Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots September 22, 2017 - Texans Gameday Edition

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

Mark Schofield tackles two questions. First, will the Patriots have an answer for the A-Gap pressure schemes they saw from Houston last year? Second, what will the Patriots do to confuse Deshaun Watson? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash get more. 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, everybody, and welcome to your Friday edition of Locked On Patriots, your game day edition, getting you ready for this weekend's matchup between the Houston Texans and your New England Patriots. Mark Schofield here with you on the big chair for this Friday, September 22nd. And as we're going to do in each game day edition, we're going to do some film stuff at the outset, what I'm looking for when each team has the

football, and then a little later, our final sort of game day predictions. And before I dive into all of this, don't sell this game short. This is a game between two teams that have a lot of familiarity with each other. It's an in-conference game. You have a head coach, Bill O'Brien, that knows the Patriots well. You have a defensive coordinator, Mike Vrabel, that knows the Patriots well. Two teams that faced off in the divisional round, so there's familiarity there as well. And so this is a big game for New England

to get you back to 2-1, get you back with a winning record, dive into the tape in that divisional game, go through some of the stuff that I picked out that I think is important to look for on Sunday. And so that's what we'll do here at the outset. Then a little later, again, some predictions, some stuff you might want to keep in mind if you're, I don't know,

heading on over to mybookie.ag or something in the next couple of hours. But before we dive into the scheme stuff, massive shout out since it's Friday and I'm in a good mood. Massive, massive shout out to all the listeners to this show. And I'm new here. I've only been here for a couple of weeks, but the feedback has been incredible. And I appreciate each and every one of you. And for those of you out there who maybe aren't Patriots fans or just listening because you

like the football chat or whatever, for those of you that might be questioning the term Patriots nation or whatever, let me submit to you that it's not Patriots nation, it's Patriots world. And what I mean by that is, look, I'm looking at stats right now and I've got people tuning into this show from England, from Japan, from Germany, from Australia, from Norway, from the Ukraine, from Brazil, from Sweden, people worldwide tuning into this show. Now, maybe one or two of them are just tuning in to listen to what I have to say, but I would venture that 99.999% of the people that listen to the show don't really care about me. They care more about the New England Patriots. And so it is a global fan base. And I'm just

honored to be a tiny little sliver of the people that get to talk about this team. And it means the world to me to have people tuning in and have this team. And it means the world to me to have people tuning in and have the feedback. And it's incredible. As always, please hit me up on Twitter at Mark Schofield, Facebook, you can find me there, Mark Schofield, stop me on the street, throw paper airplanes into my window, whatever. I love talking about this team. And more than that, I love addressing your questions, your concerns, your thoughts, because again, this is your show. I'm just sort of the vessel. So whatever you want, let me help you. Let me deliver it to you. And so let's get into some scheme stuff here. Let's get into what I'm expecting when both of these teams have the football. And I'm going to start with when the

Patriots have the ball. And I mentioned that divis start with when the Patriots have the ball. And, you know, I mentioned that divisional game, and I went back and studied it. I went back and broke down the coach's tape again. Because on its face, 34-16 victory for New England, you think, okay, maybe this is a game that the Patriots sort of have in control. But when those stories came out over the summer of, oh, is Tom Brady in decline? Are we seeing sort of the beginning of the end yet again for Tom Brady? People pointed to this divisional round game. People pointed to the game against

the Texans. People pointed to Brady going 18 of 38, two touchdown passes, two interceptions, two sacks. And they said, look, he struggled in this game. And he did. But let's look at how that came about. And for years, the book on Brady, as it is the book on most quarterbacks, is A-gap pressure. And what I mean by that is look a gaps are the gaps in the offensive line on either shoulder of the center immediate a gap pressure gets tom brady off of his game it gets most quarterbacks off of their game but especially Brady. Brady can deal with edge pressure. He can climb the pocket. He can slide the pocket. Usually he can deal with guys like Vaughn Miller off the edge or J.J. Watt off the edge because he can evade that fairly well. He has more time to evade

that fairly well. A-gap pressure is a different animal. It flusters Brady at times. It gets him off of his spot at times. And it really impacts this offense as a whole because with a gap pressure, it's quick. It's almost immediate. And it gets you off the structure of the play almost from the snap. And for an offense like New England's, for an offense that is predicated so much on timing, on precision, on the ball getting out when it's supposed to, hitting the receiver at a certain depth, when you throw the structure of a playoff from jump, it's often a little bit harder to sort of get back on track. And so it impacts not just Brady, but the entire sort of structure of the offensive

play call. And that's why we saw the Texans in that divisional game do so many different things to try to get agap pressure. But the main thing that really got them to fluster Brady, force some sacks, force some throwaways, force an interception or two, was when they rolled out this package where they took two linebackers, Jadavion Clowney, sort of your edge guy, and Whitney Mercurius, another linebacker, and lined them up on the inside. Sometimes they would use one. Sometimes they would do it with both of them.

