Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots October 18, 2018 - Take Thursday

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

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Hey there everybody, welcome on into a Take Thursday edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield sliding on into the big chair for this Thursday, October 18th, 2018. As I said, we're going to get into some takes here. One take from the timeline that I want to get into as well as some listener questions submitted via Twitter as well as the Lockdown Patriots Slack channel. We're going to talk trades. We're going to talk other teams in the AFC East, special teams valuation, and some draft quarterback stuff. But before we do all 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, and yes, even FootballGuys.com

where I contribute to the staff roundup piece every couple weeks or so. I contributed to that this week. You can look for my thoughts from a fantasy perspective on, for example, the Chicago Bears and some of the players and their quarterback, Mitchell Trubisky. But first, like I said, going to dive into the Take Thursday installment with some listener questions. And we're going to start, we're going to spend the first segment of the show talking about the trade deadline because with that approaching, a lot of Patriots fans, a lot of fans of other teams wondering if the Patriots are going to make some moves, take some steps to perhaps solidify a spot or two on their roster. And so I'm going to deal with two questions here submitted. First, from Andrew Likens via the LockedOnPatriots Slack channel.

Defensive trade targets for the Patriots. And NMAC at Reluctant underscore Trade. Very appropriate Twitter handle there. He asks, what trade would you do before the deadline? And what trade do you think they might do? And so I'll kind of put that together and talk about trade options for the New England Patriots. And having looked around the league, having seen some of the, shall we say, misfortunes of some other organizations, as well as misfortunes of perhaps one player who's coming on to, yes, another big contract type year.

Here are the four names that kind of get bandied about the most. There's a fifth that I'm not so sure the Patriots are making a move for, but Daylon Buchanan, Jamie Collins, Amari Cooper, and Patrick Peterson. Those are the four names that I've kind of seen, you know, floated out the most for the New England Patriots. And let me say this at the outset. I don't anticipate the Patriots making a move. I just don't. I think, you know, the acquisition of Josh Gordon is probably going to be the final sort of move that the Patriots make. You know, I would be surprised, you know, if they make another move right now. But given that these are the players that are currently being talked

about the most, I figured it'd make some sense to sort of go through them sort of one by one and talk about, you know, what the Patriots might be getting in return and whether they would actually do that. And let's start with the two guys from Arizona. You have Patrick Peterson, former first round draft pick, cornerback, and you have Dale Buchanan, another former first-round draft pick, who's a defensive back coming out of college, but he's sort of solidified himself as more of a linebacker type, a weak side linebacker type. And with Buchanan, first of all, you begin as somebody you would hope to be sort of an upgrade over a Kyle Van Noy type. This would give you sort of the ability to either, if you go 3-3-5, then you've got probably a package of Hightower, Buchanan, and Van Noy probably still. That would

probably take a Landon Roberts off of the field. You would have that kind of package. And if you're going with two linebackers, you're probably looking at Buchanan and Hightower, where you probably use more of Hightower down on the edge. I'm not so sure that this is as much of an upgrade as makes sense. And so I understand the desire to get more athletic at the second level right now. It's something that I've been preaching for a while, but I'm not so sure that acquiring Buchanan makes much sense, especially when you might have to consider what they would have to give up and what they would have to pay for him. So put him aside for a second.

Patrick Peterson is an interesting question, and you could obviously look at a cornerback tandem of Peterson and Gilmore and say, look, that gives you two lockdown-type guys. But again, I'm not so sure that it makes a ton of sense at this point in the season. Another name that's been bandied about is Jamie Collins, a potential reunion. And this is a discussion that we had over in the Locked on Patriots Slack channel, you know, headed into, you know, the last couple of weeks. You know, would it make sense know, the last couple of weeks, you know,

would it make sense to have that sort of reunion? And I believe it was Ian McDonald over there in the Locked on Patriots Slack channel that put it best, you know, if it was just a money thing when the Patriots moved on from Collins and traded them when they did, then sure, we can revisit the idea of bringing him back. And I've seen perhaps, you know, it would cost as little as maybe a sixth or seventh round. I'm not so sure. But if it was just a money question, then yeah, we can revisit that. And if it's always going to cost you would be a sixth or seventh rounder, I'm much more interested in going and getting him than I am, say, a Buchanan. I think acquiring Collins makes more sense. He could do more for this defense. I think he's more of an improvement over, say, Kyle Van Noor right now. So I would be okay with that sort of

