Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - LOCKED ON PATRIOTS - Sept. 1, 2016 - Highlighting the final roster spots up for grabs as Pats close preseason vs. Giants

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

The Boston Herald's Jeff Howe discusses each of the final jobs that remain up for grabs a couple days before the Patriots cut to 53 players. Here's everyone you need to watch during the preseason finale against the Giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, it's Jamie, Progressive number one, number two employee. Leave a message at the... Hey Jamie, it's me, Jamie. This is your daily pep talk. I know it's been rough going ever since people found out about your acapella group, Mad Harmony, but you will bounce back. I mean, you're the guy always helping people find coverage options with the Name Your Price tool. It should be you giving me the pep talk.

Now get out there, hit that high note, and take Mad Harmony all the way to nationals this year! Sorry, it's pitchy. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. What's up, everybody? This is Locked on Patriots. I'm your host, Jeff Howe, and this is your show for Thursday, September 1st. Already flipping into the first month of the NFL season on the calendar. And today's podcast is brought to you by SeatGeek, which is making it easier than ever for fans to buy and sell tickets on the internet. So I'll get you guys a special promo code for SeatGeek in a few minutes on the podcast here. First, I just want you to know, in case you're sitting there worried about me,

maybe I sound a little different to you, I'm battling through a pretty tough cold right now i'm not gonna lie i'm gonna try to uh not spread my germs through the podcast but i can't promise you the world i'm gonna fight through it it's tough i've got a box of tissues next to me i've got my thumb on the mute button on the microphone so i'll try not to disgust you too too much but this is an important show the Patriots are playing their final preseason game Thursday night against the Giants and with that in mind as you guys are getting ready to watch that game I want to highlight the position battles that are still up for grabs you know we could talk about the

quarterbacks but I mean what's there more to really be said nobody I'd imagine wants Tom Brady to play tonight I would imagine that if you want Jimmy Garoppolo to play it's probably not for more than a couple series so it's more likely than not going to be the Jacoby Brissett show there's the quarterback storyline there's no need to go on and on and on for 20 minutes about that I've hit on the quarterbacks quite a bit, especially on Monday's podcast. They're all archived on Audioboom, on iTunes, on my Twitter account, at JeffPHow. So go check them out if you want to catch up this week. But again, I want to get to the roster battles. The guys who are going through, you know, maybe the 43rd through the 53rd spot right now, still got a job up for grabs,

seeing if maybe they can pull off a little bit more tonight in the preseason finale to impress Bill Belichick and company in order to get one of those jobs. So we'll start on the offensive side of the ball. Seems like a logical place to start, doesn't it? We'll go with the running backs. Now again, not much has really changed my opinion over the last week. I still believe that LeGarrette Blount, James White, and Brandon Bolden are secure in the running back spot. I still think that James Devlin,

as a fullback, is going to be on the roster because he adds more power to the running game than a hybrid player would. And that means, what do the Patriots do from here? Now I'm going to discount Devlin for the rest of this running back segment, just because I want to discuss the actual running backs, the guys who are going to be carrying the football. So that gives you three of them with Blunt, White, and Bolden. Do the Patriots want to carry four? I usually think that four is the magic number that you want to go into the season with. So that means Tyler Gaffney and DJ Foster are the two guys who are probably battling for one spot. Now again, Tyler Gaffney has gotten a lot of hype over the course of the preseason. I've been one who's tried to temper that hype. I think he is, although he looked better against the Panthers,

he had a little more burst against the Panthers than I remembered seeing in the first two preseason games. We still don't know a lot about Tyler Gaffney because he had never made it past August 1st in his first two NFL seasons. So this is uncharted territory for him. Maybe he's a guy who can continue to get better over the course of the season. Clearly, he's a guy who is going to get better with his reads and instincts and everything like that over the course of the season because he's never played in one. So yeah, you could still continue to see him improve over the course of the year if he makes the team.

