Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots - October 22, 2019: New England GhostBusters

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

The New England Patriots defense was so fearsome on Monday night, it had its opponent believing that he was indeed ‘seeing ghosts.’ As a result, the Patriots easily defeated the New York Jets 33-0 at MetLife Stadium to improve to 7-0 on the regular season. Join host Mike D’Abate as he breaks down the Pats dominant victory, and also discusses the Patriots acquisition of wide receiver Mohamed Sanu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello to all you Foxborough faithful, and welcome to your Victory Tuesday episode of Locked On Patriots, your daily home for news, notes, analysis, and the occasional opinion on your six-time Super Bowl champions, the New England Patriots. This episode is brought to you in part by Roman. The folks at Roman, a men's health company, are changing the game with Roman Swipes, the secret to lasting longer beneath the sheets. Get $10 off your first order of swipes and free two-day shipping at GetRoman.com slash LockedOnNFL. My name is Mike DeBate, and I am your host of LockedOn Patriots,

which, of course, is a part of the LockedOn Podcast Network. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter at MDABATEFPC, and be sure to follow LockedOn Patriots on Twitter as well at LO underscore Patriots. Monday night football, folks. And for the New York Jets, there was something strange in the Meadowlands neighborhood last night. Something weird, and it didn't look good. Well, Adam Gaze, who are you going to call? No, not the Ghostbusters, because even they can't contain this Patriots defense.

Not even if they cross the streams. They are their own supernatural containment unit, and not even Walter Peck and his court order can shut them down. Have I inspired you to watch Ghostbusters yet? If so, I'm glad. It's a great comedy, so appropriate for this time of year. Hopefully you've seen it, but if you haven't, check out the original Ghostbusters. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, the late great Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson. I could go on and on. Great stuff. I highly recommend it. But we're not here to talk movies, right? We're here to talk Patriots football and

the Patriots' dominant win over the New York Jets on Monday night. And I will break down last night's action, all the ins and outs in just a moment. But first, we start with some breaking news this morning, and your New England Patriots have acquired veteran wide receiver Mohamed Sanu from the Atlanta Falcons for a second round draft pick. ESPN's Adam Schefter was the first to break the story this morning. Now, a second rounder might be a steep price at first glance for Sanu, but Pats have been a rumored destination for Sanu for quite some time. He really is a prototypical patriot, and how you

may ask? Well, for starters, he played at Rutgers. You know Bill Belichick loves his Rutgers guys. Well, he also played with the McCourty brothers and current Pats assistant Steve Belichick, so you know there won't be that culture shock that some players have when they come to New England for the first time. He's got a pretty good synergy with the guys already in this locker room. That being said, on the football field, Sanu is solid. He's got 33 catches this year for 313 yards and a touchdown. He's caught at least 59 passes in each of his first three seasons with the Falcons. He immediately upgrades the wide receiver core and gives Tom Brady that big target that so many have been clamoring for him to get. But Falcons fans can tell you, catching the ball is not the only

thing that Sanu can do, and this is such a Bill Belichick move, folks. Unreal. He's also thrown touchdown passes in the last two seasons and has thrown for four touchdowns over the course of a career that has started in 2012. That type of versatility is always prized in New England. You know that Josh McDaniels, especially Tom Brady, those guys are not afraid to throw in a trick play every now and then. And Sanu gives that versatility. So he won't be utilized all the time in that role, but it's always something for teams to give in the back of their head.

And no one plays the mind games quite like the hoodie, folks. And he did it again with this one. All kidding aside, with Mohamed Sanu, great addition to this New England Patriots wide receiver core. He's a consistent, reliable target, and he will bring stability to a unit that's had a lot of players on and off the roster at various points this year, and for those of you that think that the second round pick was a little bit too high of a price to give up, I get it. Second rounders are definitely prime real estate when it comes to draft capital. But one of the reasons why the Patriots might have been so comfortable in giving up that second rounder is that Sanu's contract extends through the 2020 season. And Mike Reese wrote about this on ESPN.com this morning. The

Patriots will pay Sanu a prorated portion of his $6 million base salary in 2019. Sanu is scheduled to earn a base salary of $6.5 million in 2020. Now, in terms of draft capital, the Patriots are also projected to receive two third-round compensatory draft picks in 2020. Those come from the free agency losses of Trey Flowers and Trent Brown. If that does unfold the way it's supposed to, the Patriots would have a first rounder and three third rounders on the first two days of the upcoming 2020 draft. So while the second rounder might be considered a lot, keep in mind a lot of other teams were interested in Sanu. They were offering third rounders. Patriots had to go that next level. They definitely targeted

him. They wanted him. And today he is a New England Patriot. And you can definitely bet that Tom Brady is a happy camper this morning, folks. He is going to love this edition. Already the two of them are tweeting back and forth. Hashtag LFG. It's a family show. I'm not going to get into what that means. You all know, we all know, and it means trouble for some of the opposing defenses that the New England Patriots will be facing. But welcoming Mohamed Sanu to New England was not the only good piece of news that Patriots fans are waking up to on this Tuesday morning. With little more than a week remaining until Halloween, the New England Patriots defense delivered a message of paranormal reckoning to the rest of the NFL.