in a vacuum if it was just purely a money decision that had the Patriots moving on from him. If it was freelancing and lack of effort, then it's a no-go. And something tells me that's sort of the way that the Patriots came down on it. You know, I have no inside source and I'm just sort of guessing from the outside looking in, but given some of the stuff that we've heard about Jamie Collins, my inclination is to believe those types of stories and then to basically say look it's a non-starter so those are three of the names right there the other name i sort of included is marie cooper and we've seen the situation in oakland just devolve into an absolute train wreck and some of you probably saw me retweet a video a clip from last week's game of Derek Carr getting picked up, and he just looks

shell-shocked. I hate to make the sort of war reference, but it's apt here in this case. He just looks like he's been shattered. And this seems to be going badly in Oakland. We're hearing now that they're shopping Amari Cooper. Does Amari Cooper get dropped in here and become an immediate starting wide receiver? Yes. What are my thoughts of an 11 personnel package with Amari Cooper, Josh Gordon, Julian Edelman, and Robert Gronkowski with either White or Sonny Michel? Sign me up. What were my thoughts on Amari Cooper coming out? He was wide receiver one. That gave you the entire route tree as a rookie. I love his footwork. I love his route one. Has he had some issues catching the ball? Yes. Do I think those could continue? Perhaps. Do I think he'd still be an upgrade

over a Hogan or a Dorsett? I do. But are we going to really imagine Belba Elitchek making another trade yet again for a wide receiver? It would stun me. I think that while it makes a ton of sense, I'm not so sure that they would do it. And the other thing to consider here is, according to reports, I just read this on Pro Football Focus

and some other places, they're looking for a first round pick. so maybe you could do it for a second. Are you trading a second-round pick for Amari Cooper? In a vacuum, perhaps, given some of the issues that this team has? Are you going to get yet another wide receiver? Does it make sense? And maybe it does to you. Maybe you look at trying to get the most of what you can out of what's left of the Brady window. And maybe you think, look, that makes a ton of sense. Get in a first round draft pick type receiver in Amari Cooper in exchange for if you have to give it up a second round pick, then sure. And let's remember, they've got two second rounders. They got one from the Bears as part of one of the trades that they made in last year's draft.

When they dealt with the Bears on the second round, they moved down from 51 to 105 overall and collected their 2019 second round pick. That might be more of a mid-second round pick right now. So maybe you could do that. It would certainly be a boost. I wouldn't do it for the first rounder. I would probably do it for one of the second rounders. But again, you've got to have an eye towards the future,

and I understand the idea to extend the Brady window as much as possible, and I think you've already acquired a piece that does that in Josh Gordon. Early returns seem to be very good with Gordon. And he certainly played himself already into the Brady circle of trust, which probably is more important than anything else. And so as much as it intrigues me, I'm not sure it happens. I'm not sure it gets done. The trade I would make, well, I mean, come on. You're talking to a quarterback guy here. You're talking to somebody that every chance he gets when he gets an opportunity to talk quarterbacks, that's where he's going to go. And so the trade that I would make, Giants. What do you guys want for Kyle Lauletta? Okay, I'm half a ton in cheek here,

but I will say this. As intrigued as I am in some of the names in the quarterback class, and we're going to get to the quarterback class in the third segment of this show, I'm not so sure that a team like the Giants, for example, is going to wait on a quarterback. I'm pretty sure that they're going to have to go early on a quarterback.

I'm pretty sure that if either Justin Herbert or Dwayne Haskins or both of them comes out, they're going to have to address the quarterback position early, which means, yeah, for the third straight year, they're taking a quarterback. But I'm not so sure that that fan base, and I'm not so sure that many in that organization, would be able to tolerate it if they passed on a quarterback early in next year's draft,

which means that Kyle Lalletta could be had. So I would kick the tires on that one because, again, I think Lalletta would be a great fit for this offense. And given some of the questions of the quarterback spots, some of the other guys in this group, Lalletta might make more sense than some of the guys that you could be talking about, saying Easton Stick or Ryan Finley, guys like that. So it's just something to think about, kind of tongue-in-cheek. I still think that the Patriots more than likely are just going to sort of stay pat here at the deadline

unless somebody blows them away with a potential offer here. If they decide to just give somebody away, then sure, if you're going to give Amari Cooper away for a seventh-round pick, then yeah, hey, sure, fine. But I doubt that something like that gets dropped into the Patriots' lap. And so I think they end up staying put, but very sort of interesting discussion to

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for $20 off of purchases of $200 or more as a new customer of Vivid Seats. Make a memory that lasts a lifetime and that Vivid Seats help you get to your favorite live event. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Take Thursday installment of Locked On Patriots. And we're going to get into two really fascinating questions right now that I wanted to devote some time to. One of which probably makes sense for somebody a little bit smarter than me, honestly, to tackle it.

