Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots September 8, 2017 - Chiefs Postgame: So That Happened

Episode Date: September 8, 2017

The New England Patriots began their 2017 season, and their Super Bowl defense, by taking one in the chops at the hands of Alex Smith and the Kansas City Chiefs, losing 42-27. Mark Schofield tries to put the pieces together. 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. Hello everybody and welcome to a special post-game edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield in the big chair with you as always. So that happened. Yeah, let's try to figure out how that all went down. We're going to do a little instant reaction here.

We'll have some more time over the next couple of days to really dive into the tape and see what happened on opening night. But as you are probably aware, the Patriots opened their 2017 season, their Super Bowl title defense with a loss. Something a lot of people weren't expecting, but they drop a big one to the Kansas City Chiefs, 42-27. The Chiefs end up winning this one in a game that some really thought that New England was going to win this going away,

and it looked that way earlier as we're going to get to. But first, some of the highlights and the headlines from this game. Alex Smith with perhaps, if not the best game of his career, one of the best games of his career. And in an offseason when we heard so much about Patrick Mahomes and the rookie quarterback from Texas Tech and what he might mean to this team going forward and how quickly is Patrick Mahomes going to take over

as the quarterback for this offense, it's Smith who comes out and has a wonderful evening for the Kansas City Chiefs, completing 28 of 35 passes for 368 yards, four touchdowns, no turnovers. Virtually a flawless game from Smith, and two of the four touchdowns come in on plays of over 75 yards. One long throw to Tyreek Hill. I'm going to get to this in a moment. I plays of over 75 yards. One long throw to Tyree Kill. I'm going to get to this in a moment. I kind of call this one.

Look, Hill was going to get at least one big play, and he got it. Hill had seven catches for 133 yards and one touchdown, but 75 of those came on the touchdown, which we're going to get to. Kareem Hunt, also a player we're going to talk about. He had a 78-yard touchdown reception. So Smith, a big night passing the ball for the Kansas City Chiefs. On the flip side, Tom Brady, only 16 of 38, 267 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions. Took some sacks near the end of the game as well when they really couldn't get the ball moving

when they needed to near the end of the game. A couple of other stats of note. Patriots give up a whopping 537 yards of offense. That is the most against a Bill Belichick coached team. They give up 42 points, which near the end of the game, Onlaco said that was tied for the most against a Bill Belichick team ever. According to Jessica Brand, my brilliant colleague over at Inside the Pylon, she's telling me in my ear right now that 42 points is a new high against the Bill Belichick coach Patriots team. 42 is a previous record three times, 2005 against the Chargers, 2012 against the

49ers, and of course the 2014 game against the Kansas City Chiefs, that Monday night debacle we all know and remember, which spurred the we're on to Cincinnati game, as people now call that. And now we're on to New Orleans. But before we get there, we got to take a look back at what happened on opening night. Obviously, big crowd on hand, Commissioner Roger Goodell on hand as well to see the unveiling of the banner and to celebrate last year's team. But it was this year's team that got off to a fairly decent start. They go down the field on their opening drive of the season. They are actually able to punch it in on their opening drive of the season. Going down the field, Mike Gillisley scores his first touchdown of the night on a short

run out of a jumbo package on a second goal play, and that was after a previous play. There were offsetting penalties to take away a touchdown run by Gilleslie, but they ended up punching him in, so the Patriots take a 7-0 lead. And then we get to the first of many turning points in this game, and this was kind of a big one. Kareem Hunt, the rookie from Toledo for Kansas City, has his first carry as an NFL player, the first offensive play for the Chiefs of the night, and he fumbles it away. New England gets the ball with a 7-0 lead in good field position, but they don't come away with any points.