But if it is him, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the Patriots carry him on the initial 53, and then there's a scenario where another running back gets cut, maybe it's like a Ronnie Hillman, and the Patriots say, hey, I like that guy better, put a claim on Hillman, or maybe Hillman gets into free agency, they try to pick him up, and then end up switching him out for Gaffney, or switching Gaffney out for Hillman, or whatever running back it happens to be. I like Hillman, so that's why I used him as an example. But DJ Foster is another guy. Got a handful of reps last week against the Panthers, late in the

fourth quarter mostly, and looked good. But we have to see more. That was his first preseason action. The undrafted rookie has some nice moves. He's got some good sizzle to his game, and really electric in space you saw that the Patriots tried to suit his strengths by calling the design screens and swing passes again to get him the ball in space to get him moving to allow him to use his speed this figures to be a game where DJ Foster and Tyler Gaffney are going to get a lot of reps. I think that Foster, excuse me, there's the cold talking. I think that Foster is the type of guy who if he puts some highlights on film, he's going to be tough to sneak onto the practice squad because teams

are going to be interested in his talent. Because again, he's got that shake. I don't want to compare him to Deion Lewis, but he's more Deion Lewis than Brandon Bolden. So it's tougher to get a guy like that onto the practice squad. Gaffney, I think because he's more of a downhill runner and isn't a huge bodied guy. He's listed at 230, but he's certainly no LeGarrette Blount. So what do you do? I think Gaffney ultimately is a guy that you can probably get onto the practice squad because there's going to be so many running

backs hitting the waiver wire in the coming days that you know he's one that you might not look at and say all right well yeah he was a mid-round pick a couple years ago or a low round pick a couple years ago but wasn't necessarily jumping off the charts in any sort of area so he could be a guy that teams could allow to get through waivers and onto the practice squad so we'll see i mean that's why it's important for those two guys to have a big game and i think if dj foster has a big night against the giants he could probably overtake gaffney with one good performance now i mentioned that this episode is sponsored by SeatGeek. Buying tickets online for sports and concerts has been a confusing process for a long time. It's always been hard

to find the best deal for that game or show that you want to go to. None of those older ticket sites want to change that, but SeatGeek is different. They've come along and created an amazing app and website that makes it easier than ever for fans to buy and sell tickets now i was trying to figure out what was coming up in the next week in boston the red sox have another one of their six-week road trips it seems you know those guys are always out there on the road but because seat geek has such affordable pricing i figured hey you know what when the red sox come back into town you can go see yourself a nice little seven-inning ball game and escape Fenway Park before things go off the rails with that horrendous bullpen, or at least the horrendous management of that bullpen by one John Farrell.

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Again, you want to go see seven ninths of the game you're probably paying seven ninths for the ticket so you're good there now best of all my listeners get a 20 rebate off their first seat geek purchase now to get that 20 rebate on tickets you download the seat geek app and i've told you guys every time i've told you about seat geek i am uh very technologically deficient when with my talents here and I was able to figure this part out. Now, you download the SeatGeek app. You go to the Settings tab, and you click Add a Promo Code. Now, enter that promo code.

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enter that promo code LOPatriots today. Now let's get back to the position battles. The next one, going to combine the tight ends and the wide receivers. We'll start off with the wide receivers, which is, you know, an interesting spot, spot of course because we're still not entirely sure what's going to happen with Danny Amendola he is the only guy remaining on the active pup list they've already put Sebastian Vollmer, Deion Lewis, and Trey Jackson on the reserve pup list to rule them out for the first six weeks of the season so that tells me clearly the Patriots have not yet made a decision on Danny Amendola which I've been telling you for the last week, but now it's almost decision time. The Patriots have to make that call by Saturday at 4 o'clock with the rest of those roster cuts. you're one and two and that's a good one two punch to have then you've got Malcolm Mitchell if he is all the way back in time for the regular season opener he was out there Tuesday in the red non

