September 10, 2026 • 39 mins
MMQB with HUGH MILLEN We start with Hugh’s initial thoughts about last night’s game. How did Drew Lock perform after coming in early for the injured Sam Darnold? Ok, let’s just rip the band-aid off- can Drew Lock steer this ship for as long as Sam Darnold is out? What does Hugh think about Darnold’s injury? :30- We are back with Hugh for more MMQB Drake Maye is getting hammered this morning for his last two performances against the Seahawks and while he doesn’t seem to have a lot of problems as a young QB, he sure does have one big one… Hugh breaks down what went wrong for Maye last night. :45- We take a little journey to figure out what would have happened if…
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Thank you. Alright, here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
8 o'clock hour here on this Thursday. The opener is
in the books. It was low scoring. It was a
bit sloppy at times. We had a bad injury last night,
but in the end, the Seahawks win. They begin the
defense of their crown with a 13-10 thriller. Last night
(00:41):
at Lumen Field over the New England Patriots. Don't normally
call 13-10 games thrillers, and yet that kept you on
the edge of your seat, certainly throughout the entire second
half of the football game. And joining us here this morning,
it's a Monday morning quarterback session on a Thursday. It's
our QB1 and the star of this here section of
(01:05):
the show. Hugh Millen is with us here on the
radio program.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Good morning, sir. Good morning. Great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, well, it's great to have a regular season football
game to dissect. Uh, and I know, uh, you can't
wait to chop it up with us here. So, um,
let's just go ahead with your big takeaway from that
game last night.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, I think the definition of a team win, uh, uh,
you know, just being able to, to hang in there,
find a way to, uh, you know, you knew it
was going to be a mutter once your quarterback goes
down to, to figure out a way to, to, uh,
finally get something going offensively. And then, uh, Let's face it,
(01:47):
it got a little bit fortunate for Romeo Dobbs to
have dropped that corner route leading to the interception and
on the next play. And for Drake May to commit
not three interceptions but three high school level, like not
even Friday night. The JV plays on Wednesday. Those were
(02:07):
kind of JV type of mistakes for a quarterback that–
that had accomplished as much as he did a year ago. And,
you know, but the Patriots, you know, I'm going to
just give you two thoughts about the Patriots. You know,
if you go through all the stats and you go
average yard per play success, which is, you know, formula
(02:27):
on the needed yards, you can Google it. And then EPA,
the new expected points added, you go, you know, run defense,
pass defense, run offense, pass off like 12 categories. Are
there any teams that are, in the top 10 in
every single category from a year ago. Well, it turns
(02:48):
out there's two, the Seahawks and the Patriots. And, and then,
and then one more point on the Patriots. You know,
I was looking up the, the college football game this week,
Texas and Ohio state. That's the fifth ranked team against
the first, when you go preseason and you go five
plus one is six. That means that game that we're
(03:10):
going to see this Saturday is the, is the best
matchup of September. Well, then I said, well, I wonder
about in the NFL, if you go by preseason Vegas
odds to win the Superbowl and you do this exact
same formula, the best matchup in all of September in
the NFL was last night. So, uh, you know, just
(03:34):
to find a way to get any win, right. Let alone, uh,
when you're starting quarterback only throw, um, plays five games
and you got to just, you know, put this thing
together with bubble gum and bait, bailing water wire. It just, uh,
you know, Michael Dixon, have a day, young man, uh,
Julian love, have a day, young man, on and on
a lot, a lot, a lot of great play out there.
(03:56):
But really, I think that, um, it's, it's an old cliche.
People talk about team wins, but when your backup quarterback
has to go as long as he did, it's going
to be a team win when you've beat a team
as quality as the Patriots.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Put that into perspective for us, how difficult that is.
Four games into a regular season, your starting quarterback goes down,
you're the backup, and you have to run out on
the football field and try to guide your team to
an opening night victory against a very good football team.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Well, you're probably running plays in a game that you've
never ran in practice. You know, hopefully they try and
reduce the play sheet and give you stuff that you
ran in the summertime. So I'm not saying that the
bulk of what he ran, he hadn't ran in practice
at some point. But I can promise you there are
(04:48):
several plays that he had to execute, talking about Drew Locke,
that he didn't have a rep in practice. And then
you've got the added specter of The entire world's watching,
and there's a certain juice to that game and pageantry
to it that kind of added to it. So I
think it was very difficult. And I thought he played
(05:10):
a good game last night when I did the postgame
show with Dick. Then got up at 325 this morning
is when I had access. Fun, isn't it? Yeah. So
I've been watching tape since 325 a.m. with no coffee.
So I got to produce my own caffeine, but I'll
tell you what, what I watch on the TV or
(05:31):
on the screen, watching the coach's tape, not the TV copy.
But I thought he was better after I studied the
tape than I thought he was last night. And that
just had to do with the plays that, that he
didn't make when you look, there was very few opportunities.
(05:53):
Now I have, I have a couple of minuses. There
was a couple of times where, where he, he missed
plays that I gave him a minus on. I mean,
he had, he missed a touchdown pass on a now
slant to Rashid Shaheed going into the North end zone
that was wide ass open. He ended up throwing the
corner out to to Jackson Smith and Jigba for an incompletion,
(06:16):
and they kicked a field goal. But the way he
managed the pocket, there were a lot of free runners.
That offensive line did not have their best game. I mean,
Abe Lucas, he really struggled in pass protection and guys
in his lap and what have you. So I thought
his handling of the pressure, I'm not talking about the
(06:39):
pressure of the game. I'm talking about the pressure from
the defensive lines. I thought that that was better under
tape review than I had had the impression that it
was last night. And so, um, so he, you know,
there's no question he gets a game ball. Um, you know,
if they're into giving game balls, he'll get one. Yeah. And, uh,
(07:00):
and so, you know, just, you know, if this had
happened against the Cardinals, they'd say, okay, you won the
game with a backup quarterback, but, um, You know, for
this to happen against a team that won the AFC,
good on you, Seattle Seahawks. Well done. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Give me a couple of the pluses then from Drew
Locke that you had written down or a couple plays
that stood out to you. And then who gets the credit,
Cooper Cup on the catch or Drew Locke on the throw?
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah. Well, I've got eight pluses for him.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And, you know, three– we'll go with the three– like
El Marco, really dark black ink, almost double pluses. Yeah,
you're talking, okay, first of all, in the second quarter,
he throws that X dagger, the in route to Shahid
(07:57):
for 21 yards on third and 22. So he's got
three receivers to his left. He's got Njigba on his
right running a deep in route. Well, The coverage, that
was what's called a Tampa 2 coverage. There's a safety
to that side. There's a hole player in the middle
you have to watch out for. And you want to
(08:20):
make sure that that safety doesn't come down off the
roof on you. But then if you look in that area,
then you're going to bring the underneath defenders into the area.
So a hell of a job with his eyes. And
he even did, I wrote down in my notes, he
did a shoulder shimmy. He moved what's called the curl defender.
which is one inside from the flat defender. He moved
(08:44):
him with his shoulders to get to the outside, just
moved him a yard or two and then throw it.
That is extremely high-level quarterbacking. You talked about the corner
route to cup that he threw to the right sideline.
That was cover one. Oh, man, I forgot to get
the Patriots. No, who's number 25? Hopefully you have the rosters.
(09:04):
25 for the Patriots was– I would know.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But I watched from the stadium yesterday, so I didn't
get to watch it the same way.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Covered as well as you can cover. Usually when you
throw in a corner route, you say, okay, I can
take him on the angle that he's going and just
keep him on that same track, or I can flatten him.