But I'm going to sort of tee it up there because I know a lot of smart people listen to this show. Kind of peering over in Dave Archibald's direction at Dave Archie on Twitter. Perhaps even a Michael Kist at Michael Kist NFL would be interested in taking on the second question we're going to get to. First one, though, it comes to us from Ricky Keeler via the Locked On Patriots Slack channel. You can follow him on Twitter at Rickonator555. And he asks, it's pretty kind of settled here right now that after that win that the Patriots might be the number two team in the AFC after the Kansas City Chiefs.

You know, maybe they're in one way or another, those two teams are one and two in the AFC. Who would you say is the third best right now? It feels like everyone else is around the same level. And it's a fascinating question when you think about it, because, you know, if you look at the AFC standings right now, you know, there are a number of teams that are kind of surprising. You could say the Dolphins, look, you know, they're four and two. They're coming off one against Miami. I mean, excuse me, one against Miami, one against Chicago. You can make a case for them.

You can make a case for the Chargers. You know, they're also at four and two uh that's sort of the chic team that you know people like myself sort of buy into every year you've obviously got the bangles you've got the ravens you know do you make a case for the steelers seem to be coming on one two straight um that three two and one record kind of keeping them in the game there in that afc north afc south a little bit of a jumble there you've got tennessee houston and jacksonville all there grouped at 3-3. It's fascinating to think about. And out of the teams right now, it's hard to point to one and say that, look, there's a team in the AFC that doesn't have a flaw,

particularly when you're talking about this sort of next group of teams. I mean, just go down the list. The Miami Dolphins, they might be rolling out Brock Osweiler the rest of the way. You know, we got a question mark about Ryan Tannehill on his shoulder. You know, are we really going to buy into a team that had a chance to really sort of take the AFC East by the throat and then just go out and get wiped off the field by New England? I mean, that's the kind of performance that doesn't exactly inspire people to believe in them. You know, you look at the Chargers,

and yeah, you know, they're 4-2, but when you sort of look at what they've accomplished to date, you know, they beat a 49ers team that's a little bit banged up. They beat a Browns team that didn't show up. They beat an Oakland team that's fallen to pieces. They beat a Bills team that has certainly, you has certainly shown themselves to be a poor team right now.

Their defense is great, but that offense is bad. I mean, is there a statement win from this group? When you've got wins over Buffalo, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Oakland, that doesn't really sort of inspire confidence. Talk to me in early November because they get a home game against Tennessee, and then they go to Seattle. I want to see how they do over the next two weeks. Maybe I'll buy in them, but right now I'm sort of hesitant on them. And keep going down the list. Cincinnati, do you trust Andy Dalton, you know, in a sort of playoff type environment? Let's see what he looks like. Let's see what that Bengals team looks like on Sunday night playing in Arrowhead.

You know, how do they respond to that kind of environment? Baltimore, same story as always with them. They had a fantastic defense, just posted a franchise record, excuse me, for sacks in a game last week of Marcus Mariota. But are you buying in Joe Flacco? Do you trust him at a playoff game if he has to go out there and put together a drive? So there are question marks there. Say what you want about Pittsburgh. They're certainly playing themselves back into it. But I'm not thinking people are really buying in on them, given some of the turmoil and the tumult we've seen from them this year.

And then those three teams in the AFC South, they all have some weaknesses. I like Marcus Mariota. He was my QB1 coming out. But he's starting to wonder about him. With Houston, they've won three straight. Yeah, good for them. But have they looked good doing it? They needed to pick six off Nathan Peterman to overcome the vaunted Buffalo Bills. They go to overtime for a three point lead against Dallas. They go to overtime for a three point win against Indianapolis.

They lose to the Giants. I mean, they lose to the Texans. I mean, the Titans. And so question mark's there. They can't protect Deshaun Watson. He's getting beat up on there. He's playing with cracked ribs now. So you do wonder about that. And with Jacksonville, you know, the defense is still pretty good,

but they get blown out last week by Dallas. They still have the Blake Bortles thing to deal with. You doesn't seem like he's really up to par. Five-point win in the opener on the road against the New York Giants. So these teams all seem to be flawed. If you were going to say, gun to your head type moment, what would you do? Which team would you take as the third best team in this conference right now? It's hard. It really is hard to pick one. I would probably say Baltimore

