Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots September 19, 2017 - News and Film

Episode Date: September 19, 2017

Mark Schofield starts with some injury news (don't worry, nothing bad) and then has some film review. First we look at how the Patriots were able to pressure Drew Brees then, we look at Deshaun Watson working in 20 offensive personnel situations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That's for my crazy day. My packed commute. All those unread emails in my inbox. But I'm getting stronger, faster, and pushing myself further every day. I don't care if I'm not like everyone else. This punching bag is the best way to end my day. Fearless is knowing yoga isn't your style. That's the power of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program.

Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash getmore. This is Mark Schofield from Locked On Patriots. This episode is brought to you by our great friends at bus.com. You're Locked On Patriots, your daily podcast on the New England Patriots, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Locked On Patriots for Tuesday, September 19th. Mark Schofield with you, as always, here in the big chair.

And we're going to do a couple of different things today. We're going to start out with some news and notes, go through some of the injury updates that we got out of Foxborough on Monday and Monday evening. Some guys that were banged up in that game on Sunday against the New Orleans Saints. We're starting to get some word on their current status and no bad news as of yet, but we'll get into that. We're going to start also looking at the Patriots' pass rush on Sunday against Drew Brees and the Saints. All-22 tape came out, got a chance to go through that, and there are three plays that I want to highlight from Sunday to sort of talk about how the Patriots were sort of able to get to Breeze.

Some stuff that we were worried about going into that matchup. Could they get off the field on third down? Could they keep Breeze and company out of the end zone? And they were able to do that with a couple of nice designs as well as some one-on-one matchups. So we're going to do some film review stuff. And we're going to start to get ready for the Houston Texans. Obviously, Deshaun Watson and company come into town on Sunday. We're going to look at Deshaun Watson and 20 offensive personnel, particularly at the end of that first half against Cincinnati last Thursday night.

See how he was effective in 20 personnel. Some of the good things that Watson did with his eyes that you should be ready for as we start to look ahead to the Houston Texans. Also, you should be ready for how you're going to get down to that game on Sunday. And again, our good friends over at Bust.com, they're back this week. They have another great offer for you. Getting you from downtown Boston down into Gillette. Let them take care of the driving for you. Go ahead, visit Patriots.Bust.com.

I'll have some more on them as well in a bit. But let's get to those news and notes at the outset here. And again, no real practice on Wednesday. The Patriots are just back doing some film review stuff. But guys were in the locker room. A couple guys had a chance to give some comments to reporters down at Gillette. And first and foremost, Rob Gronkowski, the tight end who had that big 53-yard touchdown catch and run, kind of left the action midway through the third quarter,

spent most of the rest of the game on the sidelines, on the stationary bike. He did confirm that it was a groin injury, but as he told reporters, it was fine. There's nothing serious. He considers himself day-to-day, so it seems like no real concerns right now from Rob Gronkowski, but obviously something to monitor going forward. Wide receiver Philip Dorsett, he left the game as well. That was what was deemed a minor leg injury at the time. It was later termed a knee injury. Monday in the locker room, he was telling reporters that he was just a little sore and that he was all right.

So again, it seems like a bullet was probably dodged there as well, but we'll keep an eye on that for you as well. Another player, Rex Burkhead, who factored big time into the game plan early on, had a touchdown reception working against rookie linebacker Alex Anzalone. He left for a period of time with a rib injury. He did come back into the game after being cleared. He contributed on special teams, on the punt team. So it looks like Burkhead should be good to go. Another player we'll keep an eye on. Two players that did not see action against the Saints. First, Danny Amendola with the concussion. No news on him as of yet. Dante Hightower, however, news came out from NFL.com's Ian Rappaport. He disclosed that Hightower was diagnosed with an MCL sprain. At the time of the diagnosis, it was termed a two to three week setback.

So thinking about that, there's a small chance that Hightower could be in the mix for this week, although it's probably more likely that he'll be back in time to take on the Carolina Panthers. But again, we'll have to see how he progresses going forward. Now let's do a little film review. And as I said, the All-22 tape came out Monday evening, got a chance to go through that. And I wanted to highlight three plays on the defensive side of the ball, particularly up front, because this was a concern that we talked about, again, going into this game. Could the Patriots establish some semblance of a pass rush? They didn't seem to have that against Alex Smith on open tonight.

