Patriots Playbook 12/4: Colts Recap, Bye Week, Looking Into the Future

Tune-in as John Rooke takes a deep dive into the good, bad and ugly from the Patriots 25-24 loss to the colts. Plus, Rooke is joined by Evan Lazar from patriots.com, Russell Baxter from profootballguru.com to discuss the current state of the team, and how they should plan for the future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Patriots Catch twenty two. We'll join Evan Lazar and Alex
Bart every Thursday as they take a deep dive into
the ex of the o's trends and latest New England
Patriots roster moves.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
And I'm usually into the numbers. Okay, we do this.
I'm into the tangible numbers.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
There's there's tame here. Just give me.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
There's the advantage fact you haven't know how to work it.
I'm surprised an old man over here. I thought maybe
I'd have to show you, like a pictorial or something.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
How am I old man? Search for Patriots Catch twenty two?
Anywhere you get your podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
I'm Patriots Playbook where Legends are barn John Roop brings
the heat, rain or storm from Brady's Throast to New Stars.
Razin the playbook Soap and it's so Maya's Morazin into the.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Playbook Patriots Playbook.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Here's your host, John Rook, legend voice of the Patriots.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
First. No, it's it's bye week, which means, of course
there's no game to talk about. But that doesn't mean
we don't have playbook. That doesn't mean that we're not
doing stuff in here today. And we are doing stuff

(01:51):
in here today we walk you here into the program.
I am John Rook that that version's growing on me. Marine,
It's grown on me a little bit. Did I have
a little I don't know. I don't. I'm not really
good with my country in western uh stars. But does
that have a little Jason Aldean to it? I don't know.
Do you know, Evan? I like Johnny Cash. I guess
Johnny Cash got at it. It's got a little twang.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
But I'm just like, I'm not a country guy either.
I just bought my Kendrick Lamar tickets earlier.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Did you really? Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, as soon as they went on sale. Didn't even
ask the missus. I texted her. I was like, I
bought tickets tickets, didn't even ask. That wasn't this is
a non negotiable.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Not well, at least you recognize that. Yeah, and so
you earn an a for recognition in that regard.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, there's a few artists that if they come here,
it's not negotiable on the list.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Well, I was that way with the Rolling Stones this summer.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
That's fair.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean far be from
me to want to watch you know, three eighty year
Olds get up on stage in rock. But they were dynamic.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, no, I've heard them. I've never been to one
of their concerts, but we are lucky that we sometimes
get to hear the sound.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
And I was like, wow, these guys they still.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Rockill got it, Yeah, they still so. I was really
thrilled with that. I thought that was actually money will spend,
especially since their quote unquote farewell tour and anybody that
says it's a farewell tour I'm doing. I did Electric
Live Orchestra ELO at the TD Garden in the fall
back in September. It was magnificent. Yeah, magnificent. Of course.
You know, now we're you know, definitely aging myself here

(03:22):
because they were big when I was in high school
back in the seventies. And but jeff Lynn, you know,
traveling Willbury, you know, for those of you might be
a little later generation. He was a part of that group,
you know, when the nineties, but everybody started, you know,
passing away. But he was fabulous, absolutely fair. I mean,
first of all, they didn'tven look like he he am

(03:42):
gray hair. I don't know if he I couldn't tell
from where I was sitting if it was hair dye
or he just takes care of himself well, you know,
which is sort of an anomaly I think for most
rock stars, unless, of course, you're Keith Richards, who clearly
has a deal with the devil one or the other. Right.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, my father is a really big Beg's fan, like massive,
and so we went and saw Barry Gibb still performs.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Oh wow, now I would have done that. I would
have totally done that.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, so my whole family went for his birthday because
he's just the biggest Beg's fan on the planet, and
Barry Gibb brought the house down. I believe it too.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Well, I'm not gonna lie. I think that's cool. Yeah,
it is cool. It's totally cool. Besides, when the Beg's
were spot were popular in the seventies, Oh man, chicks
dug the Beg's, So if you know, wanted to date
then other things, you had to be on the dance
floor with a VJs. Am I lying to anybody here?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
No, I'm I. You know, I can't be my father's
son and say I'm not a Beg's fan. So okay,
I know a lot of their songs just from being
in the car with him, you know, as a kid.
So absolutely a great concert.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, I think that's fabulous.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
So anytime I get a chance to hear a group
from that era seventies, eighties and even a little bit
into the nineties, I gotta go. I mean I have
to go. I have to admit that, you know, I
know we're completely starting off, you know, the tangent here.
But at the same time, it's bye week, Okay, so
give us a break here for just a second. Then
we'll talk into all stuff that.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
It's football.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, I know it's football. It's still football season probably now. See,
now I've had a senior moment. I forgot what the
hell I was gonna say something about concerts, something about concerts.
What was I gonna say about concerts? Can you read
my mind? Going back to Kendrick Lamar, Tell me what
I'm thinking right now?

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Marine, Okay, you're thinking you want eminem here in twenty
twenty six.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
No, there's people in this building, Marine, I won't name names,
but every once in a while he comes in this
studio and does a Madden sim with you. Every once
in a while that thinks that Drake won. They're rappief
between him and Kendrick Lamar, which is just that's a
spicy hot take. What that's an incorrect take?

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Well, we work with idiots.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
I didn't call him that.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
All right, Okay, we'll move on. Hey, Patriots fans, you
want to see Toyota's best offers, including those not seen
on TV. Go to buy a Toyota dot Com is
Toytot's official website for deals from the official vehicle of
the New England Patriots, Toyota. Let's go places. Where are
we gonna go today? Well, besides Evan of course being here.
Russell Baxter will join us at the top of the
or at the second half of the hour. Number two.

(06:23):
Karen Grigian, who longtime Patriots writer and columnista now with
Masslive dot com. She'll join us in about an hour.
We're also gonna hear from Matt Saint Jean. He's one
of the hosts of the Pats Nation podcast on CLNS,
also a writer for Pat's Pulpit, so you've probably seen
his work. I know Matt, good young kid. He's a

(06:44):
Providence College graduate, so how bad can he be? Right?
You know? But he is really up on his football.
I think he's very engaging I enjoy his work, and
we thought we'd also take a little bit of time
here during the bye week to hear from some of
the others that cover the team besides what we would
call mainstream media, because I think there's a lot of
good takes out there. And one of the things that
I want to really ask everybody today, all right, is

(07:07):
I want you to come up with three things at
this juncture, because I know we're all disappointed. You can't
not be a fan and not be disappointed. At three
and ten, I thought this team was better than you know,
four and thirteen a year ago. Looks like they're going
to be really hard pressed to even reach four and thirteen,
much less beat it. I thought this was a five

(07:28):
or a six win team this year looks like I'm
gonna miss that mark by just a little bit. So
in light of not meeting even our lower end expectations. Okay,
I want you, and I'll ask you about it in
a second, but I want really uh listeners today to
identify one good thing they're like, Okay, one good thing

(07:50):
you like about the way this team is headed, uh,
A player, a coach, whatever it might be. One good
thing I want you to identify one bad thing. We're
gonna go. Uh you know old Western movies here, one good,
one bad, and one ugly. Okay, so I need a good'n,
I need a bad un and I need an uly.

(08:16):
Exactly what was the movie? What was the movie where
the cheerleaders did the the chant, uh you g l y,
you ain't gotten a la by your ugly. Your mama
say you ugly? Bring it on? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (08:29):
Was it?

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Bring it on? Yeah? Is that what it was? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:31):
If I didn't get that, you know, I would have
said it a second later. Yeah, you can't.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
We used to do that chant in high school, in college.
The chance that the cheer has been around forever. But
when I was watching the game all right, you know,
this past weekend, and and calling the game this past weekend,
and sitting there just you know, cringing because I knew,
I knew when when the Colts were halfway through that
nineteen play drive, I just said, I looked over at

(09:00):
at uh Miss Robin, who spots for me in the booth,
and I looked over at Coop, who was the audio
two in the booth who comes in and sits with
us for about the last you know, half of the
last quarter before postgame gets started, and I look at
both of them. I said, they're going to Scoore or aren't
they touchdown? Right? Two points? Right? Yeah, they're going to
school right. They both said, uh huh uh huh. We

(09:23):
felt it coming, Yeah, we felt it coming. You just
knew it was gonna happen because you had no confidence
and no faith that this team would be able to
find a way. And that really is why this team
is three and ten. I still think there's some talent here, Okay,
not enough, and I think we can all agree on that.

(09:43):
We've been talking about that all season long. There's some
talent here, but that talent is not able to break through.
And there are probably a couple of significant reasons why
the talent that's here is not able to get through.
And frankly, it starts with coaching, and it starts with mentoring,
and it starts with attention to detail, it starts with discipline.

(10:05):
It's all that stuff that coaches are largely responsible for. Now.
I don't put a lot of the blame at the
coach's feet because I think, first of all, this is
professional football. We should be past the teaching stage and
the basic concepts of what to do and what not
to do should have already be taught. And if they're
not taught and they're not getting through like Vederian low

(10:26):
holding and jumping off sides. And I mean, guys, if
you can't figure it out, there's the unemployment line. We're
gonna pull somebody else in here.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Now.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Invariably that'll likely happen to the off season for a
lot of these guys. But my issue is is that
it shouldn't be happening. Now. Why am I getting a
call from Utah? Are you looking at me? Well? Now, now,
we played somebody from Utah last night at the amp, right, Oh,

(10:56):
I hope I didn't, like, you know, insult anybody. Did
you hear what the Providence students were doing last night?
Did you hear those cheers? Did you hear those chants? No?
I didn't. I didn't either because I had a headset song.
It didn't here. But they were not being kind to Mormons,
I know. No, I mean, I'm just you know, I'm
just like, first of all, consider the landscape. You're in

(11:19):
a sold out building. Uh, you got a you know,
an eight thirty start. So fans and students have had
a chance to get okay, you know, lots of tall
boys being sold right, so you know, hey, some people
just aren't as mature as others. It's what I can
tell you. I wasn't as mature when I was twenty

(11:40):
as I am now. I wouldn't say I'm very mature
at all anyway right now, to be honest with you,
because I like to have fun. I just know when
to have it. I would say that was largely inappropriate,
and Providence Analytic director had to come out and go
out on Twitter today or x and basically apologize for
the entire student body. It's not a direct reflection of
everybody that's in that building, but you know, hey, it's

(12:02):
just hey, you learn to go and do and hopefully
you're held responsible for your actions. I would hold the
players responsible for their actions, and if they're not doing
what they're supposed to be doing, then somebody else has
got to. I realize you can't make wholesale changes with
the fifty three man roster. So the first thing that

(12:23):
I you know that I would, you know, like to
propose for future years, especially if you know we're going
to an eighteenth game, especially if you know expansion, which
has been talked about as well in the NFL. In
getting beyond where we are now, you got to increase
roster sizes, heavan, you just have to. I think that

(12:44):
would be a way at very least to keep healthy
bodies around on the roster and be able to have
some versatility for that roster. When guys do screw up
or they do, you know, there's at least somebody holding
their feet to the fire and say, well, if I
don't do this the right way, somebody else is going
to take my job.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Does that make any sense?

Speaker 2 (13:02):
It does, I think right now. You know, just on
that point, the positions that the Patriots are currently short at,
especially on the offense side of the ball. I wouldn't
say so much on defense, but offensive tackle in general.
Around the league, the play is down and there aren't
there is not a surplus of tackles laying around. And

(13:26):
it stands the reason that there aren't a whole lot
of guys that are six six, three hundred and thirty
pound that can move like ballerinas like that, just that
those types of people just don't grow on trees. So
there's not a lot of tackles. You know, I'll give
you an example, on a good team like Kansas City
right now, can't block anybody on the edge right like,
they have huge tackle problems. And they're the Kansas City
Chiefs the two times is defending Super Bowl champions. So

(13:48):
it's not just the Patriots. There are teams with good
offensive lines that are are good teams Detroit, Philadelphia, you know,
teams like that. But for the most part right now,
expanding rosters or pulling Caleb Jones off the practice squad
or whatever the case may be, Like, these options are
just not any better. I know, it feels like it

(14:09):
can't be any worse, and you might as well, but
they're not any better, you know. Vaderian Lowe, we we've
disagreed a little bit on Vederian low I feel like
all season and Miami was a debacle for him. You know,
obviously with all the penalties pre snap penalties and things
like that. I thought he was better in this game,
you know, the in terms of that, right, no false
starts for him this game, the holding. You know, Drake

(14:32):
may left the pocket and the tackles have to learn
now that Drake is going to move around back there,
and so when he leaves the pocket, you can't go
grabbing people because he's leaving the pocket. So that's what
that hold was.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
You used to see this all the time with the
Seahawks with Russell Wilson back in the day. They would
get flagged a lot on the offensive line because Wilson's
running around back there and they don't know where he is,
you know there they don't have eyes in the back
of their head, so they don't they don't know where
he is. But I thought from a block to block basis,
Vederian Lowe was okay in this game. I thought really

(15:08):
the offensive line as a whole was okay in this game,
outside of Lady Robinson, who's a rookie and you know,
is in that developmental phases or rookie.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Did you think though that maybe uh, releasing Michael Jordan,
as they've done now from the practice squad as well,
after signing him back at first day, he's starting, then
he's demoted, then he's resigned with the practice squad, then
he's cut out, Right, Wasn't that kind of like the
on the baby out with the bath water. I mean,
you know, I realized they really like Leydon Robinson, even
though Robinson was one of, if not the lowest rated

(15:37):
offensive lineman in the NFL last week by PFF. And
I'm like, okay, so why did they get rid of
a guy who started all these games when they could
have kept him on at least for insurance for the
last four weeks. Didn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
So I think that the biggest thing is is that
they obviously want to get Leyden Robinson reps and get
him experienced.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
But to cut a guy, what if Laydon Robinson gets
hurt this week?

