September 10, 2025 • 41 mins
Week 2 is on the horizon and we are turning the page to the Patriots. We welcome in Taylor Kyles from CLNS Boston to get the skinny from New England.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Drivetime with Travis Wingfield.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What is up Dolphins and welcome to the Draft Time Podcast.
I am your host, Travis Wingfield. And on today's show
we get into the Patriots Week two upon us here
in the National Football League. Taylor Kyle's will join me
to break down this matchup from the Patriots perspective. Plus,
we are going to talk a little bit about the
state of being a Dolphins fan, as we seemingly do
(00:32):
every other year on this show. Here we'll also pick
the TNF game from the Baptist Health Studios inside the
Baptist Health Training Complex.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
This is.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
The Draft Time Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hey day.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
For this week's opponent Spotlight presented by Govy, longtime friend
of the show, Taylor Kyles.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Taylor, what is up man? How you doing?
Speaker 5 (00:52):
I'm great man, always glad to be back, see your
smiling face. I'm sorry about the circumstances. I guess on
both sides. Though from last week was hoping this.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Would be a game for the top spot in the
AFC East, but now it's kind of a game where
teams are trying to find their way back into the win.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Calling back into I guess the good graces of what.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We thought these teams could be going into Week one.
I want to go ahead and start here, Taylor, because
we knew about a lot of change this offseason coming
for the Patriots, right, And that's what kind of happens
when you get the rookie quarterback on the rookie contract
and you can start building out the roster around him,
and in week one, you know, that can be challenging
to draw big conclusions from, but I want to try
to have you do that for us here.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Offensively, what stood out about the offense for the.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Patriots as a whole, to you and Taylor, if you can,
let let's take it from the perspective of what worked
and maybe what questions exist from that first performance for
the Patriots offense here.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Well, I think I was kind of hoping for, you know,
Drake May in his first game in this Josh McDaniel system.
Was hoping for more of a mac Jones kind of debut.
I'm sure Dolphin stands. Remember back in twenty twenty one,
Mac Jones just comes out and it's slinging it. He's
getting them into the right plays, putting it on guys.
I still think that might have been his best game
as a Patriot didn't quite get that from Drake May,
and I think the biggest thing was inaccuracy and decision
(02:02):
making at times early he definitely seemed a little bit
too amped up, passed up some decisions, ran at times
where I didn't think he really should have. Also kind
of put himself in positions to take hits that these
coaches have been like, hey man, you've got to protect yourself.
Those are kind of par for the course with a
young quarterback, especially in a new offensive system. You know,
you learn what you can and can't get away with.
(02:23):
That I'm not too concerned about, but the inaccuracy for
Drake May was something that was pretty concerning for me.
In one of my biggest takeaways was there were too
many gimmes that he wound up sailing over guys heads
or even completions where he put it to the wrong
shoulder for his receivers and kind of took away yach
opportunities or forced them to have to make difficult adjustments.
And then the run game was non existent. I mean,
(02:43):
raiders really wanted to try to use stunts and post
snap movement to confuse and complicate blocking angles. They had
a lot of success the Patriots and Mike Vrable admitted
they abandoned the run pretty much in the second half
because it wasn't working. So from an offensive perspective, the
run game was bad. Drake still had his flashes. It
wasn't like, oh God, what's going on with Drake? You
still saw the things that encourage you. But there were
(03:04):
some things he definitely needs to work on, at least
from an offensive standpoint.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
With the passing game with Drake, do you think that
was more? Is that like a mechanical thing? Is it
a timing issue within the offense? And my new OC
news system that can be kind of, you know, tough
to iron out one game in Like what would you
attribute that to that performance?
Speaker 5 (03:19):
It felt like mechanics because there were times where he
wasn't really following through. There was a time where he
could have met were Andre Stevenson for a checkdown, might
have turned into a big play, but he kind of
throws it with his feet off the ground, the side
arm and then it ends up behind hermandre off his
hands wasn't almost intercepted, but Devin White was too close
where I kind of got the yips up in the
press box when it happened so and then at the
same time you see plays where he's stepping up into
(03:41):
the pocket, hitch hitch, follow through throw and it's a dime.
So you saw the flashes of positivity, But mechanically, I
feel like you did see at times him just not
following through, having breakdowns, and at times it was from
clean pockets.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It wasn't even always because of pressure to.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Kind of follow up further.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And sorry to be redundant here, but I'm just so
fascinated by the Josh McDaniels entire coaching arc. You know,
going back to the same place multiple times. Do you
think his offense. I know it's only one game, but
you got a chance to watch camp. Is it kind
of more the same? You know, the kind of complex
side adjustments and you know, ability to uncover quickly in
the quarterback to be really you know, Tom Brady ask
at the line. Has it evolved like what would you
(04:15):
say this McDaniel's version of the Patriots offense?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Kind of what's the calling card?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I guess there's definitely a lot of carryover.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
And we're even talking about here, is that the best
thing for Drake May is he the kind of guy
who like a Tom Brady is going to be able
to dink and dunk consistently hit guys in stride, like
I said, creating those yack opportunities, or is he more
somebody where you wanted to drop back and have opportunities
to go downfield where his play really does shine. So
it is a lot of the same Josh McDaniels stuff,
(04:42):
but you're also seeing, especially in the run game, they
started peppering in some more use of Drake May's legs.
You saw some zone read and I expected there was
going to be some elements of the Cam Newton offense
going back to twenty twenty. Even saw something we didn't
see with Cam Newton where you got the power Reid
option where you can either hand off behind the pulling
guard and you leave somebody on block. But we also
had Antonio Gibson as a shovel option on the play,
(05:03):
which was a new wrinkle there. So you are seeing
some new things. You know, there was a bootleg, some
moving pockets for Drake May. They still moved the pocket
had bent with Tom Brady and Mac Jones, but I
think we're gonna get more of that with Drake. Even
though there were just one boot, so a lot of
the same from Josh McDaniel is not a lot of
wholesale changes quite yet, but you did start to see
the run game starting to incorporate more things that used
Drake's athleticism.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
For some reason your commentary that reminds me the Dolphins
and Patriots play early season every year, right, because you
mentioned the Mac Jones opening day game in twenty one.
Cam Newton twenty twenty had like what was a two
hundred rushing yards for the Patriots that day and a
Patriots win over the Ryan Fitzpatrick led Miami Dolphins. You
talked about the running backs there a little bit, and
Taylor one of my.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Favorite players in the entire draft.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
He showed up in the preseason the very first play
of the preseason. Travon Henderson. I'm curious what you saw
in the first game in terms of the workload split
at the running back position and what we should expect
going forward into Sunday's game.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
So the running back split was surprising a thing for
everybody because Travon Henderson, like you said, was electric in
the preseason. He was electric in training game throughout the summer,
even going back to the spring. You could see, oh,
this guy moves very differently from everybody else because he's big,
he's stout, and then has that home run hitting ability.
But Remandre was by far the bell cow and what
we expected to be a one A, one B situation,
(06:16):
it was really very clearly Remandre as the one, and
then Trayvon Henderson is a distant two, which I'm hoping
to see a little bit different in the next week
or this week rather because Remandre, the offensive line was
not helping him, but he wasn't really slipping tackles the
way you typically expect Demandre too, and to be fair,
it hasn't been since his rookie year where he's had
sufficient pass blocking or run blocking rather where he wasn't
(06:37):
getting hit in the backfield and having to deal with
disruption and make something out of nothing constantly. So little
bit of a you know, grain assault there for Remandre.
But Travion you saw, in very limited touches, was able
to make guys miss, was falling forward. You saw the
power and the explosiveness, and then you kind of got
Antonio Gibson rounding out that backfield. It's a three headed monster,
but they need better blocking, and I think he got
(06:58):
to get more of Trayon Henderson because he might be
the most dynamic player you have on your entire offense,
even with Drake May.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, you guys went one two in terms of two
of my favorite players in the draft this year with him
and then Kyle Williams from Gokoob's Washington State. My guest
is Taylor. Kyle's that you can find his work at
Patriots c lns. And Taylor, you did a bunch of
great breakdowns. I mentioned this to you off the air,
and you make my job easier because it's like a
shortcut to Patriots weak and kind of getting some notes
on the film and stuff, and you went over you know,
Will Campbell in the offensive line performance, you talked about
(07:26):
the run game not getting going. I kind of just
want to give you the floor here, Taylor, just in
terms of how the Will Campbell debut went, how the
group did as a whole, and perhaps more importantly, you know,
we saw the Dolphins really give the Patriots fits last
year in the game down here with the pass rush.
How does the Patriots offensive line do you think match
up against this Dolphins pass rush?
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Yeah, so the Patriots have two rookies on the left side.
You got Will Campbell, like you mentioned, they also have
Jared Wilson, who is a center at Georgia and now,
like I said, playing guard for them because they have
Garrett Bradbury as their center. I thought the rookies. Will
Cambell especially had a pretty solid debut. The run wasn't great,
you know, there were some downfield blocks where guys were
able to get off of him, but he was pretty
solid in pass protection. Mostly went up against Malcolm Kons
(08:05):
because you know, Max Crosby is more of a left
edge kind of guy. Now, Will Campbell did give up
a sack. There was a play where Remandre kind of
gave Chip help. Wasn't a whole lot, but Campbell got
his arm pinned inside outside, arm pinned inside, kind of
gave up the edge luckily fell on it.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
So there's gonna be some growing pains. Everybody expected it.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
I was more concerned with Jared Wilson, like you'd expect
from a Georgia center. He does have good awareness where
like he picks up Jamal Adams on a blitz and
there's a certain level of feel that he's got even
as he's coming along. But also Adam Butler, our old friend,
really gave him some trouble, had like three clean wins,
and there were also just some miscommunications where Jared Wilson
didn't seem to pick up his assignment. So again, when
(08:43):
you have two young players, you know, even if they
have their best games of the season, there's gonna be
some moments where you're like, hey, hopefully they learned from
that and don't make the same mistakes moving forward. And
then the right side of the offensive line is where
the veterans are. You got Mike and Wan who and
Morgan Moses. Moses I did not expect to be one
on one against Max Crosby as often as he was,
and he held up really well. There was only a
couple of really quick losses. I thought for the most
(09:05):
part he was able to win on initial contact and
really force Max Krosby to go to his second and
third moves and put that motor that he has to
the test. And trying to get after Drake May Mike
and Whinny was a bit disappointing.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Got walked back a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Really, I think if the Dolphins used twists and get
Mike won, who's like three hundred and thirty pounds. If
you get him having to change direction multiple times on
a snap, it's gonna be bad news.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Bear.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
So there was some encouraging things from the Patriots offensive line,
clearly a better unit than they were last year where
four of the guys were backups, but still, you know,
an area where if the Dolphins come ready to play,
they could cause some disruption up front.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, you pretty much described how the Dolphins do want
to get after it upfront with the games and the
twists and the very expansive menu of Anthony Weaver. But
I thought the Colts did a good job of really
play actioning and kind of using some jet sweep and
using that split flow action to kind of you know,
throw the tight end of the flat and then kind
of force those linebackers to readjust and get them off
their game that way. So I'm curious to see how
the Patriots use that film and how the Dolphins adjust
(09:57):
to the fact that the Patriots might use that film
to at tap accordingly, speaking of the Dolph or the
Patriots defense, rather, let's go ahead and take a break
rate there, come back on the other side and go
back to the Patriots defense with my guess said Taylor
Kyles Drive Time podcast brought to you by Autoonation. My
guest today here is Taylor Kyles for the Patriots Beat
and Taylor on the other side of the football here
(10:18):
talking about the Patriots defense against the Miami offense again
one game.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
But I am.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Curious how much of what Mike Rabel's defense looked like
from a schematic standpoint that came with him from Tennessee
to the Patriots.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Was it similar different?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Give us the kind of Josh McDaniel's breakdown that you
gave us earlier on the Rabel defense.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
So there was more quarters, you know, cover four than
we typically see from the Patriots, But functionally it was
pretty much the same coverage style. A lot of single
high man coverage. Then you mix in some more cover
three so you can get zone eyes in the backfield
on early downs to try to stop the run. But really,
Rabel historically has not been a big blitzer. He's gonna
send four. But what happens is will typically send it
(10:55):
from different places. So sometimes it's an off ball linebacker.