Could they get off the field on third downs? Could they get to Breeze and do what the Vikings were able to do on that first Monday night game where they could get to Breeze, force him into some quick throws and get off the field on third down situations and hold the New Orleans Saints offense to three points. And they did that on a couple of occasions. And I want to highlight three plays. The first is a second and eight at New England's 16 yard line. This play comes with eight minutes and 37 seconds left in the second quarter. This is a second and eight situation. Saints are in the red zone. Breeze left in the second quarter. This is a second and eight situation.

Saints are in the red zone. Breeze is in the shotgun. You want to make sure you keep them out of the end zone here. And what we're going to see, it's a four-man pass rush. And the Patriots here, they use something called a nut stunt, N-U-T. I don't make up these terms. Some football terminology is a little bit wacky. Sometime I'll explain what the honey hole is, but for right now, we're going to talk about the nut stunt and what that is. N before T, nose, then tackle. So what we're going to see on this play is the nose guard engages the center and then the tackle loops behind him. And on this play is the nose guard engages the center and then the tackle loops behind him. And on this play, Malcolm Brown, he aligns on the right shoulder of the center. Trey Flowers,

defensive end sort of by trade. That's what he's listed as on the depth chart. But he lines up as a defensive tackle, sort of head up, maybe a little bit outside shade of the left guard. So again, you have Brown on the right shoulder of the center, Flowers outside shade of the left guard. So again, you have Brown on the right shoulder of the center, Flowers left shoulder of the left guard. What's going to happen at the snap is Brown comes off the ball first and drives into that right shoulder of the center. And his job is kind of occupy him and move him towards the guard. He goes first. Then Flowers will loop behind him. And that's exactly what you want to happen. Brown drives himself into the center, pushes him a bit to his left towards that left guard.

Flowers comes off the ball, engages the left guard, but then he comes behind his nose tackle and before T. So Brown goes first, occupies the center flowers loops around the guard sees this and he tries to stay with flowers but he can't because of the traffic that's created between brown and the center that creates traffic the center can't i mean excuse me the guard cannot come over and pick up flowers as he loops around. Flowers comes behind Brown into that now vacated A gap. There's a nice little seam there, little hole. It's almost akin to a running back where he has a hole that he's going to run through when he's carrying the football.

It's the same kind of concept. It creates a hole. Flowers has a free shot at Breeze. Breeze doesn't really have a chance to set up here and let the play develop downfield. He's forced into a very quick throw to avoid the sack, and it falls incomplete. It's a very nice design, creates some traffic up front, sort of similar to some of the pick plays that we saw that both teams scored touchdowns on. But here, again, Brown comes down, Flowers loops around on that nut stunt, pressures Brees. He forces an incomplete pass

then on the third down patriots force another incompletion that was a play that was broken up by jonathan jones in the end zone and again like we talked about saints settling for field goal tries rather than putting the ball in the end zone so that was exactly what new england wanted to do they got pressure on breeze on this play using that nut stunt, forced him to a quick throw, and they were able to get off the field on third down. Now I want to look at two plays from Dietrich Weiss. These were two individual efforts that I thought really stood out, situations where he was able to get pressure on Breeze using two different pass rushing moves, which we're going to talk about. The first play comes a little bit later in the second quarter.

This comes with about 233 left in the second quarter. It's another third down, a third and three at the Patriots' 25-yard line. Here we're going to talk about a bull rush. There are a number of pass rushing moves that you can use as sort of an edge defender. The bull rush is one of them. This is a pure power move. The Patriots show pressure at the snap. They have three down linemen, including Wise, who lines up across from the left tackle. They have three linebackers or linebacker types because they

also have a defensive back as one of those spots. They're all showing pressure. But at the snap, they only rush three. They drop everybody else into coverage, but they are still able to get home and get to breeze with just three guys. And anytime you can get to the quarterback with just three guys or four guys, you're doing a great job as a defense. Here, Wise uses the bull rush against Andres Pete, who's a guard by trade, but he was forced into action at left tackle. And what we're going to see is it's just a pure power move. Coming off the snap, Wise does an incredible job getting leverage immediately.