contact jersey so it's a good sign that he's participating but he's still not cleared for contact so that elbow is still a concern not a huge concern because that initial timetable was four weeks and that puts him a couple days before the regular season opener against the Cardinals but he would be your third receiver Keyshawn Martin would be your fourth receiver he's back in practice now looks like he's a full go so if they want to keep five or let's say Malcolm Mitchell isn't ready for week one and you need to keep I guess now we have to call it a fourth if Keyshawn Martin's your third guy. What do they do? Do they keep Aaron Dobson? Do they keep DeAndre Carter? Do they keep Chris Harper? Do they keep two of those guys? They certainly aren't keeping all three,

but went into camp thinking that one of those guys, Dobson specifically really, had a chance as the sixth receiver if he played well enough he's tapered off over the last handful of weeks and I think when they when they've got a healthy five receivers and Dobson's the odd man out they're all three of those guys really so there was an interesting report from Albert Breer who's now a Monday morning quarterback, on what day of the week are we in? Tuesday. He said that the Patriots are actively shopping Aaron Dobson, trying to see if there are any takers. It makes a lot of sense because, in my view, the Patriots look at Aaron Dobson on the same plane as Harper and Carter.

So if they end up moving on from Dobson, if they're able to trade him for anything, then you're not downgrading your talent if you end up keeping Harper or Carter on the active roster. At least that's how the Patriots view it. And Dobson's more tradable because he was a second-round pick, where Harper and Carter were undrafted guys or have much lesser reputations. They're smaller guys. Dobson's taller. Looks like more of a prototypical outside receiver. Now, that's not to say teams aren't going to look at the Patriots and say,

well, we know why you're trying to trade him. It's because you're thinking about cutting him. So it's not like they're going to get a whole lot for him. You're talking about a conditional seven if you get anything for Dobson in a trade. But again, that report just tells you or validates the fact that they look at Dobson, Carter, and Harper on the same page. The Patriots want all three of them to play as well as possible against the Giants because that opens up the potential to trade one of them or maybe two of them. Who knows? If the Patriots can swing a trade for those guys, I think they'd jump at it because they have less than a full deck of picks in the 2017 draft right now.

So that's what they're looking at at receiver. It's possible that one of those guys makes the cut. It might only be a temporary thing. They might not be around for the full season. But that's okay because they've got the depth there. And I think probably Carter and Harper are fine to go through waivers and stick on the practice squad. Harper was able to do that a couple times during his rookie season in 2015. Then you look at tight end, and A.J. Derby is impressive,

and I'm pretty sure he's locked into the roster. He had a down game against the Panthers, but Clay Harbor didn't come out and take that job away from him against the Panthers. So the question is, are the Patriots going to bite the bullet on Harbor and that $400,000 signing bonus they gave him this offseason? They haven't been shy from cutting bait with guaranteed money so far this offseason or the last week and a half with getting rid of Knighton and the $350,000 in bonus money that they've given him this offseason, Donald Brown

and $300,000 in guaranteed money they've given him. So I don't think they'd be bashful in getting rid of Harbor. But, you know, you wonder, will they look at, I mentioned the plane of Dobson, Carter, and Harper. Does Clay Harbor get included in that too? Well, the Patriots, you know, normally you say, all right, you want to keep five receivers and three the Patriots, you know, normally you say, all right, you want to keep five receivers and three tight ends. Would they keep, let's say, four healthy receivers and four tight ends if they think that Harbor is an upgrade over Dobson, Harper, or Carter? So all stuff to kind of keep in mind there, but I think Devlin, what I mentioned earlier in camp, I wasn't sure if I needed to include him as a running back or as a tight end.