Sometimes it's a slot corner where they'll come off the
edge and then a defensive lineman will drop into coverage
try to create some confusion for the quarterback's reads.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Vrabel and defense coordinators.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Roll Williams blitzed a ton, and part of that was
because their foreman rush wasn't consistently getting home. Part of
that is Geno Smith, a guy who does a great
job getting the buy out on time, not putting his
offensive line in bad situations. Milton Williams and Harol Landry
were pretty dominant. Christian Barmore didn't quite look like himself
yet miss last year with blood Clott so you understand
didn't play in the preseason two like they've been kind
(11:29):
of keeping him on a plan, so it might be.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
A ramp up period there.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
And also Kaylevon Chason and Keon White as the opposite
edge rushers weren't very consistent. I think they only combined
for like two or three pressures, so the foreman rush
wasn't getting home. But when they blitzed and you started
seeing them use twists and stunts and different things to
kind of get guys looping and using Milton Williams especially
to get attention and free up other guys, that's where
they had all their success. Like they had four sacks,
(11:53):
all four of them came with five or more rushers
and usually involved some kind of stunt up front.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Now, I like the blitzer.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
I think it led a ton of great plays, like
there were two where brock Bowers was wide open and
as he uncovered, Gino Smith got sacked. But then they
also got too cute at times where you have Trey
Tucker's touchdown for some reason, you're dropping Milton Williams and
Christian Barmore into coverage and you have Jalen Hawkins in
centerfield trying to cover one of the faster receivers in
the NFL on a crossing route got burned for it,
(12:20):
as you should have. That was a bad decision. Also,
a corner blitz on like third and one, where Carlton
Davis comes off the edge, Jacobe Myers is wide opening
the slot for an easy conversion. Like those things I
really didn't like. So I think they need to be
smarter about when they send their blitzes, because again that
was very uncharacteristic for a Mike Rabel team, but when
they did do it, it was effective for the most part.
So just finding a better balance there and hopefully getting
(12:41):
more from those four man rushers so you don't have
to lean into those extra rushers.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
See, this is why Taylor does the show ten times
now whatever it's been. Because my next question was going
to ask you about Milton Williams, Harold Robertspilane, and Carlton Davis,
and you just covered all those guys in one breath there.
So that's impressive on its own, But I guess I'll
follow up with this because you know, Harold Landry was
a guy that coming out of college, I was like
that dude's top ten pick. He winds up falling in
the draft, has a great start to his career, gets
(13:05):
injured and kind of you know, is slow to come
back from that. But he looked like pre injury Harold
Andrew to me, did you see the same thing on tape?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I did.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
And the funny thing is when I was looking at
his tape in his number is it just didn't fit
the perception of what some of the numbers say, where
he was still productive in terms of sacks, but when
you looked at the PFF pass rush win rateh He's
got to make sure.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I'm very careful with that one.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's tough, but it.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Was terrible like he was one of the worst edge
rushers in the league. And I'm thinking, all right, why
is that? Because he just what, he just fell off
a cliff. It wasn't like he was, you know, just
coming off the injury that had been a couple of
seasons before. And what I noticed is in Tennessee, once
Terrell Williams and Mike Rabel were gone, where they preach
getting aggressive, being upfield violence, I saw Harold Landry playing
a ton of contain so he wasn't really able to
(13:47):
use his skill set. And then I think that's what
contributed to his numbers dropping. But when you look at
the tape, I'm thinking, when they do let him off
the leash, he still looks explosive. And next Gen stats
had him getting a better get off every season since
he tore's ACL, which might sound crazy, but a lot
of the times with these athletes, you focus on that
one area when you tear your ACL. In some cases,
(14:08):
you come back even better because you've strengthened that area
in ways that you didn't before and it's even stronger.
And I think you saw that where he's still got
to get off. Is he the same player he was
in his prime? Of course not. But the versatility where
he can be in every down player he can win
with power, he can in with speed and is not
quite his hands. You know, that's never really been his game,
but he can switch it up on you a decent amount,
and I thought that's definitely what we saw. Currently leads
(14:30):
the NFL in pressures and sacks according to PFF, so
you know, he's doing pretty well so far.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I'll have a big test on Sunday against Patrick Paul,
who looked fantastic in his season two debut here at
the left tackle position from Miami. And I'm curious because
you talked about Barmore and Williams and man watching Milton
Williams and the way he can kind of cross face
is the one shade and fire into that like a
one gapping penetrator. When you watch players like that, they
are kind of like a blessing and curse against the
Miami Dolphins, because when the Dolphins get it like taken
(14:57):
care of and they can get their outside zone game go,
those players get removed from the equation and it turns
into an explosive run most of the times, but it
also sometimes creates negative runs that get you behind the
chains and starts a different, you know, catalog of issues
for the offense. I'm curious how you think the Patriots,
in terms of their style, might attack the Dolphins protection
scheme because it was some good against the Colts, but
a lot of their pressure disrupted the Dolphins passing game.
(15:19):
Do you see a similar a similar approach for the
Patriots up front?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I do what I think they're going to attack their
old friend. Is Cole Strange gonna play this weekend?
Speaker 4 (15:27):
No idea right now.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I mean, it was key On Smith was the right
guard in that came in for James Daniels and he's
been in that position a lot this preseason.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
So we'll see.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
But I would imagine we'll go with continuity, But as
of right now, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
So I have a feeling they might dial back some
of the blitzer and just rely on their guys because
the injuries upfront, obviously the inexperience at some spots as well.
I think they're just gonna say, hey, Christian Barmore and
Milton Williams, like wrek havoc on your twists one on
one opportunities, because like Tua is not really Gino. And
also if you blitz the Dolphins, Like, what are you doing?
Because Tua is getting the ball out so quickly. A
(15:59):
lot of the times you'd rather play coverage. You can
get as many people in areas to try to bring
down some of these fast receivers, obviously Waddle and Tyreek Hills.
So I would be surprised if they blitz quite as
much I think. I mean, you put all your money
as the Patriots into your defensive line. Harold Anders making
a ton of money, Milton Williams is getting paid more
than any player in Patriots history, and Christian Barmo is
also making a pretty penny as well, So that's where
(16:20):
your money's at.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Let those guys off the chain. In some instances, again like.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
The Raiders, where they do have a guy like Colton
Miller who's been there, done that, is very experienced and
a great quarterback like Gino, it does make sense to
try to mix it up because you got to get
pressure somehow. I just don't think the Dolphins pose the
same threat, so I'm hoping again they're a bit more
conservative in the rush plan.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, comprehensive as always, Taylor.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Two more questions for you here my penultimate one, and
this is just for my own curiosity because I want
to go to an expert here because Kyle Dugger for
the longest time was a guy that I would circle
when I would do my Dolphins Patriots game previews as
a guy that you have to watch out for. He's
got pick six against the Dolphins. I think he's got
sacks and fumble fumble recoveries. He's just done a lot
against this Dolphins offense. We saw Jabrill Peppers released a
(17:02):
week before the season. I'm just looking for a straight
up education for myself and Dolphins fans here to Patriots
have to feel like they have something big and Craig
Woodson and Jalen Hawkins that allowed them to make that move.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
I am I wrong in that? Like take us through
the entire safety decision this offseason.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
So a big reason they shifted is that typically the
Patriots safetyes had pretty defined roles, Like sometimes in their
base packages they'll kind of just stick to sides or whatever.
But really you had like Kyle Dugger as someone who
you wanted closer to the line. Jabro Peppers was more
of a free safety. You could also use him as
a slot in some of your nickel packages and he
could cover running backs. But you didn't love either one
of those guys covering tight ends consistently, especially Jabro Peppers.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Each is smaller, like that's not really his game.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
In this defensive system, the safeties play sides, so based
on the offensive presentation, you could be doing a ton
of different things. You could be playing man against a
tight end or a wide receiver, you could be playing deep.
So Kyle Dugger and Jabrill Peppers both got hurt early
last year. Both guys you know, tried to play through it.
Jabro Peppers missed some time and he couldn't rehabit right
way because he had an off field issue. And Kyle
(18:03):
duggar I mean, bless his heart, really fought through and
played a ton of games on a bad ankle. They
missed all of spring though, because those injuries and having
to recover have surgeries or what have you. And that
was big because this is a brand new defensive system.
Kyle Dugger, when you think about it, had never been
in a non Bill Belichickian type of defense, so this
is brand new for him. Peppers had spent multiple years
(18:24):
in this system, so Dugger kind of started well behind
the eight ball. And also it felt like he wasn't
really sure about that ankle. Jubro Peppers, I think has
also kind of lost a step. I still think he's
a quality player, but in this scheme where guys are
doing everything and Dougger is a little bit behind. He's
still on the roster, but he was only used as
a slot defender for them last week. I think part
of that is you don't love him in man coverage
(18:45):
as well, even if you do kind of like him
in some blitzing packages and some zone responsibilities. So I mean,
Jalen Hawkins not gonna wow you, but he made some
plays last week. He missed a tackle, but he also
had a tackles for loss, he had a sack. You
see the range from him and Craig would since a
player they like a lot also brings great versatility, even
if kind of I don't love him and man coverage either,
(19:06):
but still, you know a guy who can handle and
wear a bunch of different hats. So it's really just
the philosophical change. The versatility they need even more from
their safeties in this regime is a big reason they
moved on from Pepper's and a big reason why Kyle
Duggar is in a reduced role.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I have one more question, but just real quick. Christian
Gonzalez tracking to play this week. What do you think
about him?