He fires into his outside shoulder, sort of that left shoulder as Pete sort of kicks lines and starts to mirror Wise. Wise fires his left arm into that sort of outside shoulder and stuns him initially. Then he starts to control him with both arms, dips a little bit under him, pushes right past him into the legs of Drew Brees, gets his arms locked on Brees' right ankle. Breeze can't really go anywhere. The football, he's forced to sort of throw it away. And again, you pressure the quarterback. You force him to make a play like that where he can't go through his progressions. He can't pick out a receiver. You're doing something great from a defensive standpoint. This was more of a power

move from Wise where he really sort of got into the body of the offensive tackle, controlled him from the start, drove him backwards towards the quarterback, and then was able to disengage from the left tackle, get to the legs of the quarterback, and prevent him from making the throw. So that was a big play from Wise. But there was one that I liked a little bit later in the game. I like this next play even more. And this comes with 11 minutes and 56 seconds to go in the third quarter. And this is the Saints opening possession of the second half. This is the first possession of the second half. And this is a situation where in New England, you have a big halftime lead. You obviously don't want to give up points. Let them get this back to a two-score game, a 10-point

game. We've got a 30-13 lead here. You don't want to give up points on the open and drive. Now we've got a third and seven situation at the New England 35-yard line. And this time, Wise uses a pure speed rush. Sometimes when you hear, especially during the draft, when people talk about edge rushers, they talk about their ability to dip, to bend, and to run the arc. When you talk about running the arc, what you mean there is the ability to use pure speed to get upfield and then somehow angle back to the quarterback. Because if you think about the pass protection pocket, if a defensive end simply runs straight upfield, you're going to take yourself right past the quarterback because the quarterback

is going to drop into the pocket. But if you just run straight upfield, you're going to run right past him. So you're going to be able to sort of bend yourself and arc yourself to the quarterback's eventual dropping point. Wise does a tremendous job here. As he comes off the ball, again, working against Pete, it's pure speed to Pete's left shoulder, that outside shoulder. But once he gets past him, he gets to

about a yard past him. He needs to get dipped back in towards the middle of the field because if he doesn't, he's going to take himself right past the breeze. And that's when we see that little bend, that dip as he gets himself low towards the ground. There's actually a great image of it. I'll probably tweet it out where you can see him literally lower his upper body towards the ground. If you've ever seen motorcycle racing, for example, you know, when they take curves, they're not straight up and down. They get low to like a 45 degree angle with the bike, a 45 degree angle over the ground. That's kind of what defensive edge rushers do when they sort of dip and bend around the corner. They get themselves to that angle and it gives them the ability to turn the corner and get towards the quarterback. And that's what we

see from Wise here. It's a pure speed move. He runs that arc, gets that dip under the left tackle, and he's able to get home to Breeze, wraps him up for the sack. So those are three sort of plays that I wanted to highlight from New England's pass rush on Sunday. The ability to get pressure with just three or four defenders. The first time they did it with four on that sort of little nut stunt that we talked about. The second time with Wise, they did it with three

when it was a pure sort of one-on-one matchup that Wise was able to win against a left tackle who was playing out of position. And on this final example, they actually brought five. But again, Wise with the ability to win a one-on-one matchup. That was great execution, great individual effort from him, showing what you look for in a defensive end, the ability to run the arc, dip and bend under that tackle and get home to the quarterback. So those were some hot plays that I wanted to highlight. We talked a lot last week about would the Patriots be able to get to Breeze? Would they be able to

get off the field on third down? And on these plays, we saw that they were able to do just that. In a minute, we're going to talk some more about Deshaun Watson and the Houston Texans because, again, they're coming to town they're fresh off that Thursday night when they've had that little bye Watson wins his first start as a rookie quarterback in the NFL I want to take a look at what he did at the end of that first half using 20 offensive personnel but before I start getting you ready for the Texans. I want to talk about getting you to that Texans game. And look, I want to remind you, I want to actually tell you a story for a second. I tell you a story about a man going to a Patriots game. He hadn't been to a Patriots game for a long time. And his wife had given him a gift for their first anniversary. If any of you

