Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots October 10, 2017 - Tape Tuesday: Jets' Pressure Schemes, Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye

Episode Date: October 10, 2017

Mark Schofield brings you your Tape Tuesday Edition of LOP. He breaks down some of the Jets' pressure schemes, and looks at rookie safeties Jamal Adams and Marcus Maye. Also, check out LockedOnPatriots.com for more analysis! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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J-E-T-S! J-E-T-S! J-E-T-S! We feel great for winning justice. We know we're a much better team than we can ever represent ourselves. And we're pissed off. We're afraid to come back and show the kind of defense, the type of team, as well as the kind of character we had. We take a lot of slack. People gave us no chance. Like, we barely made the playoffs.

We're a good football team. It looks like this team played with anger all day long. For all you non-believers, disrespect us. Talk crap about the defense. And we're the third best defense in the league. All we hear is about that defense. They can't stop a no-bleed. 25th in the league.

And we want to get disrespected. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait, can't wait Jets Week rolls on here at Locked On Patriots Mark Schofield with you in the big chair As I am five days a week Bringing you everything you need to know To get ready for the upcoming action

From your New England Patriots And as I said, it is Jets Week, special Jets Week opener. Stepping away from our usual intro to each show, that's a little music from Unheard Music Concepts. Again, they're a group out of the Netherlands. You can check them out, unheardmusicconcepts.com. That song appropriately titled Angerman. As again, we're using a little bit of Bart Scott's words to get you ready for Jets week here.

And this is our usual Tape Tuesday show. We're going to take a look at what the Jets do defensively to get ready for Sunday. A couple of other items of note here. Remember, you can now go to LockedOnPatriots.com. There will be articles up there every day as well. You're getting more than just a podcast from now, everybody. You're going to get some Patriots news and analysis in the written form on LockedOnPatriots.com. And part of what I'm really excited for that site is that I can

bring sort of a more visual element to a lot of the things I do here on the podcast for you. Get some great feedback for some listeners that they love the show, but sometimes when I dive in to the nitty gritty, nerdy football stuff, it'd be nice to have some visuals to go along with it. So a lot of the times when I do tape breakdowns, like we're going to do today, there will be pieces on the site as well going along with it. So if you go to lockedonpatriots.com right now, you'll see two pieces up today. One on the Jets' defensive pressure schemes,

which we're going to talk about here in a minute. And then another piece looking at their two rookie safeties, Jamal Adams and Marcus May. So check those out again, LockedOnPatriots.com. Also, follow me on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. Hit me up with some questions for Thursday's mailbag show. It's been a while since we've done one of these. A lot has happened with the Patriots.

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Now again, this is our Tape Tuesday show, so let's dive into two areas about the Jets defense I want to talk about today. First, their pressure schemes up front. Second, a little later in the show, we're going to talk about their two rookie safeties, Jamal Adams and Marcus May. Talk a little bit about what they bring to this Jets defense. But as it seems like we do every week when we get ready for a Patriots game, we focus on protecting the quarterback, protecting Tom Brady. Because again, that's one of the ways that defenses historically have tried to attack this Patriots offense.

Attacking Brady, getting pressure on him, getting him off his spot in the pocket, and forcing him to make throws before he wants to. Throwing off the timing of the Patriots passing concepts. Now this is a little different this year, as we're going to get into. We'll get into some numbers here. And against Tampa Bay the other night, Brady was sacked again. He printed his total for the year to 16. He has been sacked 16 times.

That is sixth most in the National Football League this year. Brady has been taking a lot of hits so far just five games into this season and what's really interesting about this there was a lot made during that game that Brady's sack numbers actually surpassed his sack totals for last year. He was sacked only 15 times last year. Now there is a big asterisk to that because Brady only played in 12 regular season games. But in terms of pure totals, his 15 sacks, that was 35th most in the NFL, meaning there were quarterbacks that weren't full season long starters that were sacked more. For example, Jay Cutler appeared in only 5 games last year.

He was sacked 17 times. Josh McAllen, 5 appearances, three starts, 18 sacks. Cody Kessler, nine appearances, eight starts, 21 sacks. RG3, five starts, 22 sacks. Jared Goff, seven starts, 26 sacks. I mean, the list goes on. Colin Kaepernick appeared in 12 games last year, made 11 starts,

was sacked 36 times. More than double Tom Brady was over basically the same amount of playing time. And the player sacked the most in the league, Tyrod Taylor, in 15 games. Just three more than Brady. He was sacked 42 times.