Speaker 5 (19:24):
I don't think so, and I hope, I really hope
he doesn't, to be honest, unless he's feeling great, because
the guy hasn't practiced since very early in the summer
with these hamstring injuries. You're already scared when a guy
doesn't practice for a long time playing that position because
of the risk of soft tissue injuries. And you know
Tyreek and Wadler obviously the kind of matchup where you
want Christian Gonzales And it's not like the Raiders where
(19:45):
I was like, you know what, this is one week
where I don't think you need him. But I'm actually
going in to speak to Mike Vabel for a press
conference today, so we'll get more information. But as of now,
I would be a bit surprised. Although it is notable
the Patriots just released DJ James, who had a good
summer for them, so that could hint towards Christians I
was playing, but I'll be honest, man, I'm nervous, and
(20:05):
even if he does play, you have to be aware
of the fact that He's coming off the hamstring and
hasn't practiced in a very long time in.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
A place where cramps are frequent and two receivers run
in the four twos. It could be a tough test
if he does have to test it out for the
first time here, but he's a great player, so it's
also a big thing of the Patriots getting back as promised. Taylor,
final question here we close the opponent spotlights this way
every single time the Patriots win this game.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
If and the floor is yours.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
Think the Patriots win, if they can win in the trenches,
and if Drake May is able to take what's there.
Those are the biggest things for me. I understand it's
not going to be perfect, but you can't have another
week where the run game is completely non existent, and
there's some issues in pass pro that feel like they
can be fixed, So hopefully they take those steps forward.
And while I don't think accuracy is a thing you
just fix in a week, especially because Drake has struggled
pretty consistently, you just hope that the clip of those
(20:49):
like what the f ros is significantly lower than it.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Was against the Raiders.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You can find his work at Patriots c LNS and
on social at t Kyle's thirty nine. Taylor, you're not
only a great dude, but a brilliant foot ballmind. One
of my favorite follows on Twitter as well. We'll see
you down here Sunday, my friend, and remember long sleeves
in that press box.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yes, sir, I learned my lesson good stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
I appreciate you, and away he goes.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Always a pleasure to catch up with Taylor, one of
the nicest guys in the business and one of the
smartest analyst analysis and analyzers analogalizers in the entire business
as well. Before we go to segment three, here, let's
go ahead and pick the Thursday night football game. So
eleven and five in Week one. Pretty excited about that mark.
It's usually tougher to find wins in the first week
(21:33):
of the season, but we were on point with a
few of those games. And what a Week one it was,
by the way, like the Dolphins and Colts game was
kind of the only bad game on the entire slate.
So NFL appears to be back, and we're going to
talk a little bit about what it feels like to
be a Dolphins fan today. In the third segment, which
kind of coincides with I guess the enjoyment of watching
(21:56):
Week one that was I don't know about you guys,
but I was even texting like, I can't even get
excited about this Bills melt down here on Sunday night
because of how bummed out I was after the Dolphins game.
And then by the end of it, I was like, Okay,
now I'm starting to be excited about it, and then
there they go, and it was just became It became
the worst hate watch weekend, the worst just cumulative weekend
as a Dolphins fan outside of the Patriots and Jets
(22:18):
losing their games, although you could argue Jalen Ramsey making
the game clinching play for the Steelers against the Jets
was also a kick in the nuts. But I digress.
But as we'll get to here in the third segment,
the idea of kind of like letting go a little bit,
you know, not let yourself go, but letting go of
like belief almost in a certain sense, has a bit
of relief that comes with that. And I kind of,
(22:40):
you know, watching some of these Week one games kind
of reminded me of that a little bit. And in
this game on Thursday night. You know, I'm taking the
Packers over the Commanders, And that was a flip of
what I originally planned to do, which was a flip
of my original plan back in the summer, because I
really have minimal feel for this game. I didn't watch
either of these two teams play in Week one because
(23:01):
I was doing radio at Uh you know, I go
on the air right after the Dolphins game ends, and
I'm prep preprepping, prepping, preparing, with those two words together
my rundown for the radio program that I do for
two hours, then also writing a podcast copy for how
I want to cover the game after that, and when
you get blown out in the second half of the game,
I'm pretty much just gonna prepare copy and uh, you know,
(23:24):
not check out, but be a little bit less engaged
in a bad performance. And so, you know, I didn't
get a chance to watch the Giants and Commanders because
they were in that that one one PM slot in
the Lions and Packers game. Saw parts of it, but
I understand the Lions had a tough time running the
ball up the middle with those new center, those new
interior offensive linemen, and from a Packer's perspective, you know,
(23:47):
I think that the Commanders do have the weapons on
the outside to challenge a packer secondary that has a
lot of questions, despite the fact that Micah Parsons helps
you kind of mockel Parson helps you kind of patch
some of those things over. But I remember doing these
summer preview series and this is like how crazy the
NFL is in terms of, you know, what you think
(24:08):
one day is not what you think the next day,
and that's most of sports. Like not to get two
into the weeds here in a tangent, but like before
the Dolphins game on Sunday, the Mariners, my baseball team,
the Seattle Mariners, had won a game on Saturday in Atlanta,
and they won on Sunday as well. But prior to that,
they got they lost the first game to the Braves,
(24:30):
they got swept by the Rays in the previous series.
They lost two out of three in the previous Aeries
to the Guardians and were squandering a big playoff lead
they had, and then they beat the Braves in two games.
They beat the Cardinals on a Monday, We'll see what
happens in the Tuesday game, and all of a sudden,
Mariners fans are back, and like, I remember reading Manors
tweets during that losing streak and it was like they
(24:50):
might not win another game the rest of the year.
So it's like all sports fans have this. It's either
the best thing in the world or the worst thing
in the world, right, and it's usually somewhere in the middle.
But the feel for this game and the up and
down with two teams that I don't care at all about,
because when I did the summer preview series, I was
(25:10):
talking about how the Packers, like the way their schedule
shakes out, could be the best thing for this team,
a team that I think will be good, but they
could score these two big wins against two of the
NFC's best teams because of the way the schedule plays out,
because they had all this continuity on their coaching staff.
The Lions, you know, obviously two new coordinators, the losses
on the offensive line, they had a lot to overcome.
(25:31):
And then you know, I kind of condensed the Packers
potential issues more over the course of the summer break,
and I see the lines in a practice and they
look freaking awesome, and I'm like, Okay, well, the Lions
will win that game. And I fliped that pick. And
I also had said in the summer preview podcast that
the Packers could get off to a two no start
(25:53):
because now here come the Commanders to your house on
a short week, and that's a tough place to play from,
even though Jayden Daniels is a stud and even though
they can challenge your biggest area of concern in the secondary.
And so I ended up being like, well, maybe they
start zero and two, But now I'm gonna flip it
all the way back to the original thought and say
they did beat the Lions. I didn't pick that game,
but they beat the Lions on Week one, And now
(26:15):
I'm gonna flip it back and say, give me the
Packers on a home game on Thursday night football. A
long winded way to get to a pick. There, let's
go ahead and take our last break come back. And
I just want to sit down and we're going to
have a face to face, a little close the door
behind you meeting and talk about the state of being
a Dolphins fan once again, as we have done. I
remember doing this after one in seven, or maybe it
(26:36):
was one in five, maybe it was one in four
back in twenty twenty one. I remember doing this mid
season last year, like two and six, whatever that was,
maybe it was two and five.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
We do it every other year. It seems like we'll
do it again.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Here.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Draft Time Podcast brought to you by Auto Nation.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Right, we're back, and you know, I was kind of
searching for what to do in the C block of
today's show, and I think what I'll do going forward
for the rest of the season is kind of make
it like a for the fans segment, kind of get
a feel for what you guys want this segment to be,
what you want to talk about as we transition from
you know, the previous game to the upcoming game and
(27:12):
all the preview content we do, which you know, if
things go the way they did on Sunday, the preview
content becomes a lot less interesting. I definitely understand that,
and I thought, why don't we just go ahead and
pull the camera in tight, you know, maybe get maybe
get a coffee, put our favorite turtleneck on, and you
guys ever watched the show of Silicon Valley when the Monica,
(27:33):
the head of their the company that funded them, she
was told to dress unattractively to deliver bad news. So
this is me putting on my beige turtleneck sweater. If
you guys have seen that show for a deep cut reference,
and I've you know, been searching for what to put
in the sea block of the show, and I just
want to kind of monologue or I guess riff this
to you guys and like and that's a bit of
(27:55):
psychotic laughter here, because again like here we are once
again right. And even as I write this, I struggle
with the direction that I want to take it into.
I think the best way is to look back at
some past commiseration, which is kind of all, you know,
if you're a Dolphins fan of a certain age, and look,
if it seems crazy to you that I laid out
(28:15):
all these takes for the last nine months and about
how it was going to be this certain way to
get to this point after sixty minutes of football, Like
I know, I know, it's the emotional toying that just
makes you lose your freaking mind. Don't you think it's
making me a little bit fucking crazy too in the head,
Like I was telling a buddy here in our staff,
(28:36):
Like I remember that it was a Week five game
against the New York Giants and we had just gotten
blown up by Buffalo forty eight twenty and we're three to one,
and I go into this visiting the visiting radio booth
to do a pregame radio for the Giants to preview
the game from the Dolphins side. And after the interview
was over, I like was I was like, hey, boys,
try to have some fun today out there. Like I
(28:57):
was confident and cocky as hell because the team was
just rolling. It looked awesome, and they won that game
thirty one to sixteen. When the next week forty two
to twenty one, and it was fun to be a confident,
you know, a hole for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Kill to go back to that. But I'm just don't
I don't want to lie to you guys.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
And I will say, there's something a little bit therapeutic
about just kind of letting go, right I talked about
in the previous segment, letting go of the hope that
you have and the desire to prove all these people
on Twitter wrong, because what difference does it make? Cares
at the end of the day, but moving on to
the next like that's that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
I think I'm an acceptance.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
I was despondent I am kind of despondent the fact
that I feel totally numb to the results on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Man that sucks.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Like I remember the Titans game last year on Monday Night,
when like things kept on snowblolling. It was like just
laughing at it because it was like embarrassingly bad, right
to be in this position with the quarterback still in
the lineup, which it's never been that case when two
was played in the past.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Like, totally despondent, but it sucks.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I will say, don't don't get me wrong here, A
successful hate watch remains the most satisfying thing in football
to me. But my god, what a brutal hate watch
weekend it was for fans of the Fins.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
But I will say this not being concerned about every
single little narrative that might exist that could come back
to the Dolphins. There's some relief in that I felt
that watching the Monday night game with Caleb and JJ
McCarthy and those two teams. Like I remember watching the
Tannehill Dolphins and I will never forget twenty fourteen game
at home against the Packers, and I wanted Tannehill to succeed, right,
wouldn't why wouldn't you. It's your favorite team. They draft
(30:33):
a quarterback in the first round. If he's good, you're
gonna have a lot of fun for the next decade plus.
