Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots September 21, 2018 - Gameday Edition

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

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Hello and welcome everybody to a game day edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield sliding into the big chair for this Friday, September 21st, 2018. The New England Patriots set to travel and take on the Detroit Lions on Sunday night football. A little national stage for your New England Patriots. Before we get started into what is a loaded show for you today, I'm going to do some film stuff and what I'm watching for, some predictions, things like that. I want to remind everybody to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at places like InsideThePylon.com where I'm one of the head writers.

Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Walden's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, Big Blue View, and a host of other websites, including Minnesota's Rivals website. Minnesota Rivals, the Gophers opening up their Big Ten conference schedule on the road in my neck of the woods against the Maryland Terrapins this weekend. Let's get into it, though. And at the end, we're going to talk predictions. At the end, we're going to talk stuff like that. But I want to start with film review type stuff,

stuff that I picked up on watching the Detroit Lions and their game against the San Francisco 49ers. And this is going to be familiar ground a little bit. We've had Matt Darion on the crossover show on Wednesday. We had Jeff Raistin, the managing editor of Lions Wire. He was on a Thursday show. I hope you check those out. If not, go back and give those a listen. Great insight from both of those guys. So some of this might be familiar territory, but now we're putting some film and some X's and O's behind it. I'm going to start when the Patriots are on defense, when the Lions have the football

because this is the side of the ball. This is the matchup that Detroit Lions offense against the Patriots defense that gives me the most trepidation. And the trepidation started early when I was watching this Lions 49ers game. Very first play of the game. Lions come out.

They put Matthew Stafford, a very talented quarterback, under center. They run a play-action pass with a half roll to the right. And what do we see? We see two receivers on the right side running out patterns. But what is the route he throws? A crossing route coming from the left side of the formation to the right. And that's when he throws to Kenny Galladay for a first down.

Very first play of the game in their work in crossing routes. And those of you who have been watching the Patriots for a first down. Very first play of the game in their work in crossing routes. And those of you who have been watching the Patriots for a while, those of you perhaps in the Locked On Patriots Slack channel, again, if you'd like an invite to that, hit me up at Mark Schofield on Twitter, mark.schofield at gmail.com. Those crossing routes have been given all of us agita and heartburn, basically since the AFC Championship game last year, if not beyond that and even longer into the Patriots history, they struggle with those. I've said that it starts with a personnel problem up front. You can't get home with four. You have to blitz with five or six.

You open yourself up to man coverage situations. And what's the phrase? If you blitz and you don't get home, the band starts to play. So that was a play that gave me a little bit of pause, seeing that right out of the gate from the Detroit Lions. A little something to worry about there. With Matthew Stafford, we heard from Bill Belichick this week. I talked about his press conference and Thursday show. Matthew Stafford is a tough quarterback. He's a tough quarterback to defend. When you think of Matthew Stafford is a tough quarterback he's a tough quarterback to defend when you think of Matthew Stafford you think big arm, electric arm

talent, can make throws to all levels and that's there and we'll get to that but I'm trying to rack my brain right now when I talked about all the mobile quarterbacks that the Patriots have to play this year I don't know if I put Matthew Stafford in that category if I didn't, I should have

and he's mobile but in a different way much to, say, a Ben Roethlisberger type mobility. Yeah, he can move and throw and throw in the move and things like that. Third and seven in the first quarter. 528 left in the first quarter of this game against the San Francisco 49ers. Stafford is pressured. Stafford is under duress. Stafford has bodies around him in the pocket. He climbs.

He gets hit. He spins away from it. You don't get him to the ground. He makes a sidearm throw on a check down to Theo Riddick out of the backfield that goes for 10 yards and a fresh set of downs for Detroit. You've got to get him to the ground. I'm flashing back right now to that play early in the game against Jacksonville when Jawan Bentley blitzes. He has Bortles dead to rights, and he doesn't even get a fingertip on him. Similar situation. If you've got a shot at Stafford, you've got to get him to the ground. I'm reminded of Al Davis.

He used to say, we're going to blitz him. He's going to go down, and he's going to go down hard. That's what you've got to do with a guy like Matthew Stafford. That was probably an awful Al Davis impression. I hope Amy Trask isn't listening to my good friend Amy Trask. But when you've got a shot at Stafford, you've got to get him down to the ground. He's a physical play strength type quarterback.

Belichick talked about his ability to throw on the move. These types of moments, you've got to get him down to the ground. Play action. Something to worry about with this team. They got on the board. The Lions got on the board on a first and 10 play late in the first quarter. It comes around the 252 mark. They run play action.