Just in terms of roster projections, I think he's safe. He should be okay at this point. Move over to the offensive line. And at right guard, I think, you know, I mentioned going into last week's game against the Panthers that Ted Karras was either going to be the last guy in or the first 1-0. He had a tough night. So I think you probably at this point look at Karras as a practice squad guy. Jonathan Cooper is back at practice on a very limited basis after missing a month with a foot injury. Not entirely

sure what the Patriots can expect out of him, but I would think that because he's back you probably keep him around and I was told Josh Klein's shoulder isn't a big deal uh it's fine actually apparently so the the cause for concern that I think we had while watching him against the Bears isn't that big of a deal after all but Shaq Mason still coming back from a broken right hand he has been out there at practice it's just it's a total unknown there we'd be completely guessing if we were saying all right well you know what some guys have played with the broken hand had been fine you look at J.J. Watt had a tough time with a broken hand last year playing with the club on his hand Justin Coleman had a tough I'm not comparing Watt and Coleman, but Watt had a tough time. The Patriots really handled him during that first game back from

breaking his hand. Justin Coleman couldn't really adapt to playing with the club or the cast on his hand last season. So they had to pull him out of the game day roster for a couple of weeks. So it's tough for some players to do. And it's the Patriots just have to test or stress Mason as much as possible in practice to see if they believe he's comfortable enough to be the starting right guard week one in Arizona. And then you look at tackle, where the Patriots have Nate Solder, who's an obvious lock. Marcus Cannon, who's had two clean games in a row now, is a lock. Adrian Waddell should be a lock and then Cameron Fleming's the fourth tackle hasn't done anything overly impressive at any point this preseason I think the Patriots should probably be fine to keep three tackles there

and unless they have this grand plan for Fleming or if they just don't think that Adrian Waddell can play right tackle in the event that Marcus Cannon goes down. I don't know why they would think that, because he's played right tackle in the past, but I've only seen him on the left side this summer. If they believe that Waddell can only play left tackle, or they only want him to play left tackle, then Fleming's going to be on the roster. Otherwise, you cut Fleming because he's going to be fine. He'll go through waivers, and you can keep him on the practice squad

or on the, you know, close by on speed dial. So not too, too much to really discuss there with the offensive line. I think that's pretty set and it's all about philosophy and who they'd like to keep. The cornerback, I spent the entire show on Wednesday discussing the cornerback. So I'm just going to go through this one real quickly. If you missed Wednesday's show, I had a great story about Brandon Browner and Darrell Rivas from 2014. I discussed why Browner shouldn't be a fit to return to the Patriots this season. And then I really broke down a lot of the stuff with the young guys, Cravon LeBlanc, Jonathan Jones, and Darrell Roberts.

So I'm just going to focus real quickly on LeBlanc, Jonathan Jones, and Darl Roberts, who I think are battling for one spot. Jonathan Jones is a good special teamer, has shown it. How much do they need another good special teamer as the fifth cornerback when you've already got Nate Ebner, Brandon King, Brandon Bolden, and of course Matthew Slater? You know, I'm not sure. When you've got Craven LeBlancanc who I think is the better cornerback uh between him and Jones and then Daryl Roberts I think is probably the second best cornerback

out of that group but there is a wild card here now Craven LeBlanc missed Tuesday's practice with a minor hip injury but we have seen players get put on IR for less at this time of year than various teams because teams don't want to expose that player to waivers and potentially lose him. So we'll see what happens with LeBlanc in the coming days. But that's a huge wild card right here. Remember Jeff Demps from a few years ago tweaked his hamstring, wound up on IR. There are a bunch of different examples like that. So we'll see. It's a really interesting spot in the roster because the Patriots got, I think, more competition

than they actually realized they were going to get because LeBlanc and Jones played so well. And Daryl Roberts came back from a slow start to training camp and really turned it on in the preseason. So he's kind of forcing their hand a bit too you know teams can't find enough good corners so who knows if they would be able to keep any of those guys if they put them on waivers and try to get them on the practice squad so a tough call for those guys to make in the coming days at cornerback now we'll go to the front seven linebacker real quick and you got to include Brandon King there I guess because he's a linebacker but he's so good on special teams I can't imagine he's going anywhere Hightower Collins and Freeney are locked and then what do you do from there you've got a Landon Roberts who had some really nice