And it had been fourteen years to that point since
Danny and a massive black hole at the quarterback position,
the most important position in all of sports, outside of
one random blip from Chad Pennington, which was a nice season.
But I think it gets a little bit what's the
word I'm looking for here, like glorified by the Dolphins
(30:54):
fan base.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I understand why that's the case.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
But Tannehill on that Packers game in twenty fourteen, you
were two two coming off the London game off of
a bye, and the first half was just dreadful. I
think he threw like two picks. He was all over
the place, and I like wrote him off. I remember, like,
this is like when I'm posting on Facebook before I
even like do this for a living, and I'm just like, Tannehill,
era is over and then he goes off for two
second half touchdowns, plays really good football. We wind up
(31:17):
blowing it after we got the lead back. The famous
philb And Timeout game, the famous Courtland Finnegan tackle the
guy in bounce, the game is overgame, and then Tannehill
proceeds to have like his next four best games of
his career after that, eventually reverts back twenty fifteenth seas
then goes all the way off the rails. The twenty
sixteen start is terrible, but then he plays good ball again,
and you're just on this roller coaster of like, who
are we?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
What am I? What's this quarterback?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Are we going to be a team that can compete,
you know, down the road eventually? And you're willing to
do it because you should all know there was nothing
worse than being in search of a quarterback in this league.
It was true then and it is infinitely more true nowadays.
If you have bad quarterback, play man, you have no
shot in this league. And look, maybe they come out
(32:00):
Sunday and they do pivot the plan to match their
personnel changes.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I don't think that'll happen.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Part of the kind of existential feeling of dread that
I've been displaying on the podcast all week. Part of
that has been amplified by the postgame commentary and this
discussion of like all the things we worked on this
offseason in terms of you know, just really honing in
on our fundamentals and technique, and we didn't really make
(32:27):
a lot of changes offensively, just tried to, you know,
master the offense in a more you know, concise way.
It makes me think there isn't a plan to change
and you know, last year that wasn't even an option
because you didn't have the personnel to do it. Now
you do, and maybe you maybe it's not a bunch
of that. Maybe it's some of that, and maybe it's
the Pats being a little bit less hip to our
(32:48):
bread and butter as the Colts were. I doubt that
because Mike Rabel has cooked up good game plans for
this offense in the past. Maybe two reverts back to
his peak and we'll hit those throws that he missed
in the game on Sunday and we get that's possible.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I'm not discounting that at all.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
In fact, before the Colts game happened, I thought the
Dolphins would win this game against the Patriots and a
tight contest. I'm leaning towards flipping that result, and maybe
we'll see what I come up with that from watching
the game the tape, I should say, but I'm back
in this show me mode that I've reverted back to
so many times, and that confident a hole in the giants,
you know, visiting radio booth is all the way out
(33:25):
the window. And it's because Sunday was just such a
failure at every level, as coach and the players themselves
have told you. And the reasoning for this entire thing is, like, man,
there's this division across the fan base on social media,
which again, what kind of actual representation of reality is that?
I don't really know, Man, it's hard to say. I
feel like that's kind of the landscape of the country
(33:47):
as a whole right now is just division and vitriol.
But as far as Dolphins fans go, like like I
am you, I'm here because I am the biggest of you,
Like I was the biggest fan there was who happened
to take a chance at a broadcasting career and made
it work out for himself. But we just continuously find
ourselves in this vicious cycle since the turn of the century,
(34:08):
and it's exhausting, and it's seen a lot of us
of a certain age go from like, you know, pre
pubescent days to maturing into like these forty year old men.
Mike Gundy that have three kids now, and it's like,
what's been the one consistent the entire time I've grown up.
Is like the roller coaster of the Miami Dolphins, right,
And it's almost like you're at the top of the
(34:32):
proverbial pain rankings as a fan because of the toying
with the emotions. That's sort of what I mean by
the sense of relief and letting go. It's easier to
accept being at the end stages of the grieving process,
like it was even worse last year because it felt
like the injury was taking it away from you, not
the performance itself, which of course happened in twenty twenty
(34:52):
two as well, And that's a whole separate conversation, right,
the ability to be available, it's I mean, it's become
well until Sunday, and it was the biggest question about
the quarterback, and now the quarterback with his performance, has
opened up the discussion for other evaluations, which we'll get
into that as we go along as well. But like
every coach, every regime change the Dolphins have had since
(35:15):
you know, Dave Wanstead, start out hot and then it
just kind of slowly matriculates in the wrong direction from there.
Even Brian Flores' first year was super promising given the
talent of that twenty nineteen team, and you kind of
felt like you stole a little bit of two pieces
of the pie that you aren't allowed to have in
this league, which is the high draft pick and a
(35:36):
quarterback heavy class. And you know, hindsight says, get the
first pick and get Burrow would have been a different story,
but I digress that whole entire point. But to be
able to steal from that pot and take like, oh,
we established a good culture in one games without it
really impacting our ability to find that franchise quarterback. It
felt like you were in the most fortunate position in
the entire NFL, with all the cap space and the
(35:57):
draft capital, and it turned out the way it did,
even Adam Gase's first year playoffs right, and then an
immediate fall into obscurity back after that and to a
worse position than you were before he inherited the team.
I guess Philbin didn't really have that, but he didn't
really do anything. But Tony Sperano did first year division
freaking champions, and it just got worse from there. And
(36:17):
I thought, my buddy Kyle Krabs put it best when
talking about this present cycle that started in earnest in
twenty nineteen, but twenty twenty was really the first year
of like actual all right on the clock, like the
actual life cycle maturing into a possibility of competitive football.
But we washed away the first two years of that
because we had the wrong coach. Like there's no question
(36:37):
about that. You know, Flow is a great DC, a
great game plan designer for that side of the football,
but it didn't. There's a reason why it went the
way it did in terms of the management and the
coaching staff being what it was because you know, that's
not even getting any further into that, but you made
the wrong decision and it completely reset what this building
cycle was supposed to be. And you were able to
(36:58):
successfully pivot for a moment within that. And god knows,
if they kick down the door in twenty twenty three
and they get a playoff win, they win a game
here at hard Rock Staium and get the fans rocking
and like get some good will for the fan base,
I think the fan base would feel differently today about
where the team is. Even with the twenty twenty four
results and the Week one game of twenty twenty five
going the way it did, but you didn't, and it
(37:19):
just continued to kind of push down that anger to
later explode out when the performances are bad.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And so you pivot.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You bring in a new batch of coaches and you
know this offensive whiz you know by reputation to rebuild
your quarterback and you know, you get new players to
fit the new vision of those new coaches. You hit
the accelerator and you trade for veterans and get a
bunch of talent in here, and you buy pass a
couple of drafts, compounded by the loss of a first
and a third round pick that year, and now you're
(37:48):
in the soft reset position, which has happened across the
league we've talked about on the podcast. The Packers did it,
the Rams did it. The Niners have done it less successfully.
So for the Niners with the Rams and Packers have
done it successfully. Like the question is, and you compete
while you try to reshape the financial situation of your
team and continue to restock the draft capital and gear
up for the second maturation of that cycle. It's possible,
(38:09):
It's doable. They tried it, they're trying it right now.
But you're off to a horrendous start. We'll see what
happens in week two and beyond. And I think it
makes sense to maintain continuity as you try to parse
your way through that soft rebuild, that soft reset. I
think it's a lot like when you have a third
and seven and a a one score lead in less
than two minutes to play in a game, like do
(38:30):
you put the ball in like do you hand the
ball off and just punt it back and put the
hand the game in your defense's hands, or do you
give yourself two shots to win appost to the one
shot to win by throwing for it and if you
miss it makes the job a little bit harder on
your defense. But you gave yourself two chances to win,
one on offense, one on defense. The start could not
have been worse. Maybe it gets turned around. I'm not
(38:52):
holding my breath right now, but I will bite my
tongue if it does. And if not, at least you're
a year further in the reset than you were in
January twenty twenty five, And that would make the destination
not quite as attractive if you went that way in
twenty twenty five, right, because you would come in here
and say, look, we have we have to get through
these years of this dead money, and you know, we're
gonna have this draft class and hopefully by next year
(39:14):
we have a couple of draft classes that are good
and we can kind of funnel through our young talent.
Whereas having it play out this way, if it goes
could put like you're a year further in terms of
resetting the books, reset in the draft capital, and you're
at a better spot for the maturation of the next cycle,
and that should in turn make the destination more attractive,
which would lead to you know, better prospects for those positions.
(39:34):
I know, guys, I know, I know. Having this conversation
on September tenth is absurd. Back to Kyle for a second.
I just marvel at his ability to like, oh, we're
in draft mode again. He was texting me about prospects
on Sunday night. I'm like, you are a different beast,
my friend. It's impressive. I don't get there quite as fast.
I told him, Hey, I'm in mourning, leave me alone
right now. And I did this entire segment to say
(39:56):
that I'm not going to give it. You know, I'm
not gonna I'm not going to do this before the
three games play out, because we do have the short week.
If we lose the Patriots and then the Bills, which
feels like a damn buzzsaw situation right going there on
a Thursday against that team and that quarterback and that
freaking wagon, then with a long week, we're gonna start
making it a point to carve out a segment on
Wednesdays to look into prospects and things of that nature
(40:17):
for the future, because what else would you have at
that point if you're zero and three right And I'll
tell you right now, I've got four names that intrigue me,
that gets me, maybe helps get me through a little
bit if this goes the way it's looking like it's
gonna go. And I'll peep that college tape as well,
and Garrettnusmyer LSU's quarterback, South Carolina's Leonora Sellers, Penn Stage
Drew Aller, and Oklahoma's John Mattier Gokus from Washington State
(40:39):
quarterback might be some unique flavors next year at the position.
In April, if we get to that point right now,
it feels like we're on that track. It's tough, as
I write this, I'm literally listening to some forty one
so am I still waiting? And it makes me ask
the question, am I still waiting for sports to be fun?
Because I'm a man? I'm forty and remove the job,
the career, all that stuff. Dolphins, Seattle Mariners, the defunct
(41:02):
Seattle SuperSonics who just won a title as the Zombie
Sonics did, and Washington State football that has been relegated
to basically the third division of English football. Right like
sports have never been fun, I anticipate the day that
they are all right.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
We'll preview the.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Patriots tomorrow on the podcast and do all the preview
content before Sunday's game. Until then, you all, please be
sure subscribe to the podcast, leave us are writing, leave
us a review, follow me on social at Windle NFL,
the team at Miami Dolphins, check out the YouTube channel
for Dolphins HQ, Media availabilities, and so much more, and
last but not least, Miami Dolphins dot com. Until next time,
Boo's up, Caroline, Cameron and Willow Daddy.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
He's Kevin Holsten
This is Drivetime with Travis Wingfield.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What is up Dolphins and welcome to the Draft Time Podcast.
