Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots September 18, 2018 - Tape Tuesday and More Gordon

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

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Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Locked On Patriots for Tuesday, September 18th, 2018. Mark Schofield back in the big chair of your favorite daily Patriots podcast. Reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at places like The Score NFL, where I'm a featured NFL columnist, Pro Football Weekly, where I contribute scheme analysis as well as a breakdown each week of Mitchell Trubisky,

the Chicago Bears' second-year quarterback. Also, Matt Waldman's rookie scouting portfolio, Big Blue View, part of the SB Nation family of websites. As I've said, if a website or an outlet is covering football, chances are I'm doing some work for them. Loaded show for you today. We are still sort of basking in the aftermath of the Gordonan, the New England Patriots making a trade for talented yet troubled wide receiver Josh Gordon sending a conditional fifth round pick to Cleveland for the talented wide receiver.

In the final segment of the show, we're going to talk a little bit more about Gordon as well as revisit a piece from my good friend and colleague Dave Archibald that he wrote in August of 2016. So a two-year-old piece titled, Why Does Bill Belichick Hate the Fifth Round? But before we do that, it's his tape Tuesday after all, and as much as it's going to pain me to do this,

as much as it pained me to me to do this, as much as it pained me to revisit all of this, as much as it might pain you to listen to it, we're going to have to go back and take a look at some of the stuff from Jacksonville. And we're going to look Patriots offense first, then the Patriots defense. And to set the framework for this, one of the cool things about Pro Football Focus and what they're doing this year is I get each week a couple of emails just with Patriots stuff. They're sending this out to the hosts of the locked on shows. It's really cool what they're doing. It gives us some insight, some analysis from Pro Football Focus. Say what you want about PFF's grading mechanism. I know people have issues with it. I have my own at times, but their chart and data and stuff like that is unbelievable. Just a fantastic resource. And I'm going to kind of use that as the framework for

the discussion we're going to have today. Starting with the Patriots offense. Against the Jaguars, when passing between the numbers, Tom Brady went 15 of 18 for 163 yards, two touchdowns, and a 141.4 passer rating. But when passing outside the numbers, Brady completed nine of 15 passes for 71 yards and a 71.8 passer rating. So that's kind of an area where I wanted to start. Does this team have a problem passing outside the numbers? And I hearken back to the days when Rex Ryan was with the Ravens as a defensive coordinator. And then when he's with the Jets or the Bills as a head coach. And how his defenses would often give Brady trouble. And one of the things that they would do would be to constrict the middle of the field.

Take away the middle of the field between the numbers, those throwing lanes. That would be his focus on the defensive side of the ball going against Tom Brady. And he had some success with it. So I wanted to see if there was something there. And diving into it a little bit, it seems like there was more a failure of execution than design. And it wasn't that Brady didn't have open receivers on the outside. He did. It wasn't that Jacksonville really constricted in the middle of the field. They didn't.

They just failed to execute. A couple of examples of this. One play that I looked at. It was a second and five play at the end of the first quarter. About 12 seconds left on the first quarter. And this is a situation where Brady looks to hit Chris Hogan along the left sideline on an intermediate depth comeback route. They start with Hogan on a slot to the right. He motions to the left. He gets matched up on A.J. Bouye, the admittedly incredibly talented cornerback for Jacksonville,

but not Jalen Ramsey. I mean, they've got two great corners. Bouye is the weak link, and I put weak link in quotes for those of you watching on News Channel 8. That's a corner as a reference for you kids out there. But they get the matchup they want. They run play action. They get them matched up against Bouye in a single high coverage scheme.

So Bouye has to respect the vertical route. He opens his hips towards the sideline than defensive back does. Hogan's open. The problem is a protection one. They get pressure on Brady. There seems to be a miscommunication up front both Joe Tooney and left tackle Trent Brown block down while Rob Gronkowski

blocks to the outside that opens up a big hole now this might be a design thing because they run play action here this might be a design thing. Because they run play action here. They might be trying to sell the run up front. Because after carrying out the fake, Sonny Michel then immediately angles for the now free defensive end Calais Campbell. So this might be a design thing. The problem is, and we saw this in week one one with the Dallas Cowboys against the Carolina Panthers.