I can pull him to a flatter angle towards the sideline.
What you never want to do is throw it up
(09:35):
on the opposite shoulder. Because now you're making a guy
catch almost like a Willie Mays type of thing, but
you can't get a higher level of execution with a
pass and a catch, a one-handed catch that they had.
And the touchdown, the ball was only in the air, what,
(09:56):
five or six yards? Mm-hmm. The one to Njigba for
45 yards?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's, you know, you technically call that a hitch route.
You know, you just turn around, button hook at five,
six yards. Like, you did that when you're in third
grade playing in the street. Like, all right, just a
button hook, right? But that degree of difficulty... So you
get into I-formation, you got two tight ends, and Njigba
(10:20):
has his split tight. He turns to his left, okay?
So he's coming out as a right-handed quarterback. He's going
to turn to his left. Now you take Gray Zabel.
He blocks down, and they totally jailbreak the B-gap. So
he's got a defensive tackle after having– gone to his
(10:40):
left and has to wheel around. He's got somebody completely unblocked,
not even like throw a traffic cone at his ankles,
totally unblocked in the B gap. Um, the, you know, Bradford, um,
he took an L also. So, so there's also a
guy coming from the other side, you know, so two guys, um,
bearing down on him. And when he turns around now,
(11:05):
the way the Patriots played it, you had a, uh, uh,
the corner took the flat. And the safety took the
corner out. This is a very common progression. He probably
ran it in high school. He certainly ran it at Missouri,
and he's run it ever since he's been in the NFL.
It's called Z Spot. A lot of people call it
Snag and what have you. So it's a common concept
(11:29):
with Njigba just sitting there. But there's so much traffic,
and with guys bearing down on him, He had to
turn and in one step, he had to go sidearm
to get it around the defensive lineman. And I'm going
to pause on this thought because when you watch him,
(11:49):
there's basically two kinds of backup quarterbacks. You can put
them in two categories. One is the kind of guy
that you look and you say, He just doesn't have
starter physical traits. So there's going to be a lid
on what he could ever do. But he's got a
really good feel for the game. That would be like
(12:12):
a Sam Howell, the Gramp. Tyler Heineke. Yeah, exactly. That
brand of guy. Or you just say, he's a little
too short, doesn't move great, he's got a lollipop arm.
And then there's the backup quarterback that has starter traits
that And when you, if you look at him for
(12:33):
five minutes, you'd say he looks like a starter. It
takes a long film study to realize that his decision-making
doesn't consistently match starter quality decision-making, but he's got the traits.
And Drew Locke is in the latter category. Drew Locke
is six foot three. He moves great. He's got a
(12:54):
quick release. His, uh, He's got velocity on the ball.
Even the plays that looked easy, he had another one
to Njigba on a little option route where Njigba lined
up in the backfield and then hooked up. He had
to put enough velocity on that to beat the inside defender,
(13:17):
and he did it with his feet going all the way,
his weight coming back because he had guys right in
his face. Again, that's what I was saying. His response
to pressure... was damn good. In the first quarter, he
moved unnecessarily. He closed his throwing position. Throwing position is what?
Hips perpendicular to the line of scrimmage. Left hip closer
(13:41):
to the line, and then again, your hips aligned perpendicular.
If you close it off and get your right hip closer,
now you're out of the throwing position, and the defense
has got an advantage. So he caused a sack where
he could have stayed in the throwing position, found the
check down. It's like he went back to the sideline,
he watched it, they talked about it, and they say, hey, hey,
(14:01):
let's be stable in the pocket here. From that point on,
his pocket navigation and RTP, response to pressure in front
of him, making those kind of throws, he's got the
physical traits. And he showed plenty of that last night. Well,
I think we need to ask that question now.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
You knew I was going to ask it eventually, but
it feels like you've put me right there on the
doorstep to ask now. Sam Darnold's injury going forward and
whether or not Drew Locke can pull off the things
that this team wants to accomplish if he's asked to.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Can he take them all the way?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Is he that good of a backup quarterback that if
Sam Darnold can't play for a while or maybe not
again this year, that you're okay with Drew Locke?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Well, I think we've got to talk about the law
of large numbers. If you flip a coin 10 times,
it's very probable you'll get seven heads or seven tails
or maybe even eight. That would not shock any statistician.
If you flipped it a billion times, every stat professor
(15:10):
in the world will tell you, well, you're going to
get about 500 million tails and about 500 million heads.
Google it, the law of large numbers. So here's what
I would say. The longer you play, if you played
a 17-game season or if a computer, an all-knowing computer,
ran a 1,700-game season, you're going to win more with
(15:31):
Sam Darnold. There's no question. Absolutely. In fact, you're going
to win probably a significant amount more because Sam Darnold's better.
But can you beat the Cardinals?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Can you go on the road and beat the Commanders? Yes.
So I think that that they're feeling OK about it,
given this, you know, if he has to play, you know,
I think if if he's going to miss the probability
is that he's going to miss a week or two. Right.
(16:08):
Or maybe even maybe he even plays against the Cardinals, Darnold,
but they can afford to be a little bit conservative, right,
based on. what you saw from Locke last night. Now,
the part about this that has me concerned is if
you go to the potentials, you go back to the
(16:37):
injury that Bo Jackson had, he had a very similar,
his knee went into the ground, and now there was,
I think there was some kind of dislocation, but the
MRI for for Sam Darnold may show that there was
this slight subluxation last night. And, and there's a few
joints in the body. Obviously any orthoscopic surgeon who's listening,
(16:59):
you know, dwarfs me in terms of the knowledge, but
you know, if you play 25 years and you coach
24 seasons, you end up learning more about this stuff
than you want. Cause you've had players or, or in
my case, you know, you know, I've, I've been injured enough.
But the, what you're really concerned about is there's a
few bones in the body. The ankle, there's a bone
(17:23):
in your wrist right underneath your thumb. There's one in
your shoulder. There's a handful of bones in your body
that it's very delicate how the bone gets its blood supply.
And if you sever that, now you're talking about a
major catastrophic injury. Now, I don't think this is afflicting
(17:46):
Sam Darnold whatsoever, but you are always aware of the
specter of that. And Bo Jackson had a very similar,
and he suffered from a vascular necrosis is the term.
And that's what you would hope. It's very low probability,
(18:08):
but you can't rule it out because these are the
facts we know. We know that he never went back
in the game, that he went into the locker room,
that he still has to have an MRI. An MRI
can always show things that an X-ray, I don't want
(18:28):
to get over my skis and profess knowledge that I
don't have. But what I've learned along the way about
some of these injuries that have delicate blood supplies is
it's no joke. Yeah. And we're probably fine. We're probably fine.
I want to emphasize that. But the degree to which
(18:48):
we are concerned about an unwanted event is the product
of two factors, probability times magnitude. equals your concern. And
so until we hear about the imaging, then we just
kind of hold our breath. Yeah, I'll hold my breath
and you hold your breath. As long as you don't
hold each other's. I would recommend finding other breasts to hold.
(19:12):
Mine are nice. You do you. Yeah, mine are nice.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
It's Hugh Mellon with us, our QB1. We obviously have
a lot more ground to cover. and we will get
to Brian Fleury and Jadarian Price's debut and so many
other things and so many other plays and moments in
that crazy game last night, but I do want to
talk about the secondary, how they responded against Drake May
in the second half, and what went wrong with Drake May,
(19:36):
so we'll do that next.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Sports Radio 93.3 KJR FM. Seahawks bring a twisting four,
Ney fires in the middle, intercepted, Julian.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Love's got it, Love 40, Love to the 32, Seahawks
in business, back-to-back picks.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, we.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Last night, one of three interceptions thrown by Drake May
in the fourth quarter last night as the Seahawks come
from behind a 10-0 deficit to win the opener 13-10.