That's a big number. Brady, 12 appearances, 12 starts, just 15 sacks. One and a quarter sacks per game. But obviously he's out to a heavy sack total so far this year. And now we're going up against a Jets team that historically has been able to bring pressure on Brady. But with some different personnel this year, obviously they make the trade this offseason. The defensive line looks a little different up front.

They haven't been racking up the sacks like they used to. Through the first five games of the season, Jets only have seven sacks. That is second worst in the league. Only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have fewer with four. Of course, one of those was getting to Tom Brady. But in recent weeks, the Jets have been able to get more and more pressure on quarterbacks. They've gotten to Cutler. Got to him a couple of times in that Dolphins game.

And so I'm going to go into some of the schemes that they've been using to do that because they can't rely on talent alone now. They've had to do some stuff schematically. And the first thing that I want to talk about is an overload design. And again, you can go to LockedOnPatriots.com to check this out as well. But this is where they flood one side of the offensive formation, and then they incorporate a stunt or a twist to it as well. And this is a play against the Miami Dolphins.

And what they do here is they have a linebacker as well as Jamal Adams, the safety, who we're going to talk about in a moment. They line them up wide, well outside of the tight end, Julius Thomas, who's in a win alignment. These guys are using specifically the linebacker, Donahoe, what we call a wide nine alignment. I've talked on the show about defensive line techniques, and there are numbered positions and alignments along the defensive front. The nine alignment is the widest. That's usually somebody that's lined up outside of the tackle. But then there's something called the wide nine, which is even farther outside.

Think Jim Schwartz in the Philadelphia Eagles. He uses this a ton. You use that real wide alignment to stress that left tackle or that right tackle to basically get him detached from the rest of the offensive line. It's a good way to generate speed rushes off the edge. Here they use this overload design with both a linebacker and Jamal Adams' safety lined up wide. They're outside the right shoulder, the outside shoulder of Julius Thomas, the wing tight end. And then what they do is the linebacker rushes straight upfield to the right shoulder of Julius Thomas, the tight end. And Jamal Adams, the safety, he comes behind him to attack the right tackle.

This is what we call sort of, it's like a tackle-end exchange. We've talked about that before with Dietrich Wise. It's where you have one player rush upfield, sort of take on the end, while the other cuts behind him to tackle an end switch. They exchange their passing lanes, and that's what we get here. So that gets Jamal Adams, the athletic rookie safety out of LSU, lined up and matched up with the right tackle. Now Cutler gets pressured and tries to climb the pocket, but he bails to his right. And that plays right into this scheme because

now he's trying to escape the pocket towards Jamal Adams, who's a very athletic defender. Adams easily disengages from the right tackle who's trying to block him and chases down Cutler for the sack. So that's one thing that the Jets like to do on defense. They like to do that overload design where they can get athletic guys like a Jamal Adams matched up in some good pass rushing situations here against the right tackle. Another thing that they like to do is again

using that wide nine on your more standard exchange between the tackle and the end. On that overload design, we had that little twist look from an outside linebacker and a safety down in the box. But on this next play, we're going to talk about, again, against the Dolphins. It's your basic wide nine alignment from an outside linebacker who's down in a three-point stance on the edge, again,

well outside the tight end. And then you get your defensive tackle who's lined up between the right guard and the right tackle. And similar to the previous play, tackle stays upfield and tries to split that B gap between the right guard and the right tackle. But then that outside linebacker, who's aligned in a three-point stance, using that wide nine alignment well outside the tight end, he starts upfield, but then cuts behind that tackle. Again, tackle and exchange. And now he's going to get matched up with the right guard.

So now you have a double team. He's going to get matched up with the center. So you have a double team between the right guard and the right tackle on the defensive tackle. And then the outside linebacker, he comes inside, and now he's matched up with Pouncey, the center. And that's a matchup that most linebackers can win. Cutler gets pressured off the edge, tries to con the pocket, and he basically runs right into that outside linebacker who is stunted inside on this tackle end exchange. Again, they don't have matchups

that they can win from a pure talent perspective like they used to in the past, but they're doing some stuff schematically like these tackle end exchanges, like using that wide nine alignment to get them into some better matchups that they can win with speedier guys coming to the inside and attacking the centers and attacking the guard. It's similar to what we talked about with the Houston Texans and how they would drop guys like Jadeveon Clowney down inside into the A-gap, athletic edge type guys going up against centers and guards who aren't used to blocking players like that.