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well well, I also think that they they feel like
Cold Strange is nearing a return as well. And so
when you have Robinson Strange in city, so you're now
talking about three guards that you've drafted recently, relatively high
on all three of those guys, You're at this point
in the season at three and ten, like, just play

(16:20):
one of the kids, you know, and see what happens there.
I asked Alex van Pelt last week, I want to say,
you know, what, is there is there one thing with
the pass protection that you point at that's that's like
the biggest issue right now. Everybody loses blocks and things
like that, But is there a common thread to any

(16:41):
of the issues, and the thing that he mentioned was
picking up stunts, you know, postline movement like stunts, picks
that that type of stuff, And I would say that
Michael Jordan was probably the biggest issue on a lot
of those and so that it made sense that he
was the one to go after getting that comment from
Van Pelt that they feel like that's their biggest issue

(17:03):
right now is picking up you know, those moving parts
on the defensive line. And the guy that seemed to
stand out as the biggest issue with that is no
longer on the team. So maybe that was part of
the reason for it as well, just from an actual
film perspective of like why Michael Jordan was benched and
eventually let go.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
You know, we've been told that, you know, Cole Strange
is working his way back, but with very little time
left to go, is he going.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
To expect him to be activated here before his window
is up? I mean, Girod Mayo keeps saying that he's
going to play this year. The question that I have
is where is he going to play? Because you're not
moving on WHENU that that's for certain at this point.
They want to get Laden Robinson all this experience, so
really the spot is center, and I said earlier in

(17:50):
the week that I didn't feel like Ben Brown deserves
to get benched, and I still believe that, but I
would also I also believe that throwing Cole Strange into
an NFL game at center without any real experience playing
but the position isn't very fair. Yeah, snapping line calls,
like all the different things that go into being a center.

(18:10):
I don't necessarily know if that's fair to Cole to
then go ahead and throw him into an NFL regular
season game, you know, coming off the bye week or whatever,
without really ever playing the position in a game at
any level college or the NFL. I talked to him
about this a couple of weeks ago, and he said
that the really the only center experience that he has,

(18:31):
other than people telling him that he looks like a center,
it was at a Senior Bowl. Yeah, in a practice,
you know, practicing in the Senior Bowl down in Mobile,
because the NFL teams wanted to see what he looked
like playing center. If you gave him OTAs a training
camp a preseason to ramp up to playing center, that's
a different story than giving him three weeks of practice

(18:52):
and then asking him to go play center in a
regular season game.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
Okay, well, all right, so good explanation at any rate.
I just you know, it seems to me that you know,
you you want as much depth as you can get,
but at the same time, at the expense of another
position where they feel like they need the help. Okay,
that's fine, But now the time is at three and
ten officially eliminated from whatever. And even though realistically we
know there wouldn't anything to be paying for anyway, but

(19:15):
this is when the younger guy should be playing. This
is when we should find out, Okay, who's worth keeping,
who's worth reupping, if they're if they've got a deal up,
who's worth you know, uh, you know, bringing back or
you know, not trading, or maybe we have somebody with
you know that's worth a couple of trade hits on
down the line. I mean, this is when you have
to do your real evaluation. In other words, twenty twenty

(19:38):
five is beginning now. If it hadn't begun already, it
is now during this bye week, twenty twenty five is
already here. The process of identifying who and where it
begins now, and then when you get into the off
season obviously it'll continue and build up until you get
to the point of drafting in April and you know,
mini camps and camps and things like that next May

(20:00):
and June. So with an eye toward the future like this,
that's why I'm asking the question, give me one good thing,
one bad thing, and one ugly thing that you know
needs to You can have a bad thing and hope
that it can change or feel like he can change
with more work or more time, But an ugly thing
is gonna mean no hope. Yeah, okay, born ugly. Sorry kid,

(20:23):
you ain't gonna make it. You're gonna be an unugly adult.
And you know, we got a pork chop for your neck,
you know, so the dog will play with you. That's ugly. Okay,
do you want me to give you mine?

Speaker 6 (20:34):
Now?

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Go all right?

Speaker 2 (20:35):
So I would say, you know, just to put them
both together in the good category, so it's not all
just Drake. Drake, Drake, right, Drake's obviously a good thing.
Like we we can all see it. We can all
see the talent with Drake. A lot of upside there
right now.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
It's kind of low hanging fruit though, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, like Drake, right, now, to me, is already playing
winning football at the quarterback position, and the stats bear
that out. You know, he's a winning player right now
for the Patriots on Sunday in this game against the Colts.
He was a winning player started earlier in the year
in that game. So he's on his way. You're right,
it's not a complete finished product, but but he's well

(21:13):
on his way sure to being a franchise quarterback in
this league. I would also put him together with Christian Gonzales.
I think the one thing that one beacon of hope
that I have for this roster right now, no coaching excluded,
just from the roster perspective, is that you have pillars
on both side to the football to build around. You
have Drake Mayet quarterback on the offense. You have Christian

(21:34):
Gonzales at cornerback on the defense. So now everything else
can kind of be built around the fact that you
already have these two blue chip guys to be the
guy on those sides of the football. So that's good.
That's a step one For a lot of teams. You
don't get to that step right. A lot of regimes
never get there. So it's good that they hit on
those in back to back first rounds that they have

(21:55):
those two guys now. So with Gonzales, it's get another
outside corner on the opposite side. To your point about
the last four weeks, maybe that's Alex Austin. You know,
maybe he plays really good football.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
We've seen, we've seen improvement in play without a doubt.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, he played well down the stretch last year, played well.
I thought on Sunday, Let's see if it happens for
four straight weeks against good teams. You know, Buffalo Chargers
Arizona is a fringe playoff team. So he's gonna have
some tests. He's gonna have, he's gonna be tested. So
let's see what it looks like for Alex Austin. Maybe
that's him. You know, obviously you need pass rush, you

(22:31):
know that. I'll get to that in the second. But
the general point is is that you have some some pillars,
some building blocks in those two guys that are at
premium positions, that are young rookie contract players and guys
that you just drafted in the first round the last
two years. And that's the name of the game, like,
that's the way out. The way out is to draft well.
The way out is to draft well. And we can

(22:54):
argue about the rounds two through seven last year, and
I'm not arguing like it's not been good, so there's
no argument there for me. But first round the last
two years, they nailed both picks. They got great players
with both picks.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
They just need they need depth. They just they just
need depth with the within the draft because of all
the multiple examples of coming up short where that's concerned.
All Right, so we know what the good is. Did
you identify bad?

Speaker 2 (23:20):
So I would say the bad thing to me to
just to piggyback off that, you know, the draft outside
of Drake May last year wasn't good enough.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
And I don't roster building.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, Like I don't necessarily think that those guys you
know you said ugly is like this has got to change, right,
Like something major has got to change.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
That can improve over time.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Ugly shot right, So I'm trying to, you know, on
that side of the street. I I definitely feel like
I'm willing to give Elliott wolf in this personnel department another.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Draft interesting but.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
At least is short, right, like this is this is it?
You got one more draft?

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Basic?

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, And I will say that you know, as somebody
that that studies the draft religiously and is big into
the draft for a while. Now, what one of the
hardest things to do in the draft is it's easy
to draft first round picks, especially at the top of
the first round. I'm not trying to give them zero
credit for Drake okay, like some people are saying. But

(24:27):
at the same time, you and I John could have
picked Drake May And I think Elliot Wolf would admit that.
You know, he's He's.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Said to me, would Daniels That's just me.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, he said to me in the past in the
interview last year. I think at the combine was like,
that's not what separates good talent evaluators. Is not the
first round with good talent evaluators or days two and three?
Can you find players on days two and three in
the draft? Because everybody can find players in the first.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Round, of course.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
So when I look at the draft last year, and
then I would also say, when I look at the
draft in twenty three, Kean White's a good player? Is
he great? I don't know, good player though?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Right?

Speaker 2 (25:08):
NFL Playalid?

Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, an NFL caliber player, You're right, but he hasn't
quite turned out to be the world beater that we
thought he would be.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Not quite, but I would say that he is an
NFL caliber starter. You know, he's a starting NFL player
in this league. So I'll give you the first two
rounds in twenty three, but everything else, you know, I
guess you. You know, to Mario Douglas in the sixth
round was a nice pick, okay, but you had a
lot of other misses in there. You know, just looking

(25:36):
at the fourth round a couple of years ago, you
know they picked Chad Ryland is not even on the team, yep, right,
Like I mean it just Jake Andrews has not played
a real meaningful snap for this Patriots team, either been
hurt or he's been down on the depth chart. He's
a fourth round pick a couple of years ago in
twenty three, jay Von Baker and Jalen Polk disaster, I'm sorry,

(25:59):
just disaster rookie season like that, that's what it is.
The two of those guys have twelve combined catches. I
don't know what else to call it. Like it just
it has not been good. So they have to find
a way to improve the Days two and three drafting
because they're gonna have another top five pick, top eight pick,
whatever it's gonna end up being in the draft this year.

(26:20):
And my expectation is that that will be a good
football player. It's pretty hard to miss that high up
in the draft, so I would expect that to be
a pretty good player. But what do you do with
the rest of your draft picks? Is how you get
out of this? You know, I'll look at the Commanders
quickly Brandon Coleman as their starting left tackle. He was
drafted in the third round last year, rookie third rounder. Okay,

(26:43):
Mike Sanstra, local kid went to Everett High, Michigan, another
day two draft pick. Right, like, those are the guys
that are contributing around Jayden Daniels right now in Washington.
That's how you get out of this is by drafting well,
so they got to figure that out right now. It's
been bad. It hasn't been ugly yet, but it's been.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Bad, all right, so bad. I think I would concur
with a lot of what you had to say. But
what about ugly? What needs changing yesterday?

Speaker 2 (27:12):
I would say to again make it both sides of
the ball, to spread around the blame pie here a
little bit trench play, trench play, and I feel like
you're the same way as me.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Well, yeah, the games are one in the one and
lost on the line. On the lines.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Just I know everybody wants to talk about the receivers. No,
I know everybody wants to talk about the quarterbacks. Nope,
football is won in the trenches. The Patriots right now, offensively,
according to win rate ESPN Metric, they are thirty second
in pass blocking and they are thirty first in run blocking,
so they have statistically the worst offensive line in the NFL,

(27:52):
and I think all of us can just see that
by the eye test. Defensively, the Patriots are twenty seventh
in pressure rate on defense. They don't get after the quarterback,
especially when they only use a four men rush, where
they're thirty first in the league in pressure rate when
they only send four guys. So they just don't get
pressure on the quarterback. And as we saw on Sunday,

(28:12):
when they play a team that can run the ball
and lean on you, they don't stop to run either.
So as much as I love Drake and as much
as I love Gonzo, if Gonzales has to cover for
four seconds every single time, because nobody's getting to the quarterback.
And if Drake May is running for his life all day.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Long, he's gonna get hurt.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
So we don't have a football team. Yeah, so something
absolutely needs to change on both sides of the football.
In the trenches. They have to improve the roster in
those areas first and foremost. Then you can get your
fancy receiver. Then you can get your you know, your
Teed McMillan, your Travis Hunter, your t Higgins. I'm not
saying you can't do it all at once, but you

(28:51):
have to put real resources into pass rush and into
pass blocking.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Okay, that's it. Well I'm gonna go. I'll give you
my good, bad, and ugly and let's sort of compare
and contrast here because I'm not gonna go for the
low hanging fruit on Drake May because I think we
all realize he is the future of this franchise. But
in terms of you know, position and players that I
think have done better maybe than expected, I got to
go with the tight ends. I think both. First of all,

(29:19):
Hunter Henry is tough. Yeah, well he did. He get
his nogg and knots times a couple of times this
past week. And then what I've seen of Washington Hooper,
I like, I think I think he's really improved over
the course of this season, So I would give that
a definite uppick uptick. I think that'll make you know, Claire, uh,
you know, Clasi Claire very happy that we were talking
about tight ends today. But I think that's a good

(29:42):
and I'd like to see that maintained, if not eventually improved.
As far as bad is concerned, I can't disagree I
with your choices over the the you know, the the
personnel selections, and I think I'm gonna sort of mirror it,
but I'm also gonna say I'm gonna move the trench

(30:03):
play as you talked about the line of scrimmage is
how I had termed it, line of scrimmage. On both
sides of the ball, that's been bad. Yeah, I don't
really think you can see a lot of good out
of anything from you know, you've seen blips, and you've
seen you know flips, and you've seen moments of brilliance,
and you've seen moments of absolute utter ineptitude, you know,

(30:23):
and moments of absolute you know, brain cramp when the
offense gets a rare big play and it's called back
because of holding number seventy one. We'll get them into business,
you know, doing one of those things. Right. But so
I gotta put the offensive line in defensive line, both
in the bad as far as ugly. I to me,

(30:44):
I'm not gonna call necessarily for anybody to be fired, yeah,
because I don't think it's gonna happen this year. I
think that, you know, there probably will be some kick
of the tires. I think that there will be calls
made around the league. You know, hey, would you or
you know, could you consider or this or that? And
you know, if some things come available, you know, after
Black Monday comes in the NFL, you know, when all

(31:05):
the coaches are gone, I'm sure we're gonna have seven, eight,
maybe even nine head coaching jobs open in the NFL
at some point before you know, the twenty twenty four
season is completed, once we get to the playoff round, right,
I just think something has to happen upstairs. And I

(31:26):
don't think the coaching staff can come back as it
is presently constituted. I don't think the scouting staff can
come back as presently constituted. There needs to be a change. Now.
I'm not calling for Elliott Wolf to be fired. I'm
not even calling for DeMarcus Covening to be fired because again,
as far as the coaches are concerned, look, I think
they need to be given a couple of years to

(31:48):
see if you know, where we stand and can they
improve upon it. That goes for Gerard too, And I
know that people here locally are going absolutely ape bleep
over Gerard and how the Patriots should think about letting
him go after a year. I disagree. I totally disagree.
I think that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Now for whatever reason, you know, mister Craft ended up
hiring him. Well, that's up to mister Craft and and

(32:08):
and up to Jonathan and and up to Gerard and
those that were involved there. The proof is going to
come in the pudding by this time next year, okay.
And if this team struggles with four or five six
wins next year, uh, he's gone. He has to be
gone because this is a business. And Gerard even understands
that because he's been in the media and he understands
that before you know, after he you know, left the team,

(32:30):
then he got back into coaching, and so that's gonna
take care of itself. But let's see now, if personnel
can do their job, strike it rich three or four
draft picks, do even better within free agency to fill
these gaps and give this team a not only some
bonafide go to talent all around the field, but also