And what you get when you do that is you get athletic guys going up against center Dave Andrews and guards like Shaq Mason where they're not used to blocking guys like that. And so as we start to roll through these plays, I'm of the mind that David Andrews and James White are the two most important players for New England this Sunday. I want to start with a 3rd-and-5 play from this game. 3rd-and-5, New England has the ball on their own 19-yard line.

And you pull this up. This is a play that happens, if you want to look at it yourself, 948 mark of the second quarter. New England has a 14-13 lead. And what we see, we see Mercurius, number 59, a linebacker, lined up head up in a two-point stance over the center. Judevi on Connie, he slides inside as well. He's on the outside left shoulder of the left guard. Both of them rush the passer here. And for Whitney Mercurius, it's just a simple, quick move.

He jabs with his left foot as if he's going to attack the right A- for andrews andrews over commits to the right the linebacker then just brushes right past brady to the point where brady takes a snap he takes his second step in the shotgun and he's immediately off of his spot has to roll to the right whitney mercurialis doesn't get a sack here but he gets that sort of immediate pressure brian cushion is the guy that ends up cleaning it up for technically a sack but there are guys open here i mean it turns into a scramble drill situation, but Brady has Edelman open, but he just never has a chance to get the ball out. He has Michael Floyd open on an in-cut. Doesn't have a chance to get the ball out because of the immediate pressure. Another example of this this is another play where they get that sort of immediate

a-gap pressure on Tom Brady and it's it's another look at how they do it this comes a little bit later in the second quarter it's a third and sixth play at the 624 mark of the second quarter again New England has a 14-13 lead. And we see that same look. Whitney Mercurius head up on David Andrews. Judevion Clowney on the left shoulder of the left guard. Off the snap. Brady's in the shotgun.

We see a spin move this time from Mercurius. Shows Andrews a different little look here. He comes this time. He attacks to the right. His right. Andrews' left. Andrews again over commits to that. And then we see the spin move.

So it's immediate pressure right in Brady's face. Brady takes a shotgun snap. Hits the third step of his drop. He's using a three-step drop here and immediately tries to tuck and go, but ends up getting dragged down. And so the A gaps are going to be critical in this game. They're going to have to get those blocked up. How they did that, they started, it's like you do a better job of it as the game wore on.

And, you know, something that they could roll out this week, a couple of things to keep in mind. First, stay ahead of the chains. You want to be sort of in that third and three or shorter type of down and distance. You've got to stay on schedule against these guys because what that forced Houston to do when you know they had to stay in sort of a run defense type mode when they had to at least have their sort of a more base defensive package on there they could really only slide one of those guys down because

they had to have Vince Wilfork on the field in case of a potential run and play when New England got into third and medium third and long situations third and five third and six like we've just talked about they could take Wilfork off the field, and then they could slide both Whitney Mercurius and Jadavion Clowney down to the inside. And so that's sort of the first thing. Sort of stay on schedule. Because when you get both of those guys down on the inside,

that's when you can cause problems. A lot of people are going to ask, I know, well, look, they've got J.J. Watt back. Why don't they just sort of rely on it? Do you think they're really going to use this package? Yes, I still think they're going to use this package for the reasons I sort of laid out at the outset. Look, a gap pressure is what gets to Tom Brady.

That's what really forces this offense off track. They're still going to use it. J.J. Watt, yeah, sure, maybe he gets home once or twice, but Brady can deal with that off the edge. It's the stuff up front that gets to Brady that gets this offense off track. A couple of examples on how New England was able to sort of handle it. This is a play early third quarter, 12-23 mark in the third quarter. Patriots have the football on their own 36-yard line. This is one of those examples. Now it's third and three, so you've got Wilfork in the game. He has to line

up over the left guard. Clowney is now outside of him. He's on the left shoulder of Nate Solder. Texans slide late in the play to where Clownani does eventually slide inside, but he only gets inside just on the inside shoulder of the left tackle, Nate Solder. Mercurius is still off the line of scrimmage. He blitzes, but the Patriots have this blocked up because now they've got a better job of seeing the play pre-snap, having the right blocking scheme called. They slide the protection scheme to the right.