And it's a strange little sequence. They look to have a touchdown to Rob Gronkowski on a beautiful throw and catch from Brady to Gronkowski on a post route. But upon further review, that play is ruled an incompletion. And then the Patriots get a 4-1 situation. They decide to go for it in that. And they get stopped. So instead of a 14-0 lead, or at least a 10-0 lead if they had taken the three points, we're still at 7-0. And that was an interesting decision to me, the decision to not take the three points

there. I'm usually of the mind that if you get a chance to get three points in the NFL, you take them. And in that situation when you've gotten a fumble, you get the ball in a good field position, they've basically given you the ball in a good field position, you take advantage of the situation. You take three points. I understand the Patriots like to be aggressive. They like to keep going after teams and they are convinced that, look, our offense should be able to pick that up in that situation. But they fail to convert.

They come away with no points in that situation. And so that's a big swing. That's, you know, hypothetically at least, you know, a three-point swing or a seven-point swing. You know, they don't have the touchdown to Gronkowski. They don't get three points on a potential field goal try. So that was a big sort of turning point. Another turning point, I think,

was that Kansas City touchdown drive right before the half. They're down 17-7. They're deep in their own territory. They're facing a first and 20, and they go right down the field and score before the half with a touchdown pass to Hunt from Alex Smith, making it 17-14 at the half. Going into the second half, teams start the half. Each gets a possession. They trade punts on both opening drives. And then we get that big play to Hill. And again, this looks like the big Tyreek Hill pass and play in the vertical passing game that I sort of expected the Chiefs to hit at some point. They get double out and up patterns to both sides of the field. Both receivers are open.

The receiver on the other side of the field, the left side of the field, is wide open too. But they catch New England in sort of your standard cover two coverage. And this is a good little design to run against cover two because that corner is going to squat a little bit, and you're asking the safety to move over. At least it looked like cover two watching it live. I'd have to go back and take a look at the tape, the all-22 angle to see if it was exactly cover two.

Another thing I did notice on that play, great job by Alex Smith. He looks to the left side of the field first. It moves the safety, Devin McCourty, a bit, so McCourty can't get there late. That's what makes me think it might have been a different coverage in cover one now that I'm thinking about it. But, makes me think it might have been a different coverage in cover one now when I think about it. But, I mean, it might have been more of a cover one look than a cover two look.

But Kansas City takes the lead in 21-17. Then on New England's eighth drive of the game, they get some good field position. They get a deep crossing route to Damian Lindolo. They get into the red zone. Now Mike Gilleslie touchdown gets him the lead back 24-21. But then we get another turning point. Dante Hightower goes down. New England has to rely on Marsh, a linebacker that they recently brought in.

And that comes back to bite them. He gets matched up in a man-covered situation on Kareem Hunt out of the backfield running a deep post route, and he can't stay with him. And Smith hits him in stride, and that goes for a 78-covered situation on Kareem Hunt out of the backfield, running a deep post route, and he can't stay with him. And Smith hits him in stride, and that goes for a 78-yard touchdown. And that play came on a – let me check my notes here. That play comes on a first-and-tenth situation right at the start of the fourth quarter.

It's a vertical concept out of a two-by-two alignment. And, you know, that comes after that little shuffle pass, which Kansas City have been running that all night long. They're coming out of that pistol tee formation where they've got Smith in the pistol, running back deep behind him. They have Tyree Kill either to his left or to his right. What they would do is they would put – Smith would put the football in Tyree Kill's belly,

ride him for a bit, and then throw that little shovel pass to Travis Kelsey, their tight end. Then they come out of that play, their first and 10 situation, and then they throw this vertical concept where they get Hunt matched up on Marsh and reserve, lie back on a deep post for a score. And that gives, you know, that gives the Chiefs a 28-27 lead at that point. And then going forward from there, it was basically all Kansas City. I mean, we get another fourth down and one stop by the Chiefs. This time, New England's 10th drive of the game. This was another jumbo formation look. They try to get Gilleslie in a short-yarded situation again.

It seems to me like New England really sort of trusts Gilleslie right now in these short-yarded situations. But on this point in particular, James Devlin, the lead blocker, he gets beaten to the hole, he gets beaten to the spot. They don't even need a measurement for it. It's a turnover on downs. Defense actually steps up then. They force a punt. Chiefs decide to try to potentially draw the defense off sides on fourth down.