(32:53):
a little bit of depth. You gotta have a modicum
of depth here to be able to survive seventeen weeks.
You know, the Patriots had their bye week here in
week fourteen. Yeah, Gemini, Christmas man, that's late. That's almost
that's almost unfair. But I heard this week from some
of the players, you know, when they practiced earlier this
week Monday. I guess it was that it sort of said,

(33:15):
you know, hey, all things being able, it's great to
have the week off, but I almost wish we just
went ahead and played through, which tells me they got
a mentality of a it's onto the next. This one
ain't working out, it's we're onto the next. And I'm
kind of that way too, to be honest with you,
I'm like, all right, look, that's why I mentioned off
the top of the program today. Look twenty twenty five begins. Now,
this is it bye week. You've got you know, you know,

(33:36):
four weeks left in the regular season, you got to
play Buffalo twice, which I also think is insane not
to play Buffalo before you get to the end of
the year and everything's already been decided. Now, maybe that's
the fault of the you know, other teams in the
AFC East more than it is the Buffalo Bills. I
would tell you that I think the Patriots have a
chance to win at least one of those games, because
I don't think Buffalo is gonna play everybody at the
end of the year. They've already clenched everything that they're

(33:58):
gonna need to clinch. So it's quite possible the Patriots
to be playing the Buffalo b team, you know, and
they might actually get some kind of a you know,
representative appearance, have not a win out of the deal.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
That would not be good for the draft pick.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
John, No, it would not be. But I'm just saying
the guys that are on this team and in this
organization now, they don't care about that they're fighting for
the jobs that I just talked about because they know
that Hey, okay, maybe I get a pass now, but
I know that my performance is under the microp the microscope,
all right, so I got to play. I need player,

(34:30):
I need to kick somebody's ass. I need to do
something in order to make an impression on people. And
so is that looking at the overall good of the organization.
Of course not. It's very much a me, me I
I I think. And even though we know the old
adage there's no I in team, I would tell you, well,
there ain't no me or we either.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yeah. I would never advocate.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Actually there is me. I wouldn't there is me in team? Right, yeah, yes,
but not we.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
I would never advocate for tanking or.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
All right, all right, alright.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I would never advocate for tanking on any level, especially
the player level. I would never expect any of those
guys to go out there and dog it and lose games.
But uh, you know, I'm glad you brought up the
coaching because I probably should have included that in the
draft and in the personnel side of things, because it's
kind of all one. Leadership is like sort of one
thing to me with this team right now, And I

(35:24):
do think you know, from a coaching perspective, obviously you
hope that Girod takes the game management experiences that have
k not gone his way this year and learns from
them and makes it. You know, he's not an error repeater, sure,
so that they get better at the end the halves,
so that they get better at closing out games. And

(35:46):
you mentioned earlier that you know, that's the league in
terms of one score games and in close games and
finishing these games. I saw a stat earlier this week
that three hundred and seven of three hundred and eighty
one games this year have been decided by one score,
which is eighty percent of the games in the NFL.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
So you got to find a way to get over
the hump. We can't even get this team can't get
over the hump to be competitive because we know they're
gonna come up short in the end. Right, you got
to find a way to go beyond that and then
a little bit more in order to win those close games.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Right, So these close games, that's the league, like these
coin flip games. As I like the column where there's
one score games that get come down to the wire.
The teams that win those games go to the playoffs,
and the teams that don't there where the Patriots are
right are pick in the top ten.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
And you know, Evan, it's been great that the Patriots
actually been somewhat competitive all the one school games that
they've actually been.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Involved seven of them.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Yeah, so okay, but they didn't win any of those.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Well they're they're two and five in those seven to
one score games.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Doesn't seem like they want any well, I mean.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
That's not winning very many.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Like, I'm not to your point like that left that
to the other side. You got a team that's in
the hunt for a playoffs spot.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Right, right, And so this this not that any I'm
this might be a straw man, but like this notion
that there's a lot of blowouts in the NFL, there
really isn't. No, there really isn't. And uh And so
what you get at, you know, all of this is
that a lot of these coaching decisions that people like

(37:18):
us in the media you go over with a fine
two comb Monday morning quarterback every single week, all these
coaching decisions when you were in a twenty five to
twenty four game are ascerbated, like these are important decisions
within the course of the game. And and trust me,
no one, no one hates talking game management more than me.

(37:40):
I hate it. I cannot stand sitting here talking about
time out usage and end of half and how you
manage the clock and what plays you called on a
dry following when intercept, I hate it. I don't have
any time for it. But that being said, when you
get down to a game like you did against the Colts,
that decided the game. Yeah, and that's on the coaching, right,

(38:01):
you know, it's to coaching.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Has to be. Yeah, it has to be. I mean,
you're sure it's on the players for execution, but hey,
the players are only doing what the coaches ask them
to do.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Right, I mean, you know, just to go back to
the to the end of the game on Sunday, you
get that interception from Christian Gonzales. They call two straight
runs on the next follow the following drive. The first
down run is not the biggest issue.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
How long was that thirty second?

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, the first the first down run is not the issue,
though the second and long run is the issue. Now
there's a chance, and I don't I'm not in his
head said or in his head, But Jake Drake might
have checked into the second run. But it was a
check situation where they were canning.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
They had two plays called passing a run and based
off the defense, he was supposed to decide if we
were going to run it or pass it, right, And
all I'm saying is is that in that moment, they
might need to be a little bit more pedal to
the medal next time. And that's what you hope that
the Mayo. Yeah, but even if you're not, like if

(39:02):
I have to imagine that, if like you know, Buffalo
was in this similar situation, then in that spot to
close out the game, they're putting the ball in Josh
Allen's hands and they're expecting Josh Allen to go out
there and win them a ball game. And especially when
you look at the fact that really all you needed
was like twenty yards to kick a field goal, you know,
to put that game out of reach. So these are

(39:24):
the things that you know, like I said earlier, you
hope that Gerard Mayo downloads this information, is it, and
then the next time that situation comes up, they handle
the situation differently, right, And if they don't, if we
aren't seeing that, then that's when you start to ask questions.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Matt Saint Gene covers the Patriots, hosts the Pat's Nation
Pod on COLNS Media, and also is a writer for
Patriots pulpit, Pat's pulpit, if you will. He's at Matt
sat dream on X. We asked him to join us
in the program here today to kind of give us
some of his perspective. Hey, Matt, how's it going, Bud?

Speaker 7 (40:00):
It's going very well. How are you guys doing good?

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Excellent? So I just I'm sure you've heard at least
a little bit of the conversation here and just kind
of curious overall, what's your take on where this team
stands after thirteen weeks going into the bye week, and
is this sort of the beginning of the end or
the start of a new beginning? I guess might be
the two comparisons here.

Speaker 7 (40:25):
Well, I agree with your assertion that this is kind
of the start of twenty twenty five. Start now, I
think that's going to start on the offensive line, where
hopefully Cole Strange and Caden Wallace can get out there.

Speaker 8 (40:37):
And your last four.

Speaker 7 (40:39):
Games here, I think they're all going to be very tough.
You've got a road game against the team that's trying
to get into the playoffs in Arizona, two games against
the Bills, who they're fighting for the number one seed
right now. If they win out, Kansas City loses one
game there posting playoffs in the AFC, So I don't
think they're going to be resting anyone. I think they're
going pedal to the medal. And you got a Charger

(41:00):
scheme coming to Foxborough that has been tough and physical
and very well coached all season long, that's won a
lot of games. I think winning is going to be
tough in the final four games. But you want to
see some competition, and you want to see some guys
start to take some acclaim to jobs for next year.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Sure, of course. All right, So I'm I'm going to
ask you the same question that Evan and I have
been talking about here for a little bit, and give
me a good, give me a bad, and give me
an ugly for this team, at least at this stage
of the game. Good something you want to keep around, obviously,
Bad something that you still want to keep around even
though it has been very disappointing. Ugly you need to ditch.

Speaker 7 (41:41):
I mean, I think very easily. The good on this
team is Drake may I think he has been excellent
in basically all the things you've asked him to do.
From the standards of a rookie quarterback, very excited to
see what he can be. I mean, like he's he
seems like the real deal. I think maybe the bad

(42:03):
I think in some ways had been you know, parts
of the secondary and you know, I think the death
options in the secondary. But from what we saw from
Alex Austen this week, I felt a lot better. And
I think Kyle Duggar is kind of a player in
the spotlight. The guy who was supposed to be, you know,
a captain, a foundational player for your defense, has not

(42:24):
played his best football this year, and as you go
forward into the future, he's somebody who you want to
make sure he is playing his best football and can
be utilized properly. And then the ugly has been a
lot of the play in the trenches. But I'm going
to go specifically defensive tackle. They've been pushed around too
much there this year, and I think you look at

(42:45):
this this draft with where they're going to be picking
this year, and they might have a chance to really
upgrade that defensive tackle spot going into next year.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
Well you thought on those particular choices that he made,
I actually find the defensive line choice intriguing. I mean
because two three, weeks ago and maybe even some still now.
To me, the top eight has still got to be
an offensive tackle for this team. But that doesn't mean
you can't go out and find yourself a defensive tackle.
And will free agency be the better route for either

(43:18):
offense or defensive tackle or will it be through the draft?

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, I think the draft is stronger on defense in
my opinion, just from you know, especially in the early
part of the first round, from what I have seen
so far in my study of the draft, I am
coming around to addressing the defense in the draft. I
would prefer to do it in free agency, just because
I feel like there's more movement in the veteran market

(43:41):
usually on defense. Like if you have a stud receiver,
you're retaining him, you're trading him, You're not usually letting
him get to free agency. You know, Calvin Ridley is
the best receiver in free agency last year. You know,
maybe you get lucky and like T Higgins is you know,
the occasional guy that will slip through the cracks like that,
But even he isn't a high end number one receiver

(44:02):
in this league. So I look at defense and think
that you probably are are more likely, you know, Matt
mentioned a depth at corner, like, there are some corners
in free agency this year, you know, ta various war
DJ Reed, you know guys at Carlton Davis like guys
that play a good football in this league at corner.
So maybe you can go out and pay a corner.

(44:22):
You know, Gonzo's on his rookie contract, he's here, he's
locked in. Go give a corner some money, you know,
to have a tandem there with those two, I think
that's more possible. But if you look at the talent
in the draft, it's hard to deny that the talent
is probably more on the defensive side of the ball.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Okay, let me pose something to both of you as
well here, because it's a subject we've touched on, but
we kind of dancing around it. And maybe it's because
we're all stunned because of it. Jalen Polk's lack of
production this year, I mean, I find shocking. I thought
he would be potentially, you know, one of the finds
of the draft this last year, but for some reason

(44:58):
or another, he has not responded to anything. In fact,
I saw today a couple of reports where he's one
of the lowest rated receivers in the entire NFL in
terms of, you know, number of touches, in terms of
what he's done with those touches. I mean, he's just
he's at the bottom of the heap. And I'm like,
you know, I was hesitant because again he's a rookie,

(45:19):
but I almost threw him in the ugly category, and like, okay, look,
the Patriots have had a unfortunately and inglorious history over
the last copy you know, decade or almost two now
of finding real stinkers at wide receiver for lack of
a better phrase, and it looked like they found another one.
I'm not quite ready to go bust material yet. Talk
me out of that.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, Matt, you can go first.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Matt, what do you think about Jalen?

Speaker 7 (45:45):
I loved him coming out because he had great hands
in college. And I think the thinking was, you know,
he's not the most refined route runner, but his hands
are good enough. You can put him on the field
and if he isn't open, you could still throw him
the ball because you think that he has a chance
to make the catch anyway, we just haven't seen that materialize.
You know, I think he's got a chance because receivers

(46:06):
do take time to develop. It's a highly technical role,
so you know, in an offseason you can make a jump.
And if his hands issues this year have been just
you know, adjusting to the NFL and kind of getting
the yips, that can correct at any second. But you
really can't go into next year expecting anything from him,
just given the production he's been. I think one of

(46:27):
the worst receivers in the NFL by your per route run.
And you know, you hope that he can get better.
He's not a bust yet, but you can't plan around
that improvement happening.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
And if you can't plan on improvement happening, what's the
point in you know, keeping them around.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Yeah, well it was the second round pick, so I
don't think they're going to give up on them, and
I'm not advocating for them to do that quite yet.
I always give guys a chance, you know, to pull
out of it, and I think a lot of what's
happened with him has to be noted is confidence related.
You know, once you start to have struggles like that,
it gets in your head, and I think he has
struggled at times with that confidence out there. But with

(47:07):
that being said, I wasn't the hugest fan of his
in the draft, mainly just you know, a flavor thing
with receivers. For me, yeah, you know, I'm a big
separation guy at that position. I think that's the skill
that translates best from college to the NFL as guys
that can really separate at the top of the route
or run by people, and when you have a guy

(47:28):
that is predicated on when in traffic, winning contested catches.
Those types of things are one very role specific, like
you have to scheme those guys into your offense and
find ways to put them in those positions. But I
would also say too that the level of physicality from
the college game to the pros is a big jump.