So Solder, he takes his first step to the right, and he's got Clowney. Left guard slides right. He can handle Vince Wilfork, who cuts to that side. Andrews, he slides right. When Whitney Mercurius blitzes, he's there right with him. Right guard and right tackle, they slide right as well. Everything's blocked up.

Now, Clowney does put a good little move on Nate Solder. Similar to what we talked about with Whitney Mercurius. He jab steps to his left, then comes to the outside. Solder misses him. But LeGarrette Blount, in the backfield, he's able to throw a cut block at Clowney doesn't get him to the ground but gets him leaping in the air and Brady's able to still throw a pass over him

completes an out route to Julian Edelman to move the sticks and so that's kind of what I mean by staying on schedule now when you've got third and three Houston has to at least respect the run so they've got Wilfork there on the inside, and you can get the blocking scheme sort of blocked up better. You get a better idea of who's going to be coming and where they might be coming from. And then you've got the running back

in there, LeGarrette Blount, to help out as well. So that's sort of what I'm talking about. When you stay more on schedule, you might have a better shot at getting things blocked up because they can't go to this sort of speed package. Another example, this is a third and 10 play. So we're back to that third and long situation. This is at the 7.05 mark of the third quarter. Now, third and long, they can go back to that speed package. Wilfork's not on the field. We get Clowney on the left shoulder of the guard again. Mercurius head up on David Andrews. This is where James White's going to come into play. Because what they do here,

this time they run a combination protection scheme. The guys on the right, they go man. So the right guard takes the defensive tackle. Right tackle, Marcus Cannon. He looks at the defensive end on that side. And you've got Martellius Bennett in there on the wing. He gets a chip block as well. You might see some of that

from Dwayne Allen or Rob Gronkowski. Some chips on the edge, especially against Watt and Clowney. Now to the other side, they slide the protection to the other side they slide the protection to the left so Nate Solder he has Brian Cushion to the outside he slides to him left guard he slides to Clowney Andrews he slides to Whitney Mercurius that's how they handle that and then James White is in the game as well and this is where I'm talking about James White and why he might be important. Because he gets a pretty good chip lock on Cushen.

It's enough to sort of knock him off step for a second. And that's very important in this play. Why? Texans are going to stunt here. Both Clowney and Whitney Mercurius, they come to the outside. Cushen starts to rush from the outside, but then he's going to cut behind those guys

through the middle, which is now vacated given how this protection scheme sets up. But since White gets enough of a chip on him, it staggers Cushion just for a second. So even though Cushion then gets a free run at Brady, he's a step late. That step is all Brady needs.

He gets the ball out to Edelman on deep out route to move the sticks for a big game. So that's why I said, look, James White is going to have a big role in this game, I think, as well. David Andrews has to protect those A-gaps. He's going to be the guy that can make sure the calls are right up front. But James White is going to have to play a big role in this as well and they trust him in these blocking situations they're going to ask him to chip and release so I think White's going to play a big role in this game as

well but a gap pressure you know that's one of the things that I'm looking for when New England has the ball can they get that a gap pressure blocked up now let's look at the houston texans and i've already talked a lot about deshaun watson make no mistake he was my favorite quarterback out of the last draft class and i study quarterbacks year round i'd watch an ungodly amount of quarterback tape. I mean, I spent this summer watching three games on, I think the final number was 43 different quarterbacks to get ready for the next draft class. Deshaun Watson is somebody that I really, really, really liked coming out of Clemson.

Now, that is not to say that he is without flaws. Watson certainly has flaws and what I'm looking for when the Patriots defense is on the field is I'm looking for a couple of things one I'm looking to see if they are as stubborn as the Bengals were during that Thursday night game the Bengalsals just insisted, for some reason, to just leave Adam Pac-Man Jones in one-on-one situations with DeAndre Hopkins. Adam Pac-Man Jones is a good cornerback, physical cornerback. That was a wrestling match out there between those two guys. But it still gave Hopkins opportunities to catch the football.