And yes, folks, that's why I opened the show today with some Ghostbusters quotes. That message is simple. Their self-professed boogeyman moniker? Not an exaggeration, everyone. In fact, this is a fearsome collection of defenders, and they even had their opponent last night believing that he was indeed seeing ghosts. Get it now? Kind of figured you did. And yes, even though it's hard to believe, Sam Darnold actually told his coaching staff that he felt like he was seeing ghosts. Not a good night for the second-year quarterback to be mic'd up, but all in all, just not a good night in general for Sam Darnold.

New England continued their reign of terror over their opponents. They forced Sam Darnold into five turnovers, four of them interceptions. As a result, the Patriots easily defeated the New York Jets 33-0 on Monday night at MetLife Stadium. It was New England's second shutout this season after winning 43-0 in Miami in Week 2. The Patriots' defense just continued to show why they're tops in the league. They blitzed Darnold early, and they blitzed him often. Throughout the game, he just looked confused, and he looked overmatched. And look, this is a second game back from a bout with mononucleosis.

And Darn Donald has to shoulder the blame for his poor play last night without question. But his offensive line also did not give him much to work with either. He never looked like he had any comfort, could never get into a rhythm. And the whole seeing ghosts thing, well, he had linebackers and defensive ends swarming at him all over the field. and it's understandable why he would have made a comment like that. Obviously, it was figurative, not literal, but social media had a blast with hearing, seeing ghosts. You saw it all over the place last night,

and it also allowed me the opportunity to do one of my favorite things, and that's quote classic movies. So, I appreciate you indulging me in that. You put up with a lot, and I really do appreciate it. But getting back to the Patriots' defense, they really forced Sam Darnold into making a lot of bad, and I think it's sometimes really cringeworthy, throws. Once again, Darnold threw four interceptions in this game. Devin McCourty, Deron Harmon, Stephon Gilmore, and former Jet Terrence Brooks all took their turns

in picking him off last night. If that wasn't bad enough, Darnold also lost a fumble on a sack, and later knocked an errant snap out of the back of the end zone for a safety. So all in all, a game that I think Sam Donald is going to want to forget. Talk about burying the game ball. Would not be surprised if he's doing that today. The young Jets quarterback will not be remembering this one fondly in his golden years, folks. That's for sure. Now on the offensive side of the ball, the Patriots might have been less than perfect, but they were effective. Tom Brady set the tone with a 16-play surgical touchdown drive to open the game, and I think really, really established what the Patriots wanted to do very

early on. They lost the coin toss, the Jets deferred, Patriots got the ball and made the Jets pay for that decision. Running back Sonny Michel concluded the drive, rushing in for his first of three rushing touchdowns on the day. First time Sonny has done that in a regular season game in his career, so congratulations to him on that feat. As for Tom, he finished the night going 31-45 for 249 yards, one touchdown, one interception. The interception wasn't so pretty, but he was hit on the arm. It did throw off his throwing motion, and pretty, but he was hit on the arm. It did throw off his

throwing motion, and listen, he got hammered on the play. So before you buy into the National Hot Take Media machine, who we all know are going to try to use that as evidence of, quote-unquote, the cliff, call it for what it was, it was simply a bad moment. On the other hand, Brady's lone touchdown pass was really a sight to behold. A perfectly placed 26-yard dime to Philip Dorsett in the end zone, and without question, the highlight of the night. But this one, from the opening kickoff to the final knee, never had a chance of being competitive. Brady would actually leave the game with 2.55 left. Chance of Brady, Brady from the Patriots fans in attendance at MetLife Stadium. Amazing that in a stadium where Brady is so hated,

he heard his own name being chanted as the game was over. Patriots, again, taking over an opposing team stadium. We're seeing a trend here, folks, in this, and it's a trend that if you're a Patriots fan, you'll love every minute of it. And with this victory, the Patriots improved to 7-0 for the first time since 2015. It's only the third time in franchise history that they've been 7-0 as well. They also swept the two-game season series against the Jets for the fourth straight year. In their two meetings this year, the Pats outscored the Jets 63-14. And the 14 of those points came in Foxborough. Amazing, amazing stuff. And look, I will be the first to admit that I definitely bought into the Jets hype,

especially after seeing how well they played against the Cowboys in week six. I expected them to come in much more formidable. C.J. Mosley, I believed, was going to have a big impact on the Jets defense. Quinnen Williams being active. I expected Sam Darnold to be much more effective. Le'Veon Bell have an easier time to run the football. I predicted a 20-17 victory for the Pats. Didn't end up working out that way.