And we recap it all here this morning on Sports
Radio 93.3 KJR FM with our QB1 top analyst, Hugh Millen,
(20:29):
the Monday morning quarterback session on a Thursday night. And
let's talk about their quarterback here in this segment, Hugh.
And look, I mean, I spent a lot of last season.
I think they're giving Drake May a little too much credit.
For what he's doing in New England. And now all
of a sudden I'm finding myself having to defend Drake
(20:50):
May because the critics are coming out of the woodwork
based off of his postseason performances last year and then
last night's inexplicable three interceptions.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
In the fourth quarter. I mean, he's getting hammered.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
In Boston apparently this morning for his quarterback play. Here's
my conclusion, and I'll let you react to it. I
don't think Drake May has a lot of problems as
a young quarterback in the National Football League, but I
know the biggest one, Mike McDonald.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
You with me on that? Yeah, he does. Look, it
happened before then, the playoffs, he really deteriorated. And yet
you're talking about a guy that last year at age 23,
in year two, he was number one in the NFL
(21:42):
in passer rating, net yards per attempt, explosive play rate,
expected point added per drop back, and expected completion percentage
over expected. I watched one of the– these charts that
the NFL put out in their, their stat portal. And
(22:03):
it had a, it was a graph. It was a
visual one on the vertical axis was, I believe efficiency
on the horizontal axis was a big play. And so
the top right corner would be the best in the
bottom lower would, would be the worst. And so you
have these little dots that are all clustered and then
you have to look closely. And I look like, who's
(22:23):
that dot way up in the right corner, like far
and away blowing everybody away? Oh, it's Drake May. And
so those facts cannot be disputed. Now, if you want
to say that he has crumbled, he'll never, ever play well,
that something happened in the playoffs last year that will
(22:45):
prevent him at age 24 from ever doing it again.
And by the way, he rushed for 450 yards. Last year,
he had five first downs by legs yesterday. I think
you're right. He just has a Mike McDonald problem, and
he ends up having three interceptions in the ballgame that were,
as I said, not just Wednesday night high school. That's
(23:08):
when the JV plays. Inexplicable kind of stuff. Let's go
through them. What did he do wrong? Okay, so the
first one, 14-27 to go in the fourth quarter. Second
and nine at the Seattle 45. He goes play action,
and he's going to open to his left, which means
you're now not going odd steps. You're going even steps.
(23:29):
So he's taking not a seven-step drop, but an eight-step drop. Plus,
he's going to hitch-hitch.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
And.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
he's trying to hit a wheel up the sideline. There's
two ways to get a wheel. You can either, um,
get it right as the, as the wheel wheel route
is where you're going to the flat. And then you
turn up and go vertical. You can either hit it
right off the, the shallow coverage and in front of
the deep coverage, or you can go over the top. Well,
with the timing that he was going eight steps plus
(23:58):
two hitches, there's only one way to get it is
to be over the top of the safety. And so
the safety for Seattle over there who had a pretty
damn good game was Rodney Thomas. And now he can't run.
He's not Kobe Bryant. There's things you saw in the
run support he couldn't do, but he didn't have any
(24:20):
glaring mistakes. And so now he's a half safety on there.
So if you're in the quarterback coaches meet, if you're
Josh McDonald this morning, you're going, dude, you know it's
covered too. Like, how are we going to be that late?
You know the safety is going to get over the NFL. Now,
by scheme, they had a 20-yard hook that was supposed
to hold the safety in front. And that's where... what
(24:42):
can look to be so easy from a camera, the TV,
you actually get at the ground level and your depth perception.
You're like, Oh, I think that the, maybe my 20
yard hook is holding that safety. Well, no Thomas or, uh, uh, sorry. Uh, yeah.
Rodney Thomas, he was backed off enough. Any NFL quarterback
has got to see that. So that that's his first interception. The,
(25:05):
the second one, the Julian one, Julian Love, 925 to go.
What was the score on that one? It was 10-10
at that time. And that was right after the Dobbs
dropped the corner out. So it was third and 14
at the minus 22. Patriots get into a formation where
(25:30):
they have a back on either side. That tells you
right off the bat that Josh McDonald is worried about protection.
Cause only got three receivers going out. So from Julian
love standpoint, he is, he is on the weak side
of the formation, but this is the wrinkle. There's always
something detail. And the detail was, is this, there's a
(25:51):
term called will walk. Okay. Can you say that with me?
Will walk.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
All right. And Will is the linebacker, and when he's
walked out, you can even call it a Will jam.
When the weak side linebacker is jamming the split end,
now that's a form of double coverage. I'm going to
say the Seahawks did it last year because they probably
did it, but they do not have any kind of
(26:16):
a heavy diet of doing that. So they take Drake
Thomas and they jam him over the top of the
split and to the boundary. And there's a safety or
a corner rather over the top of that. So if
you're Julian Love and you're retreating, what am I seeing?
I'm Julian Love. Okay, I'm on the right side of
the field. What do I see? I got the three
(26:38):
receiver side is opposite to me. Um, I got, I'm
on the two receiver side, but I've got Drake Thomas
jamming my split end to my side. So I don't
have to worry about my split end. I just have
to worry about the, the, the tight end who's in
the backfield. He's not going to get vertical on a
third and 14 enough that I have to worry. So
now I can turn and I can poach to the
(26:59):
three receiver side. I, a poach is a term where
you're on the weak side, but you, you, uh, you're
aligned to the weak side, but you look to the
strong side. So now it's a seam route. Um, Drake
May goes five steps from shotgun. He's way late. Five
steps and a hitch. That should be from shotgun. That
should be three steps. You want to hit that ball
(27:20):
between 18 and 22 yards on a seam rock. Anywhere
beyond 22 yards, you're bringing in the deep, you know,
you're late. Well, the ball snapped on the 22. It
was caught by Love on the 47. That's 25 yards.
And so it's very late timing. It's late. Drake may
not understand. And he looked over to his left, uh,
(27:42):
you know, and he had that will walk that will
jam in the person of Drake Thomas, uh, And so
just a bad read, a bad understanding. And it's Julian Love,
who's right now in the prime of his career. He
is savvy enough, knowledgeable enough, but he still is young.
He covers a lot of ground. He takes very good angles.
(28:03):
He's willing to throw his body in there. You know,
just a DB in the dead prime of his career
and playing at a very smart level and made another
big play.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
All right, and then the biggest play was the Josh
Jobe interception to pretty much clinch the game. Drake May
had a field goal. The Patriots had a field goal.
If they just don't turn the ball over and instead
he turns the ball over.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, and a few things going on there. So the
Seahawks are playing a three deep four under zone and
Julian Love is the flat defender. Now the Seahawks are
in the top five in the league. in terms of
defenses with two safeties high. In this case, it's only
a one safety high. And so instead of having three
(28:53):
guys underneath, there's four guys underneath. If Julian Love was
the flat defender, now he'd be a back-end guy if
it was a two high. But if it was a
two high structure, then the flat defender... would be aligned
on the inside of what's called the number two, counting
outside in. He would align inside. But because it's a
(29:15):
three deep four under, now Julian Love, who's close to
the line of scrimmage, he's going to line up outside
of the tight end instead of inside. The tight end's
running an outside breaking route. So Julian Love has leverage
on the tight end. Uh, that was, that was a 85, uh,
(29:37):
Hunter Henry.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's the best idea. So. but but but now from
a a patriot perspective number 13 the big receiver um
mac holland mac holland's there's a term called morgo m-o-r-g-o
Morgo mandatory outside release go route. If you have somebody
from the inside breaking out, you must do a Morgo. Um,
(30:01):
I was on a team. We called it a bus ticket. Uh, um,
like even if you get jammed into the Gatorade and
you're out of bounds, you have to take an outside
release to take the corner out and get him outside.