They come out and they show sort of a heavy look. We've got Stafford under center. You've got tight end. You bring short motion into the formation. This is a run type look. A lot of teams like to do that. They motion that wide receiver in to have him block on the wing, block on the edge. They show you that look. San Francisco has 10 defenders basically within two yards of the line of scrimmage. It's play action with

Garrett Blount, Warren Hemmon a bit. And the corner that's responsible for that receiver that just came in short motion just collapses down on the run. It's an easy throw from Stafford to Galladay for a catch and run touchdown. You've got to be disciplined against this team. They will show you power heavy run type looks and then throw off of that. You've got to be disciplined in those situations. Another thing with Stafford, formation doesn't dictate where he's going with the ball. Sometimes you might see trips to the right and you're thinking, oh, they're going to throw to

the right. It might be a situation where you've got three trips receivers to the right, even into the boundary, so it's the short side of the field. Stafford's got the arm to throw that backside deep out route. If you're on backside with Stafford, you've got to be ready. He loves throwing to isolated receivers on the backside of formations, whether it's a three-by-one, sometimes even a four-by-one or a three-by-one with the running back shaded towards the trips. He loves those types of throws. If you're Stephon Gilmore, Eric Rowe, any of the Patriots corners, you find yourself on an island on the weak side of the offensive formation, be ready. He loves throwing those backside X out, X slant, stuff like that. He loves throwing that. With Stafford, no play is over. One of the biggest plays the Lions had

against the 49ers is a fantastic example of how with Stafford and his arm talent, no play is over. You have to cover to the whistle. It's a third and 17 situation in the fourth quarter. Niners have the lead. The score at the moment is 30 to 13. You've got a 17 point lead at home. You've got them in third and seven on their own 23 yard line. What happens? Well, a defender drops his eyes. Golden Tate runs a vertical route. Excuse me, he runs an out route, and Stafford starts to climb the pocket. The cornerback in that situation peaks in the backfield for a second. He sees Stafford climb and start to run. He eases up just a bit. As that out route from Tate gets towards the boundary, he turns upfield. Stafford is on the

right hash mark at his own 20-yard line. He sees Golden Tate along the left sideline at the 40-yard line. So it's at least in yardage 20 yards, but because of the angle, it's more than that. Stafford stops on a dime and fires a rocket towards the 49ers 40-yard line. That's about where Tate catches it, maybe the 43 or so. So it's basically right hash mark to left sideline, catches it about the 43-yard line on a rope. You can't give up on a play. You't assume that oh he can't make this throw Stafford can make that throw I'm reminded of Doug Flutie and the Hail Mary he threw while at BC and you talk to the Miami defensive backs and all of them to a tee said we thought there's no way he

could make that throw you can't assume that whether against Doug Flutie or certainly against you know Matthew Stafford he can make those kind of throws. So you have to cover until the whistle, period. Don't assume that he's not going to spot your guy. Don't assume that if he's on the other sideline, he can't make the throw to your guy. Assume that he can because guess what? He can.

So that's some stuff when they have the pass the pass game the run game obviously is an issue for detroit we talked about it with matt dairy we talked about it with jeff rayson this is a team that has gone now 70 games 7-0 without a 100 yard rusher i expect that to continue because they struggle running the football they struggle struggle on zone stuff. Their best, I'd say, at power-type blocking schemes, you look at they had a run with Kerryon Johnson, their rookie running back out of Auburn. It's sort of a shotgun counter-type run where he's to the left of Stafford, takes a few steps to his right, takes the handoff, then cuts back to the left. They hit that for a gain of about 10. They had a power up the middle, an iso power,

with a single back formation with LeGarrette Blount, where he was able to get small through the hole. You've got some pullers in front of him, and he's able to get small and get about a gain of 10 or 12 or so. Those were basically the run plays that they hit on. They struggle running the football. So think back to the game day show against the Houston Texans. I talked about the number four, something to watch this season. Can they get pressure with four? Can they stop

the run with four? This is one of those games where I'm looking, I want to see them stop the run with four. I think they can do it this week. It would be a good test whether they can. Those are some things I'm watching for when the Lions have the football. Up next, I'm going to talk what the 49ers were able to do to them in the run game and the passing game. And a little bit later, some predictions as well as I'm going to plug some of my own work at the end of this show, because it's my show and it's Friday. And guess what? You might be in the office and you're thinking, look, I've got a stack of work on my desk. I've got the Penske file I've been supposed to work on. I can wait till Monday. I can't leave quite yet, so I'm going to listen to some podcasts