(47:49):
And so when you're dealing with a guy that's going
to be in crowds a lot and a guy that's
going to have coverage on him a lot and has
to box out or finish through contact or high point
a ball or whatever the case may be. When you
get that jump up in physicality, that skill doesn't always
translate for every guy from college to the pros. So

(48:10):
my concerns with Polk were speed, dynamic route running ability,
separation ability, whatever you want to call it, and I
was a little worried that he was going to have
to be super reliant on the ability to finish through
contact on contested targets, and that skill does not always translate.
It does for some guys for a lot, and so

(48:32):
that that would be my number one thing when you
look at you know, what can the Patriots do to
change the way they evaluate receivers moving forward? I think
that's a major major thing. It's not drafting another Taekwon
Thorton just because he's fast, right, It's not. I'm not
saying just draft fast guys. That's not what it is.
It's watching these guys on film and the guys that
can get open at the top of the route and

(48:52):
can create separation consistently. Those guys, more times than not,
are the ones that translate to the league.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
I'm getting also some mixed signals as well on what
maybe the biggest need for this team is right now,
because I think we see some good in both sides
of the ball, and I'm talking about on the ovisive
line and in the defensive line. But even though I
think we're all in agreement here, the trench area for
this franchise has to change. That's that's a that's a

(49:20):
part of the ugly that we're talking about here today,
you know, with the subject matter. But what comes first
tackle or defensive tackle? Nose card? I mean, what's more
important guarding Drake, defending Drake, or you know, collapsing a
pocket and stopping a run.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, I definitely think, you know, pass rusher in general
is what I would call it. Like I don't, I
don't necessarily look at it as needing to be defensive tackle,
because I do think you're gonna get bar More back
at a fuller capacity next year, which should really help
the interior you know, edge rusher, I think is a
concern because everyone Jays is a really great run defender,

(49:58):
but he's not a great pass rusher, so he's a
situational player. Ideally, Keon White is not somebody that you
know is a great stand up pass rusher, but he's
a really good interior pass rusher. So he's kind of
the one of these tweeters you know that has to
play a role specific to the down and distance and
things like that. So finding a guy on the edge,

(50:20):
in my opinion, that can be a three down edge
defender that all situation type of pass rusher which are
hard to find. Like those guys are premium players. So
we're talking about paying one in free agency at the
top of the market or drafting one high in the draft.
I understand that, but it's a really good edge class.
It's probably the best edge out of all the positions.
I would say edge is probably the best besides maybe

(50:41):
running back. Running back is loaded. There's running backs all
throughout this draft, but pass rushers, edge rushers really really good.
I'll give you two names that I like. First round.
You gotta watch abdul Cotter if you haven't already from
Penn State. That guy is a problem. He's going to
be a top ten pick. He's excellent. Had a huge

(51:02):
game last week against Maryland, killed Ohio State, killed Minnesota.
Who has a draft eligible guard or tackle? Excuse me,
that's gonna go high. He's a very very unique talent.
I really like Jack Sawyer too from Ohio State. He's
a very good pass rusher. To one of these guys
that we've heard for a couple of years now is

(51:22):
going to be a very good NFL player, but he
just hasn't been eligible yet. So I look at those
two guys maybe a first round, second round for you
as two guys that can play all three downs on
the edge. That way there, you know, third down you
have an Abdual Carter off the edge, you have Kean
White and Christian Barmore up the middle, and now all
of a sudden you've got a third down pass rush.

(51:43):
You know, that's that's the hope, at least if you
draft guys like that.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
Matt, what do you think offense or defense? Where would
you lean in terms of most important as far as
a need?

Speaker 8 (51:53):
Well, in some.

Speaker 7 (51:54):
Ways I kind of feel like that's not the right
way to look at it. We have to look at
it as what comes FIRSUS free agency. You have to
see who the players are that are available. I think
that's going to kind of dictate where you go from there.
We talked about, you know, not always being able to
find offensive lineman in free agency. That may not be
the case this year. Cam Robinson, a left tackle who's
been you know, but an average left tackle in the NFL,

(52:16):
i'd say, might be available. You might get Ronnie Stanley
available at left tackle. You might get Morgan Moses available
at right tackle. You might get Tray Smith available who
can play guard. I think the trend are one of
your biggest areas of weakness, that something you might be
able to address quickly in free agency. If you know

(52:36):
these guys do hit the market, you have the money
to do it. I do think that defense is in
some ways the higher priority, though we've seen Drake May
as a rookie with a poor supporting cast, already be
pretty productive as a quarterback. I feel like, you know,
if you can get that offensive line from thirty first
or thirty second in the NFL, lots of twentieth there,

(52:58):
Drake May can shine there. This defense clearly needs, you know,
a lot of talent. I like the names that Evans
threw out. I'm also going to throw two more out
there for you in the draft. MIKEL Williams from Georgia.
He is not polished as a pass rusher yet, but
he's long, he's strong, quite defensive end. He can kick
inside for you, really really talented players still figuring things out.

(53:22):
And then Nick s Gorton, He's an edge from Texas
A and m you played it Purdue to one of
the youngest players in the draft. He's pretty mobile for
a guy his size, and you know Abdel Carter. I like,
I don't know if he's gonna fit what this front
office is looking for, if they want someone with a
little bit more size in that position to scort and

(53:45):
maybe their kind of player.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Okay, yeah, Michael Williams a good shout. You know, he's
probably the other top ten projected edge rusher in this class,
or fringe top ten. If that, I would assume that
Carter's pass rush ability is going to put him over
the top in terms of being the top edge in
this class. But Williams a really good player, and he's
a little bit longer and like stouter on the edge too.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
Okay, all right, this at least gives us a basis.
I did say, Hey, this is the start of the
new season, right, so we should at least begin to
take an eye. We're going to go a.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Little draft talk. If you have me on you know that.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
I always know that, and I know that I know
we'll get that at you to catch twenty two stuff too.
But I mean we're getting ready here. We're on the
verge of you know, the college football Playoff, the first
twelve team playoff we have have ever had in history,
which I'm really looking forward to. I have to admit
I'm a total old school about college football, and I
love the bowl games and I love the bowl game system.
I think there's something to the tradition that makes it special.

(54:39):
But at the same time, I'm actually kind of excited
about combining that tradition of the bowl games with a
little bit of March madness for football, you know, with
the way that it's going, and I'm intrigued by it,
and I think these are names that we should all
be watching during the cfped where we see how these
guys stand out against the big time competition.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Yeah, it's I really like it for draft purposes. I'm
not a big college football guy, like in terms of
rooting interest, but in terms of yes, I know, I know.
That's why I said it laughing because I knew the
horns were coming. I knew that no horns down horns
up here. Yeah, but I was. I like it a
lot because it shows you what these players do in

(55:22):
the brightest stages, you know, like the big lights are on.
It's not everything, you know, it's not everything Like Michael
Pennick's in the semi final last year has an unbelievable performance. Yeah,
he did in the semi final, he was amazing and
Jalen bulk Wot's too for that matter. That's what that's
why I'm so disappointed he trashed my guys last year
in the semi final. Yes, totally so both sides right,

(55:44):
But with Penix, you know, does he does? Is penis
a top ten pick without that semi final game? Probably not?

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Probably not?

Speaker 2 (55:51):
So like those are the big games that you watch now.
You know, Abdul Carter at Penn State, he'll play in
one of these games, might maybe multiple of these games.
You know, they that's how you go and you look
at these guys in those big stages.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Yeah, Matt, thank.

Speaker 6 (56:05):
You for Yeah, go ahead, that's the games.

Speaker 7 (56:08):
Yeah, left tackle Josh Connery at UH at Oregon. He
is someone that may slip into the first round.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, you're left tacks Well, Kelvin Banks. I know he
got banged up a little bit against A and M
last week, but I mean he's certainly a name, uh
that's worth watching. Uh. I know Cam Williams isn't we've
talked about from LSU and he won't be in the playoffs.
But at the same time, that's a guy I know
that he actually declin playered physically for the draft this week. Yeah,
so Williams is going to be a candidate for you know,
one of the tackles lots as well. Kelvin Banks seems

(56:37):
to have size, agility, He's got good footwork and good
foot speed for a big guy. I still think he's
a little unpolished, if that's if that's a phrase. And
and of course he's uh, this is just his third
year of college football and he's gonna come out maybe
a year early. He's a guy that most definitely could

(56:57):
benefit from a fourth year. But the problem is is that,
you know, if he's ready, now, get him into a
pro system and let him adapt to the pro system,
which is the way most of the thinking goes with
players who were any good, right, Yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Know Will Campbell, you know at LSU two in early
declare and both both those guys.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
Will Campbell, That's who I meant. Why did I say
cam Williams, I met Will Campbell? Yeah, I know, I
just flip flopped the name, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
So yeah, well Will Campbell, you know, is an early
declared guy too. And they've they've had good luck, you know,
with Gonzo and Drake May like both or early declared
guys as well. So usually when you're you're that good,
that talent comes out right away and you don't have
to stay in college football for four or five years
to show that you're that good. So Banks I like
a little bit. You know, we're gonna talk about these

(57:41):
guys a lot on Catch twenty two tomorrow. This is
our first like draft preview show of the of the
year is going to be tomorrow on the bye week.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
Wait, what weren't we just talking a couple of weeks
ago about you know, no draft talk until the season's over,
but the seasons.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Yeah, so we're going to the bye week and I
you know, since I'm not you know, thinking about another
opponent on Sunday, I did some draft research this week,
and you know, can't Banks? I? I like, I think
that you can obviously see that he can move the
line of scrimmage. A powerful kid, you know, big body, big,
big play, strained type of guy. You can see that

(58:15):
generate the movement in the in the in the run game,
and uh footwork and stuff like that to angle blocks
and get a you know, they'll write leverage and all
that fancy you know, detailed stuff is all there for him.
The one thing that I had a little bit of
concern with on his tape was, you know, getting out
to speed rushers and things like that. It's it's it's

(58:38):
right on the line, right, some of those you talk
about getting guys to ten yards, right, that's usually the landmark.
Like he's usually like right at ten you know, when
he's trying to deal with those speed guys coming off
the edge. Campbell has a little bit of a different,
you know, sort of weakness. But I think Campbell's outstanding.
You know, his his body control a.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Little bit more compact really, I mean he's not quite
quite then. He has shorter arms.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
He's still six six, three thirty, so I wouldn't call
him compact, but he's got shorter arms, which is you
know what I was going to get to, which is
sort of the concern with him. But in terms of
movement skill, body control, balance, anchor, you know, power, just
stout you're not going to go through him. That he's
got it all. He's excellent. I think he's going to

(59:25):
be a really good NFL offensive lineman, whether it's inside
or outside. But you talk about the length issues, and
that is a concern. You know, longer, longer armed pass
rushers can get into his body, get into his chest
plate and then push him, you know, and that that
does not bode well for him playing outside at tackle
in the NFL. But I do like your boy a

(59:47):
little bit. They're at Texas, you know, I think that
he's going to be a good player. Neither one of
them is really Joelt like, They're not really in that category,
but certainly they would have been in the mix with
you know, Fashanu and Tulsa Fugawa and like that next
wave of tackles last year after Joelt.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
All right, man, before I let you go, who do
you like in the SEC title game this week?

Speaker 7 (01:00:11):
Oh boy, you know what, give me give me Texas.
I'm not going to pitch against the host.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
Or host either. Right, you're a good man, hey man,
Thank you for the time today. Body, appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Thanks for having me on that good chat.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
You got you got it. That's Matt Saint Jane, who
covers the Patriots for CLNS Media, does one of their
podcasts there on c ln S it's the Appatch Nation Pod,
and also writes for Pats Pulpits.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Two places that I used to work at as.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Well, I was just gonna say, you know, Evan worked
his way into this realm, and its right. And if
the network come and take you away like they took
Mike Reese away once upon a time, it to be
a guy like Matt Saint Jean coming in here and
sitting in where Evan is, you never know, You just
never know. It seems to be a proving ground for
guys coming in.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Yes, as Fred like has to called clinics because you know,
Selon s Is doesn't really roll off the tongue, which
I tried to tell them multiple times, love you all,
I mean it. I'm I'm just messing. But yes, look
I Matt is a good example of it too. And
my boy Taylor Kyle's another example. You know, a lot

(01:01:25):
of the traditional people told me to like go to
work from some small town paper covering high school football.
And I'm not like looking down at the people that
did it that way either, But I took you know,
the the internet path, the blogger path, if you want
to call it that, and we all got to the
same destination.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
Can be done. It can be done. It just depends
on your own perseverance and your own ability connect. Really,
I teach this to my college kids all the time.
You know, it's really about you know, not who you know,
but who knows you. Yeah right, yeah, you know. I
think that's a big thing. Like nowadays, you can be
a brand, Like you can build yourself a brand even
without the platform of patriots dot com or whatever. You know,

(01:02:06):
I had it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
I started on Twitter in two thousand, I don't know,
eleven twelve something like that, and you know that's a platform.
Like just just do the job, like just write podcast, tweet, like,
do it all. And as you go, you know, people
will start to recognize you and start to oh, yeah,
I know that guy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
That'll be consistent with whatever it is that you do.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Right, yeah, yeah, I mean that was That's what it was.
Taylor is another great example. He's doing a great job,
and you know that's he did the same sort of
thing that I did. Just you know, keep putting your
head down and keep working at it. I think unfortunately nowadays,
the old school journalism way of going to cover some

(01:02:49):
small town high school paper thing like those jobs don't
exist anymore, you know, so it's it's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
You have to dig really to find him. To be
honest with you, Yeah, you know. The story that I
tell is a former student that I had when I
was at Emerson a little over a decade ago and
he was a year out of graduating. He called me
up and he basically said, I'm having a hard time
getting a job, you know. And he was an okay student, Yeah,
you know, good looking kid. He wanted to be a
sports anchor. You know, I wanted to be an ESPN

(01:03:15):
guy that kind of stuff. And so, you know, we
went out to lunch one day and he wanted to
pick my brain. I said, well, what do you really
enjoy doing? And he says, I enjoyed reporting. You know,
I liked it on the desk, but I was reporting.
I said, so basically, you're telling me you want to
tell stories. Yeah, and he said, yeah, I want to
tell stories. I said, I told him exactly. I said,
go find a small place that will lull you tell stories.