I am your host, Travis Wingfield. And on today's show
we get into the Patriots Week two upon us here
in the National Football League. Taylor Kyle's will join me
to break down this matchup from the Patriots perspective. Plus,
we are going to talk a little bit about the
state of being a Dolphins fan, as we seemingly do
(00:32):
every other year on this show. Here we'll also pick
the TNF game from the Baptist Health Studios inside the
Baptist Health Training Complex.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
This is.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
The Draft Time Podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hey day.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
For this week's opponent Spotlight presented by Govy, longtime friend
of the show, Taylor Kyles.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Taylor, what is up man? How you doing?
Speaker 5 (00:52):
I'm great man, always glad to be back, see your
smiling face. I'm sorry about the circumstances. I guess on
both sides. Though from last week was hoping this.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Would be a game for the top spot in the
AFC East, but now it's kind of a game where
teams are trying to find their way back into the win.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Calling back into I guess the good graces of what.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We thought these teams could be going into Week one.
I want to go ahead and start here, Taylor, because
we knew about a lot of change this offseason coming
for the Patriots, right, And that's what kind of happens
when you get the rookie quarterback on the rookie contract
and you can start building out the roster around him,
and in week one, you know, that can be challenging
to draw big conclusions from, but I want to try
to have you do that for us here.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Offensively, what stood out about the offense for the.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Patriots as a whole, to you and Taylor, if you can,
let let's take it from the perspective of what worked
and maybe what questions exist from that first performance for
the Patriots offense here.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Well, I think I was kind of hoping for, you know,
Drake May in his first game in this Josh McDaniel system.
Was hoping for more of a mac Jones kind of debut.
I'm sure Dolphin stands. Remember back in twenty twenty one,
Mac Jones just comes out and it's slinging it. He's
getting them into the right plays, putting it on guys.
I still think that might have been his best game
as a Patriot didn't quite get that from Drake May,
and I think the biggest thing was inaccuracy and decision
(02:02):
making at times early he definitely seemed a little bit
too amped up, passed up some decisions, ran at times
where I didn't think he really should have. Also kind
of put himself in positions to take hits that these
coaches have been like, hey man, you've got to protect yourself.
Those are kind of par for the course with a
young quarterback, especially in a new offensive system. You know,
you learn what you can and can't get away with.
(02:23):
That I'm not too concerned about, but the inaccuracy for
Drake May was something that was pretty concerning for me.
In one of my biggest takeaways was there were too
many gimmes that he wound up sailing over guys heads
or even completions where he put it to the wrong
shoulder for his receivers and kind of took away yach
opportunities or forced them to have to make difficult adjustments.
And then the run game was non existent. I mean,
(02:43):
raiders really wanted to try to use stunts and post
snap movement to confuse and complicate blocking angles. They had
a lot of success the Patriots and Mike Vrable admitted
they abandoned the run pretty much in the second half
because it wasn't working. So from an offensive perspective, the
run game was bad. Drake still had his flashes. It
wasn't like, oh God, what's going on with Drake? You
still saw the things that encourage you. But there were
(03:04):
some things he definitely needs to work on, at least
from an offensive standpoint.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
With the passing game with Drake, do you think that
was more? Is that like a mechanical thing? Is it
a timing issue within the offense? And my new OC
news system that can be kind of, you know, tough
to iron out one game in Like what would you
attribute that to that performance?
Speaker 5 (03:19):
It felt like mechanics because there were times where he
wasn't really following through. There was a time where he
could have met were Andre Stevenson for a checkdown, might
have turned into a big play, but he kind of
throws it with his feet off the ground, the side
arm and then it ends up behind hermandre off his
hands wasn't almost intercepted, but Devin White was too close
where I kind of got the yips up in the
press box when it happened so and then at the
same time you see plays where he's stepping up into
(03:41):
the pocket, hitch hitch, follow through throw and it's a dime.
So you saw the flashes of positivity, But mechanically, I
feel like you did see at times him just not
following through, having breakdowns, and at times it was from
clean pockets.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It wasn't even always because of pressure to.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Kind of follow up further.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And sorry to be redundant here, but I'm just so
fascinated by the Josh McDaniels entire coaching arc. You know,
going back to the same place multiple times. Do you
think his offense. I know it's only one game, but
you got a chance to watch camp. Is it kind
of more the same? You know, the kind of complex
side adjustments and you know, ability to uncover quickly in
the quarterback to be really you know, Tom Brady ask
at the line. Has it evolved like what would you
(04:15):
say this McDaniel's version of the Patriots offense?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Kind of what's the calling card?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I guess there's definitely a lot of carryover.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
And we're even talking about here, is that the best
thing for Drake May is he the kind of guy
who like a Tom Brady is going to be able
to dink and dunk consistently hit guys in stride, like
I said, creating those yack opportunities, or is he more
somebody where you wanted to drop back and have opportunities
to go downfield where his play really does shine. So
it is a lot of the same Josh McDaniels stuff,
(04:42):
but you're also seeing, especially in the run game, they
started peppering in some more use of Drake May's legs.
You saw some zone read and I expected there was
going to be some elements of the Cam Newton offense
going back to twenty twenty. Even saw something we didn't
see with Cam Newton where you got the power Reid
option where you can either hand off behind the pulling
guard and you leave somebody on block. But we also
had Antonio Gibson as a shovel option on the play,
(05:03):
which was a new wrinkle there. So you are seeing
some new things. You know, there was a bootleg, some
moving pockets for Drake May. They still moved the pocket
had bent with Tom Brady and Mac Jones, but I
think we're gonna get more of that with Drake. Even
though there were just one boot, so a lot of
the same from Josh McDaniel is not a lot of
wholesale changes quite yet, but you did start to see
the run game starting to incorporate more things that used
Drake's athleticism.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
For some reason your commentary that reminds me the Dolphins
and Patriots play early season every year, right, because you
mentioned the Mac Jones opening day game in twenty one.
Cam Newton twenty twenty had like what was a two
hundred rushing yards for the Patriots that day and a
Patriots win over the Ryan Fitzpatrick led Miami Dolphins. You
talked about the running backs there a little bit, and
Taylor one of my.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Favorite players in the entire draft.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
He showed up in the preseason the very first play
of the preseason. Travon Henderson. I'm curious what you saw
in the first game in terms of the workload split
at the running back position and what we should expect
going forward into Sunday's game.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
So the running back split was surprising a thing for
everybody because Travon Henderson, like you said, was electric in
the preseason. He was electric in training game throughout the summer,
even going back to the spring. You could see, oh,
this guy moves very differently from everybody else because he's big,
he's stout, and then has that home run hitting ability.
But Remandre was by far the bell cow and what
we expected to be a one A, one B situation,
(06:16):
it was really very clearly Remandre as the one, and
then Trayvon Henderson is a distant two, which I'm hoping
to see a little bit different in the next week
or this week rather because Remandre, the offensive line was
not helping him, but he wasn't really slipping tackles the
way you typically expect Demandre too, and to be fair,
it hasn't been since his rookie year where he's had
sufficient pass blocking or run blocking rather where he wasn't
(06:37):
getting hit in the backfield and having to deal with
disruption and make something out of nothing constantly. So little
bit of a you know, grain assault there for Remandre.
But Travion you saw, in very limited touches, was able
to make guys miss, was falling forward. You saw the
power and the explosiveness, and then you kind of got
Antonio Gibson rounding out that backfield. It's a three headed monster,
but they need better blocking, and I think he got
(06:58):
to get more of Trayon Henderson because he might be
the most dynamic player you have on your entire offense,
even with Drake May.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, you guys went one two in terms of two
of my favorite players in the draft this year with him
and then Kyle Williams from Gokoob's Washington State. My guest
is Taylor. Kyle's that you can find his work at
Patriots c lns. And Taylor, you did a bunch of
great breakdowns. I mentioned this to you off the air,
and you make my job easier because it's like a
shortcut to Patriots weak and kind of getting some notes
on the film and stuff, and you went over you know,
Will Campbell in the offensive line performance, you talked about
(07:26):
the run game not getting going. I kind of just
want to give you the floor here, Taylor, just in
terms of how the Will Campbell debut went, how the
group did as a whole, and perhaps more importantly, you know,
we saw the Dolphins really give the Patriots fits last
year in the game down here with the pass rush.
How does the Patriots offensive line do you think match
up against this Dolphins pass rush?
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Yeah, so the Patriots have two rookies on the left side.
You got Will Campbell, like you mentioned, they also have
Jared Wilson, who is a center at Georgia and now,
like I said, playing guard for them because they have
Garrett Bradbury as their center. I thought the rookies. Will
Cambell especially had a pretty solid debut. The run wasn't great,
you know, there were some downfield blocks where guys were
able to get off of him, but he was pretty
solid in pass protection. Mostly went up against Malcolm Kons
(08:05):
because you know, Max Crosby is more of a left
edge kind of guy. Now, Will Campbell did give up
a sack. There was a play where Remandre kind of
gave Chip help. Wasn't a whole lot, but Campbell got
his arm pinned inside outside, arm pinned inside, kind of
gave up the edge luckily fell on it.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
So there's gonna be some growing pains. Everybody expected it.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
I was more concerned with Jared Wilson, like you'd expect
from a Georgia center. He does have good awareness where
like he picks up Jamal Adams on a blitz and
there's a certain level of feel that he's got even
as he's coming along. But also Adam Butler, our old friend,
really gave him some trouble, had like three clean wins,
and there were also just some miscommunications where Jared Wilson
didn't seem to pick up his assignment. So again, when
(08:43):
you have two young players, you know, even if they
have their best games of the season, there's gonna be
some moments where you're like, hey, hopefully they learned from
that and don't make the same mistakes moving forward. And
then the right side of the offensive line is where
the veterans are. You got Mike and Wan who and
Morgan Moses. Moses I did not expect to be one
on one against Max Crosby as often as he was,
and he held up really well. There was only a
couple of really quick losses. I thought for the most
(09:05):
part he was able to win on initial contact and
really force Max Krosby to go to his second and
third moves and put that motor that he has to
the test. And trying to get after Drake May Mike
and Whinny was a bit disappointing.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Got walked back a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
Really, I think if the Dolphins used twists and get
Mike won, who's like three hundred and thirty pounds. If
you get him having to change direction multiple times on
a snap, it's gonna be bad news.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Bear.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
So there was some encouraging things from the Patriots offensive line,
clearly a better unit than they were last year where
four of the guys were backups, but still, you know,
an area where if the Dolphins come ready to play,
they could cause some disruption up front.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, you pretty much described how the Dolphins do want
to get after it upfront with the games and the
twists and the very expansive menu of Anthony Weaver. But
I thought the Colts did a good job of really
play actioning and kind of using some jet sweep and
using that split flow action to kind of you know,
throw the tight end of the flat and then kind
of force those linebackers to readjust and get them off
their game that way. So I'm curious to see how
the Patriots use that film and how the Dolphins adjust
(09:57):
to the fact that the Patriots might use that film
to at tap accordingly, speaking of the Dolph or the
Patriots defense, rather, let's go ahead and take a break
rate there, come back on the other side and go
back to the Patriots defense with my guess said Taylor
Kyles Drive Time podcast brought to you by Autoonation. My
guest today here is Taylor Kyles for the Patriots Beat
and Taylor on the other side of the football here
(10:18):
talking about the Patriots defense against the Miami offense again
one game.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
But I am.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Curious how much of what Mike Rabel's defense looked like
from a schematic standpoint that came with him from Tennessee
to the Patriots.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Was it similar different?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Give us the kind of Josh McDaniel's breakdown that you
gave us earlier on the Rabel defense.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
So there was more quarters, you know, cover four than
we typically see from the Patriots, But functionally it was
pretty much the same coverage style. A lot of single
high man coverage. Then you mix in some more cover
three so you can get zone eyes in the backfield
on early downs to try to stop the run. But really,
Rabel historically has not been a big blitzer. He's gonna
send four. But what happens is will typically send it
(10:55):
from different places. So sometimes it's an off ball linebacker.