They ran a similar play. You're asking, in that case, Ezekiel Elliott to then block to the outside to get that defensive end who's left unblocked. And he doesn't get there in time and Prescott is sacked. So it might very well be a design thing and not a miscommunication thing brown's sort of reaction makes me think that he's trying to get to claus campbell with his left arm which makes me lean miscommunication but seeing other teams do it this way and seeing how michelle immediately angles for campbell makes me think it's designed so we don't know, but the main issue is the pressure forces Brady off his spot. He makes his throw fade in a way that results in a high throw that sails out of bounds and incomplete. So you get the look you want. You get the matchup you want. You get the design you want. You get a good route

on the outside, but whether it's miscommunication or design up front, you can't execute it. So that was one play on the outside that sort of stood out to me. Another play on the outside, third quarter, third and five. This is going to lead into the next little thing I want to talk about here. You get 6.57 left in the third quarter. You get another situation where you have a matchup you want. You're down 24-3. You need to get back into this game. You go empty. This is one of the few plays where they put Gronkowski out wide and Jalen Ramsey

trailed him. And they had Bouye on the same side of the field to cover Hogan. So you get Dorsett matched up one-on-one against Tyler Patman. Their third string third corner. This is a matchup you want to hit. And they send Dorsett on a vertical

route. You get single high coverage yet again. It looks to be cover one, man free. Brady does a great job manipulating that free safety in the middle of the field. And then throw in the vertical route to the boundary. And he leaves it maybe two steps

too far. And Dorsett has two steps on Patman. If this play is hit, it's a touchdown. But he just throws it a step or two too far. And that gets me to the other thing. This offense was 4 of 12 on third down. You think of some of the big plays, the plays that we were talking about on the Locked On Patriots Slack channel, the plays that you probably noticed when you were watching with your family, your friends at the bar, wherever.

The strip sack from Dante Fowler, third down. The Cordell Patterson bubble where he stumbles and falls, third down. The Cordell Patterson bubble where he stumbles and falls, third down. The open and drive that passed to Hogan that got, again, Brady under pressure and kind of floated, third down. The pass to James White where it was initially ruled a first down on the field but then overturned, third down. Four of 12 on third down is not going to cut it. And this pass to Dorsett was on a third down that we just talked about.

You change any one of these plays, any one, and this game might look different. Especially, you know, the strip sack or the Patterson bubble screen that he stumbled on. But, I mean, you could change any one of these plays and this game might be different. Even that throw to Hogan. Say he doesn't get the first down, but say it's at least a completed pass for a gain of four. Now you're looking at a 50-yard field goal instead of a 54. Maybe Ghost hits it and you start with a 3-0 lead. Maybe that changes things a little bit. And so, failures on third down, passing inside and outside the numbers. Wanted to look at those. As for the inside-outside thing, I'm not too worried about it right now because I think this

team still has enough. You look at some of the plays that they hit on the outside, those free access smoke routes, hitch routes, things like that, they'll still do that. So I'm not too worried about that yet. But the third down conversions, that has to change. Other thing I wanted to look at offensively, again, thanks to Pro Football Focus, they sent over in his professional debut, running back Sonny Michel saw 10 carries on 13 snaps total.

He averaged 1.7 yards after contact per attempt and forced one missed tackle. So I did take a look at him, and the first play I want to start with is a play that's going to require yours truly to do a bit of a mea culpa. If you remember during the postgame recap show, the melancholy and the infinite sadness episode of Locked On Patriots, I talked about David Andrews, Joe Thune, getting blowed up on a third down in one play and really sort of put it on them that they screwed up.

And I went back and looked at that play and thanks to having the end zone camera where you can see the offensive line and you get a nice view of it, I gotta say my bad, dudes. My bad. The Patriots run wide zone to the left side, which asks all of the linemen to flow to the left in unison and not really block a man, but an area. Now the problem starts up front. The Jaguars put a tilted defensive tackle

in the A-gap between Andrews and Thune. And so while Andrews initially comes to the left, Thune has to make sure that that guy is handled before he can pass him off to the center and work to the second level. He has to make sure that Andrews will be able to maintain that block once Thune vacates and gets to Miles Jack, the linebacker. Now on the outside, Trent Brown is blocking to the outside as everybody is blocking to their left. And as Thune tries to help on that A-gap defender who's tilted, he doesn't move left as much.