(01:03:37):
So he ended up finding a weekly newspaper which obviously
has a website in central Pennsylvania in and around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
and ended up starting a podcast and an online interview
with the high school football coaches every week. Grew their readership,
you know, over the course of six to eight months,

(01:03:58):
ended up getting his first TV job from that job
in the smallest market in America and Alpena, Michigan, which
is the Upper Peninsula, right, that's where you know it's winter,
you know, ten months out of the year basically. And
then he took that and Alpina, Michigan, came back home
to work as a freelancer for a station in Providence.
Decided he didn't like the freelancer out because it didn't

(01:04:19):
pay all the bills, so he took a full time
job in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which, by the way, is a
sneaky good sports market.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
Tulsa's because they cover everything college as you would imagine
between Goldman, Arkansas because it's right there in eastern Oklahoma.
But they also cover a lot of pro sports in
the area as well. And then he went from Tulsa
to Dallas. Yeah, and he's now the weekend anchor at KATFW,
the Fox Affilitate in Dallas. So he's gone from market
two hundred and seventy five whatever el Pina, Michigan is

(01:04:48):
to market five.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
That's incredible. Yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
But he started because he found a small place to
tell stories.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, I said that that would be my one piece
of advice to anybody that wanted to listen is just
just start. Just just find a place to put your writing,
to put your podcasts that you don't even need like
a podcast host anymore. Like he just posted right post.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Didn't put it up there and get you know, friends
and family to jump in on it. And frankly, I
know that a lot of people who listen here that
do Patriots later podcasts because Marine and I have actually
had some of them on Yeah, and we'll probably do
that again in the off season. We'll do a couple
of shows in our off season programming here, which we
do monthly rather than weekly, but we invite some of
the these podcasts hosts from Patriots podcasts that have caught

(01:05:32):
our attention and that we know people will listen to
to kind of come in here and we all exchange
thoughts and ideas, because you know, covering a football team
isn't just restricted to people like you and me and
even the mainstream media. Everybody's got a thought, everybody's got
an opinion. It's how you package that thought and how
you package that opinion that will attract potential readers or

(01:05:54):
listeners that really counts, and if you do it in
an attractive, interesting way that people will go, ah, you
know what, that's not bad. I'm going to listen to that,
or I'm going to read that again. Now you're cooking.
Now you're on the right track. It can be done.
And that's why I like, you know, hearing from all
kinds of people. You know, we ask people all the
time to call this show, and we get our regulars
to call in, which is fabulous. I'd like to hear
more indifferent opinions, regardless of whether you agree or disagree,

(01:06:17):
because it causes me and people like yourself, people like
Fred and Paul anybody else that around here deuce. It
causes us to stop and think and to see another
side and another point of view. Sometimes we do get
so close to the forest we can't see the trees
all the time, and so it's always good to get
a fresh perspective. And this is why I also like

(01:06:39):
to do things like we've done today, which is asked
people about you know, good, bad, and ugly, because it
gives us perspective. Is where people are coming from. I'm
not totally surprised for the answers thus far, and I'm
hoping we get a chance to ask a few you
know listeners about it as well today. But at the
same time, perspective is really everything here because I think
it helps us really attack what we need to attack

(01:07:01):
in terms of figuring out what's right and what's wrong
with the football team in the franchise.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Yeah. Absolutely, well said, thank you buddy anytime, appreciate time.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Karen the only, the one and only Evan Lazar and
he did say hi to Karen. We're gonna get right
to her. Hey, this reminder, bud Light is easy to drink,
easy to enjoy. Bud Light the official beer sponsor of
the New England Patriots, and don't forget, Bridgestone is the
official tire of the New England Patriots. I'm proud to
partner with Sullivan Tire, New England's headquarters for quality Bridgestone tires.

(01:07:30):
Visit Sullivantire dot com to find a location near you.
Eight five five Pats five hundred. That's the TPX toll
free hotline eight five five Pats five hundred. You can
also find us, you know via email if you'd like
to send a note, don't have time to pick up
the phone and call podcasts plural podcasts at Patriots dot com,

(01:07:53):
or you can hit me up on x at JR Broadcaster,
because I usually have that up looking at everybody else's feed.
But if you hit my feed as well, I'm happy
to answer a question that way. All right, So what
Evan just did as he said hello to our friend
Karen Krigian, who has covered the Patriots as a columnist
and as a writer to beat writer for a number

(01:08:14):
of years, several decades. In fact, I don't want to
date you, Karen, in terms of how old you are
or anything else like that. That's not my point here.
My point here is that you're an experienced journalist and
she's a good friend of the show, and we appreciate
her taking some time today. Karen Grigan joined us.

Speaker 9 (01:08:28):
Hi, Karen road John, how are you?

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Everything's good? Yeah, you know, as good as it can
be for a three and ten football team.

Speaker 10 (01:08:36):
Right well, And for the record, I am old, but.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
That's okay, No, no, no, I.

Speaker 10 (01:08:41):
Think I equate that with Wyse.

Speaker 6 (01:08:44):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
Well, let's see, I've learned how to do that too,
because I think I have you beat in that department.
In fact, I'm pretty sure of it. And yeah, I
try to think of wisdom. Yeah, I try to think
of wisdom. You know. That's that's the that's the main
thing I kind of, you know, rely upon. And so
I want you to use a little of your wisdom
in this regard because one of the questions that I'm

(01:09:06):
asking today has to do with kind of taking a
you know, that beginning look ahead with the bye week
now being so late this year and only four weeks
left of the regular season, to me, this really is
this is the start of twenty twenty five for the Patriots,
for this team, this franchise. And you know, Jerrod Mayo
I think has even sort of, you know, alluded to

(01:09:28):
that as well when you met with the media earlier today,
earlier this week as well, and postgame anter the Colts
game this past week. And I think we all know that,
you know, because you're now mathematically eliminated, guys are gonna
start playing for their next deals or guys are going
to try to impress upon coaches or decision makers whoever
may be in those spots with an eye toward next year.

(01:09:48):
You know, you're gonna be kept around, We're gonna move
you around, You're gonna make you expendable. You know, what's
it gonna be. They've already done that with an offensive
lineman and Michael Jordan, and who could be next? We
also have the decision makers, you know, whether it's a
coach or somebody in player personnel that could also be
moving around, because we just don't know, and you shouldn't
know rightfully, so you shouldn't have, you know, absolutes down

(01:10:11):
when your team is three and ten. So I'm gonna
ask you for something good about this team that you've
seen this year. I'm gonna ask you for something bad
that you've seen about this team this year. And I'm
gonna ask you for something ugly, And by ugly that
means it's just not fixable. You've got to change it.

(01:10:33):
So you want to which one do you want to
start with? You want to start with good?

Speaker 10 (01:10:36):
Sure, go, well, the good is obvious.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
Yes, well, we that we know. But I'm kind of
curious to know whether or not you I'm kind of
curious whether or not to know if you have something
that might be hidden that you've seen, that you've noticed
that you think is Hey, that's pretty good.

Speaker 10 (01:10:53):
From from Drake.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Drake.

Speaker 10 (01:10:55):
The sure it's necessarily hidden, but a couple of things.
I mean, I think we've seen growth over the course
of his eight starts. I think we're seeing I want
to say, advanced skills, but skills that you know, lead

(01:11:20):
to him being a better, a really good quarterback. You know,
his ability to throw and lead throw guys open. Not
everyone can do that, but he can or throw it
to a spot where only receivers can get it. I

(01:11:43):
had a conversation with Austin Hooper recently about a ball
that Drake threw to him, and he was just raving.
I mean, it was like there were three defenders around
and there was Austin and Drake, with Austin telling me
the story. Although I did see it, he just marveled

(01:12:07):
at how Drake put it in a spot where only
he could get it. And you know, he's telling me
he's played with a ton of quarterbacks, he's a veteran
tight end, and he hasn't seen that ability a lot
where the quarterback just instinctually puts it in a place

(01:12:29):
in a crowd where his guy, only his guy, can
get it. So you know, those things, those you know,
they might not be obvious to the eye, but you know,
subtle things like that. You know, I love, I wouldn't
advocate quarterbacks throwing across the body, but boy does he

(01:12:52):
do it really well.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
Yeah, I mean I have to admit that that reminds
me of you know, some real you know, gun slinger
quarterbacks type of that I've seen, you know, in the past,
who sling it that way, And yeah, that's you know,
it's it's.

Speaker 11 (01:13:07):
I mean, we have mag Jones attempt that and it
was gross, didn't go well, no, I mean didn't go well.

Speaker 10 (01:13:14):
But but he does it. It just amazes me how
accurate he is doing it. And you know, I I think,
you know, another thing, subtle thing, John instincts that he
has instincts knowing when to run, when to roll out

(01:13:36):
and throw.

Speaker 11 (01:13:37):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:13:38):
Again, it might not seem like a big deal, but
it is. This kid's twenty two years old, and he
just seems to have a natural feel for the game.
I think he's done a really good job seeing the defense,
reading the defenses, not hesitating. Again, these are kind of

(01:14:02):
these intangible qualities that might not be obvious off the screen,
but they're obvious when you watch plays back, when you
go over the tape. As all of us beat writers do,
and you gain even more of an appreciation for how

(01:14:22):
good he is.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
You know, I have to admit that his ability to
sort of you know, as my coaches used to call it,
you know, hey, rook, how come you can't just penny
years back and let it go? You know? And because
I was always too afraid of making a mistake, that's
what kept me from being really good. I think that
and talent, you know, usually has something to do with it.
But he is willing to do that, and I like

(01:14:46):
that attitude. So he's not afraid to make a mistake,
and I'm actually impressed by that. I'm you know, okay,
yeah I messed up here, but I know where I
messed up. I'm going to try not to make that
mistake again. And I think we've seen that sort of
improvement from him this year, which is most encouraging, which
is really why everybody should be, you know, happy with

(01:15:06):
what they've seen this far. You can't be happy with
the overall product, but man, get this guy some dudes
to get the ball to and you might have something
here in the next year or two.

Speaker 10 (01:15:15):
Oh well, that's the whole thing.

Speaker 11 (01:15:17):
John.

Speaker 10 (01:15:17):
It's almost like you want to fast forward the narrative,
you know, and it's like god like, you can't wait
to see him when he actually has a team around him,
you know.

Speaker 11 (01:15:28):
Yeah, yeah, but again along the subtle lines, what he's
able to do.

Speaker 10 (01:15:36):
With nobody around him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
Yeah, honest to.

Speaker 10 (01:15:39):
Goodness, you know how he can.

Speaker 8 (01:15:43):
You know, I'm not.

Speaker 10 (01:15:44):
Gonna I'm not gonna put him into the same category
as some of the earliite quarterback but make people around
him better.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:15:55):
I think he's made the offensive line uh not seen
quite as god awful because of his ability to move.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
Yep.

Speaker 10 (01:16:05):
I think he's helped some receiverslong and his ability to
you know, put the ball in good spots for them
since they can't gain separation. His accuracy is help these
guys who really don't create separation. The only issue here

(01:16:26):
is he hasn't been able to produce wins.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
No, he does need some help where that's concerned. I
do like his His is zeroing in on the Patriots
tight ends in particular, which is one of those underlying
good things that I thought of, because I think the
performance by the tight ends, all things being equal, they've
helped with blocking. They've got shown us that they have
pretty good hands you know, Austin Hooper I think has
been a fine so I give him credit where that's concerned.

(01:16:51):
So I would kind of put that in the good
category as well. What about bad? What about bad? And
by bad, I mean, okay, right now, it's not good,
but it's worth saving, it's worth keeping around, it's hopeful
of improvement. What do you think, Well, I.

Speaker 10 (01:17:07):
Have to look to the defense, okay, and it's kind
of all encompassing, with the exception of maybe Christian Gonzalez,
who's another BLUs.

Speaker 6 (01:17:20):
God.

Speaker 10 (01:17:21):
The play of the defensive line has been startlingly poor,
getting blown off the line of scrimmage, not being able
to stop running games, not being able to stop quarterbacks
you know, you know, the linebacker play, the confusion in

(01:17:47):
the in the secondary and backfield, I mean, and opposing
teams have picked up on the fact that you get
down in the red zone, stick a play in there,
no huddle, and the Patriots are lost trying to figure
out who to cover, what to do. Motion is another
killer has been another thing that they haven't been able

(01:18:10):
to figure out or get again get their their ducks
in a row. And I don't know if again they
obviously they've lost some good players. John Bentley was kind
of the quarterback back there. The linebacker Kyle Duger, I

(01:18:32):
believe he has been playing on one leg with a bad ankle.
They didn't have Jabrill Peppers until recently. They didn't have
Christian Barmore until recently. But I think perhaps we were
spoiled when coach Belichick was here of his ability to
kind of hide his weak spots yep, or still be

(01:18:57):
able to confuse quarterbacks. You know, we just haven't seen
that type of mystique, that type of you know, doing
things with the defense that confuses quarterbacks because the way

(01:19:17):
it looks, the defense is the one that's confused, ye,
not the offense.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
It does. So let me ask you then the tough
question here, should there be Will there be changes in
the coaching staff on that side of the foot?

Speaker 9 (01:19:30):
Well?

Speaker 10 (01:19:32):
I think I really think Girod has to sit back
and take an honest look at the coaching staff on
both sides of the ball. And you know, I don't
know if that means firing people, but perhaps it means
bringing in co coach type of people that can help

(01:19:57):
straighten out and fix some of the difficulties. Of course,
talent will help talent helps any coach, but it's just
the problems we've been seeing John fundamental where to line up?

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know how that happens.
I just I mean it's inexplicable for this time of
year for guys not to know how to line up
in order to be legal, or guys to know that
you can't jump the signal or you know it just
I do. It's a head scratcher that I've never seen
before in covering this team for nearly forty years as
I have, I've never seen this of a team this

(01:20:34):
late in the season. So it can't be anything but
coaching or how they're being instructed how to do things.

Speaker 10 (01:20:40):
Right right, And again it's mystifying to me, you know,
just again the dumb things that they do, and it just.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
Oh yeah, and it just ruins everything, which leads me
then into the real winner here, the ugly what needs
to be changed, what has no hope of improvement, what
should be thrown out, you know with you know Tomorrow's trash,
that kind of thing.

Speaker 10 (01:21:10):
I mean, it goes right to the offensive line. Yeah,
I mean they've ignored they've ignored left tackle, and it's
stunning that they did so, bringing in having a rookie quarterback.
And again I think Viderian Law has done as well

(01:21:31):
as he humanly possibly can with his ability. But and
but you know, whether they were or drafting tackles, they
drafted people to play the right right tackle and expected
them to move to the left.

Speaker 3 (01:21:51):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:21:52):
They signed in free agency a predominant right tackle, expecting
him to play left. I mean, are you willing to
take that kind of chance that whoever can make that
change without really knowing? I mean that to me is
that's ugly. That's an ugly assessment or an ugly way

(01:22:16):
to go about your offensive line. It's just and it again,
it's trumbling, it's you know where you know that doesn't
seem to be high on the right, which is offensive
line is the that's that's where the offensive that's where

(01:22:37):
the offense stems from.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
Of course it is. And why wouldn't you want to
protect your best asset? I just that one blows me away,
and it just tells me. I mean, the only thing
I'm left really together is that they tried to do
it on the cheap and they failed.