So 13 bus on that play, he go, he takes
an inside release and he's got a go route. He's
got the clear out what that allows is, is that
(30:24):
Job turns inside, not outside, because of the inside release.
So his eyes are looking at the receiver, but he's
also in a much better position to see the ball.
And then there's a further point on this. You got
Demarcus Lawrence, the right tackle for the Patriots. He tried
(30:46):
to cut him the way you would in the quick game.
He just, he goes right at his knees. Lawrence recognizes this.
He uses his hands. He jumps over. So now Drake may.
So what does Drake may see? He says, Oh, he's
got with, I got with a spoon to my left.
I don't want to go over there. I want to go.
What I want is to go to Hunter Henry against,
(31:10):
against Julian love. Oh, they're in a, they're not usually
in a, in a four under they're usually in a
three under, but I can still beat him. But now, oh,
what the hell, I've got Demarcus Lawrence right in my lap.
So now he can't throw on time against Julian Love.
So now he just says, oh, wait, wait, wait. I
(31:32):
know in my scouting report, even going back to the
Super Bowl, that we can pick on Josh Jobe, and
certainly with a 6'4, Matt Collins is at 6'4, 221.
I got a rebounding advantage. I'll throw it up. this
is what I'm, I'm speculating, um, is going through his
head and it was a horrible play. You know, if
(31:54):
he's going to give him a chance, he's got to
give him a better chance. And yet that's, that's what
happened in that is, uh, is, is, is that you
got to Marcus Lawrence, you got the cover three with
Julian love on the outside. Julian love was able to
fire down on it and, and cover it. And now
he's goes, okay, what's my, my, my next option was
(32:16):
let me try and win the game with a rebound.
And he just, he underthrew the ball just for him. Yeah. Yeah.
And the toe dance by, by a corner, that was
a wide risk. That was Chris Carter. Remember Chris Carter?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Remember him toe dancing and Larry Fitzgerald all day. I'll
be like that. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's doing fresh
Fred Astaire stuff, man, on those guidelines for, for a corner. So, yeah, he,
he would probably prefer to, Think of somebody beside Fred Astaire,
but we'll let that go.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
All right.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Hugh Millen is with us. We've got a lot more
ground to cover.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Like I said, I do want to get into Brian
Flory and Jadarian Price. Probably save that for the top
of the hour at 9 o'clock. But there's some other
things that we can cover. In our next segment, so
much to talk about in last night's 13-10 win over
the New England Patriots.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Fascinating game.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
And we got the fascinating guy to give us all
the fascinating analysis.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Right here on Sports Radio 93.3 KJR FM. It's a block. Block.
Up top. For Cuff, he made a catch. Cooper Cuff.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Shades of that amazing grab he made in Philadelphia in
the playoff game.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
With the Rams a few years ago. That was big.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Now, that's a play that you know impacted the game, right?
That's right before your eyes. That was a big play
in the end. We needed a big play at that
point in the game. But, Hugh, I've got to ask
you about, because I'd like to kind of know in
an alternate universe, plays that don't happen.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And how they impact the game.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I'd like to be able to sit on the cloud
with the Archangel Gabriel and ask him, hey, if the
Patriots would have ran that play last night in that
game against the Seahawks before Mike McDonald called what seemed
to be kind of an odd time for a timeout.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Had they run that play?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Had Mike not gotten the timeout called, what would have happened?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
So I'll ask you, what would have happened? Yeah. Well,
we don't know how the Patriots might have exploited Seattle's
unsound defense. I'll tell you what I can say with 99.9%
certainty happened. The Seahawks were up in a cover zero
(34:39):
look with eight men on the line of scrimmage. And
what cover zero means is there's man-to-man with the eligible
receivers outside. and there's no safety help whatsoever. And so
it's going to be an all-out, some people call it
casino blitz, call it whatever terminology you want. The Patriots
(35:01):
took number 85, Hunter Henry, the tight end, and against
that look, they just said, screw it. We'll put him
up two yards behind the line of scrimmage right there
in the A-gap to block. And that was where Rodney
Thomas was. who's filling in for Okada, who's filling in
(35:21):
for Kobe Bryant, and there's no Bud Clark, so we're
down to a guy literally who was on the street
a week ago in Rodney Thomas, who still played pretty
damn well. Well, his coverage assignment, he had 85, and
he originally lined up, but somehow through some communication or miscommunication,
(35:44):
he then walked out to the edge of Now, everything
would have been fine if the Patriots snapped the ball
and Hunter Henry had just stayed in the block. But
what if he had released? What if he had bluff
blocked and ran right down the middle of the field,
which Josh McDaniels has been known to do? Tom Brady,
(36:06):
they used to pants people with guys that are seemingly
running backs in blitz protection. They step up like they're
going to block, and then they bluff, and then they release.
And Tom Brady has had a number of wide open
walk-ins with that. And so Mike McDonald, he's sitting there,
he's waving to go, cover 85, cover 85. And then
(36:27):
he had to call a timeout because it would have
looked really gnarly on national TV for him, Mike McDonald,
to get pantsed in the manner I just described because
Hunter Henry would have gone right down. I'm going to
go to the way back machine for Seahawks fans. When
Efren Herrera, ran right through the middle of the field
goal formation on a Monday night football against the Falcons,
(36:48):
and Jim Zorn hit him right down the middle. Yeah,
that happened. That's not a dream I had. That's a kicker, right?
That's a kicker. That's this little chubby Mexican guy that
looks like he's had too many burritos, man. Somehow he's
waddling down. He made the catch. It was incredible. But, yeah,
(37:11):
that could have happened had they not adjusted. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Um, another feather in the cap for Mike McDonald then.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah. Well, he just knew, okay, this is a five
alarm fire here. I got to put this out immediately. Yeah.
And good, good thing he had a.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
And, and look at timeouts right there were pretty valuable
to have. So, um, to say, Hey, I got to
burn one. I got to burn one of these and
then we'll worry about it later.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
You have to have an answer for five eligible receivers
when you're in cover zero. Like, how are we going
to do it? And sometimes it's a defensive end peeling
if the running back happens to peel on a swing route. Like,
sometimes you say, that's not really sound. If they know
how to execute, they're going to beat us. But at
least it's remotely sound. But the way that they were
(38:00):
fixing to snap that ball, there was literally nobody for
an eligible receiver. And Hunter Henry, one of the better
tight ends in the league, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I just want to say for the record that one
of my favorite football cards as a kid was Efren Herrera.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Wasn't he a delight? Yeah, I loved the Efren Herrera.
He was a fan favorite. We all loved Efren, man.
But we never smiled wider than when he ran down
the middle of the field. Who would even design that play?
If you put that on a whiteboard, you're fired. You're fired.
Just the idea that you think that would work. But
it worked. That's the greatest pass Jim Zorn ever completed
(38:39):
in his life. How do you hit that target? I mean,
you have to just walk it to him, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Our Monday morning quarterback session continues. We've got one more
fat segment, and we've got a lot of ground to cover.