But now Trent Brown, as he moves left, he's still a wide guy. So he has wide feet, wide base. And his right foot, Trent Brown's right foot, nicks Joe Thune's left foot as they're trying to execute these blocks allows the defender to sort of fall forward into the hole. And it just creates a pile of bodies that Michelle ends up tripping over, losing a yard on the play. And so I thought upon first watch and then the broadcast angle again that, you know, Andrews and Thune get overpowered, but two guys just collided with their feet and got tripped up. And that's what it was. Some more stuff on Michel.

I love to change the direction. You look at a run he had at about the two-minute mark of the first quarter. And it's another sort of zone-type run and play to the left side. And there's a defender that comes basically unblocked into the backfield. And he has a nice quick little cut. It's not much, but it shows you a bit of that change of direction ability that he has. And he had another run sort of an outside zone play where he had to make a tough split second decision. And I like what he did on this play play this is a run that comes in the second quarter about seven minutes or so left in the second quarter and it's a fullback lead zone to the right and James Devlin

takes on the corner and Michelle faces a decision does he stay inside of Devlin's block or bounce it to the outside? He stays inside, puts his head down, and gets three yards. Sometimes you see young running backs or running backs in general think they have the speed to bounce that around that, but they don't have the speed. And then they get cut down for a minimal gain or maybe even a loss. I like that Michelle put his head down in that situation, stayed inside the block, and got what he could.

So that was some stuff on the offensive side of the ball. I'm going to talk defense in a second. But first, I want to remind everybody that, look, I know what you're all hoping for each time you listen to Locked on Patriots. You're hoping for an edge. Maybe you're hoping for an edge with your fantasy teams. I know that there are a lot of guys and girls out there listening to the show that are playing fantasy. They're hoping they can get some insight on offense, on defense, on special teams, whatever they can do to get themselves an edge. And I appreciate that. I respect that. I'll try to give you the best information I can. Same thing when it comes to picking games. I know that a lot of people out there are really excited. Look, they're going to find some info. Maybe they'll know who to bet on this week.

I don't always have the answer to that question. But the question I do have an answer to is where you should be placing your bets. Because who you're betting on, it's important. Where you're placing your bets might even be more important. That's why I always tell people to bet with my bookie. Trust me, guys, they are your best bet this season. They've been in business for years. They have great reviews online on their mobile site.

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Up next, some film stuff from the Patriots. We're on defense. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this taped Tuesday edition of Locked on Patriots. And look, I do actually have something good to talk about when it comes to the Patriots' defense and their performance on Sunday.

Now, this is a little bit of a good news, bad news situation. And I think what I'll do is a little bit of a good news, bad news situation, and I think what I'll do is I'll start with a smattering. It'll be like what Stewie calls the compliment sandwich. You have a little bit of good news, you hit him with the awful, and then you close it out with some good news. So the last thing that people remember is a little bit of good news and not all the awful stuff that was in the middle. So we'll start with some good news. Again, courtesy of our friends over at Pro Football Focus. It was an eventful day for Kyle Van Nooy who saw seven passes into his coverage,

intercepted one and allowing six to be completed for 55 yards and a 59.8 passer rating against. Van Nooy also had one stop and three missed tackles on the day. And I think that 59.8 passer rating against, that's due in large part to the interception, which as you remember was a tipped ball that he made a dive and play on. And so, some good there. Now let's get to the bat.

I mentioned in the first part of the show how the Patriots could not stay on the field offensively after third down. They only converted four of 12 for third down chances in that game. Now the Patriots defense, well, they couldn't get off the field in third down situations. This is something I mentioned in the recap show. Jacksonville was 10 of 14 on third downs.

They had two third down conversions on their opening drive of the game. The first was a third and six. And this was a play I talked about. Juwan Bentley, he blitzes on the play, misses Bortles in the game. The first was a third and six. And this was a play I talked about. Juwan Bentley, he blitzes on the play, misses Bortles in the pocket. Bortles climbs. Bortles makes a throw to Austin Safarian-Jakins. Here's the problem with that play. This is a zero blitz, which means you're blitzing everybody except the people that are covering receivers on pass patterns. Now,

in this situation, it's a little different because they have an underneath linebacker who's a whole defender, but still, the premise is the same. If you blitz and you don't get home, the band is going to play. I'm always reminded of that quote from, I believe it was Doug Gilmore doing a Utah game a couple of years ago when somebody blitzed against the University of Utah. They didn't get home, touchdown pass, and he said it. Look, if you blitz and you don't get home, the band is going to play. And this is one of those moments. Bentley gets put right in Bortles' lap. And he doesn't even get a hit on him.