Speaker 10 (01:22:52):
Well, well, if they continue to do it that way,
shame on them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Yeah. Yeah, they can't afford to and they.

Speaker 10 (01:22:59):
And they deserve all the criticism that's coming their way.

Speaker 3 (01:23:03):
Yeah. Along the whole lines of ugly, the performance of
rookie second round draft pick Jalen Polk has almost been inexplicable.
He's not the same player that I saw, you know
in the you know, national semifinals and finals last year.
He not even closed. He was explosive, he had great hands,
good speed, I mean, and we've seen nothing of that.

(01:23:25):
And so I'm going to ask you a very simple question. Why.

Speaker 10 (01:23:31):
Yeah, well something Well, let's even go back to training camp. John,
he looked like that player. Sure, at least he started out.
You know, it looked like you know, watching him in
training camp. But again you have to put training camp
into context. These aren't padded. Practice is basically people running

(01:23:56):
free and you know, with little you know defense, let's say,
you know, with little opposition. But he again, he stood
out in kind of the early going in training camp,
and he seemed to have a chemistry with Drake May

(01:24:17):
and that kind of has all disappeared in It's funny
I talked to him yesterday, so I wrote something about
him today. A series of drops, uh, bad penalties, lining
up in the wrong place. I mean, it's like it's

(01:24:37):
like when he gets on the field during games, he
loses his mind, which is weird.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
So why are we going back to football? One oh one?
That's what That's what I don't understand. What's causing him
to do?

Speaker 10 (01:24:51):
You know, perhaps again perhaps uh you know you look
at the coaching staff, the wide receivers coach or again
something is missing, you know with Jalen Polk and to
a degree to Von Baker because they put him out

(01:25:15):
there and then they have to take him out because
he's in the wrong place or he doesn't do the
right thing. And it's like, is anyone teaching these guys?

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
Well, if they're teaching them and they're failing, then they're
not really holding them accountable, now, were they.

Speaker 10 (01:25:30):
Well that opens up a whole nother can of worms there,
because when you I'll just go back to our friend
Viderian Lowe, when you commit when you false start three
times in the same game and don't get benched, and

(01:25:51):
he didn't. But here's well, here's the other issue. Well,
who the heck are they going to put in there?

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
Well, that's the problem. You know, we've been talking about
We talk about a little of that almost every week,
and they're just not there's just not enough. That's the
ultimate failure of this roster in the way it was constructed.

Speaker 10 (01:26:10):
The coach can't even bench players because there's such a
huge drop off. And again, when you're talking about left
tackle or even right tackle and you're in the in
the franchise you're trying to protect, are you going to
bench the guy to send a message and thanks getting

(01:26:31):
the franchise hurt.

Speaker 3 (01:26:33):
Yeah, no, you can't do that, can't.

Speaker 10 (01:26:37):
So again, So in some ways I think Gerrod Mao's
hands have been tied by the roster that he's competing with.

Speaker 3 (01:26:46):
Yeah, somewhat. We'll find out if that changes soon enough. Hey,
I appreciate you spending a little time with us, Karen.
As always, it's it's good to talk to you. I
hope you had a good Thanksgiving and good lord, Christmas
is three weeks from today. I'm stunned by that.

Speaker 10 (01:26:59):
I know it to get As always, John, thanks for
having me on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:05):
I enjoy our chat, so do I, And believe it
or not, Karen, there's a lot of people who listen
that also enjoy it. So I appreciate your making time
for us.

Speaker 10 (01:27:14):
Thank you anytime. I have a great holiday. If I
don't see you or talk to you before, then.

Speaker 3 (01:27:20):
Same to you. Hopefully we'll run into each other at
the stadium here very very shortly, with a couple of
games left to play. The One and only Karen Greggian
from masslive dot com at Griggy and g U R
E g I A n on X is where you
can find her. Her stuff is always good. It's always
spot on. The One thing that I've always loved about Karen.
This isn't necessarily mutual admiration society here, but one thing

(01:27:43):
I always love reading about Karen is that she reads
and she writes about the stuff that I think about.
She's spot on, and that comes from covering the team
for thirty plus years as she has. And so that's
where experience really pays off, because she knows what you expect.

(01:28:06):
She knows what I expect. She knows what she expects,
she knows how to go to it, and she's been
around and the players know her. I mean, heck, she
was one of TV twelve's favorites. You know. For those
that don't know, you know, he would always you know,
kind of like you know, in front of the White
House press scops, I always call on you know one
reporter first because you know him best, and think that's
what Tom Brady did when he was here. He'd always

(01:28:28):
call on Karen first anyway, because he respected and her
ability to recognize, her ability to write, and her ability
to be fair. That's what I like most about Karen.
So you gotta make sure that she's a follow if
you're if you're following along, and that's why we love
having her on the show every now and then. Okay,
so I got to hit the TPX hotline here pretty
quickly because Patty and Aguam has been hanging on like

(01:28:49):
for flipping ever. Patty, you're still there.

Speaker 8 (01:28:53):
I'm still here, John, hold on one, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:28:57):
No, it's good. Hey. I kept you on hole, so
you can keep me on hold for a second or two. Anyway.
It doesn't make for great radio, Patty, but it's all right.

Speaker 9 (01:29:06):
Hey. As I was listening to Peu earlier today, I
guess I don't make for great radio for some callers,
So that's all right. I don't mind. I don't mind
being the bad guy.

Speaker 6 (01:29:16):
If I have to be.

Speaker 3 (01:29:17):
Well, but see, I like bad guys. I like foils.
I like you know, people who come in to sort
of stir the drink or shake the tree, or however
you want to term it. Because you know, even if
I don't even if I don't agree with it, I
like to hear other opinions because it gets me to
stop and think and consider the other side and hopefully
making a better educated opinion in my own right. Does

(01:29:39):
that make sense?

Speaker 9 (01:29:42):
Makes sense?

Speaker 3 (01:29:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:29:43):
He kind of serves it up to me, you know,
because wait to you hear the three answers I have
to the question today?

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):
All right, baby, go what's good?

Speaker 6 (01:29:52):
My good?

Speaker 9 (01:29:53):
Aside from the obvious Ndalas and May, I wanted to
stand out and be a little different. So I'm taking
Alex van Pelp because if you look at the difference
between Drake May when he first got here, you know,
in rookie camp and minie camp and training camp to
where he is now. Yes, May had a lot to
do with it, but I think as far as his
development goes, you got to give your you got to

(01:30:16):
take your hats off to Alex van Pelp for what
he's done with the kid. And we're starting to finally
see a little bit more creativity within the offense too.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
Well, you know that that's a fresh take. I'm going
to give you credit for that one. And let's also
go back to you know, even though didn't win the
game this past weekend, it was their most balanced offensive
effort of the year. They outgained the Colts. They had
over four hundred yards at total offense.

Speaker 9 (01:30:39):
Yeah, I know, it's I mean, it's just last week
was one of those games where I just when it happened, John,
when the Colts scored, I'm like, they're going for two
years and I'm watching the game with my friend next Yeah. Yeah,
I'm like, how how could you not go for it
right here? When your playoff lives are on the line,
you're playing a team with three wins at their house,

(01:31:02):
you go for the win. But yeah, I mean they
outgained them almost two to one, won the turnover battle,
and still lost. And I was left there like, what
the hell, man, oh boy, we got to do to
pull out a win?

Speaker 3 (01:31:15):
You know? Yeah, yeah, I don't think this team is
capable of that. That's the problem. It's just a prise.

Speaker 9 (01:31:22):
I think they're still very you know, for as much
crap as the coordinators, the coaches, Elliott Wolf. Everyone takes
this is I've said this on a previous call to John,
this is a rookie year for everybody minus the Craft,
you know, everyone else in a big position this year

(01:31:42):
is it's the rookie year. So I wish people would
be more patient and cut them some slack.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
All right, so you hit how about the bad?

Speaker 9 (01:31:50):
Yeah, my bad? And I'm only putting a one year
label on this bad because if we're at the bye
week next year, I might I might be saying this
guy is ugly. I'm going to go jail and polk
because I think there is something there. I think there's
a reason why, you know, wide receiver coach. Notwithstanding, I

(01:32:11):
think I think the organization likes them. I think eventually,
like you know, I listened to Evan a lot. I
listened to Alex a lot, listen to p I listened
to Patriots Doc Amla.

Speaker 3 (01:32:23):
You know that.

Speaker 9 (01:32:24):
But when Mao made the comment about him kind of
like being in his own head, I'm paraphrasing there. You know,
Evan came on the air and said, you know, the
one thing we were worried about with him getting open,
he's doing He's just not catching the ball, and I
mean I think it's I think it's sort of stacked

(01:32:45):
against him over the last few weeks, and I think
he just needs to settle it down. I'm hoping this
by a week does does him some good. And I
said it a few weeks ago to I don't care
which one of these rookie wide receivers it is, Baker
or Polk. I just want to see one of these
guys be a player. Doesn't matter who, doesn't matter, how,

(01:33:07):
it just doesn't matter. I want to see it happen.

Speaker 3 (01:33:09):
Yeah, no, I agree, so many needs to all right,
ugly what what is? What is the proverbial lugly baby
that needs to pork chopper hanging around its neck so
the dog will play with it?

Speaker 6 (01:33:23):
All right?

Speaker 9 (01:33:23):
I went back and forth on this, and I know
this is probably going to be very unpopular with some people.
I was gonna throw out de Marcus Covington, but again,
like he's in his first year, let's give the guy
another year. As bad as the defense has been, I'm
gonna go Kyle Dugger. And I think if you look
at since you know, the last couple of years, the

(01:33:46):
last two years, especially even with Bill Belichick as head coach.
You know, I think he's he's pretty good playing at
the line of scrimmage, but as far as like the second,
you know, second and third levels coverage, covering tight ends,
you know, covering the deep middle of the field, he's
he hasn't been good and I don't think he's been

(01:34:08):
He hasn't been worth the money that they gave him,
and I think it's it might be time to move
on from him. As much as I mean, I like
the guy, I thought he was, you know, he was
emerging a couple of years ago, but even before they
paid him, like I just thought, like, well, he didn't
he really didn't look that good last year, you know,

(01:34:29):
he didn't look good. I thought down the end of
the stretch at twenty twenty two as well. But many
had that big pick in Arizona, the Pick six, or
maybe it was Raiders game. I can't remember one.

Speaker 6 (01:34:39):
Of those games.

Speaker 9 (01:34:40):
But ever since then, he's he's fallen off, and I
don't know, maybe another team can get something out of him,
Maybe we can get something out of him as far
as draft capital. And like I said, I like the guy.
It's nothing personal, but I mean, we at this point,
we got to kind of be what we can cut

(01:35:02):
out for dead weight, you.

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
Know, yeah, well that is going to come with a team.
You know, it's going to be three and ten, or
is three and ten and could be you know, three
and fourteen. We don't know. I mean, we don't know
what will happen over the last four weeks, but it's
certainly not going to be I don't think it'll be
better than what we saw last year. And like I
said at the top of the show today, Patty, I'm like,
I really thought this was a five or a six
win team this year and maybe with a break or two,

(01:35:24):
you know, they might be in playoff contention to about
this time early to mid December before they ultimately succumbed,
because I didn't think they'd have enough depth overall. Certainly
they don't have the depth. The problem is they don't
have the starters, So that's part of the issue overall.
But we were wrong, and they just they don't have

(01:35:45):
the depth that you know, they've got to create depth.
They've got to bring in starters, they've got to bring
in more NFL ready more NFL capable performers surrounding you know,
hopefully the offensive anchor and the defensive anchor that they have,
you know, and that's really where we stand. So to me,
I'm kind of I tend to agree with you. I mean, look,

(01:36:06):
DeMarcus Covington has had a rough ride over the last
few weeks as the defensive coordinator because we've seen regression here,
and I do think there's an issue here. But at
the same time, because it's the first year for everybody
in terms of the head coach, the OC, the DC,
I'm certainly I'm kind of more in your camp, Patty.
I really think that yeah, they probably should get another

(01:36:27):
year to be entirely fair, but the one that the
owner really has to go down upon and that we
really need to come through otherwise he needs to, you know,
rethink his employment status is Elliott Wolf. I mean, yeah,
you got to bring in the personnel for these coaches
to coach up. I just don't know that it's fair
one hundred percent. And we know it's not a fair business. Okay,

(01:36:49):
it's professional sports. It's not a fair business. It's not
gonna be. It's a what have you done for me now? Business.
It is all about you know, the Benjamins. It's about
nothing else other than that you gotta make money. This
is a professional business, but you got to give you know,
it's kind of like Bill Parcells once said, right, if
they're gonna want you to coach the players, they got
to let you shop for some of the groceries. And

(01:37:11):
I totally agree with that assessment. So when you bring
in the groceries, don't go buy rotten eggs, don't don't
don't buy it quickly. Yeah, don't buy stale bread. Don't
do any of that stuff real quickly.

Speaker 9 (01:37:24):
Before I get off, you can get some other people on.
I mean, he got the biggest chip, the artist piece
to get. You know, we have the quarterback. Now it's
up to him, you know what, Like I want to
see them build up the defense. But while he is
on his rookie contract, you have to do him justice. Sure,
you start building the offense around here so we can compete,

(01:37:44):
because it's not it's not your father's NFL. It's not
my father's NFL. Games are one on offense more often
than not nowadays. You got to build it up. That's
all I got.

Speaker 6 (01:37:54):
Johnny.

Speaker 3 (01:37:54):
You're a good man, Patty, Thank you, buddy, Appreciate you all. Right,
Before we get to mister Baxter here, Aldred. What's happening brother.

Speaker 6 (01:38:03):
Hey, mister legend, how you doing today?

Speaker 3 (01:38:05):
All good today? How about you?

Speaker 6 (01:38:08):
Uh, let's tired, but it's worth.

Speaker 3 (01:38:11):
Wait do we do? We have a tough hall, tough haul.

Speaker 6 (01:38:13):
Today, a long ones.

Speaker 3 (01:38:15):
Oh where were you coming from? Where are you headed?
All right? Now?