It's fourth and short, but they can, so they take the delay game penalty. The offense can't move the ball, and they get it back. And this is a situation where you're at home, you're expecting big things for your team this season. Your defense, who's undermanned, understaffed at this point, they get a stop. You get the ball back, trailing by one. You get a first down run and play that picks up on two yards,

and then you get a nice run by Rex Burkett on a stretch zone design to the left, so that he gets the ball sort of, you know, up to about the 35-yard line or so. Then they go three straight incompletions. They get a vertical concept. Brady tries to throw the go-rub to Hogan out of the slot.

That falls incomplete. Then they get another situation where Brady tries to buy a little bit of time in the pocket, slots it on a bit, basically ends up throwing it away on a deep cross in her post route from Gronkowski coming from right to left. And then on third down, and this was a throw that I think was sort of emblematic of Brady's night. He tries to hit Brandon Cooks along the sideline on either a comeback or an out route, and the ball just isn't placed well. And that was sort of emblematic of Brady's night.

Ball placement was off at times. Accuracy was off at times. Decision-making seemed to be a little bit off at times. It just didn't seem like he had it tonight. And part of it was maybe the coverage that Kansas City was playing, which we'll get into in a little bit. They were dropping guys at times. They were dropping defenders at times. They were trying to close down the throwing lanes,

sort of the game plan that maybe we saw back in that 2014 Monday Night Massacre, dropping guys into underneath zones and trying to take that stuff away, and they did a good job doing that. So, again, Patriots have to punt, give the ball back to Kansas City. Kansas City goes right down the field and scores again. And then it's basically just the rod is on. Patriots can't do anything offensively from that point, but yet we start to see the defensive ends.

Justin Hughes in particular pinning his ears back, sacking Brady on multiple times. Brady has to fight his way up the end zone to avoid a strip sack. It all adds up to a Kansas City victory over the New England Patriots 42-27. A couple of takeaways from schematic stuff that we've learned. First of all, the Kansas City Chiefs. I thought the Chiefs, interestingly enough, did a lot of air raid stuff in the beginning of this game.

A lot of shallow cross, a lot of mesh stuff. It was clear that they thought one of the things they could do from a schematic standpoint was run that mesh concept. You've got two receivers that are running crossing routes from the opposite sides of the formation. So they cross over the middle of the field at about four to five yard depth. And they were doing that with both Travis Kelsey and Tyree Kill. And what's interesting about that design is if you're trying to double cover Warner, both of those guys, that's going to create a lot of traffic. And so they did that early and often hit some place with that early in the

first quarter, had some success with it. Another thing they were doing was something called shallow cross, which is again, another air raid design where you've got sort of that deep dig route and then a shallow crossing route, again, similar to MASH, really close to the line of scrimmage. Sometimes you hear this called drive concept, but they were also doing it where one receiver would come from one side and one receiver would come from the other side. So they were running some air raid stuff and trying to attack horizontally, what we've usually expected and seen in the Kansas City Chiefs.

But I thought what was really interesting was when they went more vertical. Obviously, the out-and-out play, obviously the deep post route to hunt out of the backfield. When they started to get more vertical, they looked like a much different offense and a much better offense to me. And so that kind of clues us into what we think the Kansas City Chiefs might look like going forward. This might be a bit more of a vertical team than we really expected or

anticipated. And Al Michaels mentioned that. And Chris Collins talked about this. They talked about this. They said in their meetings with Alex Smith that he said, look, we're trying to get more vertical. It's been working for us in practice. It's been working for us in the preseason.

We have the guys to do it now. The big question mark was, was Alex Smith going to be able to do that from the quarterback spot? There was maybe some hesitation early. Sometimes when he didn't pull the trigger tonight, when he had guys open deep early in the first half, early in the first quarter, in the start of the second quarter. But as this game wore on, you could tell the confidence in Alex Smith built up. The routes were there, he started taking those shots deep, and it certainly paid off for

them. Obviously, the New England Patriots defense was undermanned, they were playing with some guys that they weren't expecting to have on the field. Collinsworth and Michaels made a huge point of that throughout the second half. But the simple fact of the matter is Alex Smith was the better quarterback. Alex Smith had a fantastic game tonight when this offense went more vertical. He executed it extremely well. And on the flip side, look, Tom Brady, we know who he is.