He doesn't get a fingertip on him. Bortles climbs, fires. And it's hard for defenders in that moment, if the blitz doesn't get home, to make a coverage play. Later in the drive, third and seven situation in the red zone. Patriots come out and they play red two coverage. That's a two deep safety look with the middle linebacker reading three to two, basically. This is one of those situations where that middle linebacker has to sort of wall off the number three receiver, but it's not where the number three receivers, it's not who starts at number three, it's where they end up. And what happens here is

there's a running back to that side, there's a wide receiver outside, and there's Austin Safarian-Jakins at tight end. ASJ releases vertically, and Kyle Van Noy stays with him because the running back starts to the outside, working on Patrick Chun, who has outside leverage over the tight end, who begins the play lined up as the number two, but then that switches when he starts outside. When the running back starts outside, who was

three, now he becomes two. I know, it's confusing. That's why teams do this, because they try to screw up the coverage and switch rules from the defensive backs. So that puts Chun over the running back. Kyle Van Nuys staying vertically, but then the running back cuts inside. And so Chun doesn't have that help that he might have been expecting because Van Noy's carrying Austin Zafarian-Jakins up the field. And it's probably not even a miscommunication issue. It's just a well-designed play to attack that kind of coverage. The tight end goes vertically. That linebacker that's taken number three goes with him.

That opens up the underneath middle of the field. Running back starts outside, then gets that inside leverage working away from Chun. Easy throw, easy catch. Third and seven, second quarter, late in the second quarter, minute before halftime. Again, another zero blitz situation. Blitz doesn't get home in time. Leaves Austin Safarian Jenkins. That noise you heard right there was my cat sneezing, by the way. And if you follow me on Twitter, you know that this little furball has been trying to kill me.

I got a great thread going, you know, documenting his efforts. So when I disappear from the face of this earth, that animal that just sneezed, he's the culprit. But I digress. Austin Safarian Jenkins runs an out route against Devin McCourty. And without the pressure, there's no pressure at all. It's just an easy timing and rhythm throw for Bortles to ASJ. You don't get home on these blitzes. You are going to get picked apart. You just leave your defensive backs out to dry. Final play to talk about. Third and 11.

Third quarter, 12-49 left. No blitz here. We just get a defensive back flipping his hips. And what I mean by that is this. Keenan Cole, he starts out wide. Aligns on the numbers. Motions in towards the formation. Now, what should that tell you as a defensive back?

Player starts out wide, motions in. Now he's closer towards the middle of the field. Where do you think his route is going to end up? Do you think it is going to end up in the middle of the field where he started? Or perhaps towards the boundary where he now has more room to work with. Cole releases vertically. Rowe has him in man coverage. Cole then starts showing the post like he's going to cut towards the middle of the field. Rowe overplays that. Cole then breaks out to the boundary. Rowe makes a slow turn with his hips, and it's an easy throw and catch on the out route. It's one of those moments where pre-snap alignment should tell you all you need to know about what a wide receiver is going to do. So those were some of the third down failures.

Blitzes not getting home, good play design, and a defensive back getting beat. Those were just, I could have spent much more time breaking these down, but frankly, I'm starting to get nauseous. Let's talk about a little bit of good news, though. Again, spurred in part by our friends over at Pro Football Focus. Lawrence Guy was a stellar presence in run defense, registering five stops on the day on just 15 run defense snaps. Guy is the third-rank ranked interior defender in the entire NFL through two weeks

with a 90.5 overall grade. And again, you can take PFF's grades with a grain of salt. I know they've been doing some work to improve their process and they audit the grades and things like that. So the grades where they start week one, they might not always be where they end up. They do some auditing, but might not always be where they end up. They do some auditing, but they've been doing a pretty good job. So has Lawrence Guy. I just want to highlight a couple of plays. First play, second and fourth, New England's 34, 1137 left in the third quarter.

He's on the backside of a wide zone run that's going away from him. And he just beats the right tackle to the inside off the snap. Really works his way down the line of scrimmage. Tracks down Corey Grant, who's running away from him. Stops it for just a two-yard gain. I thought that was a fantastic play. First and ten late third quarter. A minute 42 left in the third quarter.