Speaker 6 (01:38:19):
Coming from Columbia going back to Charlotte. Right now it's
traffic time. And the other day we've got a little snow,
the flurries.

Speaker 3 (01:38:27):
Oh you know how long a drive is that? How
long are driving from from Columbia to Charlotte? How longer
drive is that?

Speaker 6 (01:38:36):
A good day is an hour? Almost two hours? Okay,
bad day two and a half three?

Speaker 3 (01:38:41):
Traffic on the traffic are we? Hey? When are we
putting together Eldridge Rules of the road. We have to
do that, you know, all right, that's that's for marine.
That's for marine. That marine's got to get together on that.
We want to put together Aldridge Rules of the Road

(01:39:03):
and that way we you know, have some little reminders
for people who are sitting in traffic listening to the
pod or you know, whatever they're doing. Marine, We we
definitely have to get to Eldridge Rules of the Road.
At some point, right, like you don't have enough to do.
I understand that, but I'm just saying it's on my list.
I will get to you, Eldred. See it's gonna happen.
It's gonna happen, all right, So Eldred, give me good,

(01:39:26):
bad and ugly about this team because I know you've
got some definitive choices here.

Speaker 6 (01:39:30):
Yeah. Good, I'm I'm going with everybody else. Drake may
you know, he's do a little bit better. It's getting
better what I thought he would do. Ye I had him,
I didn't. I wouldn't want to drive him, but I
got to give it. Give Hi his problems.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
Yeah, well you told me you're gonna go buy his jersey.
You bought his jersey, right.

Speaker 6 (01:39:47):
I already got it.

Speaker 3 (01:39:48):
Yeah, you showed. Remember you sent me a picture? Yeah,
you sent me a picture?

Speaker 6 (01:39:51):
Did you show?

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):
Did ye? Okay?

Speaker 6 (01:39:53):
Man of my word?

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
You know?

Speaker 6 (01:39:56):
Yes? Sir?

Speaker 3 (01:39:57):
All right? Bad? What's bad?

Speaker 6 (01:40:00):
What's bad? Well, it's it's you go a lot of
ways with that. I want to go the line and
I want to go defense. That's time. I'm gonna go
with both. What's ugly, it's the talent level on that
team with Ian Wolf. That's what's damn right ugly.

Speaker 3 (01:40:19):
You would have said, you would have said that for
GM Bill Belichick too though, right.

Speaker 6 (01:40:25):
I think they're the same people, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:40:30):
It wasn't the version of yeah, he'll probably take that
as a contown. Right.

Speaker 6 (01:40:37):
He shouldn't the way where he drafts. He shouldn't. That's
why I feel ain't got a job. You ain't got no,
you ain't got no, you ain't got no groceries in
in uh in the cabinets, you know. And then uh,
I'm like everybody else. You gonna have all this cap space,
you have cap money, you know, cap money you have,
you have this top of the draft whatever. He won't
get it right. I don't think he. I think he.
I think he drafts like Bill, or he learned from Bill,

(01:41:00):
and I think he drafts the same way, you know,
because you got the same guys and coaching wise, you know,
ugly on defense office I thought was ugly at first,
but it's getting better, you know. And then I'm like
Marcus Covenant, I can't understand you, even in high school
when I was coaching in high school. If a guy

(01:41:22):
go in most motion, if you go a man and
you want to double him the far stats on the
other side, double the guy that goes with him. That's
that's elementary. That's elementary. The other the other states to
cover up the deep end. That's elementary. It's a side,
you know. And then if you're dropping, you just drop
back in the zone or whatever. But you just don't
have nobody confused or whatever. But they pro they get paid,

(01:41:45):
so they should. They should know that rule too, because
they had to start from high school to leave him
and to learn the same thing. I just can. It's
just a talent level. And another thing I'm mad about is, Okay,
you got some guys on the scout team. I hear
some people right about him or whatever, you know, and like,
you got a six y three wide receiver right there already.

(01:42:07):
You know you got speed. He might be whatever, but
right now you three and ten. Why not try everybody?
You got some some some corners with some speed and
some size. Why not try to see what you got
instead of just looking at practice squad and said, well,
they just run the scout team and that's that, you know.
Why not give them a shot somewhere else because you're
hurting the secondary. Who knows you might have a second

(01:42:29):
guy right there might have a receiver right there, Jalen Polk.
I gave it from from Jump Street because I said,
I want a d Mitchell, I.

Speaker 3 (01:42:37):
Know, although although I mean, I don't think ad Mitchell
had the best game of this last week either for
the Colts.

Speaker 6 (01:42:42):
Right, No, he hasn't little little what you call. Matter
of fact, my brother in law he's a Colt saying
he told me that, Hey, I tell you what if
I was them, I trade you a d Mitchell for
Robinson to guard. I said, no, I ain't giving you
the guard I give you. I'll give you somebody else
for him. I won't give you the guard Lennon Robinson.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
Rob Yeah, that's one of the reasons.

Speaker 6 (01:43:05):
Pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:43:06):
Yeah, that's one of the reasons why they want to
play him, because they want to see more of him.
They want him to get on the job training, kind
of like what they did with with Drake earlier this
year when they decided to move him into the lineup.
It's on the job training, and there's no better way
to learn than on the job.

Speaker 6 (01:43:21):
Yep. And what else is ugly you only got only
hit on one draft pick, which I know that's the
major one, but that ain't the only one. At least
you got leash hit three out of how many people
getting eleven? Least hit three. You ain't hit but one.

Speaker 3 (01:43:35):
I know, I know, you gotta you gotta, you gotta
have a three hundred batting average minimum, right minimum? Minimum?

Speaker 6 (01:43:42):
Yeah, minimum, you know. And right now he got zero
with me. He got zero from another year, and he
got zero for this year, you know. And then uh defense,
like you said, you got some free age of corners.
You know, that can help help out a gun zone
on that side over there. But it's a linebacker crew
and the front line, you decent line differ. I'm like,

(01:44:03):
kind of trade. I'll pay somebody for that back to
do that and then keep trying to draft whatever. But
like I said, the other thing is the GM and
the talent level. And you saw this when Bill was
there and you got your chances to do something different,
you did the same thing your predecessor did.

Speaker 3 (01:44:21):
Correct.

Speaker 6 (01:44:22):
I think that's dumb.

Speaker 3 (01:44:24):
Yeah, I listen. It's hard to argue that. It's hard
to argue that you're willing to get them another shot
next year. You're willing to give the coaching staff another shot.

Speaker 6 (01:44:34):
I get a coaching Shaft coaching staff another shot. But
like I told you a while ago, mister Kraft, let
me draft for you one year. I guarantee you let
me draft rest of the time. You ain't gotta pay me.

Speaker 3 (01:44:44):
Well, we're gonna, we're gonna go to GM. We're gonna
we're gonna give you a chance to make that draft Eldred.
All right, you're gonna we're gonna work on that for
April and May next year, and we're gonna let you, uh,
you know conduct you know, Eldridge draft, and we're gonna
see how it compares to what the Patriots do and
go from that point. All right, So start boning up
on these guys. I want you to find me some

(01:45:06):
you know, third, fourth and fifth round gems, right, guys,
guys that are lumps of klo, Guys that are lumps
of coal right now that you can mold into diamonds.

Speaker 6 (01:45:17):
All right, don't do that, okay, But I like you.
I like moving at the top of the draft to
get some of those guys they're around those special team guys. Yeah, totally, yes, yes,
But okay, you have a good one, mister Landa.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):
I was good talking to always good to talk to you, Eldred,
Love you all right, Eldred once again from North Carolina,
just fresh off the road. And now it's what week
fourteen in the NFL.

Speaker 6 (01:45:42):
It's a real woman could stop you from drinking, a
real big woman.

Speaker 5 (01:45:47):
It's time to go around the NFL with football guru
Russell Baxter.

Speaker 3 (01:45:51):
Now on.

Speaker 11 (01:45:53):
The name is Flounder.

Speaker 3 (01:45:55):
On Patriots playbook hung And this reminder, Massachusetts is made
for everyone. For the leaf peepers, corn maze strollers, for
gando lovers, pumpkin pickers, and anyone else you could think of.
Come to where there's something for everyone this fall and winter,
Massa Choosets, where everything is made possible. Plan your trip
at visit MA dot com. Good afternoon, mister Baxter. How

(01:46:16):
are you sir?

Speaker 8 (01:46:17):
Hello there, sir. Are you recovered from Thanksgiving?

Speaker 3 (01:46:20):
Or yeah, yeah, listen. I don't have any complaints. I mean,
I had it good last week. I was in eighty
degrees in sunshine every day, just you knowall wasn't so great.
But at the same time, I had no problems with
my office every day, so that part was really good.
That part was really good, and of course the day
itself was nice to be with friends and family, and

(01:46:42):
that part worked out, and I hope that you had
a similar day yourself.

Speaker 8 (01:46:46):
Very much. My standard line for twenty three years if
you had the turkey and me bet the over and
you won. No, it was relaxing.

Speaker 6 (01:46:54):
We saw.

Speaker 8 (01:46:56):
Some entertaining football for the most part.

Speaker 3 (01:46:59):
We did, didn't we.

Speaker 8 (01:47:01):
You know, I think the Lions, I think we're headed
for dinner. And then realized that the Bears weren't finished yet.
Although the Bears found a way to finish themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:47:12):
They did, they did.

Speaker 8 (01:47:15):
Now they have an interim head coach. Hey, the Cowboys
Giants game was competitive. The disappointment was was the Thursday
night game of Green Bay in Miami. Miami just they
were kind of a no show. I mean, and I
know a lot gets made about the weather and different
things like that and so on, but you know, they

(01:47:36):
they for a team that had won three games in
a row, they were very very flat, especially with what
they have on the line, you know, with the AFC
playoff picture and so on. So but you know, I
know the Bills were happy because then they beat San
Francisco and they won the East fifth year in a row.
So that's a you know, you know, you're having a
good year in Buffalo when you know you have won

(01:48:00):
ten games and the rest of your division is one eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:48:03):
Yeah, no fooling right. I got a couple of specific
things I wanted to ask you today. First one starts
with the Lions, as you mentioned them. Of course winning
you know, on Thanksgiving Day, because they're usually tough on
that day. But now they're going to turn around and
they got the early game this week and playing Thursday
against the Packers. Are the Lions the best team in

(01:48:23):
Pro football? If they are, why and if they are not,
why not?

Speaker 8 (01:48:29):
Well, I'm ten in a row. They have the highest
scoring they're the highest scoring team in the league. John,
But they've also given up the second fewest points in
the league, which is that's I wouldn't say that's common, okay.
I mean we see a lot of high scoring teams
definitely give up their share of points, but only the

(01:48:52):
Chargers are given up more points per game than the Lions.
I think the Lions defense got a little banged up
the other day, and I think that was part of
the reason the Bears were able to they got This
is not an overpowering defense, but I'd give them credit
losing Aiden Hutchinson, you know, in the middle of the season,
and they've still found ways to be just more solid.

(01:49:13):
Aaron Glenn deserves a lot of credit. But this is
a team that runs the ball, stops the run, they
have a court, I mean. And the thing you have
to think about, John, is the resiliency that you know
that Sunday night game at Houston when Jared Goff threw
the ball to everybody but you and me, and they

(01:49:36):
still came back and won that game on the road.
So this is a team that's like supreme. Think about this, okay,
And I'm just going to go back to last season.
In the regular season, Okay, the Detroit Lions are twenty
three and six in their last twenty nine games.

Speaker 3 (01:49:57):
That's amazing.

Speaker 8 (01:49:58):
I mean, yeah, if you've include the playoffs, they're actually
twenty five and seven.

Speaker 3 (01:50:04):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (01:50:05):
Okay.

Speaker 8 (01:50:05):
Now, for those of us who've been who watched the Lions,
obviously you have a team that hasn't won a championship
since nineteen fifty seven, the only team in the NFC
has never been to the Super Bowl. These are pretty
remarkable numbers. And listen, they had some good teams in
the nineties when they got to the NFC title game
in ninety one, that was kind of Barry Sanders. It

(01:50:26):
was actually if you remember that year, that was Wayne
and a very emotional moment at the sober Dome with
Mike Gutley yep, as you remember, and a lot of
people talked about that and so on. And you know,
I had some teams in the mid nineties with Scott
Visualist the quarterback, exciting teams, but never what we're seeing

(01:50:47):
now this dominance at times and again as we are
finding out and this is not a shock. You know,
while teams and I've went right off the top of
my head, I want to say, there's been fourteen rematches
so far this year. As far as teams playing each
other in the Vision, I think, sweet, it's sweets ten

(01:51:08):
to four.

Speaker 3 (01:51:09):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (01:51:09):
Okay, kidding, but that's not a shock. Usually happened. But
that doesn't mean that these games aren't close. And we
have seen this all year with these divisional games that
are nail bikers. Okay, even think about Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Okay,
Pittsburgh scored their most points of the season and gave

(01:51:30):
up their most points in the season and still managed
to win the game, but it's a six point game.
Jacksonville has been dreadful this year and they've taken the
Texans to the wire twice. Jackson the Texans swept Colts
this year. The Colts took them to the wire twice.
About the Dallas Giants games were closed, so we haven't

(01:51:53):
necessarily seen, you know, but what about Baltimore and Cincinnati?
A forty one thirty eight and what a thirty five
thirty four?

Speaker 3 (01:52:02):
I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Speaker 8 (01:52:04):
Well yeah, yeah, exactly, so you're seeing click again, Baltimore swept,
Dallas swept, but Houston swept twice and so on. But
it doesn't mean that these games aren't competitive. And here's
a funny thing. I just thought about Houston with their
two suites, and a couple of weeks ago they got
beat at home by the Titans, who won three games.

(01:52:26):
So the difference between games during the regular season between
teams that don't play each other on a regular basis
per se and these divisional matchups, I mean, it's very, very,
very evident, which is why it's so smart that the
final week of the season features sixteen games, and all
sixteen or within the division.