just because that defense seems to be, again, another ridiculously good defense. You look at the fact they've only given up 77 points this year. That's the lowest in the AFC. It's lowest in the league. Bears are the only other team that's given up fewer than 100 points right now, and the Bears have played one less game. And so that does sort of stand out. Yeah, there's the Flacco thing, but that's the type of defense that they could have another run like they did with Trent Dilfer, like they probably kind of did with Flacco, where that defense leads them to a title. And so I would probably say sitting here right now, it's Baltimore. But again,

all of these teams have flaws and some of them might be fatal. Let's talk with the other question that I got in that I wanted to deal with on this segment. This is from Mr. Quindazi, at M-R-Q-U-I-N-D-A-Z-I on Twitter. Fantastic question here. And as I said, I'm more or less teeing this one up for people smarter than me. And the question is this, how about an analysis of the relative benefit of carrying more special team specialists and the attendant cap hit versus results on the field? And this is a question that deserves more than like a two minute off the cuff answer on a podcast, because I think there's a couple of different ways you can go with this. You can go with, you know, the value of having

people that can execute on a snap to snap-snap basis when it comes to special teams, having special teams dedicated guys like the Matthew Slaters of the world and what they really contribute. And you could probably go down the road of what has Matthew Slater contributed in terms of field position, in terms of down and punts, tackles on punts, tackles on kickoffs, and know, and what has that translated to over the years. And so there's a way to sort of sit down and craft an answer, you know, worthy of that question. I think it's a fantastic question. My quick initial off-the-cuff response to it is this, you know, we, especially at Patriots fans, you know, Bill Belichick stresses, look,

you have to be good in all three phases. You have to be good in all three phases. You've got to be good in special teams, right? Special teams is just as important as the rest. Does that continue to be the case given some of the rules that we're already seeing being rolled out on kickoffs, for example? Do we start seeing similar rules on punts? Do they start sort of addressing punt returns in the same way, sort of neutralizing punt returns? And if that's the direction that the league's going to go in, how valuable will special teams remain? Because sure, look, right now you could say, look, special teams, it's important. You need guys that can execute on special teams. It's the third phase of the game. And it's critical to have guys that can go out there and do those jobs. But if the NFL is stepping away from all of that,

if the NFL is sort of retreating on the importance of special teams to the point where kickoffs don't matter, they're going to eventually tee it up at the 50, or they're just going to do away with them completely, then maybe it just doesn't make that much sense to have these guys. And so that's kind of my off-the-cuff response. Maybe I'm ducking it a little bit, ducking Mr. Quiznadi's question, but that's kind of my initial thought too. But like I said, I'm kind of teeing that up for people smarter than I. Up next, we're going to talk some draft

QB stuff. I got a question from my buddy, Bill Rossetti, the host of Locked on Panthers, as well as a take from the timeline that is just a BP fastball down the plate that I had to dive into. We're going to get to that, but first, isn't it crazy how much we pay for new brand name clothes? Especially look, parents like me, why do we buy new kids clothes if they just outgrow them in a few months? I know why we do it, but it just seems crazy.

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On Patriots. And I've got a question in from Bill Rossetti, my good buddy, the host of Locked On Panthers. He submitted this via the Locked On Patriots. And got a question in from Bill Resetti, my good buddy, the host of Locked On Panthers. He submitted this via the Locked On Patriots Slack channel. What quarterbacks are you expecting and hoping to see in Mobile for the Senior Bowl? And how much fun can I expect to have with you this time around? Well, Bill, to the second

question first, I believe there is documented photographic evidence of some of the exploits that we all partake in at the world's greatest bar, Veet's, right down there in Mobile, downtown Mobile. Love me some Veet's. So it's always a fun time down there. What's always fun about getting together at Veet's is it's basically like your entire timeline, just sitting at a table drinking beers and talking football. It's kind of fun, not going to lie.

It really is. And when you can do it and you look around and there's like the general manager of the Oakland Raiders and hey, there's the general manager of the Seattle Seahawks. And oh my God, these are some other people I know from the timeline. It's a fun little experience. And I do always look forward to Mobile and I look forward to heading back down there again because let's face it, Patriots might be drafting a quarterback and they're going to be drafting people anyway. And had I been paying more and more and more attention to Juwan Bentley, maybe I could have been ahead of the curve on that one, but I digress. Bill's first question though, what quarterbacks are you expecting and hoping to see in Mobile

for the senior bowl? Well, here's kind of where I'm at on the senior group of quarterbacks. Here's kind of the eight that I'm expecting to see down there right now. Ryan Finley from NC State, Drew Locke from Missouri, Jake Brownen from University of Washington, Will Greer, West Virginia. I kind of look at that. I mean, I think, okay, well, we could probably flip two of these guys. And then the other guys, Brett Rippon, Clayton Thorson,

Trace McSorley, Easton Stick. Okay, so you're probably going to have to flip two of these guys. And then the other guys, Brett Rippon, Clayton Thorson, Trace McSorley, Easton Stick. So you're probably going to have to flip some of those guys around. Those are the eight I'm expecting. I think Easton Stick sort of gets in there. McSorley's going to get in there. Trent Dilfer seems to be high on him. He was talking about him recently. I think he's going to find a way to get invited.