We know what he's meant to this franchise. He had a rough night tonight. We can admit that. It's fine to say that. The route concepts weren't always there for him, but the had an off night tonight. We can admit that. It's fine to say that. The route concepts weren't always there for him, but the ball placement did look off. He got bailed out early by a couple of defensive holding penalties or defensive pass interference penalties,

but the throws and the placement just wasn't there. It wasn't what you're always expecting, what you're always seeing from Tom Brady. And so we'll see going forward if they iron that stuff out. And given what we've seen from Tom Brady over his career, I expect them to do that. One sort of scheme thing that I will mention from the Patriots is we saw on a throw to Rob Gronkowski on sort of a dig route in the second quarter.

And I think that gives us sort of a good little window into how we might expect the Patriots to use the combination of Brandon Cooks and Rob Gronkowski. They had, Cooks was on the right side of the formation, Rob Gronkowski was on the left side of the formation, and ran something that's called the Mills concept. And this concept sort of dates back to Steve Spurrier at the University of Florida. He was one of the first coaches to run this. He actually named it after a player, a wide receiver that played for him, Ernie Mills. Spurrier believed that he caught dozens of touchdowns on this concept.

I don't know if it was when Spurrier was Duke or if it was when Spurrier was actually at Florida. But basically, it's a route combination that consists of a post route over the top and a dig route sort of underneath. And you could run this with both receivers on the same side of the field, or in this case, they run it with one receiver, the post route from the right and the dig route from the left. And what it really does is it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on that middle of the field safety because you're basically high-low on that guy.

In this situation, they had sort of a cover one look. Again, I expected the Chiefs to play some cover one. They played it on this play. Roy Cooks was occupied with deep safety. That gets Gronkowski sort of matched up on Eric Berry, who had a great night until he got hurt. Looks like Berry's suffering an Achilles injury, but Gronkowski was able to work himself open.

The play on this occasion was successful because of the strength in Gronkowski and working off of Eric Berry, the athletic ability from Gronkowski and working off of Eric Berry, the athletic ability from Gronkowski to work himself open. But from a schematic standpoint, that was something that stood out to me from the Patriots was how they were going to use Cooks and Gronkowski in tandem. And that was, I think, a good example

of what we might see from them going forward. But that was a good example on the night. And unfortunately for the Patriots and Patriots fans everything else just kind of didn't fall into place the way we had hoped so my hope for you those of you who are listening

is that you took advantage of that opportunity from patriots.buzz.com or from buzz.com and let them take care of the drive for you so you could perhaps have a consolation beverage or two on the ride back, so to say. Tough opening night for New England. Obviously, we hope they bounce back. We'll get into the tape review of this game early next week.

This is more instant reaction stuff from my notes and from my charting during the game, but we'll take another look at the tape over the weekend and have some more thoughts for you on Monday. And then it's on to New Orleans. I mean, because now, look, you drop an AFC game on opening night, they get a little bit of a mini-bye here because they'll get a couple of extra days to sort of look through the tape themselves and figure out what went wrong and what they can fix, and hopefully they figure that out because there are no real weeks off here in the NFL.

And seeing what this defense was putting together tonight and seeing what they were able to do and what they actually weren't able to do, now you have to worry about this New Orleans Saints offense because it looks like they might be able to put up some points too. Guys like Michael Thomas and rookie Alvin Kamara, obviously Mark Ingram, Adrian Peterson, Drew Brees, of course, still an extremely dangerous quarterback. So New England's going to have to have some answers for them pretty quickly.

So rest up, everybody. Hand in there. It's just the first one. It's a long season to go. But keep it locked here to Locked on Patriots. I'll keep breaking it down for you. And we forge ahead. We'll go through the tape, figure out what to do next,

and then it's on to New Orleans. But until then, keep it locked right here to Mark Schofield and Locked on Patriot. What you doing? Ran out of space on my phone, so I'm deleting some stuff. Bye singing dog. Bye goal. Bye wedding ceremony.

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