Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots September 7, 2017 - Chiefs Gameday Edition

Episode Date: September 7, 2017

Mark Schofield previews the Patriots-Chiefs game with some "Schofield on Scheme," looking at coverages both teams might employ tonight. He also looks at some of the various odds on the game and some prop bets, and has a final prediction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Now get out there, hit that high note, and take Mad Harmony all the way to nationals this year! Sorry, it's pitchy. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. This is Mark Schofield from Locked On Patriots. This episode is brought to you by our great friends at bus.com. You are Locked On Patriots, your daily podcast on the New England Patriots, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.

Good morning and welcome to a special game day edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield here in the big chair with you. This is the first game day edition of Locked On Patriots for the 2017 season. We are now just hours away from kickoff of the new NFL year. Tonight, your defended Super Bowl champion, New England Patriots host the Kansas City Chiefs in what is sure to be a thrill and matchup between two very talented teams, two teams that expectations are high in both fan bases.

So we're getting excited for that. We're going to do some scheme stuff today at the outset. I'm going to take you through some Schofield on scheme, talk about my expectations for when both teams have the football and what these defenses tonight might look to do from a coverage standpoint to try to slow down the guys on the other side of the ball. If you haven't, listen to some other scheme stuff that's been done this week.

I hosted Chris Clark from Locked On Chiefs. You can follow Chris at ChrisClarkNFL. He came on. We talked about this Chiefs matchup, talked about his expectations for the Chiefs this year, talked about some of the moves that they've made over the offseason, some of the guys they brought in. We got into a little Patrick Mahomes discussion as well,

a guy that many people are excited about out in Kansas City. We won't see Mahomes tonight, but we will see Alex Smith as well as Travis Kelsey and Tyreek Hill. Also checked out Locked On Chiefs. I joined Chris and his co-host Ryan Tracy. You can follow Ryan at RyanTracyNFL. I joined them and sort of talked about this matchup from the Patriots standpoint.

We went into the loss of Edelman and what that means to this offense. Talked a lot about Brandon Cook's, Philip Dorsett's addition. What we can expect from the Patriots defensively. How the Patriots might sort of try to defend Kelsey and Tyreek Hill. So check those out. Some good stuff for you to listen to as well if you haven't listened to those yet. After we do some scheme stuff here, we're going to get into some fun. Go through some odds, some prop bets, things like that.

And then we'll close it out with a prediction for what I'm expecting to see tonight in terms of a final score. Also check out our friends mentioned at the outset, bus.com. They have a website for tonight's game, patriots.bus.com. They've got a website set up for this game. Get you into Gillette. They'll take care of the transportation and then they'll get you out of Gillette, which frankly might even be more important. So check out our friends, patriots.bus.com as well. And finally, before we dive in, I want to send again thoughts and prayers down to everybody down in the Texas area, the Houston area.

I know you're digging out from Harvey, but also to our friends and listeners who might be in the Florida area. Irma is now bearing down on you. Please pay attention to local news reports. If you're listening to this, it's now Thursday. Evacuations have been issued for some areas. I know Broward County, some parts of Broward County are now under an evacuation for today.

So please stay safe. Listen to your local authorities. When they tell you to get out, it's time to get out. This looks to be another monster storm. So please stay safe down there. So let's do a little Schofield on scheme and talk about my expectations from a schematic standpoint when both teams have the football tonight and I want to start when New England has the ball and we're going to start with some percentages first I'm going to start with the Chiefs on defense last year. And I'm going to throw a little bit of a number at you.

That number is 48.9%. What that number stands for is, according to Pro Football Focus, the guys at PFF, they do a lot of really good work, charting games, taking notes on every single snap, what the guys are doing, what the players are executing, what the coverages are, what the plays are. They do a lot of great work. Their charting stuff is excellent.