Thorson, I think, is probably a good bet for it. I'm dying to see Brett Rippon there. I might want to reach out to some people I know and see if he's been talked to about that. I'm very curious to see if he gets an invite. I think he's earned one. I think Finley, Locke, Browning, and Greer are probably quote-unquote Locke's for it. The next four I'm not as confident in, but those are the ones I'm expecting to see. If it were me, I would love to see a Taron Christian from South Dakota State or a Devlin Hodges from Sanford, who is probably not NFL size, the kid from Sanford, but the kid just, I don't know, something about him is fun. I would love to see him, if not at

the Senior Bowl, perhaps in an East-West Shrine type invite. But those are some of the quarterbacks I'm expecting to see down there. And I think what we saw last year with Josh Allen and Baker Mayfield going, I think it helped both of those players. And so I think we are going to see more and more, you know, top type quarterbacks accepting that invite. And for some of these guys who are more bubble type guys, I think you got to go. You know, you got to go. You got to compete. You got to show that you want to do stuff like this. You got to show that you're not afraid of the moment. Don't go

hide for a couple of months and then come out, reemerge around the calm line. Go down to the senior bowl, go to Mobile, compete. It's a week-long job interview, and you can really sort of help yourself there. The other thing I want to talk about here, this is Take Thursday, and I saw a take on the timeline that I had to address just for a moment, and it's that NFL scouts, again it's we're already into an anonymous scout season god i love anonymous scout season oh it's so great it's just as good as screenshots scouted and we're seeing takes such as this nfl scouts already believe that justin it's better than any of the quarterbacks in the 2018 class. And my, my, my. It reminds me again of a piece that I wrote years ago that I always come back to. Development is not linear and the grass is always greener on the other side. And it was basically written about the 2017 class and how

people were already looking ahead to 2018 saying, oh, that's going to be better. And you might want to make the case. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, who knows, but there's always this, oh, look, you know, here, whatever, but whatever's coming is even better. And this is just a sort of variation of that idea is that, yeah, we just saw, you know, five quarterbacks go in the first round, whatever, But, oh, this kid, this next kid, he's even better. And part of that you wonder is that sort of an anonymous giant scout or source kind of, don't worry, we had a plan in place. Herbert might not come out. That's problem number one with that take. Yes. Do I think he's established himself right now as QB1? Yes.

Do I think that could change? Maybe, but right now, I doubt it. But still, would I take him over some of the other guys that we just saw come out? Would I take him over Rosen? I'm not so sure. Would I take him over Baker Mayfield? I'm not so sure. You know, so to say that it's like definitive that he's better than this group we just saw,

I wouldn't go that far. But this is what always happens. People always get so excited about, you know, what's down the road. They miss what was right there in front of them. And what we're seeing right now is a pretty decent crop of rookie quarterbacks that a couple weeks ago was 4-0 as rookies starting. And so let's kind of slow the horses. You know, we heard this a lot from Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth. Bill Parcells saying, put away the anointing oil.

I think you could apply that to Justin Herbert right now as well. You can anoint him as QB1. I'm fine with that. But let's kind of slow our roll when we look at comparing him to other classes. But that will do it for today's Take Thursday installment of Locked On Patriots. Reminder, check out all the episodes that we've been doing over here at Locked On Patriots. Tell your friends. Look, closing in on 100 reviews.

The numbers have been great, but please keep telling friends. Spread the word. Spread the gospel. Get involved over at the Locked On Patriots Slack channel. That's another way to keep tabs on what we've got going on, what we're going to be doing next. Speaking of next, tomorrow, I have our game day edition. I'm going to have my thoughts, my tape stuff on the Chicago Bears, what to expect from them.

And then don't forget, Sunday, Sunday morning tailgate. We're going to have last-minute injury news and notes, some DFS recommendations. Had a couple of good recommendations last week. Kind of excited about that, to revisit those. As well as a recap of what's going to be the Saturday action on the gridiron down at the collegiate level. We'll probably talk about some of the quarterbacks we were just talking about. So those are the next couple of days.

Until next time, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.