Sometimes it's a slot corner where they'll come off the
edge and then a defensive lineman will drop into coverage
try to create some confusion for the quarterback's reads.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Vrabel and defense coordinators.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Roll Williams blitzed a ton, and part of that was
because their foreman rush wasn't consistently getting home. Part of
that is Geno Smith, a guy who does a great
job getting the buy out on time, not putting his
offensive line in bad situations. Milton Williams and Harol Landry
were pretty dominant. Christian Barmore didn't quite look like himself
yet miss last year with blood Clott so you understand
didn't play in the preseason two like they've been kind
(11:29):
of keeping him on a plan, so it might be.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
A ramp up period there.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
And also Kaylevon Chason and Keon White as the opposite
edge rushers weren't very consistent. I think they only combined
for like two or three pressures, so the foreman rush
wasn't getting home. But when they blitzed and you started
seeing them use twists and stunts and different things to
kind of get guys looping and using Milton Williams especially
to get attention and free up other guys, that's where
they had all their success. Like they had four sacks,
(11:53):
all four of them came with five or more rushers
and usually involved some kind of stunt up front.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Now, I like the blitzer.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
I think it led a ton of great plays, like
there were two where brock Bowers was wide open and
as he uncovered, Gino Smith got sacked. But then they
also got too cute at times where you have Trey
Tucker's touchdown for some reason, you're dropping Milton Williams and
Christian Barmore into coverage and you have Jalen Hawkins in
centerfield trying to cover one of the faster receivers in
the NFL on a crossing route got burned for it,
(12:20):
as you should have. That was a bad decision. Also,
a corner blitz on like third and one, where Carlton
Davis comes off the edge, Jacobe Myers is wide opening
the slot for an easy conversion. Like those things I
really didn't like. So I think they need to be
smarter about when they send their blitzes, because again that
was very uncharacteristic for a Mike Rabel team, but when
they did do it, it was effective for the most part.
So just finding a better balance there and hopefully getting
(12:41):
more from those four man rushers so you don't have
to lean into those extra rushers.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
See, this is why Taylor does the show ten times
now whatever it's been. Because my next question was going
to ask you about Milton Williams, Harold Robertspilane, and Carlton Davis,
and you just covered all those guys in one breath there.
So that's impressive on its own, But I guess I'll
follow up with this because you know, Harold Landry was
a guy that coming out of college, I was like
that dude's top ten pick. He winds up falling in
the draft, has a great start to his career, gets
(13:05):
injured and kind of you know, is slow to come
back from that. But he looked like pre injury Harold
Andrew to me, did you see the same thing on tape?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I did.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
And the funny thing is when I was looking at
his tape in his number is it just didn't fit
the perception of what some of the numbers say, where
he was still productive in terms of sacks, but when
you looked at the PFF pass rush win rateh He's
got to make sure.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I'm very careful with that one.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's tough, but it.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Was terrible like he was one of the worst edge
rushers in the league. And I'm thinking, all right, why
is that? Because he just what, he just fell off
a cliff. It wasn't like he was, you know, just
coming off the injury that had been a couple of
seasons before. And what I noticed is in Tennessee, once
Terrell Williams and Mike Rabel were gone, where they preach
getting aggressive, being upfield violence, I saw Harold Landry playing
a ton of contain so he wasn't really able to
(13:47):
use his skill set. And then I think that's what
contributed to his numbers dropping. But when you look at
the tape, I'm thinking, when they do let him off
the leash, he still looks explosive. And next Gen stats
had him getting a better get off every season since
he tore's ACL, which might sound crazy, but a lot
of the times with these athletes, you focus on that
one area when you tear your ACL. In some cases,
(14:08):
you come back even better because you've strengthened that area
in ways that you didn't before and it's even stronger.
And I think you saw that where he's still got
to get off. Is he the same player he was
in his prime? Of course not. But the versatility where
he can be in every down player he can win
with power, he can in with speed and is not
quite his hands. You know, that's never really been his game,
but he can switch it up on you a decent amount,
and I thought that's definitely what we saw. Currently leads
(14:30):
the NFL in pressures and sacks according to PFF, so
you know, he's doing pretty well so far.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I'll have a big test on Sunday against Patrick Paul,
who looked fantastic in his season two debut here at
the left tackle position from Miami. And I'm curious because
you talked about Barmore and Williams and man watching Milton
Williams and the way he can kind of cross face
is the one shade and fire into that like a
one gapping penetrator. When you watch players like that, they
are kind of like a blessing and curse against the
Miami Dolphins, because when the Dolphins get it like taken
(14:57):
care of and they can get their outside zone game go,
those players get removed from the equation and it turns
into an explosive run most of the times, but it
also sometimes creates negative runs that get you behind the
chains and starts a different, you know, catalog of issues
for the offense. I'm curious how you think the Patriots,
in terms of their style, might attack the Dolphins protection
scheme because it was some good against the Colts, but
a lot of their pressure disrupted the Dolphins passing game.
(15:19):
Do you see a similar a similar approach for the
Patriots up front?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I do what I think they're going to attack their
old friend. Is Cole Strange gonna play this weekend?
Speaker 4 (15:27):
No idea right now.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I mean, it was key On Smith was the right
guard in that came in for James Daniels and he's
been in that position a lot this preseason.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
So we'll see.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
But I would imagine we'll go with continuity, But as
of right now, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
So I have a feeling they might dial back some
of the blitzer and just rely on their guys because
the injuries upfront, obviously the inexperience at some spots as well.
I think they're just gonna say, hey, Christian Barmore and
Milton Williams, like wrek havoc on your twists one on
one opportunities, because like Tua is not really Gino. And
also if you blitz the Dolphins, Like, what are you doing?
Because Tua is getting the ball out so quickly. A
(15:59):
lot of the times you'd rather play coverage. You can
get as many people in areas to try to bring
down some of these fast receivers, obviously Waddle and Tyreek Hills.
So I would be surprised if they blitz quite as
much I think. I mean, you put all your money
as the Patriots into your defensive line. Harold Anders making
a ton of money, Milton Williams is getting paid more
than any player in Patriots history, and Christian Barmo is
also making a pretty penny as well, So that's where
(16:20):
your money's at.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Let those guys off the chain. In some instances, again like.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
The Raiders, where they do have a guy like Colton
Miller who's been there, done that, is very experienced and
a great quarterback like Gino, it does make sense to
try to mix it up because you got to get
pressure somehow. I just don't think the Dolphins pose the
same threat, so I'm hoping again they're a bit more
conservative in the rush plan.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, comprehensive as always, Taylor.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Two more questions for you here my penultimate one, and
this is just for my own curiosity because I want
to go to an expert here because Kyle Dugger for
the longest time was a guy that I would circle
when I would do my Dolphins Patriots game previews as
a guy that you have to watch out for. He's
got pick six against the Dolphins. I think he's got
sacks and fumble fumble recoveries. He's just done a lot
against this Dolphins offense. We saw Jabrill Peppers released a
(17:02):
week before the season. I'm just looking for a straight
up education for myself and Dolphins fans here to Patriots
have to feel like they have something big and Craig
Woodson and Jalen Hawkins that allowed them to make that move.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
I am I wrong in that? Like take us through
the entire safety decision this offseason.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
So a big reason they shifted is that typically the
Patriots safetyes had pretty defined roles, Like sometimes in their
base packages they'll kind of just stick to sides or whatever.
But really you had like Kyle Dugger as someone who
you wanted closer to the line. Jabro Peppers was more
of a free safety. You could also use him as
a slot in some of your nickel packages and he
could cover running backs. But you didn't love either one
of those guys covering tight ends consistently, especially Jabro Peppers.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Each is smaller, like that's not really his game.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
In this defensive system, the safeties play sides, so based
on the offensive presentation, you could be doing a ton
of different things. You could be playing man against a
tight end or a wide receiver, you could be playing deep.
So Kyle Dugger and Jabrill Peppers both got hurt early
last year. Both guys you know, tried to play through it.
Jabro Peppers missed some time and he couldn't rehabit right
way because he had an off field issue. And Kyle
(18:03):
duggar I mean, bless his heart, really fought through and
played a ton of games on a bad ankle. They
missed all of spring though, because those injuries and having
to recover have surgeries or what have you. And that
was big because this is a brand new defensive system.
Kyle Dugger, when you think about it, had never been
in a non Bill Belichickian type of defense, so this
is brand new for him. Peppers had spent multiple years
(18:24):
in this system, so Dugger kind of started well behind
the eight ball. And also it felt like he wasn't
really sure about that ankle. Jubro Peppers, I think has
also kind of lost a step. I still think he's
a quality player, but in this scheme where guys are
doing everything and Dougger is a little bit behind. He's
still on the roster, but he was only used as
a slot defender for them last week. I think part
of that is you don't love him in man coverage
(18:45):
as well, even if you do kind of like him
in some blitzing packages and some zone responsibilities. So I mean,
Jalen Hawkins not gonna wow you, but he made some
plays last week. He missed a tackle, but he also
had a tackles for loss, he had a sack. You
see the range from him and Craig would since a
player they like a lot also brings great versatility, even
if kind of I don't love him and man coverage either,
(19:06):
but still, you know a guy who can handle and
wear a bunch of different hats. So it's really just
the philosophical change. The versatility they need even more from
their safeties in this regime is a big reason they
moved on from Pepper's and a big reason why Kyle
Duggar is in a reduced role.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I have one more question, but just real quick. Christian
Gonzalez tracking to play this week. What do you think
about him?