We're going to talk about some penalties last night, including
some really dumb ones. Jadarian Price's debut, Brian Fleury's debut.
So a lot more ground to cover with our QB1
here on this Monday morning quarterback session on a Thursday,
(39:08):
Sports Radio 93.3 KJRFM.
Thank you. Alright, here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
8 o'clock hour here on this Thursday. The opener is
in the books. It was low scoring. It was a
bit sloppy at times. We had a bad injury last night,
but in the end, the Seahawks win. They begin the
defense of their crown with a 13-10 thriller. Last night
(00:41):
at Lumen Field over the New England Patriots. Don't normally
call 13-10 games thrillers, and yet that kept you on
the edge of your seat, certainly throughout the entire second
half of the football game. And joining us here this morning,
it's a Monday morning quarterback session on a Thursday. It's
our QB1 and the star of this here section of
(01:05):
the show. Hugh Millen is with us here on the
radio program.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Good morning, sir. Good morning. Great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, well, it's great to have a regular season football
game to dissect. Uh, and I know, uh, you can't
wait to chop it up with us here. So, um,
let's just go ahead with your big takeaway from that
game last night.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, I think the definition of a team win, uh, uh,
you know, just being able to, to hang in there,
find a way to, uh, you know, you knew it
was going to be a mutter once your quarterback goes
down to, to figure out a way to, to, uh,
finally get something going offensively. And then, uh, Let's face it,
(01:47):
it got a little bit fortunate for Romeo Dobbs to
have dropped that corner route leading to the interception and
on the next play. And for Drake May to commit
not three interceptions but three high school level, like not
even Friday night. The JV plays on Wednesday. Those were
(02:07):
kind of JV type of mistakes for a quarterback that–
that had accomplished as much as he did a year ago. And,
you know, but the Patriots, you know, I'm going to
just give you two thoughts about the Patriots. You know,
if you go through all the stats and you go
average yard per play success, which is, you know, formula
(02:27):
on the needed yards, you can Google it. And then EPA,
the new expected points added, you go, you know, run defense,
pass defense, run offense, pass off like 12 categories. Are
there any teams that are, in the top 10 in
every single category from a year ago. Well, it turns
(02:48):
out there's two, the Seahawks and the Patriots. And, and then,
and then one more point on the Patriots. You know,
I was looking up the, the college football game this week,
Texas and Ohio state. That's the fifth ranked team against
the first, when you go preseason and you go five
plus one is six. That means that game that we're
(03:10):
going to see this Saturday is the, is the best
matchup of September. Well, then I said, well, I wonder
about in the NFL, if you go by preseason Vegas
odds to win the Superbowl and you do this exact
same formula, the best matchup in all of September in
the NFL was last night. So, uh, you know, just
(03:34):
to find a way to get any win, right. Let alone, uh,
when you're starting quarterback only throw, um, plays five games
and you got to just, you know, put this thing
together with bubble gum and bait, bailing water wire. It just, uh,
you know, Michael Dixon, have a day, young man, uh,
Julian love, have a day, young man, on and on
a lot, a lot, a lot of great play out there.
(03:56):
But really, I think that, um, it's, it's an old cliche.
People talk about team wins, but when your backup quarterback
has to go as long as he did, it's going
to be a team win when you've beat a team
as quality as the Patriots.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Put that into perspective for us, how difficult that is.
Four games into a regular season, your starting quarterback goes down,
you're the backup, and you have to run out on
the football field and try to guide your team to
an opening night victory against a very good football team.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Well, you're probably running plays in a game that you've
never ran in practice. You know, hopefully they try and
reduce the play sheet and give you stuff that you
ran in the summertime. So I'm not saying that the
bulk of what he ran, he hadn't ran in practice
at some point. But I can promise you there are
(04:48):
several plays that he had to execute, talking about Drew Locke,
that he didn't have a rep in practice. And then
you've got the added specter of The entire world's watching,
and there's a certain juice to that game and pageantry
to it that kind of added to it. So I
think it was very difficult. And I thought he played
(05:10):
a good game last night when I did the postgame
show with Dick. Then got up at 325 this morning
is when I had access. Fun, isn't it? Yeah. So
I've been watching tape since 325 a.m. with no coffee.
So I got to produce my own caffeine, but I'll
tell you what, what I watch on the TV or
(05:31):
on the screen, watching the coach's tape, not the TV copy.
But I thought he was better after I studied the
tape than I thought he was last night. And that
just had to do with the plays that, that he
didn't make when you look, there was very few opportunities.
(05:53):
Now I have, I have a couple of minuses. There
was a couple of times where, where he, he missed
plays that I gave him a minus on. I mean,
he had, he missed a touchdown pass on a now
slant to Rashid Shaheed going into the North end zone
that was wide ass open. He ended up throwing the
corner out to to Jackson Smith and Jigba for an incompletion,
(06:16):
and they kicked a field goal. But the way he
managed the pocket, there were a lot of free runners.
That offensive line did not have their best game. I mean,
Abe Lucas, he really struggled in pass protection and guys
in his lap and what have you. So I thought
his handling of the pressure, I'm not talking about the
(06:39):
pressure of the game. I'm talking about the pressure from
the defensive lines. I thought that that was better under
tape review than I had had the impression that it
was last night. And so, um, so he, you know,
there's no question he gets a game ball. Um, you know,
if they're into giving game balls, he'll get one. Yeah. And, uh,
(07:00):
and so, you know, just, you know, if this had
happened against the Cardinals, they'd say, okay, you won the
game with a backup quarterback, but, um, You know, for
this to happen against a team that won the AFC,
good on you, Seattle Seahawks. Well done. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Give me a couple of the pluses then from Drew
Locke that you had written down or a couple plays
that stood out to you. And then who gets the credit,
Cooper Cup on the catch or Drew Locke on the throw?
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah. Well, I've got eight pluses for him.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And, you know, three– we'll go with the three– like
El Marco, really dark black ink, almost double pluses. Yeah,
you're talking, okay, first of all, in the second quarter,
he throws that X dagger, the in route to Shahid
(07:57):
for 21 yards on third and 22. So he's got
three receivers to his left. He's got Njigba on his
right running a deep in route. Well, The coverage, that
was what's called a Tampa 2 coverage. There's a safety
to that side. There's a hole player in the middle
you have to watch out for. And you want to
(08:20):
make sure that that safety doesn't come down off the
roof on you. But then if you look in that area,
then you're going to bring the underneath defenders into the area.
So a hell of a job with his eyes. And
he even did, I wrote down in my notes, he
did a shoulder shimmy. He moved what's called the curl defender.
which is one inside from the flat defender. He moved
(08:44):
him with his shoulders to get to the outside, just
moved him a yard or two and then throw it.
That is extremely high-level quarterbacking. You talked about the corner
route to cup that he threw to the right sideline.
That was cover one. Oh, man, I forgot to get
the Patriots. No, who's number 25? Hopefully you have the rosters.
(09:04):
25 for the Patriots was– I would know.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But I watched from the stadium yesterday, so I didn't
get to watch it the same way.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Covered as well as you can cover. Usually when you
throw in a corner route, you say, okay, I can
take him on the angle that he's going and just
keep him on that same track, or I can flatten him.
I can pull him to a flatter angle towards the sideline.
What you never want to do is throw it up
(09:35):
on the opposite shoulder. Because now you're making a guy
catch almost like a Willie Mays type of thing, but
you can't get a higher level of execution with a
pass and a catch, a one-handed catch that they had.