listeners out there are married, you know that that first anniversary gift, that first anniversary wedding gift traditionally is paper. And my wife got us Patriots tickets. Tickets come printed on paper. It was a beautiful gift. And we actually went to, if you remember when the Bears came to town, the game where Brady juked Erlacher, I was at that game. There was actually a guy sitting in my row wearing a pink Urlacher jersey. And to his credit, that guy took all the abuse that came his way after that play. But then I want to tell you what happened after the game when we were stuck in route one. Couldn't get out of there. Behind the wheel, frustrated to get home late. Don't be me. Let our friends at Bust.com take care of you. We all know that getting down to Foxborough can be

a pain, right? They were here for open at night. They had that introductory rate from Boston down into Gillette for open at night. And while the game didn't turn out well, if you took advantage of their offer, at least the ride in and out probably turned out well for you. They're back for another offer here. They offer an air-conditioned coach transportation from Huntington Avenue right by the Prudential T-Stop down into Foxborough, well in time for you to tailgate before the game. And if you want to have a couple of beverages on the ride down, go for it. There are bathrooms on board just to take care of you, so you're all set from that point

of view. And if you're worried about your tailgating supplies, leave them on the bus while you're in the game. That's just another perk that they're going to provide for you. Again, getting down to Foxborough, it can be a pain if you drive. You can take the train. Sometimes that's overbooked. Parking, get it out after.

As I said, it can be a mess. Don't be me. Don't be stuck in traffic. Worse, if you catch a ride with a buddy, you're going to be in the cramped back seat. And it's probably going to be that buddy whose car kind of smells like cheese you know that friend we've all had that friend in our lives don't be in that situation let our friends at bus.com take care of you go to patriots.bus.com use promo code locked on patch you'll get 15 off your round trip fare that's an incredible deal that leaves all the transportation to them you can use their app as well put you in touch with other pats fans

it'll also put you in touch with their great support staff if you need it. So again, go to Patriots.Bus.com and let them take care of your ride down to Foxborough for Sunday's game against the Houston Texans. And let's talk about those Texans for a bit. And again, I want to focus on Deshaun Watson and what he did at the end of the first half, because this was a drive that began sort of on their own 10-yard line. And this was a game that was a really ugly game, but we're going to get to the biggest offensive play of the game in a second. But this was a 3-3 game at the time. Didn't seem like either team could really generate much offense.

But then Watson puts together a few plays that really sort of changed the course of this game. And he does it out of 20 offensive personnel. And what that is, it's an offensive personnel package that consists of two running backs, no tight ends, and three wide receivers. And it's not one of your more traditional packages, but given the injuries that the Texans had at the tight end spot, they had a guy who was active for the game that was on the practice squad a couple of days before their top three tight ends were out. And so what they had to do, they had to go with a package like this in this situation. And Watson seemed extremely comfortable when they started doing this. It seemed as if he could get more into a rhythm.

He was much better with his eyes. And that's something that really stood out as well because he started to get through progression reads. You could tell he seemed more comfortable as he got through this plays. And the first play I want to talk about comes with a second and five at the Houston 23-yard line. This is just a simple check down where Watson's going to check the ball down to Lamar Mill, but it sort of sets the tone for what we're going to see down the rest of these couple of plays here. And Watson's in the shotgun. He's got two running backs in there, sort of in a divide formation, which means one

to each side of them. Again, three wide receivers, two to the right, DeAndre Hopkins alone on the left. And what they're going to do, they're going to run a little spot concept to the right. We have a curl route from one receiver, a corner route from the other receiver, and then the fullback or running back to that side is just going to release to the flat. Then we get this little dig flat concept where Hopkins runs that deep dig route, which is a route of about 15 yards that goes vertically and then cuts across the middle. And then Miller releases to the flat. And all we're going to see here is

we're going to see a little soft Tampa 2 coverage look from the Cincinnati Bengals, where you get two deep safeties, that middle linebacker drops deep, and he's going to look towards the two receiver side. So Watkins sees that. He sees the soft coverage. The coverage kind of sinks under Hopkins on that backside dig route. So he simply goes through his reads, gets to that check down from Miller and gives it to him. And you know, when you look at the end zone angle of this, the end zone angle of this on the all 22, you actually get to see straight into the offensive backfield. It comes from that camera angle. You get to see Watson's eyes and you see some calmness in the pocket, some calmness in his eyes that wasn't there on some of the other plays, particularly when they

were using different offensive formations. I mean, here he goes from the spot concept on the right. He then checks the dig route over the middle of the field and then finally comes to that final progression read, which is that check down. It's just a simple gain of eight, but it gets the ball out past the 30-yard line again. They had started on the 20, and now you've got about a minute, 45 seconds left, and now we get to Watson's best throw of the night. This is something that if the Texans can do more stuff like this, they're going to be okay offensively. They run the same exact play. You have that little spot concept to the right with the two receivers over there. To the backside, you have that dig route from Hopkins and that little flat route.