PFF has a piece up. I'll tweet this out a little bit later. Looking at how every NFL defense played coverage last season in 2016. And while no team played man coverage in more than half of their snaps, there were the two teams that played the most man coverage last season were the Tennessee Titans. They were number one at 49.6%, which is a little bit surprising when you think about the Titans last year in that secondary. They tried to address some holes in the offseason. They bring in Logan Ryan. They drafted Dory Jackson. The Tennessee Titans played the most man coverage last year, 49.6%. The second most in terms of a team playing man coverage in the 2016 season,

that was the Kansas City Chiefs at 48.9%. That's the number I started with. And diving into it deeper, according to PFF's numbers, the Chiefs actually ran man coverage 6.5% more than they ran zone overall. So the Chiefs are a man coverage team. Cover one is typically the coverage that they implement. Don Sutton has been their defensive coordinator for years. He was their defensive coordinator in 2015 in that divisional game between these two teams.

And I'm going to talk about that in a moment. But cover one is basically sort of your standard man free coverage. And what that means is you've got a free safety deep who's responsible for help to either side of the field depending on the route concept. If you get somebody that's breaking free deep, the safety theoretically can come over and help on that. But sometimes if it's a deep route along the boundary, that's a lot of ground to cover. That's why long range and free safeties are a valuable commodity in this league. That's why you see a guy like Malik Hooker out of Ohio State. You see him make that interception against Deshaun Watson and the Clemson Tigers in the playoff game where he covers basically one hash mark to the opposite sideline to intercept

a pass. That's why those guys are valuable commodities. That's why Devin McCourty is a valuable commodity for this Patriots defense, because if you can cover ground back there as a long range and free safety type, that helps the guys in front of you. That helps your defense play better. And so cover one, man free. You've got that free safety. And then it's typically just man across the board. Everybody else is in man coverage. What you sometimes see with cover one schemes is in addition to having that free safety deep, you have what people call an underneath

hole defender, H-O-L-E, hole defender. This is typically your middle linebacker. He doesn't have a man coverage responsibility. You can use either spy on the quarterback, and you might see a little bit of that when the Chiefs have the ball if the Patriots decide to use cover one because you might want to spy Alex Smith in some certain situations, some third down situation, because Smith is a guy that can make something happen with his feet.

But when New England has the ball, typically you might see that underneath hole defender. He's not too worried about spying Tom Brady. What he's trying to do is help on quick routes that break to the inside. Quick ins, quick slant routes. Again, Chiefs play a lot of man coverage. They played more man coverage in zone last year. You expect that to continue for the most part,

given what this team has done in the past. I want to talk briefly about that 2015 game because the Chiefs used a lot of man coverage in that game. And I actually wrote a piece shortly after that game, came out in January of 2016, that 2015-2016 divisional game, that talked about how Brady is effective at attacking this coverage using his eyes. And what I meant by that was there was a play on the first drive of the game. This was Julian Edelman's return from injury. Obviously, Edelman won't be in the lineup tonight, but the concepts are similar. And the Patriots empty the backfield. They go five wide, three to the right side of the field. Gronkowski's in a wing alignment to the right, and then you've got Edelman and another receiver to the outside.

And then to the left side of the formation, you've got a slot look with Danny Amendola in the slot and Brandon LaFell to the outside. Chiefs run cover one on this play. They've got a free safety deep, and they've got the rest of their defenders in man coverage. They're using cover one on this play. They've got a free safety deep and they've got the rest of their defenders in man coverage. They're using off coverage technique. They're not impressed right in the receiver's face. They're given about seven to eight yards of cushion. This is sort of

off man coverage. And there is an underneath hole defender. That's Derek Johnson. He's a linebacker for the Chiefs. He serves in that underneath whole coverage assignment. Again, his job is to help on routes that are going to be breaking to the inside. And Johnson is going to be in the lineup tonight. And what we see on this play is to the left side of the field, we have Amendola and LaFell. We get what's called a smash concept. LaFell runs a deep sort of corner route. Amendola runs a quick out route. And then back to the other side, we get a tosser concept from the two receivers. The two receivers are running slant routes.