And the touchdown, the ball was only in the air, what,
(09:56):
five or six yards? Mm-hmm. The one to Njigba for
45 yards?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's, you know, you technically call that a hitch route.
You know, you just turn around, button hook at five,
six yards. Like, you did that when you're in third
grade playing in the street. Like, all right, just a
button hook, right? But that degree of difficulty... So you
get into I-formation, you got two tight ends, and Njigba
(10:20):
has his split tight. He turns to his left, okay?
So he's coming out as a right-handed quarterback. He's going
to turn to his left. Now you take Gray Zabel.
He blocks down, and they totally jailbreak the B-gap. So
he's got a defensive tackle after having– gone to his
(10:40):
left and has to wheel around. He's got somebody completely unblocked,
not even like throw a traffic cone at his ankles,
totally unblocked in the B gap. Um, the, you know, Bradford, um,
he took an L also. So, so there's also a
guy coming from the other side, you know, so two guys, um,
bearing down on him. And when he turns around now,
(11:05):
the way the Patriots played it, you had a, uh, uh,
the corner took the flat. And the safety took the
corner out. This is a very common progression. He probably
ran it in high school. He certainly ran it at Missouri,
and he's run it ever since he's been in the NFL.
It's called Z Spot. A lot of people call it
Snag and what have you. So it's a common concept
(11:29):
with Njigba just sitting there. But there's so much traffic,
and with guys bearing down on him, He had to
turn and in one step, he had to go sidearm
to get it around the defensive lineman. And I'm going
to pause on this thought because when you watch him,
(11:49):
there's basically two kinds of backup quarterbacks. You can put
them in two categories. One is the kind of guy
that you look and you say, He just doesn't have
starter physical traits. So there's going to be a lid
on what he could ever do. But he's got a
really good feel for the game. That would be like
(12:12):
a Sam Howell, the Gramp. Tyler Heineke. Yeah, exactly. That
brand of guy. Or you just say, he's a little
too short, doesn't move great, he's got a lollipop arm.
And then there's the backup quarterback that has starter traits
that And when you, if you look at him for
(12:33):
five minutes, you'd say he looks like a starter. It
takes a long film study to realize that his decision-making
doesn't consistently match starter quality decision-making, but he's got the traits.
And Drew Locke is in the latter category. Drew Locke
is six foot three. He moves great. He's got a
(12:54):
quick release. His, uh, He's got velocity on the ball.
Even the plays that looked easy, he had another one
to Njigba on a little option route where Njigba lined
up in the backfield and then hooked up. He had
to put enough velocity on that to beat the inside defender,
(13:17):
and he did it with his feet going all the way,
his weight coming back because he had guys right in
his face. Again, that's what I was saying. His response
to pressure... was damn good. In the first quarter, he
moved unnecessarily. He closed his throwing position. Throwing position is what?
Hips perpendicular to the line of scrimmage. Left hip closer
(13:41):
to the line, and then again, your hips aligned perpendicular.
If you close it off and get your right hip closer,
now you're out of the throwing position, and the defense
has got an advantage. So he caused a sack where
he could have stayed in the throwing position, found the
check down. It's like he went back to the sideline,
he watched it, they talked about it, and they say, hey, hey,
(14:01):
let's be stable in the pocket here. From that point on,
his pocket navigation and RTP, response to pressure in front
of him, making those kind of throws, he's got the
physical traits. And he showed plenty of that last night. Well,
I think we need to ask that question now.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
You knew I was going to ask it eventually, but
it feels like you've put me right there on the
doorstep to ask now. Sam Darnold's injury going forward and
whether or not Drew Locke can pull off the things
that this team wants to accomplish if he's asked to.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Can he take them all the way?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Is he that good of a backup quarterback that if
Sam Darnold can't play for a while or maybe not
again this year, that you're okay with Drew Locke?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Well, I think we've got to talk about the law
of large numbers. If you flip a coin 10 times,
it's very probable you'll get seven heads or seven tails
or maybe even eight. That would not shock any statistician.
If you flipped it a billion times, every stat professor
(15:10):
in the world will tell you, well, you're going to
get about 500 million tails and about 500 million heads.
Google it, the law of large numbers. So here's what
I would say. The longer you play, if you played
a 17-game season or if a computer, an all-knowing computer,
ran a 1,700-game season, you're going to win more with
(15:31):
Sam Darnold. There's no question. Absolutely. In fact, you're going
to win probably a significant amount more because Sam Darnold's better.
But can you beat the Cardinals?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Can you go on the road and beat the Commanders? Yes.
So I think that that they're feeling OK about it,
given this, you know, if he has to play, you know,
I think if if he's going to miss the probability
is that he's going to miss a week or two. Right.
(16:08):
Or maybe even maybe he even plays against the Cardinals, Darnold,
but they can afford to be a little bit conservative, right,
based on. what you saw from Locke last night. Now,
the part about this that has me concerned is if
you go to the potentials, you go back to the
(16:37):
injury that Bo Jackson had, he had a very similar,
his knee went into the ground, and now there was,
I think there was some kind of dislocation, but the
MRI for for Sam Darnold may show that there was
this slight subluxation last night. And, and there's a few
joints in the body. Obviously any orthoscopic surgeon who's listening,
(16:59):
you know, dwarfs me in terms of the knowledge, but
you know, if you play 25 years and you coach
24 seasons, you end up learning more about this stuff
than you want. Cause you've had players or, or in
my case, you know, you know, I've, I've been injured enough.
But the, what you're really concerned about is there's a
few bones in the body. The ankle, there's a bone
(17:23):
in your wrist right underneath your thumb. There's one in
your shoulder. There's a handful of bones in your body
that it's very delicate how the bone gets its blood supply.
And if you sever that, now you're talking about a
major catastrophic injury. Now, I don't think this is afflicting
(17:46):
Sam Darnold whatsoever, but you are always aware of the
specter of that. And Bo Jackson had a very similar,
and he suffered from a vascular necrosis is the term.
And that's what you would hope. It's very low probability,
(18:08):
but you can't rule it out because these are the
facts we know. We know that he never went back
in the game, that he went into the locker room,
that he still has to have an MRI. An MRI
can always show things that an X-ray, I don't want
(18:28):
to get over my skis and profess knowledge that I
don't have. But what I've learned along the way about
some of these injuries that have delicate blood supplies is
it's no joke. Yeah. And we're probably fine. We're probably fine.
I want to emphasize that. But the degree to which
(18:48):
we are concerned about an unwanted event is the product
of two factors, probability times magnitude. equals your concern. And
so until we hear about the imaging, then we just
kind of hold our breath. Yeah, I'll hold my breath
and you hold your breath. As long as you don't
hold each other's. I would recommend finding other breasts to hold.
(19:12):
Mine are nice. You do you. Yeah, mine are nice.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
It's Hugh Mellon with us, our QB1. We obviously have
a lot more ground to cover. and we will get
to Brian Fleury and Jadarian Price's debut and so many
other things and so many other plays and moments in
that crazy game last night, but I do want to
talk about the secondary, how they responded against Drake May
in the second half, and what went wrong with Drake May,
(19:36):
so we'll do that next.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Sports Radio 93.3 KJR FM. Seahawks bring a twisting four,
Ney fires in the middle, intercepted, Julian.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Love's got it, Love 40, Love to the 32, Seahawks
in business, back-to-back picks.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, we.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Last night, one of three interceptions thrown by Drake May
in the fourth quarter last night as the Seahawks come
from behind a 10-0 deficit to win the opener 13-10.
