wide receiver one, an X type guy. You know, the guy that is the wide receiver one, put him on the boundary, making the big plays downfield, along the sideline and things like that. You know, the ability to beat press coverage. You might look at this class and say, well, you know, maybe there isn't a true X type guy. You know, maybe there isn't a bona fide top 15 player.

But I think that this wide receiver class, as with the quarterback class, is a little bit deeper once you sort of start digging in. You know, and if you're looking for an X-type guy, you've got Stanford's J.J. Arteaga-Whiteside, NC State's Kelvin Harmon, Arizona State's Keneal Harry, Georgia's Riley Ridley, Collin Johnson at Texas, Hakeem Butler at Iowa State. These are guys that if they declare, they're probably going in the top 75,

maybe the top 50, depending on who you talk to. DK Metcalf at Ole Miss, he might enter the draft a little. He's got a neck injury. All these guys are height and weight where you'd want them to be, north of 6'2", north of 200 pounds. They fit that sort of ex-receiver mold. Now, I take a white side as the only senior, so he's obviously coming out, but the other guys, juniors, they probably declare as well. You could look at some other guys, A.J. Brown, Debo Samuel, Marquise Brown over at Oklahoma,

George's Maycole Hardman, Old Mrs. DeMarcus Lodge. These are some other names to remember too. And so this gives me a chance to sort of talk for a minute about sort of the life cycle of a draft prospect in this day and age. Because when the draft ends, the next draft cycle begins. It's literally like the presidential election. You know, we just got out of elections. We're still actually counted votes. We haven't called some races, but people are already talking 2020 as we sit here Wednesday morning.

It's the same thing with the NFL draft. We get through with the draft and what happens? We get the early draft, you know, early sort of mock drafts get done. What's next year's first round going to look like? We spend all summer long breaking these guys down, putting together rankings. People get on their heels and say, this is my guy. This is my guy. This is my guy. And then the games begin and people start nitpicking. And I've written about this a ton. I've talked about this a ton.

But what happens is people either dig in with confirmation bias or they start nitpicking and we start tearing these guys down and then start looking ahead to the next group. It's what always happens. But I think as we get closer to the draft, as we get closer to really looking at these guys, this wide receiver class is going to be a little bit better than I think people are giving it credit for right now. I'd highly recommend you go read Benjamin Solak's piece on the Draft Network. You look at some of these guys. I think there is some potential here in this wide receiver class. So that's all my thoughts on those questions. Thank you so much, John, for getting them in. Again, give John a

follow, if you would, on Twitter at J-O-H-N-L-I-M-B-E-R-K-I-S. Up next, we're going to take a quick look at the Tennessee Titans and why this game might be a little bit tougher than I think people are expecting it to be. That's ahead on this Wednesday edition of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Wednesday installment of Locked on Patriots. And we're going to take just a few minutes here, give you sort of a quick snapshot of the Tennessee Titans and where they are at right now. Because, you know, people are sort of looking at this game right now and saying,

look, you know, this is a game that the Patriots should win. I'm pulling up the line right now. And, you know, you sort of look at Patriots opening as big favorites on the road against the Titans. They opened at 6.5 to 7-point favorites. That was before the Monday night game. And so I think that that line is going to move a little bit, obviously, after the Titans win on Monday. But the Patriots opened as big favorites on the road, too. I mean, so when you consider that Vegas typically gives the home team a three-point advantage to start, that's a kind of big number. And some things will also shift it as well, the health and availability of Robert Gronkowski and Sonny

Michel. Now, when you think about the Tennessee Titans, at least if you're me, obviously the focus is Marcus Mariota, a player that I was really high on. He was my QB1 coming out of that class. And you're sort of still waiting to see what he can do as a quarterback. And a lot of us, myself included, thought with Matt LaFleur, this was going to be a better offense. He was going to have this uptick in production. And maybe that hasn't quite hit yet. You know, maybe that hasn't quite happened yet. He's got six starts this year, completing 67% of his passes, five touchdowns, five interceptions. Those numbers aren't great. Adjusted net yards per attempt of just five, which is very low when you sort of look at, you know, passers overall. That's a pretty low number, pulling up, you know, the adjusted net yards per attempt for all the qualified passers right now.

5.0 puts them 30th of all qualified passers behind guys like C.J. Bethard, Case Keenum, Eli Manning, Blake Bortles, Ryan Tannehill. That's a bad number. I mean, the only guys he's beating out right now are Winston, Donald, Rosen, and Allen. So that's not a spot to be proud of. But I think if you dig in a little deeper, especially when you look at that game against the Dallas Cowboys,

who admittedly might have a bit of a problem on their hands, Mariota goes 21 of 29 for 240 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, adds 32 yards rushing as well as a touchdown. So that's good production. But even on the film, you're seeing him making throws from the pocket. You look at a play where he hits Taewon Taylor on a deep out route. This is a third and long situation. Good timing, good rhythm, good placement. The Titans were 11 of 14 on third downs, and Mariota played a huge role in all of those, whether running or passing. On their first score

and drive alone, the Titans were a perfect 4-for-4 on third downs. And that play that I was just talking about was a 3rd-and-9. So that was a big play. You see another throw on 3rd-and-long where he climbs up in the pocket, makes a fantastic throw downfield. Later on a 3rd-and-9, you got a

blitz coming after him. He steps up in the pocket, delivers a beautiful throw on that seam route in the middle of the field against a Tampa 2 look. It's the right read. It's well-timed. It's a perfect throw. An aggressive decision that you'll want to see from Marcus Mariota.

Again on a third down. And so I think we're starting to see maybe the Dallas game was a mirage. But I think we're starting to see maybe, just maybe Mariota turn in the corner. Now, this could just be me being hopeful. This could be looking at him with rose colored glasses and hoping my confirmation bias is kicking in, but I think we're seeing a little bit of an uptick from him. Now, what I think we really sort of have to talk about is their defense. You know, you look at the Titans right now in terms of scoring defense, they're number one in the league in scoring defense, which is

an impressive thing for them right now. You look at their pass defense in terms of giving up yardage per game. And then the Titans are a top 10 defense in that category, giving up just 226.3 yards per game in the air. So that's a pretty good number. Quarterback rated against them is just 92.4. In terms of where that ranks, that's more middle of the pack, but still pretty good. Adjusted net yards per attempt that they're giving up to opposing passers, 6.4. That's a little bit on the higher side, but still fairly good. Their run defense, what they're doing yards per game,

again, middle of the pack, 16th, giving up just over 100 yards. But I think this defense is a little bit better than people might be talking about as well. And so if Mariota is turning the corner, perhaps, if this defense performs as a number one scoring defense might, this could be a better game than I think people are giving it credit for. It opened as a big number. Maybe that number moves, but I wouldn't go so far as to start talking about blowouts and things like that. Road games in the NFL are notoriously tough to win. We just saw one a couple weeks ago where the Patriots

went into Chicago, came down to one yard, basically, for the Patriots to pull out that win. So we're going to learn more about the Titans as we go through the rest of the week, doing some film stuff, obviously, on Friday. Our crossover show with the guys in Tennessee locked on Titans as well for tomorrow. But I'm just saying,

this is one of those games that I wouldn't get wildly optimistic about just yet. Maybe as the week goes on, we get some good news on Gronk and Michel. Maybe we can get there. But right now, tempered optimism. Let's put it that way.

But that will do it for today's show. Thank you so much for tuning in. As always, check out the show on iTunes. Leave a subscribe, rate, and review. All that good stuff.

Follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. I will be back tomorrow with a crossover edition. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.