Speaker 5 (19:24):
I don't think so, and I hope, I really hope
he doesn't, to be honest, unless he's feeling great, because
the guy hasn't practiced since very early in the summer
with these hamstring injuries. You're already scared when a guy
doesn't practice for a long time playing that position because
of the risk of soft tissue injuries. And you know
Tyreek and Wadler obviously the kind of matchup where you
want Christian Gonzales And it's not like the Raiders where
(19:45):
I was like, you know what, this is one week
where I don't think you need him. But I'm actually
going in to speak to Mike Vabel for a press
conference today, so we'll get more information. But as of now,
I would be a bit surprised. Although it is notable
the Patriots just released DJ James, who had a good
summer for them, so that could hint towards Christians I
was playing, but I'll be honest, man, I'm nervous, and
(20:05):
even if he does play, you have to be aware
of the fact that He's coming off the hamstring and
hasn't practiced in a very long time in.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
A place where cramps are frequent and two receivers run
in the four twos. It could be a tough test
if he does have to test it out for the
first time here, but he's a great player, so it's
also a big thing of the Patriots getting back as promised. Taylor,
final question here we close the opponent spotlights this way
every single time the Patriots win this game.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
If and the floor is yours.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
Think the Patriots win, if they can win in the trenches,
and if Drake May is able to take what's there.
Those are the biggest things for me. I understand it's
not going to be perfect, but you can't have another
week where the run game is completely non existent, and
there's some issues in pass pro that feel like they
can be fixed, So hopefully they take those steps forward.
And while I don't think accuracy is a thing you
just fix in a week, especially because Drake has struggled
pretty consistently, you just hope that the clip of those
(20:49):
like what the f ros is significantly lower than it.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Was against the Raiders.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
You can find his work at Patriots c LNS and
on social at t Kyle's thirty nine. Taylor, you're not
only a great dude, but a brilliant foot ballmind. One
of my favorite follows on Twitter as well. We'll see
you down here Sunday, my friend, and remember long sleeves
in that press box.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yes, sir, I learned my lesson good stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
I appreciate you, and away he goes.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Always a pleasure to catch up with Taylor, one of
the nicest guys in the business and one of the
smartest analyst analysis and analyzers analogalizers in the entire business
as well. Before we go to segment three, here, let's
go ahead and pick the Thursday night football game. So
eleven and five in Week one. Pretty excited about that mark.
It's usually tougher to find wins in the first week
(21:33):
of the season, but we were on point with a
few of those games. And what a Week one it was,
by the way, like the Dolphins and Colts game was
kind of the only bad game on the entire slate.
So NFL appears to be back, and we're going to
talk a little bit about what it feels like to
be a Dolphins fan today. In the third segment, which
kind of coincides with I guess the enjoyment of watching
(21:56):
Week one that was I don't know about you guys,
but I was even texting like, I can't even get
excited about this Bills melt down here on Sunday night
because of how bummed out I was after the Dolphins game.
And then by the end of it, I was like, Okay,
now I'm starting to be excited about it, and then
there they go, and it was just became It became
the worst hate watch weekend, the worst just cumulative weekend
as a Dolphins fan outside of the Patriots and Jets
(22:18):
losing their games, although you could argue Jalen Ramsey making
the game clinching play for the Steelers against the Jets
was also a kick in the nuts. But I digress.
But as we'll get to here in the third segment,
the idea of kind of like letting go a little bit,
you know, not let yourself go, but letting go of
like belief almost in a certain sense, has a bit
of relief that comes with that. And I kind of,
(22:40):
you know, watching some of these Week one games kind
of reminded me of that a little bit. And in
this game on Thursday night. You know, I'm taking the
Packers over the Commanders, And that was a flip of
what I originally planned to do, which was a flip
of my original plan back in the summer, because I
really have minimal feel for this game. I didn't watch
either of these two teams play in Week one because
(23:01):
I was doing radio at Uh you know, I go
on the air right after the Dolphins game ends, and
I'm prep preprepping, prepping, preparing, with those two words together
my rundown for the radio program that I do for
two hours, then also writing a podcast copy for how
I want to cover the game after that, and when
you get blown out in the second half of the game,
I'm pretty much just gonna prepare copy and uh, you know,
(23:24):
not check out, but be a little bit less engaged
in a bad performance. And so, you know, I didn't
get a chance to watch the Giants and Commanders because
they were in that that one one PM slot in
the Lions and Packers game. Saw parts of it, but
I understand the Lions had a tough time running the
ball up the middle with those new center, those new
interior offensive linemen, and from a Packer's perspective, you know,
(23:47):
I think that the Commanders do have the weapons on
the outside to challenge a packer secondary that has a
lot of questions, despite the fact that Micah Parsons helps
you kind of mockel Parson helps you kind of patch
some of those things over. But I remember doing these
summer preview series and this is like how crazy the
NFL is in terms of, you know, what you think
(24:08):
one day is not what you think the next day,
and that's most of sports. Like not to get two
into the weeds here in a tangent, but like before
the Dolphins game on Sunday, the Mariners, my baseball team,
the Seattle Mariners, had won a game on Saturday in Atlanta,
and they won on Sunday as well. But prior to that,
they got they lost the first game to the Braves,
(24:30):
they got swept by the Rays in the previous series.
They lost two out of three in the previous Aeries
to the Guardians and were squandering a big playoff lead
they had, and then they beat the Braves in two games.
They beat the Cardinals on a Monday, We'll see what
happens in the Tuesday game, and all of a sudden,
Mariners fans are back, and like, I remember reading Manors
tweets during that losing streak and it was like they
(24:50):
might not win another game the rest of the year.
So it's like all sports fans have this. It's either
the best thing in the world or the worst thing
in the world, right, and it's usually somewhere in the middle.
But the feel for this game and the up and
down with two teams that I don't care at all about,
because when I did the summer preview series, I was
(25:10):
talking about how the Packers, like the way their schedule
shakes out, could be the best thing for this team,
a team that I think will be good, but they
could score these two big wins against two of the
NFC's best teams because of the way the schedule plays out,
because they had all this continuity on their coaching staff.
The Lions, you know, obviously two new coordinators, the losses
on the offensive line, they had a lot to overcome.
(25:31):
And then you know, I kind of condensed the Packers
potential issues more over the course of the summer break,
and I see the lines in a practice and they
look freaking awesome, and I'm like, Okay, well, the Lions
will win that game. And I fliped that pick. And
I also had said in the summer preview podcast that
the Packers could get off to a two no start
(25:53):
because now here come the Commanders to your house on
a short week, and that's a tough place to play from,
even though Jayden Daniels is a stud and even though
they can challenge your biggest area of concern in the secondary.
And so I ended up being like, well, maybe they
start zero and two, But now I'm gonna flip it
all the way back to the original thought and say
they did beat the Lions. I didn't pick that game,
but they beat the Lions on Week one, And now
(26:15):
I'm gonna flip it back and say, give me the
Packers on a home game on Thursday night football. A
long winded way to get to a pick. There, let's
go ahead and take our last break come back. And
I just want to sit down and we're going to
have a face to face, a little close the door
behind you meeting and talk about the state of being
a Dolphins fan once again, as we have done. I
remember doing this after one in seven, or maybe it
(26:36):
was one in five, maybe it was one in four
back in twenty twenty one. I remember doing this mid
season last year, like two and six, whatever that was,
maybe it was two and five.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
We do it every other year. It seems like we'll
do it again.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Here.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Draft Time Podcast brought to you by Auto Nation.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Right, we're back, and you know, I was kind of
searching for what to do in the C block of
today's show, and I think what I'll do going forward
for the rest of the season is kind of make
it like a for the fans segment, kind of get
a feel for what you guys want this segment to be,
what you want to talk about as we transition from
you know, the previous game to the upcoming game and
(27:12):
all the preview content we do, which you know, if
things go the way they did on Sunday, the preview
content becomes a lot less interesting. I definitely understand that,
and I thought, why don't we just go ahead and
pull the camera in tight, you know, maybe get maybe
get a coffee, put our favorite turtleneck on, and you
guys ever watched the show of Silicon Valley when the Monica,
(27:33):
the head of their the company that funded them, she
was told to dress unattractively to deliver bad news. So
this is me putting on my beige turtleneck sweater. If
you guys have seen that show for a deep cut reference,
and I've you know, been searching for what to put
in the sea block of the show, and I just
want to kind of monologue or I guess riff this
to you guys and like and that's a bit of
(27:55):
psychotic laughter here, because again like here we are once
again right. And even as I write this, I struggle
with the direction that I want to take it into.
I think the best way is to look back at
some past commiseration, which is kind of all, you know,
if you're a Dolphins fan of a certain age, and look,
if it seems crazy to you that I laid out
(28:15):
all these takes for the last nine months and about
how it was going to be this certain way to
get to this point after sixty minutes of football, Like
I know, I know, it's the emotional toying that just
makes you lose your freaking mind. Don't you think it's
making me a little bit fucking crazy too in the head,
Like I was telling a buddy here in our staff,
(28:36):
Like I remember that it was a Week five game
against the New York Giants and we had just gotten
blown up by Buffalo forty eight twenty and we're three to one,
and I go into this visiting the visiting radio booth
to do a pregame radio for the Giants to preview
the game from the Dolphins side. And after the interview
was over, I like was I was like, hey, boys,
try to have some fun today out there. Like I
(28:57):
was confident and cocky as hell because the team was
just rolling. It looked awesome, and they won that game
thirty one to sixteen. When the next week forty two
to twenty one, and it was fun to be a confident,
you know, a hole for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Kill to go back to that. But I'm just don't
I don't want to lie to you guys.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
And I will say, there's something a little bit therapeutic
about just kind of letting go, right I talked about
in the previous segment, letting go of the hope that
you have and the desire to prove all these people
on Twitter wrong, because what difference does it make? Cares
at the end of the day, but moving on to
the next like that's that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
I think I'm an acceptance.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
I was despondent I am kind of despondent the fact
that I feel totally numb to the results on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Man that sucks.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Like I remember the Titans game last year on Monday Night,
when like things kept on snowblolling. It was like just
laughing at it because it was like embarrassingly bad, right
to be in this position with the quarterback still in
the lineup, which it's never been that case when two
was played in the past.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Like, totally despondent, but it sucks.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I will say, don't don't get me wrong here, A
successful hate watch remains the most satisfying thing in football
to me. But my god, what a brutal hate watch
weekend it was for fans of the Fins.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
But I will say this not being concerned about every
single little narrative that might exist that could come back
to the Dolphins. There's some relief in that I felt
that watching the Monday night game with Caleb and JJ
McCarthy and those two teams. Like I remember watching the
Tannehill Dolphins and I will never forget twenty fourteen game
at home against the Packers, and I wanted Tannehill to succeed, right,
wouldn't why wouldn't you. It's your favorite team. They draft
(30:33):
a quarterback in the first round. If he's good, you're
gonna have a lot of fun for the next decade plus.