Speaker 3 (01:52:46):
Yeah. Interesting. The other couple of games I don't wanted
to kind of glance at I have to do with,
you know, contenders certainly to whatever supremacy you know, the
Lions end up with. And you and I have talked
about this before, but I mean I kind of tend
to want to root for the teams that haven't had
that opportunity to get to that big game or win
the big game, and along those lines, while I'm going

(01:53:06):
to kind of pull if I'm going to be a
fan from it, and I'm going to kind of pull
for what the Lions are doing. In the AFC, well,
you've got potential for history again with the Kansas City Chiefs,
and you've got the potential for history with the Buffalo Bills,
maybe getting back to the ball and maybe actually winning
one for the first time in five attempts. They appear
to me to be the cream of the crop and
the AFC, with all due respect to the Steelers and

(01:53:29):
maybe another, but the Bills will go on the road
to the Rams this week, and the Chiefs are at
home against the Chargers what may be the sneaky best
game of the entire weekend on Sunday night.

Speaker 8 (01:53:41):
Well, I mean, listen even though they survived a wild
Sunday night game against the Bengals. As I was pointing out,
food for Thought will be out tomorrow. Think about we're
twelve games into the season for just about every team,
six six teams that have played thirteen, the Chargers still

(01:54:01):
haven't given up two hundred points.

Speaker 3 (01:54:03):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (01:54:04):
They're the only team in the league that can claim
that pretty good d okay, And that's a big turnaround
for that team, you know. And I didn't go back
to the AFL, but I was looking today and I
noted that since the merger nineteen seventy, the Chargers have
never led the league and viewers point allowed.

Speaker 3 (01:54:27):
Wow, how about that?

Speaker 8 (01:54:30):
As we know with the Dan Fouts teams and the
Philip Rivers, and you know the big year of by
La Damian Tomlinson in two thousand six, they've led the
league in scoring okay, quite a few times. But as
far as points allowed, that's a different story for this franchise.
And their defense really really gets after you. And in
the way Kansas City has played offense this year. And

(01:54:50):
I know the game's in Arrowhead and right off the
top of my head, I think the Chiefs have beaten
him six times in a row. Okay, But there's something
about the Chiefs. I think people keep waiting for them
to stub their toes and it's the other team that
stubbed their toes, is it?

Speaker 3 (01:55:09):
They kind of like people kept waiting for Tom Brady
and the papers to fall off a cliff.

Speaker 8 (01:55:14):
Absolutely, absolutely, And that's why. You know, that's why when
you hear about former players talk about the Patriots and
they talk about the different things. Bill belichicked it. He
left no stone unturned, okay, in terms of preparation, and
that's one of the Patriots. When these weird things happened

(01:55:36):
and they were put in situations, they were not surprised. Okay,
the defense and Malcolm Butler was not surprised when Russell
Wilson dropped back to pass. Okay, let's I know. People
want to blame Russell Wilson and they want to blame
Pete Carroll. And you certainly could considering the way marsh
Hunt Lynch likes to run through people. Okay, but you

(01:55:59):
can't say that New England was surprised by that decision.
Patriots got beaten Super Bowl. Sure, the Giants did the twice.
The Eagles obviously, you know, but preparation is why, and
that's why Tom Brady was as good. The thing I'd
admire the most about Tom Brady was the fact that

(01:56:21):
he understood and at least and this is from afar,
he understood that he was it was not all about him. Okay,
he was part of the team. Now, I'm not saying
that Bill Belichick didn't drill the dis into his head.
I'm sure he certainly did. Okay, but we saw that
many instances where Brady didn't have to play well and

(01:56:43):
they won. And yet Brady throws her five hundred and
five yards in the Super Bowl against the Eagles and loses. Okay. Now,
there was the critical fumbled lake in the game, but
that didn't take away from the fact that the Eagles
moved the ball will against them in Super Bowl fifty two.
So that was the thing I always admired about. Plus
even the year they didn't win the Super Bowl, I

(01:57:04):
still think this is one of the three greatest clutch
plays in the history of the NFL, and I've been
watching for fifty years. When he converts that fourth down
at Denver with Rob Gronkowski in the AFC title game,
that was Yeah, that's like standing ovation.

Speaker 3 (01:57:21):
No, sure, yeah, absolutely, standing ovation. Absolutely.

Speaker 8 (01:57:25):
I don't know if I answered your last two.

Speaker 3 (01:57:26):
Questions, but no, no, that's fine. Listen, you know, sitting
here and listen to you go on about that at all.
I just the bottom line is is that you know,
the Chiefs continue to defy whatever our expectations are. They
get another challenge against the Charges this week, I just wonder,
and the Bills will get tested going out on the road.
I think to play the Rams this week. But I'm

(01:57:49):
just I for some reason another I still have that
little bit of doubt in my head in the back
of my head about Buffalo. And maybe it's because of
the I don't know, the apparent recklessness of a guy
like you know, you know their quarterback, or or you know,
some of the questionable play calling of their coach or
whatever it may be. They're just a doubt. And maybe

(01:58:10):
it's because these guys are going for you just feel
like if they get into the big opportunity, they're going
to blow it again. I don't know. It might not
be anything more complicated than that. Well, but I'm rooting
for that game to where either Detroit or Buffalo has
to finally win it.

Speaker 8 (01:58:24):
Well, I will say this, Josh Allen has been a
lot less recknand yeah, yeah, okay, is ball security and
so on. I don't think there's any question he's having
his best cheer. The trepidation for me with Buffalo might
be their defense. Okay, and that's not the saying their
defense isn't playing very well. It is, but I think

(01:58:45):
it's a defense that also can you can move the
ball against?

Speaker 3 (01:58:48):
Sure they do.

Speaker 8 (01:58:50):
They're a team that certainly relies on takeaways. There are
I'm just looking at the tide perspective in the league
with twenty four takeaways. But by the way, John, just
in case you don't get your wish and I agree
with I agree with you because I think a lot
of people would like to see the Lions and the Bills,

(01:59:12):
just from what you read around on social media and
you know, other shows and different things like that. There
is a fascination with two franchises that have never won
a Super Bowl facing each other, and of course one
franchise has never been there. Do you know who the Bills?

Speaker 3 (01:59:32):
I believe they would play? Uh, well, hold on, can
I cheat?

Speaker 8 (01:59:39):
Of course you can?

Speaker 3 (01:59:40):
Well, I think let's see on the I know that
They've got the Patriots twice in their last three games.
So so after they played the Rams, Uh, where are
they hold it? Where is it? I had it here
a second ago. Oh they got the Lions. Duh, right,

(02:00:02):
yeah you did, you did? They got the Lions. So
we get the we get what what I hope and
what I know a lot of people hope is the
Super Bowl preview? Right, and they're playing at Detroit. So hey, listen,
uh if the Patriots, I mean, look, I realized the Patriots,
you know, the way that the schedule popped out, they
got to play him twice in the last three weeks.
But you know, Buffalo has already clenched everything. So I'm wondering,

(02:00:25):
you know, A, are they going to be focused on
Detroit and b that last game of the year. Shoot,
there won't be anything to play for. I would imagine
to see the team.

Speaker 8 (02:00:34):
They haven't clinched everything. They do not have home field. Okay,
you don't know if the Kansas City. Kansas City has
the better record than they do.

Speaker 3 (02:00:41):
That's true, which is why I don't know that the
Bills are going to get home field like that.

Speaker 8 (02:00:45):
Well I don't know either. And by the way, to
remind people the Bills had home field against the Chief
last year in the divisional playoffs. Couldn't get it, couldn't
get it done, and so but just off the top
of my head, and I'm trying to remember what year
it was, there was Thanksgiving, I think two years ago
when the Bills and Lions played, and the Lions were

(02:01:05):
starting to feel you could see them coming, okay, and
they and I think Buffalo wound up eating them, either
late and overtime or something like that. And I assume
I also recalled that Buffalo has had to play other
teams at Ford Field because the snow condition.

Speaker 6 (02:01:25):
Near that was.

Speaker 3 (02:01:26):
By the way, I never I never get tired of
snow games. I don't. I mean, and even even when
we have to play them, I just think it's it's
so great and so fun to watch on television.

Speaker 8 (02:01:35):
Well it's it's it's it's what people grew up on. Okay,
this is not baseball, and that's not a knock on baseball. Okay,
the elements play what let me ask you this, what
the hell would the ice boal be without any ice?

Speaker 3 (02:01:54):
I know exactly it wouldn't be without a frozen field.
And by the way, you mentioned baseball. If we get
golden at bat, I'm out. I'm out. I'm not watching
that garbage.

Speaker 8 (02:02:05):
I'm not watching Look at Chris Berman just dropped popped
in my head. And when you think that, you know
the oh, it's not frozen anymore.

Speaker 3 (02:02:15):
Uh, the the tundra yield the frozen.

Speaker 8 (02:02:20):
But I mean, you know, we've seen the great snow Game.
I remember Lashawn McCoy a couple of years ago running
through the Lions and Buccaneers, Packers, and you know watching
you know, team games almost getting canceled because of that.
And it's not because they're afraid that the players playing
and there they want the fans to be able. You
think the Bills fans are anxious to see the forty

(02:02:42):
nine ers. What was it twenty bucks an hour and
the Neil Shovel. By the way, for those who are
not aware of how bad San Francisco has been the
last couple of weeks, seventy three to twenty.

Speaker 3 (02:02:57):
Wow, I would never have guessed that.

Speaker 8 (02:03:00):
Certainly, yea with many three to twenty Packers. And you
know what's really ironic, John, The last time the forty
nine Ers went to the Super Bowl before last year
was in twenty nineteen when they lost to the Chiefs
the first time. The year afterwards, they didn't make the playoffs.

Speaker 3 (02:03:20):
Boy, so they've been up and down like a thermometer.

Speaker 8 (02:03:22):
Yeah, well, listen, it's not like the rest of the
NFC West has given them a chance.

Speaker 3 (02:03:27):
That's true.

Speaker 8 (02:03:28):
The division is monkey. But yeah, you know, the Niners
are one in three in the division. Last year they
were five and one.

Speaker 3 (02:03:37):
Wow. And now at the other end of the spectrum again, Russell,
thank you, my man. I appreciate you as always. Talk
to you next week.

Speaker 8 (02:03:48):
I'd say, so, okay, and next next, Now, in some
ways I'm looking forward to the last four weeks for
this reason then, as well as many others.

Speaker 3 (02:03:59):
Yeah, no more buys, No more buys. Number one and
number two, hey, for the Patriots is to start a
twenty twenty five here already. So here we go. The
evaluation process. If it hasn't already begun, it certainly has
by now.

Speaker 8 (02:04:12):
We have seen more than one instances, even in this
free agency era, that teams that play late one year
can carry that over to the following year, depending on
coaching changes, in personnel incidents like that. And so that's
why you know, no tank you. Yep, I'll just leave
it at that.

Speaker 3 (02:04:31):
No, thank you. Let's see who wants to play. Thank you, sir,
talk to you soon week. Yes, sir, you got it.
The one and only at Backs Football Guru on x
Hey attention, Pat's Nation. The most nail binding action film
of the season, Carry On, Starting tarn Edgerton, Sophia Carson,
and Jason Bateman touched down on Netflix December the thirteenth,

(02:04:51):
just in time for the holidays. Only liquids allowed, blood,
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and of course, our program brought to you by bud Light,
Easy to Drake, Easy to Enjoy, bud Light, the official
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to share. Our friend Klasy Claire says her good Drake

(02:05:13):
may is obvious, but also the tight end duo, which
I mentioned earlier in the show The Bad. Some of
the coaching and coaching decisions pretty obvious. There ugly drops
by the wide receivers. Yeah, I totally understand that. And
our friend Aiden in California, right, John Man. All the
negativity in this town sucks, says Ripe Patino right. I

(02:05:36):
believe people are not seeing the forest through the trees.
We knew this team had no talent. We're in the
midst of a rebuild. I believe this was a year
to see who the players they are only going to
build with, but go to Warwick next year. I have
faith that this team will do right and sign and
draft players for next offseason. We're seeing the disparity and talent.
Now we get address the needs and coaching staff to

(02:05:56):
be able to put the players in the best position.
And now that I'm done with my little rant, I'm
visiting Boston next week. Any recommendations of dinner places or
breakfast places in Boston be greatly appreciated. Well, look, dude,
if you don't go to the North End and get
some of the best Italian on the planet, certainly outside
of Federal Hill in Providence, then you are sadly misdirected.

(02:06:19):
And I'll just start with a Seaport's also a really
nice area to go to in Boston. But you know,
I listen me, I do the Italian thing. I've to
admit I was in the Bahamas this last week because
we talked about That's why we missed the show last week,
I found a Carmines at Atlantis. They have a Carmines restaurant,
Italian restaurant, you know where they serve it old family style.
Check it out. Yes, I went. I know, I know,

(02:06:42):
I'm in the Bahamas. What I'm gonna do. I'm eating
Italian food, right. It was. It was good, it was spectacular.
Same thing. I mean, come on, yeah, I mean, you
can't mess up a good chicken or a good veal parm.
You can't. That's a staple of life up here.

Speaker 1 (02:06:56):
So hungry, I'm literally looking my let's thinking about vill parp.

Speaker 3 (02:07:03):
I know, I know, uh, I'm totally with you on
that one. Hey. Thanks to of course, you know, Evan
Lazar and Karen Grigian and Matt Saint Jean for joining
us here on the program today. Thanks for taking the
time here to be with us and listen to our
stuff here for today. Thanks to the Marine for putting
all together as he always does. So the bye week

(02:07:23):
we get by this week. Next week we'll be back.
We'll actually have a game to talk about with the Patriots,
you know, we'll start their last four week stretch here
playing the Arizona Cardinals. We'll come back same Patch time,
same patch channel next Wednesday. For more right here in
Patriots Playbook. See you then.

Speaker 5 (02:07:42):
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Speaker 1 (02:08:11):
Patriots Unfiltered the world's original podcast, Patriots Unfiltered brings you
inside you atte Stadium for rousing conversations on everything new England, Patriots,
and NFL. Join host Fred Kersh alongside Patriots dot COM's
Paul Parillo, Mike Deso, Evan Lazar Tamara Brown, and Alex
Francisco as they bring you in depth coverage of the team.

Speaker 2 (02:08:29):
He's a red shirt rookie at that point, so it's
really that's his rookie season essentially too, So now we're
really not talking about them, really knowing experience called twenty
twenty six.

Speaker 1 (02:08:38):
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