and maybe read some stuff on the internet. I wrote a cool article, at least I think it's cool, that I'd like you to check out. That's all I had with me, Mark Schofield and Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you on this Friday game day edition of Locked On Patriots. And I did want to mention, I glanced over to my notes, I forgot to mention at the outset, two injury things that we're watching here with the Patriots and I did want to mention I glanced over to my notes I forgot to mention at the outset

two injury things that we're watching here with the Patriots a Thursday's practice Patrick Chun and Trey Flowers both of them are not present for the media portion of practice it does seem unlikely that they're going to be able to go both of them down with a concussion suffered against the Jacksonville Jaguars so that is something to monitor we'll hopefully have some more good news as we get to the Sunday morning tailgate show. Again, be on the lookout for that. Sunday morning tailgate, something new this season where we'll take you through some last-minute news and notes,

injury-type stuff from the Patriots and around the league. Also some daily fantasy recommendations for you men and women out there who like to do the DFS stuff. And finally, some college recap. We've got an interesting slate of games going on this weekend in college football. A lot of teams, a lot of schools are starting their conference slate of games. And so, like I said, look, you've got Minnesota coming out to play, you know, the University of Maryland. You've got Penn State, Illinois. You've got Nebraska, Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, Texas A&M at Alabama, Clemson, Georgia Tech.

So you do have some top 25 games starting to get in conference, and that's where things tend to get a little bit interesting. So it'll be an interesting slate of games. Maybe Jared Stidham can get back on track after a tough out against LSU when they host Arkansas, a team that is struggling. Also the game I think most people want to watch, where my eyes are going to be trained, Stanford at Oregon, Justin Herbert. Will we get a really good look at him?

They haven't played a tough schedule so far, Oregon. I mean, they've gone Bowling Green, Portland State, San Jose State. That's not a tough slate of games. But now, number seven's coming to town and it's your conference opener, so that's going to be a big one. But let's get into what we expect, what I'm looking for from when the Patriots have the football against the Detroit Lions on Sunday night. And the main thing I think is important to talk about is, and we talked about this with Jeff Rizzo and we talked about it with Matt Derry, Don't focus so much on Garoppolo and what he did last week against the Lions

in a sense of the sacks and things like that. Because when you look at that game, you look at that out in between the 49ers and the Lions, Garoppolo a lot of times really held the ball. You know, didn't get the ball out of his hands quickly, wasn't decisive enough as he could be. He was at times, but there were times when he wasn't. So they missed some opportunities. He invited pressure at times. These are things that Tom Brady generally doesn't do.

So that's one thing at the outset. Darius Slay, he's got a concussion thing. That might be something that is worth monitoring, and it is something that's worth monitoring because big play Slay. If he can't go, Detroit's going to have their hands full on the defensive side of the ball when the Patriots are on the field. Some things that worked for the 49ers from a schematic standpoint that I would love to see New England

do, there's this sort of route concept that I'm seeing a lot of teams use so far this year. I saw the Bengals use it. I saw the Falcons use it against Carolina. Matter of fact, in today's piece that I have over at the score, I talk about it. It's sort of a vertical pivot combination where you've got a deep pattern, whether it's a deep post or a deep go route from the outside receiver. And then your slot receiver, or sometimes it's a tight end,

who's inside of a flanker that's outside of him, runs this deep sort of pivot route where they start, make it look like a post, but then they break towards the outside. And it's such a great design against a cover three, cover four, because you run off that outside defender, and then you've got that pivot route coming inside. And if it's a cover three, there might not be anybody there. And if it's a cover four, that safety in the middle of the field is responsible for that. And the Lions got hit by that by the 49ers. They did it with some play action. Look for the Patriots to use that. Patriots, Haas concept, we've talked about it. The 49ers, they used it a couple of times against the Lions. They did some mirrored hoss stuff where you've got you know the outside receivers running hitches those inside guys

were running seams and the just like the Patriots Kyle Shanahan loves a lot of multiple running back type formations well he'll come out with two backs to start a drive Kyle Juswick their full back they like to use him as a receiver they'll spread him out Matt Brita Alfred Morris some of the other guys they have they'll spread those guys out so theyida, Alfred Morris, some of the other guys they have, they'll spread those guys out. So they'll do some mirrored Haas-type stuff. If they were successful with that, I'd expect the New England Patriots to run stuff like that.