And again, it's a testament to how well this team is prepared and how well they come in and shut down what the opposing team does well. A lot of people are going to use a victory like this against the Patriots. They're going to constantly point out the fact that they're playing in a weak division. They're playing lesser opponents. To that, I say, ridiculous. They are playing NFL teams here, folks. These are NFL caliber players. The Patriots are not squeaking by lesser competition, quote unquote. They're destroying their competition. They're doing what they need to do. They're playing the teams on their schedule, and they're racking up victories. Defense has already posted two shutouts. We're not even at the halfway point in the season yet,

folks. Offensively, they put up more points than any other team in the league. So for an offense that is being labeled as anemic, pathetic, not Super Bowl caliber, the worst 6-0 or 7-0 teams that I've ever seen, use your eyes and use your common sense just for a minute, and you might be surprised to see that this New England Patriots team is a well-deserving 7-0 team. They are formidable. No one is suggesting that they don't have any flaws or even some weaknesses, and we may see teams come in and be able to exploit that. But to lessen what this team has been able to do, simply because you look at a win-loss column, one line item, and a post-game box score and make the determination that, oh, well, they haven't played anyone, they have absolutely obliterated their competition.

Their only exception was the Buffalo Bills. And let me tell you, folks, that is a formidable team. Right now, I would say they're a top five team in the NFL. So certainly a legitimate challenge for the Patriots. And oh, yeah, what division do they happen to play in? That's right, the AFC East. So the Patriots remain only one of two unbeaten teams left in the NFL, the other being the San Francisco 49ers.

And now, next up, they come back home to Gillette Stadium and they will welcome Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns to Foxborough. The two teams will face off at 425 this Sunday, October 27th at Gillette Stadium. That one will be an exciting one, folks. I know the Cleveland Browns record is not what everyone expected. Team is not playing up to the hype it received prior to the season, but there's still a lot of talent on both sides of the ball in this one, and this could end up being a great matchup in Foxborough on Sunday. But before we officially move on to Cleveland for Sunday's game, I just wanted to give my final thoughts on the Patriots' victory over the Jets last night on Monday Night Football.

And I probably started to tip my hand a little bit about what some of my observations were and my biggest takeaways from the game last night. But my first takeaway might actually surprise some people, and that is I was pretty impressed with what I saw from the Patriots offensively last night, but my first takeaway might actually surprise some people, and that is I was pretty impressed with what I saw from the Patriots offensively last night. The defense always gets a lot of credit for their prowess on third down. They're the best in the league at being able to stop teams from converting on third down, and that is very well deserved, and I'll get to the defense in just a minute, but what the offense showed me last night is that they are able to convert on third down themselves, and it started with the first drive of the game. The Patriots converted four big first downs last night,

one of which was the touchdown run for Sonny Michel. However, it started earlier on. Their first third down conversion came at about the 12-minute mark of last night's game. It was third and seven at the New York Jets 49, and Tom Brady found Jacoby Myers for a nine-yard gain and for everyone that tries to push the narrative that Tom Brady doesn't like to go to rookie or young wide receivers if he's going to you on third down folks that shows he's got some confidence in you so that's a relationship between quarterback and wide receiver that I would keep a sharp eye on going forward the second happened just a couple of minutes later at the 95.59 mark. This was a third and 10 conversion, and once again, Tom Brady finds good old reliable Julian Edelman. This was a 14-yard gain. It advanced the Patriots to the

New York Jets 26-yard line, but they weren't done yet. With 8.14 left in the first quarter from the shotgun, Brady finds old friend Benjamin Watson for 11 yards and the third down conversion, which was a third and five at the Jets 21. It was great to see Benjamin Watson get back into the swing of things, especially after the first pass that Brady threw him, hit him in the face. Yeah, everybody had a pretty good laugh out of it, but Watson ended up turning in a solid game and does show that the Patriots will be able to get some production out of the tight end position.

So he was a welcome back addition, and I know Tom was definitely happy to have him back. And last but certainly not least, third and two at the end of the drive, Sonny Michel pushes it in from the New York Jets. Three, two-yard run, and the Patriots establish a 7-0 lead right off the bat. Again, and I said it before, the Jets won the coin toss, deferred to the second half. Understandable. Most teams do that, and I get the strategy. But the Patriots set out with the intention of making them pay for that decision, and

they did that on the opening drive. From that point on, the Jets were on their heels, and you're already staking a very formidable defense with a 7-0 lead at that point. But the defense wasn't about to let the offense have all the fun here, folks. And that's my second takeaway from this game, is the defense constantly putting pressure on the opposing quarterback. And they did that right off the bat in their opening drive. And the Jets came into this one with a lot of confidence.