And we recap it all here this morning on Sports
Radio 93.3 KJR FM with our QB1 top analyst, Hugh Millen,
(20:29):
the Monday morning quarterback session on a Thursday night. And
let's talk about their quarterback here in this segment, Hugh.
And look, I mean, I spent a lot of last season.
I think they're giving Drake May a little too much credit.
For what he's doing in New England. And now all
of a sudden I'm finding myself having to defend Drake
(20:50):
May because the critics are coming out of the woodwork
based off of his postseason performances last year and then
last night's inexplicable three interceptions.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
In the fourth quarter. I mean, he's getting hammered.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
In Boston apparently this morning for his quarterback play. Here's
my conclusion, and I'll let you react to it. I
don't think Drake May has a lot of problems as
a young quarterback in the National Football League, but I
know the biggest one, Mike McDonald.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
You with me on that? Yeah, he does. Look, it
happened before then, the playoffs, he really deteriorated. And yet
you're talking about a guy that last year at age 23,
in year two, he was number one in the NFL
(21:42):
in passer rating, net yards per attempt, explosive play rate,
expected point added per drop back, and expected completion percentage
over expected. I watched one of the– these charts that
the NFL put out in their, their stat portal. And
(22:03):
it had a, it was a graph. It was a
visual one on the vertical axis was, I believe efficiency
on the horizontal axis was a big play. And so
the top right corner would be the best in the
bottom lower would, would be the worst. And so you
have these little dots that are all clustered and then
you have to look closely. And I look like, who's
(22:23):
that dot way up in the right corner, like far
and away blowing everybody away? Oh, it's Drake May. And
so those facts cannot be disputed. Now, if you want
to say that he has crumbled, he'll never, ever play well,
that something happened in the playoffs last year that will
(22:45):
prevent him at age 24 from ever doing it again.
And by the way, he rushed for 450 yards. Last year,
he had five first downs by legs yesterday. I think
you're right. He just has a Mike McDonald problem, and
he ends up having three interceptions in the ballgame that were,
as I said, not just Wednesday night high school. That's
(23:08):
when the JV plays. Inexplicable kind of stuff. Let's go
through them. What did he do wrong? Okay, so the
first one, 14-27 to go in the fourth quarter. Second
and nine at the Seattle 45. He goes play action,
and he's going to open to his left, which means
you're now not going odd steps. You're going even steps.
(23:29):
So he's taking not a seven-step drop, but an eight-step drop. Plus,
he's going to hitch-hitch.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
And.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
he's trying to hit a wheel up the sideline. There's
two ways to get a wheel. You can either, um,
get it right as the, as the wheel wheel route
is where you're going to the flat. And then you
turn up and go vertical. You can either hit it
right off the, the shallow coverage and in front of
the deep coverage, or you can go over the top. Well,
with the timing that he was going eight steps plus
(23:58):
two hitches, there's only one way to get it is
to be over the top of the safety. And so
the safety for Seattle over there who had a pretty
damn good game was Rodney Thomas. And now he can't run.
He's not Kobe Bryant. There's things you saw in the
run support he couldn't do, but he didn't have any
(24:20):
glaring mistakes. And so now he's a half safety on there.
So if you're in the quarterback coaches meet, if you're
Josh McDonald this morning, you're going, dude, you know it's
covered too. Like, how are we going to be that late?
You know the safety is going to get over the NFL. Now,
by scheme, they had a 20-yard hook that was supposed
to hold the safety in front. And that's where... what
(24:42):
can look to be so easy from a camera, the TV,
you actually get at the ground level and your depth perception.
You're like, Oh, I think that the, maybe my 20
yard hook is holding that safety. Well, no Thomas or, uh, uh, sorry. Uh, yeah.
Rodney Thomas, he was backed off enough. Any NFL quarterback
has got to see that. So that that's his first interception. The,
(25:05):
the second one, the Julian one, Julian Love, 925 to go.
What was the score on that one? It was 10-10
at that time. And that was right after the Dobbs
dropped the corner out. So it was third and 14
at the minus 22. Patriots get into a formation where
(25:30):
they have a back on either side. That tells you
right off the bat that Josh McDonald is worried about protection.
Cause only got three receivers going out. So from Julian
love standpoint, he is, he is on the weak side
of the formation, but this is the wrinkle. There's always
something detail. And the detail was, is this, there's a
(25:51):
term called will walk. Okay. Can you say that with me?
Will walk.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
All right. And Will is the linebacker, and when he's
walked out, you can even call it a Will jam.
When the weak side linebacker is jamming the split end,
now that's a form of double coverage. I'm going to
say the Seahawks did it last year because they probably
did it, but they do not have any kind of
(26:16):
a heavy diet of doing that. So they take Drake
Thomas and they jam him over the top of the
split and to the boundary. And there's a safety or
a corner rather over the top of that. So if
you're Julian Love and you're retreating, what am I seeing?
I'm Julian Love. Okay, I'm on the right side of
the field. What do I see? I got the three
(26:38):
receiver side is opposite to me. Um, I got, I'm
on the two receiver side, but I've got Drake Thomas
jamming my split end to my side. So I don't
have to worry about my split end. I just have
to worry about the, the, the tight end who's in
the backfield. He's not going to get vertical on a
third and 14 enough that I have to worry. So
now I can turn and I can poach to the
(26:59):
three receiver side. I, a poach is a term where
you're on the weak side, but you, you, uh, you're
aligned to the weak side, but you look to the
strong side. So now it's a seam route. Um, Drake
May goes five steps from shotgun. He's way late. Five
steps and a hitch. That should be from shotgun. That
should be three steps. You want to hit that ball
(27:20):
between 18 and 22 yards on a seam rock. Anywhere
beyond 22 yards, you're bringing in the deep, you know,
you're late. Well, the ball snapped on the 22. It
was caught by Love on the 47. That's 25 yards.
And so it's very late timing. It's late. Drake may
not understand. And he looked over to his left, uh,
(27:42):
you know, and he had that will walk that will
jam in the person of Drake Thomas, uh, And so
just a bad read, a bad understanding. And it's Julian Love,
who's right now in the prime of his career. He
is savvy enough, knowledgeable enough, but he still is young.
He covers a lot of ground. He takes very good angles.
(28:03):
He's willing to throw his body in there. You know,
just a DB in the dead prime of his career
and playing at a very smart level and made another
big play.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
All right, and then the biggest play was the Josh
Jobe interception to pretty much clinch the game. Drake May
had a field goal. The Patriots had a field goal.
If they just don't turn the ball over and instead
he turns the ball over.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, and a few things going on there. So the
Seahawks are playing a three deep four under zone and
Julian Love is the flat defender. Now the Seahawks are
in the top five in the league. in terms of
defenses with two safeties high. In this case, it's only
a one safety high. And so instead of having three
(28:53):
guys underneath, there's four guys underneath. If Julian Love was
the flat defender, now he'd be a back-end guy if
it was a two high. But if it was a
two high structure, then the flat defender... would be aligned
on the inside of what's called the number two, counting
outside in. He would align inside. But because it's a
(29:15):
three deep four under, now Julian Love, who's close to
the line of scrimmage, he's going to line up outside
of the tight end instead of inside. The tight end's
running an outside breaking route. So Julian Love has leverage
on the tight end. Uh, that was, that was a 85, uh,
(29:37):
Hunter Henry.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's the best idea. So. but but but now from
a a patriot perspective number 13 the big receiver um
mac holland mac holland's there's a term called morgo m-o-r-g-o
Morgo mandatory outside release go route. If you have somebody
from the inside breaking out, you must do a Morgo. Um,
(30:01):
I was on a team. We called it a bus ticket. Uh, um,
like even if you get jammed into the Gatorade and
you're out of bounds, you have to take an outside
release to take the corner out and get him outside.