And it had been fourteen years to that point since
Danny and a massive black hole at the quarterback position,
the most important position in all of sports, outside of
one random blip from Chad Pennington, which was a nice season.
But I think it gets a little bit what's the
word I'm looking for here, like glorified by the Dolphins
(30:54):
fan base.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I understand why that's the case.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
But Tannehill on that Packers game in twenty fourteen, you
were two two coming off the London game off of
a bye, and the first half was just dreadful. I
think he threw like two picks. He was all over
the place, and I like wrote him off. I remember, like,
this is like when I'm posting on Facebook before I
even like do this for a living, and I'm just like, Tannehill,
era is over and then he goes off for two
second half touchdowns, plays really good football. We wind up
(31:17):
blowing it after we got the lead back. The famous
philb And Timeout game, the famous Courtland Finnegan tackle the
guy in bounce, the game is overgame, and then Tannehill
proceeds to have like his next four best games of
his career after that, eventually reverts back twenty fifteenth seas
then goes all the way off the rails. The twenty
sixteen start is terrible, but then he plays good ball again,
and you're just on this roller coaster of like, who
are we?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
What am I? What's this quarterback?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Are we going to be a team that can compete,
you know, down the road eventually? And you're willing to
do it because you should all know there was nothing
worse than being in search of a quarterback in this league.
It was true then and it is infinitely more true nowadays.
If you have bad quarterback, play man, you have no
shot in this league. And look, maybe they come out
(32:00):
Sunday and they do pivot the plan to match their
personnel changes.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I don't think that'll happen.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Part of the kind of existential feeling of dread that
I've been displaying on the podcast all week. Part of
that has been amplified by the postgame commentary and this
discussion of like all the things we worked on this
offseason in terms of you know, just really honing in
on our fundamentals and technique, and we didn't really make
(32:27):
a lot of changes offensively, just tried to, you know,
master the offense in a more you know, concise way.
It makes me think there isn't a plan to change
and you know, last year that wasn't even an option
because you didn't have the personnel to do it. Now
you do, and maybe you maybe it's not a bunch
of that. Maybe it's some of that, and maybe it's
the Pats being a little bit less hip to our
(32:48):
bread and butter as the Colts were. I doubt that
because Mike Rabel has cooked up good game plans for
this offense in the past. Maybe two reverts back to
his peak and we'll hit those throws that he missed
in the game on Sunday and we get that's possible.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I'm not discounting that at all.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
In fact, before the Colts game happened, I thought the
Dolphins would win this game against the Patriots and a
tight contest. I'm leaning towards flipping that result, and maybe
we'll see what I come up with that from watching
the game the tape, I should say, but I'm back
in this show me mode that I've reverted back to
so many times, and that confident a hole in the giants,
you know, visiting radio booth is all the way out
(33:25):
the window. And it's because Sunday was just such a
failure at every level, as coach and the players themselves
have told you. And the reasoning for this entire thing is, like, man,
there's this division across the fan base on social media,
which again, what kind of actual representation of reality is that?
I don't really know, Man, it's hard to say. I
feel like that's kind of the landscape of the country
(33:47):
as a whole right now is just division and vitriol.
But as far as Dolphins fans go, like like I
am you, I'm here because I am the biggest of you,
Like I was the biggest fan there was who happened
to take a chance at a broadcasting career and made
it work out for himself. But we just continuously find
ourselves in this vicious cycle since the turn of the century,
(34:08):
and it's exhausting, and it's seen a lot of us
of a certain age go from like, you know, pre
pubescent days to maturing into like these forty year old men.
Mike Gundy that have three kids now, and it's like,
what's been the one consistent the entire time I've grown up.
Is like the roller coaster of the Miami Dolphins, right,
And it's almost like you're at the top of the
(34:32):
proverbial pain rankings as a fan because of the toying
with the emotions. That's sort of what I mean by
the sense of relief and letting go. It's easier to
accept being at the end stages of the grieving process,
like it was even worse last year because it felt
like the injury was taking it away from you, not
the performance itself, which of course happened in twenty twenty
(34:52):
two as well, And that's a whole separate conversation, right,
the ability to be available, it's I mean, it's become
well until Sunday, and it was the biggest question about
the quarterback, and now the quarterback with his performance, has
opened up the discussion for other evaluations, which we'll get
into that as we go along as well. But like
every coach, every regime change the Dolphins have had since
(35:15):
you know, Dave Wanstead, start out hot and then it
just kind of slowly matriculates in the wrong direction from there.
Even Brian Flores' first year was super promising given the
talent of that twenty nineteen team, and you kind of
felt like you stole a little bit of two pieces
of the pie that you aren't allowed to have in
this league, which is the high draft pick and a
(35:36):
quarterback heavy class. And you know, hindsight says, get the
first pick and get Burrow would have been a different story,
but I digress that whole entire point. But to be
able to steal from that pot and take like, oh,
we established a good culture in one games without it
really impacting our ability to find that franchise quarterback. It
felt like you were in the most fortunate position in
the entire NFL, with all the cap space and the
(35:57):
draft capital, and it turned out the way it did,
even Adam Gase's first year playoffs right, and then an
immediate fall into obscurity back after that and to a
worse position than you were before he inherited the team.
I guess Philbin didn't really have that, but he didn't
really do anything. But Tony Sperano did first year division
freaking champions, and it just got worse from there. And
(36:17):
I thought, my buddy Kyle Krabs put it best when
talking about this present cycle that started in earnest in
twenty nineteen, but twenty twenty was really the first year
of like actual all right on the clock, like the
actual life cycle maturing into a possibility of competitive football.
But we washed away the first two years of that
because we had the wrong coach. Like there's no question
(36:37):
about that. You know, Flow is a great DC, a
great game plan designer for that side of the football,
but it didn't. There's a reason why it went the
way it did in terms of the management and the
coaching staff being what it was because you know, that's
not even getting any further into that, but you made
the wrong decision and it completely reset what this building
cycle was supposed to be. And you were able to
(36:58):
successfully pivot for a moment within that. And god knows,
if they kick down the door in twenty twenty three
and they get a playoff win, they win a game
here at hard Rock Staium and get the fans rocking
and like get some good will for the fan base,
I think the fan base would feel differently today about
where the team is. Even with the twenty twenty four
results and the Week one game of twenty twenty five
going the way it did, but you didn't, and it
(37:19):
just continued to kind of push down that anger to
later explode out when the performances are bad.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And so you pivot.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You bring in a new batch of coaches and you
know this offensive whiz you know by reputation to rebuild
your quarterback and you know, you get new players to
fit the new vision of those new coaches. You hit
the accelerator and you trade for veterans and get a
bunch of talent in here, and you buy pass a
couple of drafts, compounded by the loss of a first
and a third round pick that year, and now you're
(37:48):
in the soft reset position, which has happened across the
league we've talked about on the podcast. The Packers did it,
the Rams did it. The Niners have done it less successfully.
So for the Niners with the Rams and Packers have
done it successfully. Like the question is, and you compete
while you try to reshape the financial situation of your
team and continue to restock the draft capital and gear
up for the second maturation of that cycle. It's possible,
(38:09):
It's doable. They tried it, they're trying it right now.
But you're off to a horrendous start. We'll see what
happens in week two and beyond. And I think it
makes sense to maintain continuity as you try to parse
your way through that soft rebuild, that soft reset. I
think it's a lot like when you have a third
and seven and a a one score lead in less
than two minutes to play in a game, like do
(38:30):
you put the ball in like do you hand the
ball off and just punt it back and put the
hand the game in your defense's hands, or do you
give yourself two shots to win appost to the one
shot to win by throwing for it and if you
miss it makes the job a little bit harder on
your defense. But you gave yourself two chances to win,
one on offense, one on defense. The start could not
have been worse. Maybe it gets turned around. I'm not
(38:52):
holding my breath right now, but I will bite my
tongue if it does. And if not, at least you're
a year further in the reset than you were in
January twenty twenty five, And that would make the destination
not quite as attractive if you went that way in
twenty twenty five, right, because you would come in here
and say, look, we have we have to get through
these years of this dead money, and you know, we're
gonna have this draft class and hopefully by next year
(39:14):
we have a couple of draft classes that are good
and we can kind of funnel through our young talent.
Whereas having it play out this way, if it goes
could put like you're a year further in terms of
resetting the books, reset in the draft capital, and you're
at a better spot for the maturation of the next cycle,
and that should in turn make the destination more attractive,
which would lead to you know, better prospects for those positions.
(39:34):
I know, guys, I know, I know. Having this conversation
on September tenth is absurd. Back to Kyle for a second.
I just marvel at his ability to like, oh, we're
in draft mode again. He was texting me about prospects
on Sunday night. I'm like, you are a different beast,
my friend. It's impressive. I don't get there quite as fast.
I told him, Hey, I'm in mourning, leave me alone
right now. And I did this entire segment to say
(39:56):
that I'm not going to give it. You know, I'm
not gonna I'm not going to do this before the
three games play out, because we do have the short week.
If we lose the Patriots and then the Bills, which
feels like a damn buzzsaw situation right going there on
a Thursday against that team and that quarterback and that
freaking wagon, then with a long week, we're gonna start
making it a point to carve out a segment on
Wednesdays to look into prospects and things of that nature
(40:17):
for the future, because what else would you have at
that point if you're zero and three right And I'll
tell you right now, I've got four names that intrigue me,
that gets me, maybe helps get me through a little
bit if this goes the way it's looking like it's
gonna go. And I'll peep that college tape as well,
and Garrettnusmyer LSU's quarterback, South Carolina's Leonora Sellers, Penn Stage
Drew Aller, and Oklahoma's John Mattier Gokus from Washington State
(40:39):
quarterback might be some unique flavors next year at the position.
In April, if we get to that point right now,
it feels like we're on that track. It's tough, as
I write this, I'm literally listening to some forty one
so am I still waiting? And it makes me ask
the question, am I still waiting for sports to be fun?
Because I'm a man? I'm forty and remove the job,
the career, all that stuff. Dolphins, Seattle Mariners, the defunct
(41:02):
Seattle SuperSonics who just won a title as the Zombie
Sonics did, and Washington State football that has been relegated
to basically the third division of English football. Right like
sports have never been fun, I anticipate the day that
they are all right.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
We'll preview the.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Patriots tomorrow on the podcast and do all the preview
content before Sunday's game. Until then, you all, please be
sure subscribe to the podcast, leave us are writing, leave
us a review, follow me on social at Windle NFL,
the team at Miami Dolphins, check out the YouTube channel
for Dolphins HQ, Media availabilities, and so much more, and
last but not least, Miami Dolphins dot com. Until next time,
Boo's up, Caroline, Cameron and Willow Daddy.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
He's Kevin Holsten
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