And this time, they catch the Bengals in straight cover two. It's not Tampa two where you drop that linebacker deep. It's just straight cover two. And we actually see some manipulation from Watson here as he throws that dig route to Hopkins. And it's his best throw of the night. He splits two defenders to two underneath linebackers, puts the dig route right on him with a little bit of anticipation, and he gets the ball into Cincinnati territory. And again, watching that end zone angle, you see Watson take the shotgun snap, immediately look to his right, comes off that spot concept to that side of the formation. Then he checks the dig route, doesn't see it there yet, but he sees the throwing

window opening up again. When those two linebackers widen underneath and that cover two look, Hopkins is going to come open eventually, but he can't throw it yet. So then what does he do? He looks to the check down route. And what that does is it gets that linebacker number 59, it gets him to sort of lean towards that check down route and just widens that throw in lane for the dig route a little bit more. And then he pulls the trigger on the dig route before it's really even open. He releases it before Hopkins has truly cleared that linebacker, number 59. There's a great sort of image of it.

I can tweet this out as well, where he pulls the trigger, throwing that dig route. Hopkins is still behind number 59, that linebacker. He's not technically open yet, but this is what you see when you hear people talk about throwing a receiver open. This is kind of what they're talking about, the ability to make that anticipation throw, get the ball out before the receiver looks open. There are quarterbacks who are sometimes called see it, throw it guys, where they have to see the route come open before they're comfortable to pull the trigger. This is one of those anticipation throws where he throws the receiver open. Watson's by far, I think it was his best throw of the night. And it shows you what he can be as a

quarterback and what the Patriots need to be wary of, things that he can do at times in the backfield. Then we get to that big sack. And we talked about stunts a little bit. We're going to see here what we call a tackle-end exchange. You know, this is a first and 10 at Cincinnati's 44-yard line. There's just over a minute left. You know, this time they go slot to the left.

Hopkins is alone to the right. He runs another dig route, Hopkins, from that right side. And they use a sail concept to the left. That's where you have one deep vertical go route, a deep out route, and the running back release into the flat. It sets up sort of three levels where you have the deep vertical route and that out route, and then the receiver in the flat. The problem here is that it's a slow development play. It takes a little time to come together and that sort of works against Houston here because we're

going to get that little tackle end exchange. And what happens is the defensive end, Jordan Willis, number 75, he lines out well to the outside of the left tackle, sort of in what we call that wide nine alignment, which is he's about basically five yards outside the left tackle. You're expecting him in that situation to use sort of that speed rush to the outside, like we talked about with Dietrich Wise. The problem at the snap, he cuts a little bit to the inside. He goes head up on the left tackle and tries to take him to the inside over his right shoulder. Geno Atkins, he's the defensive tackle inside of Willis. He lets Willis go first, and then he does what we call the exchange. Willis comes inside,

Atkins loops to the outside. And that's happened Watson is looking to that sale concept to the left it's a slow development play he wants it to come open since he wants to throw to the left he starts to slide that way and he slides right into the path of Atkins who just just level some again I call this a sort of gif worthy meme worthy hit because the second it happened you were seeing on the twitter timeline watson just gets lit up and driven backwards you know now suddenly houston's facing a second and 21 on their own 45 yard line and on the next play what we get is just a simple check down route where we get a levels concept to the right where it's three receivers breaking in at different depths and then we get a comeback slash flat concept to the left where you've got

hopkins on that deep comeback route and lamar miller on the check down and you know this is that's a sort of simple concept that comeback slash flat route it's something i ran back when i was young and athletic or relatively athletic but what I like here is the decisiveness from Watson because as he's dropping into the pocket, he sees the coverage bail. Obviously, Cincinnati is really worried about giving up a big play here. It's second and 21 with a minute remaining in the first half. They don't think Watkins is going to beat him deep. So he sees that soft coverage and rather than trying to make something happen, he simply flips the ball out to Miller, who's able to get back to about the Cincinnati 49-yard line and get out of bounds. So then that sets up the big run.