Play action. 49ers had some success with play action. We know the Patriots love to do stuff like that. They tried to take some deep shots that were actually covered. Garoppolo in those moments was willing to take those sort of check down type throws. We know Tom Brady's willing to take those types of check downs. So I think those are going to be some good designs to see them implement against the line, some play action stuff. One of the things the Niners love to do,

they missed it early in the game and they came back to it late. It's something the Patriots love to do. You go play action, you go stretch look to one side of the field with the run fake, and then you come back and throw that backside quick post, ban eight post, or even just a skinny post route, or skinny slant route, excuse me. They missed it once to kiddle the tight end. They came back to it later in the game and hit it. Garoppolo missed on the first throw.

Look for that to be part of the game plan for the Patriots against the Lions. Final thing I want to mention, post and mills concept. They had a play that they hit in the third quarter, about the 8-39 mark. Again, off of play action. You've got a double post type look, and they were able to hit that in the middle of the field between the hash marks.

You know, Jared Davis is a name to keep in mind. Lions linebacker. We heard Jeff Rizdan talk about him, not the smartest guy, but very athletic. You know, you got to kind of exploit those guys in coverage where you do some things where you maybe run a receiver through his zone, get him out of position, come back and throw to the other side. You know, once you've gotten him out of position, Brady can move this guy, Jared Davis, with his eyes. Look for Tom Brady to use his eyes to get that young linebacker out of position, out of zones, and then attack him in coverage. And so that's something I'm watching for.

When the Patriots run the football, we know the Patriots aren't a team that wants to come out and impose their will and run the football down your throat. But this is a game where New England can establish some sort of a running game. This run defense for Detroit is bad. Their run fits are bad. Sometimes they don't know who's responsible for what gap. And when you've got that going on as a defensive front, you're not going to stop the run. So I'd expect New England to come out, do some things on the ground, establish a little bit like a modicum, a little amuse-bouche, as it were, of a run game, to set up this play-action stuff we're talking about, to set up maybe these shot plays down the field or things like that.

And so that's what I'm looking for when the Patriots have the football. There are opportunities against this defense, particularly if Darius Slay is sidelined. But even if he goes, look, I think this is a game that the Patriots can put up some points. How many? Well, that's what we're going to cover next when we get to predictions, as well as I'm going to talk the scientific theory of revolutions. That's ahead with me, Mark Schofield,

in Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now to close out this game day installment of Locked on Patriots. Don't forget, Sunday morning, Tailgate will be coming to you first thing Sunday morning. And if you want to be part of the conversation on the Locked on Patriots Slack channel, hit me up again. At Mark Schofield on Twitter. Mark.Schofield at InsideThePylon.com. Get yourself an invite.

I'm going to get super nerdy here for a second. I'm going to plug something I wrote for Pro Football Weekly titled Patrick Mahomes Paradigm Shifter. One of the more influential books that I read when I was in college was a book by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And in this work, which has been viewed now as like seminal, not just in the natural sciences, but in a lot of different philosophies, a lot of different schools of thought. Kuhn basically challenged the then widely held theories of scientific involvement and advancement. At the time, people thought like little development by accumulation, you know, you learn a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And that's how people eventually alter their theories, whether it's evolution or any sort of

natural science. You know, that's of natural science. That's what people expected. That's what people thought happened. But Kuhn was like, nah, nah, friends. This is what really happens. We discover a couple of anomalies in the area, and then we get sort of this large scale paradigm shift where there's like an episodic event where everybody really recalibrates their thinking. And part of the impetus and part of the reason that people eventually give up the old ways of thought and shift to the newer model with these newer discoveries is that they realize that the old way just wasn't efficient. It just wasn't working. And there were crises and problems using the older

model that were created because of the older model that the new way of thinking answered. Okay, I know that's super nerdy. And it's probably not what you want to be listening to on a Friday when all you're thinking about is getting the happy hour. But bear with me for a second. Because Kuhn's sort of model was applied to other schools of thought, political thought, economics, sociology, and even in Kuhn's original field of work, philosophy. He was challenging the natural sciences, but because of what he put together, because of the thought behind it, because how it made sense, it spread to other schools of thought. And I'm taking it and applying it to football because I want to. And the reason is Patrick Mahomes. Let's sort of think about things for a second. When Patrick Mahomes entered the