So 13 bus on that play, he go, he takes
an inside release and he's got a go route. He's
got the clear out what that allows is, is that
(30:24):
Job turns inside, not outside, because of the inside release.
So his eyes are looking at the receiver, but he's
also in a much better position to see the ball.
And then there's a further point on this. You got
Demarcus Lawrence, the right tackle for the Patriots. He tried
(30:46):
to cut him the way you would in the quick game.
He just, he goes right at his knees. Lawrence recognizes this.
He uses his hands. He jumps over. So now Drake may.
So what does Drake may see? He says, Oh, he's
got with, I got with a spoon to my left.
I don't want to go over there. I want to go.
What I want is to go to Hunter Henry against,
(31:10):
against Julian love. Oh, they're in a, they're not usually
in a, in a four under they're usually in a
three under, but I can still beat him. But now, oh,
what the hell, I've got Demarcus Lawrence right in my lap.
So now he can't throw on time against Julian Love.
So now he just says, oh, wait, wait, wait. I
(31:32):
know in my scouting report, even going back to the
Super Bowl, that we can pick on Josh Jobe, and
certainly with a 6'4, Matt Collins is at 6'4, 221.
I got a rebounding advantage. I'll throw it up. this
is what I'm, I'm speculating, um, is going through his
head and it was a horrible play. You know, if
(31:54):
he's going to give him a chance, he's got to
give him a better chance. And yet that's, that's what
happened in that is, uh, is, is, is that you
got to Marcus Lawrence, you got the cover three with
Julian love on the outside. Julian love was able to
fire down on it and, and cover it. And now
he's goes, okay, what's my, my, my next option was
(32:16):
let me try and win the game with a rebound.
And he just, he underthrew the ball just for him. Yeah. Yeah.
And the toe dance by, by a corner, that was
a wide risk. That was Chris Carter. Remember Chris Carter?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Remember him toe dancing and Larry Fitzgerald all day. I'll
be like that. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's doing fresh
Fred Astaire stuff, man, on those guidelines for, for a corner. So, yeah, he,
he would probably prefer to, Think of somebody beside Fred Astaire,
but we'll let that go.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
All right.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Hugh Millen is with us. We've got a lot more
ground to cover.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Like I said, I do want to get into Brian
Flory and Jadarian Price. Probably save that for the top
of the hour at 9 o'clock. But there's some other
things that we can cover. In our next segment, so
much to talk about in last night's 13-10 win over
the New England Patriots.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Fascinating game.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
And we got the fascinating guy to give us all
the fascinating analysis.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Right here on Sports Radio 93.3 KJR FM. It's a block. Block.
Up top. For Cuff, he made a catch. Cooper Cuff.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Shades of that amazing grab he made in Philadelphia in
the playoff game.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
With the Rams a few years ago. That was big.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Now, that's a play that you know impacted the game, right?
That's right before your eyes. That was a big play
in the end. We needed a big play at that
point in the game. But, Hugh, I've got to ask
you about, because I'd like to kind of know in
an alternate universe, plays that don't happen.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And how they impact the game.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I'd like to be able to sit on the cloud
with the Archangel Gabriel and ask him, hey, if the
Patriots would have ran that play last night in that
game against the Seahawks before Mike McDonald called what seemed
to be kind of an odd time for a timeout.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Had they run that play?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Had Mike not gotten the timeout called, what would have happened?
Speaker 1 (34:17):
So I'll ask you, what would have happened? Yeah. Well,
we don't know how the Patriots might have exploited Seattle's
unsound defense. I'll tell you what I can say with 99.9%
certainty happened. The Seahawks were up in a cover zero
(34:39):
look with eight men on the line of scrimmage. And
what cover zero means is there's man-to-man with the eligible
receivers outside. and there's no safety help whatsoever. And so
it's going to be an all-out, some people call it
casino blitz, call it whatever terminology you want. The Patriots
(35:01):
took number 85, Hunter Henry, the tight end, and against
that look, they just said, screw it. We'll put him
up two yards behind the line of scrimmage right there
in the A-gap to block. And that was where Rodney
Thomas was. who's filling in for Okada, who's filling in
(35:21):
for Kobe Bryant, and there's no Bud Clark, so we're
down to a guy literally who was on the street
a week ago in Rodney Thomas, who still played pretty
damn well. Well, his coverage assignment, he had 85, and
he originally lined up, but somehow through some communication or miscommunication,
(35:44):
he then walked out to the edge of Now, everything
would have been fine if the Patriots snapped the ball
and Hunter Henry had just stayed in the block. But
what if he had released? What if he had bluff
blocked and ran right down the middle of the field,
which Josh McDaniels has been known to do? Tom Brady,
(36:06):
they used to pants people with guys that are seemingly
running backs in blitz protection. They step up like they're
going to block, and then they bluff, and then they release.
And Tom Brady has had a number of wide open
walk-ins with that. And so Mike McDonald, he's sitting there,
he's waving to go, cover 85, cover 85. And then
(36:27):
he had to call a timeout because it would have
looked really gnarly on national TV for him, Mike McDonald,
to get pantsed in the manner I just described because
Hunter Henry would have gone right down. I'm going to
go to the way back machine for Seahawks fans. When
Efren Herrera, ran right through the middle of the field
goal formation on a Monday night football against the Falcons,
(36:48):
and Jim Zorn hit him right down the middle. Yeah,
that happened. That's not a dream I had. That's a kicker, right?
That's a kicker. That's this little chubby Mexican guy that
looks like he's had too many burritos, man. Somehow he's
waddling down. He made the catch. It was incredible. But, yeah,
(37:11):
that could have happened had they not adjusted. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Um, another feather in the cap for Mike McDonald then.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah. Well, he just knew, okay, this is a five
alarm fire here. I got to put this out immediately. Yeah.
And good, good thing he had a.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
And, and look at timeouts right there were pretty valuable
to have. So, um, to say, Hey, I got to
burn one. I got to burn one of these and
then we'll worry about it later.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
You have to have an answer for five eligible receivers
when you're in cover zero. Like, how are we going
to do it? And sometimes it's a defensive end peeling
if the running back happens to peel on a swing route. Like,
sometimes you say, that's not really sound. If they know
how to execute, they're going to beat us. But at
least it's remotely sound. But the way that they were
(38:00):
fixing to snap that ball, there was literally nobody for
an eligible receiver. And Hunter Henry, one of the better
tight ends in the league, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I just want to say for the record that one
of my favorite football cards as a kid was Efren Herrera.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Wasn't he a delight? Yeah, I loved the Efren Herrera.
He was a fan favorite. We all loved Efren, man.
But we never smiled wider than when he ran down
the middle of the field. Who would even design that play?
If you put that on a whiteboard, you're fired. You're fired.
Just the idea that you think that would work. But
it worked. That's the greatest pass Jim Zorn ever completed
(38:39):
in his life. How do you hit that target? I mean,
you have to just walk it to him, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Our Monday morning quarterback session continues. We've got one more
fat segment, and we've got a lot of ground to cover.
We're going to talk about some penalties last night, including
some really dumb ones. Jadarian Price's debut, Brian Fleury's debut.
So a lot more ground to cover with our QB1
here on this Monday morning quarterback session on a Thursday,
(39:08):
Sports Radio 93.3 KJRFM.
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