It's a very similar type of mindset that the Jets are now using defensively. One last thing I will mention from a pressure perspective. This is a play against Deshaun Kizer, the rookie quarterback, last week where they got a sack on Kizer. This sort of gets us into what we've talked about before, what I've talked about with

respect to rookie quarterbacks and how you don't want to blitz them. I don't think you need to blitz rookie quarterbacks, younger quarterbacks, because then you just make their job a little bit easier. You give them the quick read, the hot read, the quick outlet to a running back out of the backfield. What you want to do to those guys is confuse them. There was a third down and an 11 play that the Jets had against the Browns on Sunday where they definitely confused Kaiser, got him to freeze in the pocket, and were able

to get home with only three guys rushing the passer. It's a third and 11 situation in the first quarter around the 1147 mark. Again, this is part of the article that you can go to at lockedonpatriots.com to check it out with your own eyes. But they show cover zero, which is a man coverage across the board, all out blitz. They have three defensive backs. They're all about nine yards off the line of scrimmage. Each one is aligned nine yards across from a wide receiver. The other eight defenders are all on the line of scrimmage.

Three of them are down at a three-point stance. The other five are at a two-point stance. But they all are showing blitz up front. So as a quarterback, as Deshaun Kizer, as somebody in the pocket seeing this before the play, you're thinking, I need to adjust the protection. They're showing blitz. We need to be ready for it.

But the Jets don't blitz at all. They show all-out blitz. They have eight guys on the line of scrimmage. But at the snap, only three of them rush the passer. The other five that are on the line of scrimmage all drop off into underneath zone coverage. They just run a basic day one install cover three look. Three deep players, five guys underneath. And Kaiser completely freezes because he's expecting to get an all-out blitz. He's thinking he'll need to get the ball out quickly. He's thinking any one of these quick routes

that they're about to run will be open given the alignment he sees pre-snap from the guys in the secondary. They're all nine yards off the line of scrimmage. So Kaiser's going into this thinking, I'm going to get the ball out quickly, and I'm going to have an easy throw and catch but in reality once those five guys drop off into those

underneath zones they take away those quick throws they get into those throw in lanes so Kaiser has nowhere to go with the football and he's completely flustered at this point starts to slide around a little bit in the pocket to try to buy some time. And even with only three guys rushing him, the Jets still get to him, still bring him down for a sack and force a punt. So that's a great example of how you don't need to blitz young quarterbacks to get to them either for a sack or to get to them to pressure them to force them to make a mistake here the jets show blitz they

drop off of it and they still get home with only three guys rushing the passer now of course the caveat to that is tom brady's not a young quarterback. Tom Brady's seen things like that many times over the course of his career in the National Football League. So the Jets will have to do a little bit more than just faking a blitz like this to confuse Brady. But they're doing some stuff schematically right now

that's allowing them to get to the passer. Using these twists, using that wide nine alignment, and like they did here with Kaiser, showing them the blitz and then dropping off. And so these are some of the defensive pressure schemes we'll see from the Jets on Sunday. So again, check out that article.

It's over at LockedOnPatriots.com. It's about the Jets' pressure schemes. Do a little reading before Sunday. Get yourself ready. You're also going to want to get ready for these two safeties. Now, it was a bit of a surprise when the Jets, with the sixth overall pick, went with Jamal Adams, the safety out of LSU. Adams was one of the top two safeties in this class, Malik Hooker being the other.

Hooker, you're more center field, free safety type guy. Adams, you're more strong safety, down in the box, run support type defender. And in a draft class where the Jets could have gone in a number of different directions, they went with Jamal Adams, the safety, with that sixth pick. But then they doubled down, and with the 39th overall selection, their second-round pick, they then went and got Marcus May, another safety from the University of Florida. May had been injured for most of last season,

but they went and got him in the second round anyway. May, a more versatile type guy, he can play a bit more free safety as well, and that's how the Jets have been using him. So we're going to get to what May does in a coverage sense in a second, but I want to start with Jamal Adams and run support because that's where Adams has really flashed this season.

Again, you can go to LockedOnPatriots.com. There's an article now breaking down the plays I'm about to talk about. But Adams has really shown me that they can drop him down into the box, use him as almost an extra linebacker, depending on the situation, and rely on him to help them defend the run. The first play we're going to talk about is from that game between the Jets and the Jaguars. This is a fourth quarter play. This is at a big

moment in this game. The Jets have a three-point lead. There's about five minutes left in the game. The Jacksonville Jaguars are basically just outside field goal range right now. It's a third-and-one situation.