I would be stunned if we don't see some sort of combination coverage, bracket coverage on Hopkins at least a couple of times in this game. Because by leaving him out there on an island, you're just asking for trouble. You're just asking for Hopkins to have opportunities to get open. Watson targeted Hopkins in more than 50% of the throws. And so you've got to be able to sort of bracket that to sort of take that away because you know Watson is going to look there. So that's one thing that I'm looking for at the outset. Two, are they going to blitz Watson? And I know that there are differing opinions on whether you should

blitz young quarterbacks, blitz rookie quarterbacks. I've always been of the mind that if you blitz inexperienced quarterbacks, you're making things easier for them. Because if you think about what a quarterback's job is against the blitz most plays have a hot read an alert a quick outlet when a quarterback sees blitz you're going up against young inexperienced guys you want to make them think when you think you're dead particularly as a young quarterback if you blitz them you do the thinking for them. You know, it's one thing to try to diagnose a rolled coverage at the snap and say, oh, it's cover three.

I thought it was cover two. What do I do? It's another thing where you're like, oh, blitz. Here's where I go with the football. But that's what blitzing does. It gives the quarterback a quick out. Don't simplify the game for Deshaun Watson. Make it tougher on him. Show him some complex coverages. You can bait him into mistakes.

Here's what I mean by that. During the draft process, anybody who had something negative to say about Deshaun Watson pointed at one single number, 17. Watson threw 17 interceptions last year, and sure, that's a pretty big number. So I went through all of them last year. There's a YouTube video. You can go to youtube.com slash inside the pylon. It's about 25 minutes of me breaking down every single interception. What did I learn from that? A couple of things. Watson doesn't repeat a lot of mistakes. Bill O'Brien said that this week.

Watson doesn't repeat mistakes. You can get them once. You're not going to get them twice. Not with the same exact look. I did a piece on Watson facing the weak side cornerback blitz. And against Florida State, he saw a look like that three different times in that game. The first time, the cornerback on the outside blitzed. Watson saw it, threw right to the immediately uncovered receiver. This is what I'm talking about.

You blitz, you make the decision easier for the quarterback. The defensive back blitzes off the boundary. Watson sees it. He throws the quick outlet. First down. Later in the game, he sees that same look. That cornerback, this time on his left, starts to show blitz pre-snap.

And if you go through the tape, you can see the left tackle points it out. The receiver points it out. Everybody on the field is thinking blitz. So Watson thinks he's going to have the same nice little throw again. So he takes a snap, floats out a pass to that receiver. The only problem, the cornerback did not blitz.

He faked it, dropped back, the pass went right to him for an interception. There's a mistake. Later in the game, it's now an eight score, an eight point game. Florida State has the lead by eight. Clemson's just outside or maybe even just inside the red zone. They show that same look again. Cornerback to the outside starts to show blitz. Watson looks over there. Everybody's thinking, oh, blitz is coming, blitz is coming, blitz is coming. The guy doesn't blitz. Watson immediately looks over there, sees the guy drop,

comes off of it, makes a late throw down the middle on the post route, first and goal at the three. You're not going to get him twice. And so what I'm wondering is, can the Patriots bait him into a mistake? Can they do it once? You might not do it twice, but you might get him once with a different kind of look than he's expected. And that's an area where Watson did sort of struggle. When you go through those 17 interceptions, if there was one sort of overarching theme, it was you can bait him into mistakes on the boundaries. Another example was

an interception he threw against Florida State, again, in that Florida State game where he had that smash concept that I've talked about. You have a receiver in the flat and then another receiver deep. It's sort of that high-low read where you're reading the corner back and you quote-unquote throw the corner. Corner drops, throw to the flat. Corner squats on the flat route, throw the deeper route. Well, Watson rolls out and he sees the cornerback squatting a little bit. So he tries to throw the deeper route. The only problem is that cornerback was just reading his eyes and just waiting. And he cuts under it for a touchdown. I mean, an interception. And so you can bait him into a mistake, but you're not going to get him twice. And so that's what I'm wondering if we see from New England. One,

double in Hopkins. Don't make it easier for Hopkins to get open. Two, are they going to blitz him or not? I think you might be able to blitz him once or twice, but again, don't make it that much easier for him. Don't give him those quick, easy reads. Show him more complex coverages. Try to bait him into mistakes here and there. I think that's your better chance at forcing Deshaun Watson into situations where he turns the ball over. Bait him a little bit. And more than anything else, the final thing to remember is

when you get a shot at him, you've got to get him to the ground because he's elusive. He can make plays with his feet. And you can see a situation where if this game is close and he has a chance to rip off a long run like he did against Cincinnati, that could change the course of a game. So you can't let him

beat you with his feet. So those are the things that I'm looking for in this game. When the Patriots have the ball, those A-gap pressure schemes that Houston brought last year, can New England block those up? When the Texans have the ball, how are they going to sort of attack Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins?