And the thing about Watson and his ability as a quarterback, yeah, there's some stuff that he has to work on. There's some times where he stares routes down. There are times when he doesn't go through progressions. There are times when it doesn't seem like he has enough velocity. But then there's a play like this where in a blink of the eye, he can turn what looks to be a collapsing pocket into a 49-yard touchdown run. When you realize that there is something special about this kid, that's something you can't teach. You can't coach it on either side of the ball. You can't coach a kid to do something like this at the quarterback position. It's just natural.

It's just natural athletic ability. And as a defensive coordinator, as a defensive mind and head coach, you can try to scheme up ways to stop that. You can try to spy him. You can try to contain him in the pocket and make sure guys stay outside. But this is a situation where he breaks it upfield. It doesn't break to the outside. He this is a situation where he breaks it upfield. He doesn't break to the outside. He cuts upfield first. And so then if you're spying him, you're counting on that spy

defender to be able to bring Watson down in the open field. And he's sometimes athletic enough because on this run, he uses a stiff arm to shake one tackle near the line of scrimmage before he starts racing into the open field where he makes a number of moves. And so this is more than anything, the drive where I thought this is going to be Watson at his best and what the Patriots should be looking for. Sort of this 20 offensive personnel package. He looked incredibly comfortable when they were using this sort of scheme. And later in the game, when they needed another field goal drive, that long drive where they get those final three points that really sort of were the difference in what Cincinnati had to do at the end of the game when they needed a touchdown. Again, they came back to this 20 personnel package. Watson again seemed comfortable. Yeah, he's a rookie. He's going to make mistakes. But if you see them use a lot of 20 personnel, it's something that you should be watching for on Sunday night. Something that I'm sure the Patriots are going to hope to have an answer for. And so there you have it.

There's some news and notes at the outset. A little film review on the Patriots' pass rush. And also a look ahead to what we might expect from Deshaun Watson in that 20 offensive personnel package. Also, again, don't forget a couple of things. Again, Patriots.boss.com. Let them take care of your ride down to gillette they use that promo code locked on pats you will get 15 off your round trip fare take advantage of that you can have a beverage or two on the ride down if you want to tailgate

great they will take care of your stuff while you're in gillette and they'll leave it on the bus they will take care of everything for you so go go ahead, go to patriots.bus.com. Use promo code LOCKEDONPATS for 15% off. Also, again, if you want a PFF Edge subscription, an Edge subscription from Pro Football Focus with all their chart and data, some fantasy information, it's an incredible value. It's $39.99.

You can get it for free if you do this. Go to the Locked On Patriots page on iTunes. Leave a review for the show. Make sure your Twitter handle is in there. We're picking one winner a week from each Locked On show across the entire network. And look, I'd love it if you would leave a five-star review, but it doesn't have to be. Leave any review. Say whatever you want.

Just make sure your Twitter handle is in there and you will be entered to win. So do that as well. We're going to have some more stuff for you this weekend. You're ready for that Texans game. We're going to have our show with the guys over from Locked on Texans. That will come out on Wednesday, Thursday. That will be your mailbag Thursday show. Get some Twitter questions in to me.

You can find me on Twitter at Mark Schofield Friday, as we'll do each week. Some final scheme stuff for you to think about and chew about over as we get ready for that game. Have some lines and some predictions as well. Four for four in picks so far this year. Hope to keep that rolling as we get into the weekend. Until then, keep it locked right here with me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. Is democracy in danger or decline? Condoleezza Rice, William Galston, and Carlos Gutierrez and others take on this question in the fall edition of The Catalyst, a journal of ideas from the Bush Institute.

Surveys show Americans place less trust in institutions like the media and business. Others contend America has faced far more challenging periods and emerged strong. Leading policymakers, Bush Institute experts, and respected journalists take on this debate. Read about it at bushcenter.org slash catalyst.