Jacksonville tries to run TJ Yeldon up on the inside. And this is a play where you see somebody just stacking an offensive lineman in the hole. It's just sort of a split zone look. He just stacks RJ Gann, the right guard in the hole, sheds him, chops Yeldon down for just a one-yard game. Final play I'll talk about. This comes late in the game. 2.30 left, so the contest has pretty much been decided. But he stops Wilds, the running back that he brought off the practice squad,

for no gain and forces a fumble. Again, another play where he stacks and sheds the left tackle, gets off the block, scrapes off the block, and punches the ball out. Patriots just don't recover. But as the PFF numbers point out, as the film points out, Lawrence Guy off to a great start, particularly in run defense.

So there's your Patriots defense compliment sandwich. Some good stuff from Van Noy, a whole bunch of bad stuff on third down, and then some good stuff from Lawrence Guy. Up next, I'm going to check to make sure my cat's not sneezing anymore, and we're going to talk a little bit of Josh Gordon aftermath.

That will close out today's Tape Tuesday edition of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you to close out this Tape Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots, and we're still going to talk for a moment, just a couple of minutes, about the Josh Gordon trade again. I did an emergency edition of the Locked on Patriots podcast yesterday afternoon. You can still check that out with my thoughts, 20 minutes on Josh Gordon trade again. I did an emergency edition of the Locked On Patriots podcast yesterday afternoon. You can still check that out with my thoughts, 20 minutes on Josh Gordon, what we're getting on the field, what we're getting off the field, the good, the bad, all that kind of stuff if you want to check that out.

But I do want to highlight something. My good friend and colleague Dave Archibald over at Inside the Pylon on August 29, 2016 wrote a piece titled, Why Does Bill Belichick Hate the Fifth Round? And as he wrote, the 2017 draft will mark the sixth consecutive year New England has dealt its fifth round pick. And with the news yesterday that the Patriots sent a conditional fifth-round pick, conditional in the sense that if Josh Gordon is not active for 10 games, then the Patriots will get a seventh-round pick from Cleveland as sort of a recoupment of sorts. Again, the Patriots have traded away a fifth-round pick.

And it's a fascinating piece that Dave put together, sort of putting it away. And as Dave puts it, a fifth-round pick is a long shot anyway, and by trading it, New England can improve their potential payoff by obtaining a higher upside player or a high-floor veteran at a position of need. Either approach has value compared to staying put and making the draft pick, even if this strategy has not delivered impressive returns to date. And that's sort of what I wanted to highlight, those two sentences, because in the wake of this trade, I've heard people say that it's a panic move, that it's a desperation

move, that it shows that this team is worried. I've seen people speculating that Brady is angry about the lack of weapons. And if you want to make that case, let's remember what they gave up. A fifth round pick is a long shot anyway. A fifth round pick is a long shot anyway. And as Dave put it, New England can improve their potential payoff by obtaining a higher upside player. That would be Josh Gordon. And so I think that that is a smart move

and it's not a huge risk. Some other stuff to point out, Doug Farrar over at Touchdown Wire USA Today has a really nice piece talking about why and how Gordon could thrive with the Patriots and why he might fail. He talks a little bit, obviously, about the route concepts and things like that. He gets into the complexity of the Patriots' offense. So that's definitely worth checking out. Doug does do good work. So you can check that piece out. And finally, some comments from Tom Brady himself. He was on Westwood One prior to Monday Night Football with Jim Gray. Hopefully he, as in Gordon, can work hard, put the team first, and end up helping us in any role he can find for himself on the team.

But make no mistake about it. The Patriots didn't give up a ton. They didn't reach. They didn't panic. They didn't do anything outside of their norm. They traded away a fifth round pick, which, as Dave wrote back in 2016, they don't like anyway. They don't like those. And so remember, as with all the moves that the Patriots make, give it context, give it the grain of salt. Don't overreact to everything. I think sometimes, and I'm as guilty of this as anybody, because we spend so much time studying prospects, studying players, getting hyped up about the draft, we kind of overemphasize

or place too much stock or too much value in draft picks. We always think, oh, this guy we're going to watch, this quarterback from South Central Oklahoma State Eastern University is going to be the next Tom Brady. That some team is going to find him in the fifth round or the sixth round or the seventh round. And he's going to be the greatest of all time. It doesn't always work out that way.

These later round picks are long shots for a reason. Because of the CBAs, the roster sizes and all that, they don't get a ton of opportunities. They don't always pan out their long shots. When you can get a player with the upside of Josh Gordon in exchange for one of those picks, you do it. That will do it for today's show. I will be back tomorrow.

Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Picks. you