When they show a power run formation, they've got 12 personnel on the field. Actually, it should be 22 personnel on the field. They've got two tight ends. They've got a fullback in the game. They are showing run. And the Jets see that. And they've got nine guys in the box,

including Adams, who drops down into the box as well as that ninth defender, anticipating a run and play. And that's exactly what Jacksonville does. They try a fullback lead play to the left edge, and the recognition and explosion here from the rookie safety is flawless.

It's exquisite. Because he's reading the tackle and the tight end. And right at the snap, both of those players block down. And he sees it and immediately sticks his foot in the turf and explodes forward to fill the hole at the edge. And he meets the running back right in the hole, right at the line of scrimmage. Puts his shoulder right into his chest. And he does this as he's avoiding the blocking attempt from the fullback. The fullback tries to cut to the edge

because he's got both a defensive end out there in a wide nine alignment as well as now Adams filling the hole. So the full back basically kind of gives himself up, tries to block both of these guys by cut blocking them. And Adams is able to deftly skip over him, put his shoulder into the running back's chest, meet him right at the line of scrimmage. And then the rest of the cavalry arise, and they hold it to no gain, and Jacksonville has to punt. That was a big play at that point in the game. Jacksonville did go on to tie it, force overtime.

That was a great play from the rookie safety, and it's the kinds of things that he was doing at LSU that made him the sixth overall pick now we're going to talk about a play between Miami and the Jets and this is another example of Adams down in the box given the Jets defense that run support from the safety spot this is an outside stretch zone play. They bring Adams down into the box. He's lined up outside the tight end, Julius Thomas. And again, we see the recognition here from the rookie safety. This is a veteran type play because they run that outside stretch zone. The offensive line, they all flow out in unison to their left. Adams sees it, but he's

the player responsible to set the edge. He needs to stay outside of this. So the second the young safety sees everybody flowing to his side of the formation, he attacks to the outside as well.

And he takes the initial block attempt to Julius Thomas because the veteran tight end comes out to try to block the rookie safety. But Adams hits him first, and he hits him and stuns him. He knocks him backwards. Pushes him basically two yards back into the flow of the play. And then Adams immediately resets himself and does a tremendous job at, again, maintaining the outside leverage here because he cannot let Jay Ajayi get outside of him.

He's responsible for keeping this play from getting to the sideline. So Adams reads the flow of the play, diagnoses it, attacks downhill, stuns the main blocker at the point of contact, then resets himself, maintains that outside leverage over the running back. It finally chops him down behind the round of scrimmage for a loss of two on the play. It's just a tremendous individual effort from a rookie safety, the kind of play that you would think he could make given where they drafted him.

It's just a tremendous individual effort. We'll talk about one more play here from Adams. And it's, again, Hammond runs support down in the box. This is a play against the Buffalo Bills. They bring him down into the box. Once more, he sees the hole open up instantly.

He's lined up basically a few yards off the line of scrimmage. In the C-gap. Well, actually, I take that back. He's more in the outside shoulder of the tight end. And when the play begins, the tight end blocks to the outside, and the right tackle blocks to the inside. And that opens up a hole for Adams to explode through. And this is an inside zone run and play.

So it's not even run to his through. And this is an inside zone run and play. So it's not even run to his direction. But when LaShawn McCoy takes the handoff and doesn't see any hole immediately develop, he tries to bounce it back and he comes right into the arms and the shoulders of Jamal Adams. Because again, Adams sees that hole created and explodes and fills it instantly. And he hits McCoy in the backfield,

trips him up again for a loss on the play. So Jamal Adams is really impressed in terms of his run support so far this year. Now it will be a little bit different for him going up against the Patriots because now he's going up against an offense that likes to spread it out a lot. Likes to rely on

three and four wide receiver looks. So there might not be a ton of chances for him to get down into the box but there will be short yardage situations in this game you can be sure of that. There will be times when New England uses 12 offensive personnel or 21 offensive personnel and they use your more run heavy type formations and personnel groupings.

And those will be the chances when the Jets can bring Adams down into the box and he can wreck havoc on the Patriots ground game. So Jamal Adams, number 33, definitely a player to watch on Sunday. And he's shown through just five games that he is worth the investment the Jets made in him when they drafted him sixth overall. Just a few quick words here as we close about Marcus May. Again, he's the guy that they picked in the second round. They doubled down on the safety position at the start of this draft. And they draft May out of Florida, who's your more versatile safety.