Julian Edelman is that middle receiver. There's three receivers to that side, Gronkowski in the wing, then Edelman, then the outside receiver. Edelman runs a slant route. That inside slant route, the outside guy runs another slant route. Gronkowski releases to the flat. Brady hits Edelman for an 11-yard gain here on a play that should be stopped by cover one. What I mean by that is you've obviously got man coverage across the board, but you've got that underneath hole defender in Derek Johnson,

that linebacker whose sole purpose on this play is to help on routes that break to the inside. He's supposed to take away slant routes. But when you watch this play from the end zone angle, you're behind the New England offense, watching the defense. Brady takes the snap. And the first thing he does is look to his left, and that's towards Amendola. And Amendola is, again, running a quick out pattern.

But what does Johnson do? He jumps towards that. He reads the quarterback's eyes. He reads Brady's eyes and jumps towards that. He reads the quarterback's eyes. He reads Brady's eyes and jumps towards that. Remember, Johnson's supposed to be helping on routes coming inside, not going outside. But Johnson sees Brady's eyes and just can't help himself. He jumps to his right, to Brady's left, and Brady is doing exactly what he does so well, manipulating that defender with his eyes. Because as soon as he gets Johnson away from his assigned position, out of position,

he then throws that slant route to Edelman right to where Johnson was supposed to be and it goes for an 11-yard gain. And so that's something to watch for tonight. Again, I expect to see a lot of cover one, a lot of cover one a lot of man coverage from the Chiefs tonight look for Brady look for his ability to manipulate defenders with his eyes whether it's the second level and linebackers like that underneath hole defender like Johnson was on this play or sometimes even that third level that free safety because if you've got vertical routes like think about that touchdown against the Lions that I broke down earlier in my first episode that we had vertical routes and you got your choice which guy you're

going to throw to. You want to move that free safety with your eyes to one side and then throw to the other. So if the Chiefs run a lot of cover one tonight and expect them to do that, watch for Brady's ability to manipulate defenders with his eyes. Now I want to talk about what to expect when the Chiefs have the football. And what I want to do is talk about another coverage, a zone coverage concept. Cover 2 slash cover 5. Cover 2 is sort of your basic zone defense with two deep safeties. You've got deep safeties, each one's responsible for half the field, and you've got the other sort of five defenders across the board, whether they're consistent of,

you know, two cornerbacks, three linebackers, or, you know, three defensive backs if you're a nickel and two linebackers. Cover two, straight zone, you've got the two deep safeties and then zone coverage underneath. Cover five is a variation of that. It's sometimes also called cover two man under where you still have the two deep safeties, but then what you can do is have man coverage underneath. So cover two man under, cover five. It's in the Patriots playbook as cover five. So you've got the two deep safeties, man coverage underneath. Now cover two is sort of a dying breed in the NFL. Cover two used to be much more popular years ago. You think of defenses running in the 70s.

But then you saw the development of the third wide receiver, seeing a lot more three-receiver looks, or even tight ends that could attack the middle of the field. And then teams started to get away from cover two because one of the soft spots in cover two is that middle of the field between the two safeties. And when you started seeing wide receivers that could attack that area quickly, teams got away from it.

But then Tony Dungy comes along and they start running, you know, that coverage with Monty Kiffin as well. You've got that sort of Tampa 2 look now that uses a talented, athletic middle linebacker, like say Derek Brooks, who can drop into the middle of that area in a sort of a pass defense capacity. So that Tampa 2 defense, that was designed to sort of take away or designed to react to those three receiver sets where you had a receiver that could attack the middle of the cover 2.

Well, okay, now we'll get a linebacker that can drop into that area and sort of take that away. But still, cover 2, Tampa two, teams don't do a lot of it. But here's why I think you might see some of cover two or specifically cover five, which is cover two man under tonight. There are some variations to that. There's cover five vice, cover five triangle, or cover five cone. These are all again from New England's playbook. And what these are, they're variations that allow you to get sort of either double coverage or triangle type coverage on receivers to each side of the field, depending on what exactly you

want to do. And we can start with cover five vice. Now in cover five vice, that allows you to sort of get a double coverage on an X type receiver, on an outside boundary type receiver. Now if you envision a situation where you've got three receivers in the game, you've got a boundary receiver and a slot receiver to the left and then a tight end and another receiver to the right. If you want to double that boundary receiver to the left, you can use what they call cover five vice. And that gets you the corner and the safety to that side of the field, running double coverage on that guy. Then you get a matchup on the slot guy with your slot corner. Then your two linebackers are kind of going to be responsible for the running back and the tight