moments and definitely had some rookie moments against the Panthers last week was able to start filled the gaps really well uh definitely got toward the line you know he missed some tackles he missed a gap at one point allowed a a mid-range run so he's not a perfect player he's not a guy that you would say all right if if you would play him over freeney or anything like that but a nice little player who i think is making a late charge to earn a spot on the roster camu grugier hill has really been the fourth corner fourth linebacker through most of training camp. And he's another rookie who has some good athleticism.

He's got good ball skills, too. He's around the ball a lot. He's not afraid to dive to break up a pass. He's active there. He's got good hands. Had some interceptions in training camp. And again, I think he's an interesting playmaker guy who has good athleticism and can be a factor on special teams too so he's not a big guy it's you know brandon king's bigger

than camus grugier hill so he's probably more of a niche player that you can use in sub packages not that there's anything wrong with that because subpackage linebackers are almost full-time players in some systems so if he can carve out a niche in that capacity not that the patriots are looking to take collins and hightower off the field at any point but in the event that they go down those guys had injury issues last year so it's good to have depth and young depth and athletic depth and that's what they have there so i wonder if they're going to be able to keep both grugier hill and roberts but if those guys are battling for one job it really comes down to what the patriots want do you want a guy who can

potentially play on early downs like roberts or later downs like grugier hill so it's kind of a fascinating philosophy philosophical debate i'm sure the patriots are having or and will continue to have up until saturday's deadline both guys look like they've got some nice ability to play in a pinch i'm not saying they're going to be franchise caliber linebackers but they've got enough where you'd want to keep them in your system for a year or two and see how they develop then you go to the line which nothing has changed again at defensive tackle since Terrence Knighton got cut you've got Malcolm Brown and Vincent Valentine as locks I can't see a scenario where you cut Anthony Johnson unless he just you know really just

plays poorly against the Giants but he's been so good the last two weeks that you got to think that he's on the right track there has a chance to be a really good sub package defensive tackle who can get after the passer and kind of play in that Dominique Easley role after the Patriots moved on from him I'm not saying he's going to be as explosive or anything as like that as Easley was but you know you know how they used Easley A lot of times on third down or obvious passing situations and say, hey, get after the quarterback, cause some havoc up front. And when they're devoting, when offensive lines are devoting some of their attention to, or most of their attention to the quality edge guys and the linebackers the Patriots have, it frees up a guy like Anthony Johnson to get a lot of one-on-one matchups.

And if he's able to keep winning them, it's going to be a real valuable piece so I keep him no question about it and then you look at Alan Branch who again I can't he's got to be on the team he's he's one of those guys that all right if they were going to cut Branch which again I don't think was ever even discussed I don't think that alan branch was ever really in jeopardy of losing his job they do some weird things obviously in foxborough with these roster cuts there's always some surprises there already have been some surprises but i think branch is just fine if they were going to cut him like i've said a handful of times they would have done it a couple weeks ago when they just suspended him for a week.

Or he's the type of guy that they would cut on Tuesday when they trimmed down to 75 because you usually try to get rid of the veterans who were in trouble at that point as opposed to Saturday when you're trying to get rid of the young guys that you want to slip through the waiver system and then get into the practice squad.

Mostly because you just want to, you know, that's a time, that's more of a strategy where, you know, Bill Belichick will say, all right, every team is going from 75 to 53 on Saturday at 4 p.m. You know, give or take a few transactions. Some of these teams make their cuts on Friday. But the point remains you got 22 players times 32 teams and you're talking about several hundred players who are going to hit the waiver wire at once it makes it a lot more difficult a lot more stressful for front offices to look and say all right i like this player i like that player i want to claim

this player i want to claim that player so that's why you wait for your young guys if you're going to move on from them you want to do that on Saturday and that's why you usually see more of the veterans get cut on Tuesday so there are two chances now if the Patriots were going to cut Alan Branch I think they would have done it by now so I think he's a lock and that leaves Marcus Kuhn who I think really just hasn't done anything to really stick out I know Belichick loves him, but you know what? Belichick loved Donald Brown, and Belichick said really nice things about Terrence Knighton this week after cutting him.