National Football League, when Baker Mayfield entered the National Football League, a lot of the resistance to these guys was, look, they're running against Big 12 defenses, these wide open air raid type offenses. They don't work in the National Football League. When these guys are faced to throw into an NFL window, run an NFL designs, It's not going to work. They won't be able to make the throws. What did I say about Kuhn's theory? It was one of the things I said. It was this. It was the fact that when these sort of episodic type events come about, part of the reason that people finally realize that the new way of thinking is better is that the old ways have a crisis type situation that was created in part by the old ways and the new way fixes that. I'm quoting from Kuhn's work here, quote, probably the single most prevalent claim advanced by the

proponents of a new paradigm is that they can solve the problems that have led the old one to a crisis. When it can be legitimately made, this claim is often the most effective one possible. Claims of this sort are particularly likely to succeed if the new paradigm displays a quantitative precision strikingly better than its older competitor. And here's what I'm saying. We have this belief that there's sort of a quarterback development problem in the game of football, that these guys come in and they can't run NFL offenses. We can't develop them because we don't have time. And these guys don't have the skill set to run these offenses. That's the crisis. And it's a crisis that has been led to this point by the NFL offensive minds insisting that they do it their way. But let's revisit this.

What if the crisis that was created by this doesn't need to be in place because you start running these air raid designs and you're not faced with a situation where your quarterback has to make tight window throws because you spread the field out, you go four or five wide, you run these air raid things that the Chiefs are doing right now where nobody can figure out how to cover these guys and your quarterback doesn't have to make tight window throws because there are no tight windows. There's somebody open or multiple people open on every single play. Now, I know that there might be pushback.

Look, last year, the Chiefs were doing stuff like this. Early, it was working. Then people figured it out. Yes, there will be some regression to the mean from Patrick Mahomes. He's not going to go out and throw five TDs with no interceptions every single game. But, and this is my main point, this is the episodic event in my mind. This is the event where people are finally realizing that, look, these air raid quarterbacks, if you run this air raid stuff, it can work in the National Football League. You can stop taking your square peg of an air raid quarterback

and trying to jam him into the round hole of your NFL-boring type of offense and spread things out a bit. What have I said so often on this show? When you've got a quarterback that's comfortable with what he's running, when you help your quarterback, you have success on the field. I think Patrick Mahomes is the final episodic event that is going to finally shift the paradigm in offensive football. And that's what I wrote about over Pro Football Weekly. I did it in the realm of breaking Patrick Mahomes down, showing you,

look, this aerated stuff, it stresses you as a defense. You don't know how to defend it. You don't know how to cover it. And you can try. I've had people say, oh, Mark, chill out. Once you start seeing combination coverages with man to one side and zone to the other, they're going to struggle. Well, here's the thing. For all the people out there that said, look, Big 12, they don't play defense. One of the things they do do is combination coverages. You've got to do stuff like that when you've got four and five wide. You've got to do like three over two and two over one and read sides and triangle sides and things like that. You've got to use combination coverages because just going cover two or cover four or cover three might not work. And the NFL defenses are figuring that out and they'll start

running these combination coverages and they'll think that, look, this is something Patrick Mahomes hasn't seen, but guess what? He has. Patrick Mahomes, Space Pirate. I mean, Paradigm Shipper. Sorry, Martian reference. Love that show. Anyway, love that movie. Excuse me. Anyway, let's close it out. Prediction time. I know we've gone long. I know what you're thinking. You want to get on the train. You want to get home. You want to turn me off. You want to get to happy hour. And I get it. Believe me, I do. I do this show for those of you that are, you know, in the truck, you know, out on the field, in the office that are working nine to five when you need something to get you through the day, because that was me. That was me back when I was a lawyer, when I needed something and I needed something to listen to. And I looked forward to podcasts and articles and things like that to

help get me through the day. And you guys and girls are the people I do this show for, you know, to help you guys, because I was once there with you. So I know what you're thinking right now. It's Friday. And either you're thinking, I can't wait to get to the bar. I can't wait to get to dinner. I can't wait to go home and see my family. The last thing I want to do is be at the office right now. So go, go, be free, be free. But one last thing, our prediction, 34-28. I think it's going to be a shootout kind of game. I do think the Patriots win on Sunday night. No matter what, win or lose, I will be back probably about 45 minutes after the game. I'm going to hop into the studio, studio with quotes. Those of you on News Channel 8,

you see me using the air quotes there, ban out, hopefully, a glorious victory installment and not another melancholy in the infinite sadness edition of Locked on Patriots. But like I said, either way, I'll be here for you until Sunday and Sunday morning tailgate. Enjoy your Friday nights. Enjoy your weekend. I will be back Sunday morning. Keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patreons.