They were riding a pretty good high from their victory over the Cowboys. Sam Donald was talking about, quote-unquote, finding the weaknesses in the Patriots' defense. Yeah, that didn't work out quite so well for them. The Jets' first possession took just two plays for the defense to force the first turnover of the night, one of six in total turnovers for the Jets. On second and eight from the 10-yard line,

the Patriots overloaded a blitz on the right side, and Donald was under pressure, lobbed the pass up too high. That was easily picked off by Devin McCourty, and right then and there, it set the tone. The Patriots might not have been the home team last night, but they were going to treat MetLife Stadium like it was their own house, and that's exactly what they did. Scoring on their first possession, getting a turnover on their first defensive possession, and at that point, the Jets, quite frankly, just did not have a chance in this one, folks. Another takeaway from the game last night, folks, and listen, because of Sam Donald's comments about seeing ghosts and everything, people are going to think that the Patriots

are devising these incredibly complex schemes to be able to confuse quarterbacks and do things that we haven't seen on a football field anymore. Quite honestly, what they did on defense was simple in its plan, but brilliant in its execution. And I did steal that line from my good friend Steve Balistrieri at Patsfans.com, but I thought it was so perfect, especially to describe what the Patriots did, not only last night, but really what they've been doing for the season all along. Quite simply, they attacked the Jets' offensive line,

and they've been doing this to a lot of offensive lines that they've faced. And what that does is it allows the linebackers to be able to run free and get after the passer. And we saw this with Darnold last night. It forced him to throw off of his back foot all game long. When they tried to adjust to that, and they really didn't do a very good job of it, but when they did try to adjust,

the Patriots' defense would then show blitz and then drop seven into coverage and it would give Sam Donald no way to throw the ball so essentially what they're doing again sounds very elementary but they're taking what you do well and they're just not allowing you to do it and this has been a hallmark of a Bill Belichick coach defense going back to his days with the Giants going back to the early days of the Patriots dynasty. It's simply what they do, and you're seeing it executed at one of the highest levels this year, and that's because of the level of talent they're able to inject into the personnel groupings this year. And my final takeaway from the game last night is that this Patriots secondary just

continues to wow me. And for lack of a better term, I can't think of any way to more adequately describe what I feel when I watch the secondary than the word wow. Stephon Gilmore, with all due respect to some of the great cornerbacks in the league, I believe is playing at the highest level of any of them right now currently in the NFL. Robbie Anderson had a great game against Dallas. He was essentially a non-factor in this game. And that begins and ends with Stephon Gilmore.

Anderson had one catch for 10 yards, targeted only eight times. Gilmore did have one of the Patriots' interceptions, and he also helped J.C. Jackson in coverage with being able to shut down Demarius Thomas. And I said yesterday on the podcast that the Patriots did not want Thomas to be able to hurt them, especially after some of the chirping he did earlier in the week about considering the Patriots having played him dirty and that the time that he spent in New England was quote-unquote a waste of time. Well, Thomas really wasn't much of a factor in this game either. He was only targeted nine times, had just three catches for 42 yards, and a big reason

for that was because of the play of the secondary, primarily the corners of Gilmore and Jackson. And look, they actually had to play through a little adversity last night. And no, I'm not talking about the Jets offense. I'm talking about all the flags that were being thrown around. We all saw them. A lot of them were questionable, I guess is the best way for me to put it. But the Patriots showed tremendous poise. They didn't get frustrated.

They remained focused on the task at hand and continued to play lockdown defense. And that is a hallmark of a well-coached, well-oiled machine. And that's exactly what this Patriots defense is. Again, I open the show by saying the boogeyman moniker wasn't an exaggeration. It's not, folks. These guys are for real. And they're going to be there all season long. And that's bad news for a lot of the opposing offenses that the Patriots are going to be

facing in the coming weeks. So as we put the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets in the rearview mirror and now move on to the Cleveland Browns this coming week, I know all you Pats fans are excited about the 7-0 start and you should be. Enjoy it. Some of the biggest games the Pats have on the schedule are yet to be played. Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, playing them all, folks, coming up in the next couple of months.

Don't sleep on this Cleveland Browns game. There is still, again, a lot of talent on both sides of the ball, and this one could end up getting interesting. And joining me tomorrow to preview this Sunday afternoon matchup with the Browns is Jeff Lloyd, host of Locked On Browns, who puts on a phenomenal show. And it is crossover Wednesday here on the Locked On Podcast Network. So stay tuned.

That will be a fun one. As always, be sure to join me here each and every day on the Locked On Podcast Network for Locked On Patriots. Subscribe to Locked On Patriots via your favorite podcast provider. Once again, I'm Mike DeBate. I thank you so much for listening today. Have a great day, everybody.