end depending on the routes that they run they'll switch response responsibilities middle guy middle linebacker will take first in whereas the linebacker shade to that side the strong side linebacker will take first out and then you've got man coverage over the last receiver with the safety sort of applying deep outside help to that side of the field so that's one way if you're seeing a lot of Tyree kill you know going deep maybe he's starting to hurt the Patriots a little bit maybe you see a little cover five vice where you get sort of dedicated double coverage on him another thing you can do is what they call cover five cone. And that's similar to vice. But what you're getting there is, you know, double coverage on the Z receiver, on the receiver on the other side of the field.

So thinking about that same formation again, you have one receiver and a slot receiver to the left, tight end, and the Z receiver to the right. Well, this time you're going to use cover five cone to double that Z receiver. So if, for example, the Kansas City Chiefs are doing a lot tonight where they get both Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelsey aligned on the same side of the field to force you to make your choice. And if you Patriots want to double Hill cover five zone that gives you sort of the double coverage over the z receiver that would be hill in this situation and then sort of the same sort of coverage rules that we just talked about now if you want to sort of set up what they call

cover five triangle that gives you a three over two coverage scheme to both sides of the field. And what that means is, again, you've got your slot formation look to the left and you've got the tight end and another wide receiver to the right while you use cover five triangle, which again, you've got the two safeties over the top and then you've got your cornerbacks and then your slot corner and your additional linebacker to each side of the field. So you've got three over two. And then you're reading and matching what the receivers do. So if one breaks in and the other goes out, you kind of switch the responsibilities.

Sometimes that's termed banjo where you switch the responsibilities. And then you've got the safety help over the top. So those are some things I'd expect to maybe see New England do. Again, not a lot of people playing cover two, not a lot of people playing, you know, cover five, which is cover two man under. But if guys like Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelsey, because you can use, you know, that cone coverage or that triangle coverage to get, you know, two guys looking in his direction, you know, If those guys start to do some damage, or if the Patriots really want to take away Travis Kelsey at the start,

expect to see either a combination of cover five triangle or that cover five cone to get an extra defender or two sort of looking at those guys. So that's some Schofield on scheme stuff. Again, nerdy football stuff. I love it. Some things that you can be looking for tonight. Also, about tonight, with the season just hours away

and your defending Super Bowl champions about to take the field, I know you want to be there for the festivities. Don't be stuck on the train or stuck in traffic on Route 1 getting into Foxborough. Let our friends at bus.com take care of all your transportation needs. They're launching a shuttle service from downtown Boston into Gillette Stadium, and it begins with a $5 round-trip

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And you don't want to be stuck behind the wheel trying to get out there late, hopefully after a Patriots open and night victory. So let our friends at bus.com take care of all the driving for you. Plus, it's going to be a fun atmosphere tonight. You don't want to be the designated driver. Let them do the driving for you. They've got a special website set up just for this offer. Patriots.bus.com

So go there and get your ride scheduled for tonight's game. Or you can check out their app, which puts you in touch with other riders as well as their support team. Pats fans, let Bus.com take care of your transportation down to Gillette and tell Mark Schofield from Locked On Patriots sent you.

All right. I don't want to take up too much of your time here. You know, we're kind of got a little long winded. They're talking about some scheme stuff, but I did want to spend a few minutes talking about some of the odds that are on tonight's game. It's always a fun thing to kind of do as we've sort of wrapped our mind

around all the scheme stuff. You know, at the outset, Patriots, somewhat big favorites tonight. You know, looking at Bovada right now, you know, Pats are nine-point favorites, which is a pretty big number, I think. I think this game is going to be closer than that. I think, you know, as I'm about to sort of dive into here in a second, Patriots have a tendency to sort to play closer games on opening nights. We've seen that somewhat historically.

I think that the Chiefs have some weapons on offense that could give the Pats secondary a little bit of trouble, particularly if they can't get home to Alex Smith or they can't pressure him. So that's a big number. Over-under on this game, 49. You'll see in my prediction, I'm going to go over that. I think that both teams will put up some points tonight.