Belichick likes guys that he ends up cutting. You know, it's the nature of the beast. And this is a team with a whole lot of talent from 1 to 53. And at this point, you could say it's got a whole lot of talent from 1 to even 65. So there are going to be some good players that they're going to have to get rid of and I'm not entirely sure Marcus Kuhn has done anything to definitely earn a job on the 53 man roster unless Anthony Johnson's surge has been so surprising that they're like all right well he's really the fifth defensive tackle and Kuhon was the fourth all along because they want to have enough bodies as possible to run that 3-4 defense so there's another spot

and then you look at the defensive edge where rob nikovich jabal sheared chris long and trey flowers because of his just fantastic summer four locks right there there. I guess you include Shane McClellan in the mix there. Barkevious Mingo. There's six edge players right there. How many can you realistically keep? That cuts out Geno Grissom and Rufus Johnson. But Geno Grissom is a valued special teamer once again. But again, another but, Geno Grissom got benched last year for blowing a punt block assignment in that loss to the Eagles a key play and you know how much does that filter over into now or into this season you know you can't hold that against a guy forever but again what how many of those edge players can you keep how many special teamers can you keep

do you want to give up on a third round pick after just a year and change so there's a lot the patriots have to decide when looking at grissom and how many of these guys they can realistically can't keep everybody so yeah if the patriots had a 57, 58 man roster right now, I think they'd be just fine, but that's not how things work. So that's where the Patriots are at. These are the guys I think you need to be looking at tonight when you watch the game. I mean, this fourth preseason game, it's easy to want to change the channel, but you know, check out who's out there, see who gets the most playing time, see who gets pulled early. That's usually a good sign. If the starters play, the starters are traveling.

Basically, it looks like with Brady and Edelman making the trip, if you're healthy, you're making the trip. I don't know if that necessarily means these guys are going to play, especially Brady, but they're not going to play for more than two series and I wouldn't think that's me guessing because based off patterns of almost every fourth preseason game in history so how much you're going to see a lot of backups and you know the game could look pretty damn sloppy at times on Thursday night but as you are looking at these roster battles and you know the guys who are battling for 42 through 45 45 through 53 whatever whatever the case may be

there's a lot of jobs on the line I'm not sure what the Patriots are going to do in the coming days they're definitely not going to practice on Friday. They might practice. They have practiced on Saturday of cut-down day in the past. And because Tom Brady's suspension kicks in Saturday at 4 p.m., they might be inclined to have just one more practice with him out there before he has to go away for four weeks. So basically these guys who are all battling for jobs,

they've got one more night left under the lights and then no more than one practice on saturday before bill belichick starts sending guys to the unemployment line so there's a lot going on in the coming days we'll get through a lot of that stuff some roster projection stuff on friday's show recap some of the game from thursday night but i'll see you guys on Friday enjoy the preseason finale it's the last meaningless game we'll be watching until the Patriots travel to Arizona for their September 11th regular season opener you guys have a good one this show again was sponsored by SeatGeek I'm Jeff Howard the Boston Herald make sure you check out Locked On NFL

Locked On Fantasy and Locked On Fantasy, and Locked On Celtics. My guys down the street there. We've got a big network. So, you know, it's not just my show that I want you listening to regularly. There's a lot of podcasts out there on the Locked On Network. And again, if you want to find any episodes that you missed from my end, my Twitter account, at JeffPHao. Audioboom has archived them. Audio Boom has archived them all.

iTunes has archived them all. And we'll see you guys on Friday. You have a good one. 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.

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