They've been using him as a free safety. And he tallied his first NFL interception on Sunday against Deshaun Kizer and the Cleveland Browns. And it was just, again, another individual effort that I think is worth highlighting as we start to look forward to Sunday this is a third and three play and the Browns basically run sprint right option here a famous play dating back to Bill Walsh and Joe Montana in the 1981 NFC championship game the catch where Montana's rolling to his right and

pump fakes to get Ed Tutal Jones up in the air and then lofts a pass to the back of the end zone that Dwight Clark somehow snared from the sky. Iconic photographs I'm sure you have all seen of Clark coming down with that and spiking the football in the end zone. Well, sprint right option is a staple of most red zone packages for teams, and it's a sprint right by the quarterback, takes a snap, rolls to his right, and you've got receivers flooding the zone.

And here, Kaiser is trying to throw to Seth Duval, the tight end who lines up in the slot, and he runs a flat route just down the goal line. Now, Kaiser makes a mistake here because he never looks anywhere else. He takes the snap, and as he's rolling right, he's looking right at the valve on the flat. And normally you'd think that would be the dead giveaway for a safety to make an interception on a play like this,

but instead it's just the recognition in the film study work of Phrel May because he never looks at Kaiser. He never looks at the quarterback. but instead it's just the recognition and the film study work of Pharrell May. Because he never looks at Kaiser. He never looks at the quarterback. He only looks at Seth DeValve, the tight end, who's running that quick flat route. And as soon as DeValve starts to break down the line of scrimmage, May is running with him, and he immediately cuts under the route. Because he knows

that that's where Kaiser wants to go with the football. That's what they want to do on this play is to throw it to the tight end on this flat route. And when Kaiser lets go of the football May has already cut underneath Devalve. It's the point where when Devalve thinks he's going to catch the ball,

he's two yards deep in the end zone, May intercepts the football at the one-yard line. That's how far underneath May has gotten. And it's all due to the fact that he read this play, he recognized what the Browns were trying to do, got himself under the route, got himself in position to make the interception, to shut down this red zone threat

and prevent the Browns from scoring. These are two very young, very capable, very talented safeties. Marcus May, Jamal Adams, one very capable, very talented safeties. Marcus May, Jamal Adams. You'll hear their names early and often on Sunday. These are two kids that can play. So the Patriots are going to have to be aware of where those guys are.

Whether it's a run formation or run and play, you're going to know where Adams is, number 33. If you're throwing the football, you're going to know where Adams is, number 33. If you're throwing the football, you're going to know where May is, number 26. These two kids can play. And they look to have that safety spot locked down for the Jets for years to come now. And many people sort of mock the Jets when they went one-two, safety, safety. Why are you doubling down on these positions when you have so many other needs across the board

on both sides of the ball? But people aren't laughing now. That's going to do it for your Tape Tuesday edition of Locked on Patriots. Again, go to LockedOnPatriots.com. You will see the two articles up there on both of these topics. You can see the plays yourself. You can go through the film yourself, break it down,

see if I described everything right. Let me know on Twitter if I didn't, at Mark Schofield. Also, send me some questions on Twitter for the Thursday Mailbag Show. Again, leave a review if you could on iTunes, the iTunes Locked On Patriots page. Leave your Twitter handle in your review. You will be entered for a chance to win a Pro Football Focus Edge subscription.

They're charting their data, all the information that's in there. It is invaluable to the work that I do. It can help you as well. So definitely go leave a review, get yourself set up with that. It's well worth the couple of clicks it's going to take. I'll be back tomorrow. We're going to keep diving into Jets Week.

And then Thursday, Mailback Show Friday will be, as always, your game day edition of Locked On Patriots. Jets Week is a special week. It's a rivalry week. We've got to do it upright, and that's what we're going to do here this week. So hope you enjoyed today's show. Let me know on Twitter if you have any thoughts, any questions. Hit me up on there.

Until tomorrow, keep it locked right here, everybody. To me, Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriots. Is democracy in danger or decline? Condoleezza Rice, William Galston, and Carlos Gutierrez and others take on this question in the fall edition of The Catalyst, a journal of ideas from the Bush Institute. Surveys show Americans place less trust in institutions like the media and business. Others contend America has faced far more challenging periods and emerged strong. Thank you.