The Chiefs do have some injuries in their secondary that, you know, there might be some matchups that the Patriots can exploit in the passing game. So I think we might see above 49 tonight. First half spread, interestingly enough. Patriots favored by six in the first half. So I guess the anticipation there is the Pats will jump out to an early lead and sort of salt it away as the game gets into the fourth quarter. Again, I think the game's going to be closer than that, but still interesting to consider. Here's another interesting one.

The Patriots are now favored to score the first touchdown in this game. And in terms of the player favored to score the first touchdown, it's Rob Gronkowski. I've been actually watching this over at oddschecker.com. Early in the week, or late last week as well, Kareem Hunt, the running back, the rookie out of Toledo for the Kansas City Chiefs, was the favorite to score the first touchdown. But the markets have moved on this.

Now it's Gronkowski anywhere from 9-2 over at Betfred. Sporting Bet has him at 11-2. That's the odds at a couple of other different sites as well. But Gronk is now the favorite to score the first touchdown of this game and thereby the first touchdown of the 2017 NFL season. I think that's a little bit interesting. I think there you're betting that the Patriots either get a stop on that first drive or force a field goal attempt or a field goal try from the Chiefs

because we all know if the Pats have their druthers, they're going to defer and go on defense first. And so if the expectations are that that's the way this plays out, you're expecting New England to either get off the field defensively or hold Kansas City to a field goal to make the Patriots and Gronk the favorites to score the first touchdown of this season. And lastly, what I wanted to look at here, I thought this was an interesting one, whether there'll be a defensive touchdown tonight. And I thought this was interesting because, you know, both teams have a little bit of

question marks on the defensive side of the ball, as we've talked about this week. Therefore, the favorite is no. That there will not be a defensive touchdown right now. At least that's the odds right now at Betfred. It's 8-15. No. 6-4, yes. I would

agree with that. I don't think there's going to be a defensive touchdown tonight. These are two quarterbacks that typically take care of the ball pretty well. Weather conditions should be good. So I don't think we're going to see a sloppy game or anything like that. So I think the expectations are that, you know, at least from where I sit, you know, that we're going to have a fairly clean offensive game tonight. I think that, you know, both teams will sort of have their chances to score some points. And, you know, I think that when this sort of plays out, you know,

it's going to be a clean game. There's not going to be a lot of turnovers. Therefore, I don't, it's going to be a clean game. There's not going to be a lot of turnovers. Therefore, I don't think there's going to be a defensive score. I'll just kind of pause there for a second because I'm just double-checking my weather forecast and looking like a low 51, but partly cloudy tonight.

So it should be a nice atmosphere down in Foxborough. So that's sort of our game day edition here. Some scheme stuff, some X's and O's for you at the outset. A little bit of odds making stuff at the end. Hope I read those odds right. I'm not that big of a gambler. Maybe you are. Please do so responsibly.

You have my quick takes on that. But the final prediction, I got to get that in. Look, I've said it before. I think this is a New England victory. I think it's going to be a close one. I'm expecting something like 27-24. I think the Patriots have enough in the tank on both sides of the ball to take care of this win and get out of Week 1 with a win.

Sort of enjoy that little mini-bye to get them the chance to play on Thursday night. Gives you a nice couple of extra days to get rested up, get ready for Week 2. So those are my thoughts. You can let me know your thoughts for this game tonight on Twitter. You can follow me at Mark Schofield. Tweet me your thoughts on your expectations for tonight's matchup. Again, patriots.bust.com. Check them out.

Let them take care of the ride for you. Let them know that I sent you. To our friends down in the Houston area, we're pulling for you. To our friends down in Florida who are listening, please be safe. Heed the warnings. Make sure that if they tell you to evacuate, if they tell you to get out, please do that. Please stay safe and

enjoy tonight's game. We've got football back. Enjoy it. Savor it. I will be watching. I will be charting every play and I will have immediate reaction for you in the aftermath that will go up tomorrow morning. But until then, keep it locked right here on Locked on History.

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