Are they going to roll some extra coverage towards Hopkins? Are they going to blitz Watson or not? I don't think you blitz him. Those are sort of my quick takes. Before we get to predictions, look, I want to give a shout out quickly to my friends over at Baltimore New England Patriots fans. It's a great group of people. They get together each weekend, each Sunday down in Baltimore, watch the games

together. This year, they're going over to Dog Watch Tavern on Broadway down in Fells Point. They're going to be getting together to watch this game on Sunday. And my parents, they're going to be there. And so I know that these people, they're great people. They're going to take care of my parents. But if you listen to this show, if you head over to Dog Watch for the Patriots games, if you're part of that group, massive shout out to you guys. Again, Patriots fans are worldwide. Big group of Pats fans down in Baltimore. They're crushing it down there. Have some fun. Enjoy the game. Take care of my parents. If you're listening to this show,

if you're just going over to Dog Watch for the first time, you should go. You should check it out if you're in the Baltimore area and you haven't been yet. Head over to Dog Watch Tavern down on Broadway in Fells Point. Let them know that Mark Schofield from Locked On Patriots sent you. Big fans of all those guys and girls getting together and having fun and enjoying the game down in the Baltimore area.

Have another good time. Hope to see everybody soon. Finally, just quick words on some predictions. Again, we're 4-4-4 right now. Let's go 6-6. Hopefully we have some good luck with these as well. Head over to mybookie.ag to sort of get your bets in before game time. They've got a great interface over there and big fans of what they do.

And they're great partners for us here at Locked On Patriots and the whole Locked On network. Line right now is Patriots by 13. I think they cover that. I think this is a situation where New England is going to force Watson to make some mistakes. They're going to get some short fields. They might even get a defensive turnover score type situation.

So I think they cover that. The over-under right now is 44. That seems a little low, but I think what the expectations are is that, look, Houston's not going to punch the ball in the end zone. Patriots might put 30 up, but Houston might only get 10. But this one scares me a little bit, but Houston might only get 10. This one scares me a little bit, but I'm going to go with the over. I think Houston, they probably put 14 on the board.

That wouldn't surprise me if they get a touchdown early. Maybe they get a touchdown sort of late. So there's 14 right there. I think New you know, maybe 32, 33 on the board. So they got you to 47. You know, I think we're looking at like a 33-14 type game. And so I think it's going to be close. This one does sort of scare me a little bit,

but I do think we get the over here. And so let's hope for six for six. Go to mybookie.ag to check those out. Check those guys out and get your bets in. Hopefully we hit that six for six mark. I'd really like to, you know, stay sort of undefeated on the year. I to check those out. Check those guys out and get your bets in. Hopefully, we hit that six for six mark. I'd really like to stay sort of undefeated on the year. I know somebody probably out there is going to say, wait a minute, you missed something.

And maybe I did. But in my head, I'm four for four right now. Also, again, shout out to our friends over at Dog Watch Tavern. Again, Broadway in Fells Point. Head over there. Let them know Mark Schofield from Locked On Patriots sent you. Great group of people there watching the games

each and every Sunday. You know, if you're in the Baltimore area and you're looking for a place to go, head to Dog Watch. Let them know I sent you. We'll be back Monday or maybe even late Sunday night.

Independent. Hopefully, it's another glorious victory edition of Locked On Patriots. We'll keep our fingers crossed for that. Enjoy the weekend.

Slate of games, everybody. Enjoy the weekend, Slater Games, everybody. Enjoy the weekend. We've got some fun college games on tap as well, so it should be another fun weekend of football. I will be back after the game with some instant reaction analysis, and then we start to look forward to the Carolina Panthers.

We'll have a crossover show with my friend Bill Rossetti from Locked On Panthers. We'll get you ready for that game as well, but enjoy the games, everybody. Come back shortly after the game ends with the Houston Texans and the New England Patriots. I'll have some instant analysis for you.

But until then, keep it tuned right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. What you doing? Ran out of space on my phone, so I'm deleting some stuff. Bye singing dog. Bye goal. Bye wedding ceremony. Stop. At MetroPCS, you get two free phones with twice as much memory. Really?

Don't say bye to your memories. Switch to MetroPCS and get two free LG K20 Plus phones with 32 gigs when you switch two lines. MetroPCS. Wireless. Figured out. Coverage not available in some areas. Sales tax not included in phone price. Excludes numbers on the T-Mobile network. See store for details and terms and conditions.