When it comes to music, everyone has a totally unique taste. So when a song comes on to perfectly fit your mood, it kind of feels like magic. And at Credit Karma, we do the same thing, but for your finances. We got tired of the financial system, giving broad, impersonal, and a relevant advice to everybody. So we created a way for you to cut through the noise and find offers and recommendations that make sense for your specific money goals. So you know the guidance you're getting is truly custom to you. Download into a Credit Karma today and get everything you need to outsmart the system. With Walmart's new Fresh and Frozen subscriptions, you can save time when you're weekly grocery shopping. Dad, you're supposed to be grocery shopping. And miss the chance to embarrass you in front of your friends? I subscribe to Snacks and Wet Napkins. You know how messy you are. Dad! Walmart, subscribe to your weekly list. All-star, closer, keenly, Janssen, we have a question. What's the best podcast of all time? This boy isn't boring, baby. I'm Rob Radford, and every single day I'm sitting down with the biggest names to show you this great game is the greatest game. It's my podcast. It's my passion. It's a cause I started more than two years ago. And it's now the most prolific national daily baseball pod. There is another fact. So jump aboard the BIB Express. Follow and listen to baseball as I'm boring, presented by Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. With Walmart's new Fresh and Frozen subscriptions, you can save time when you weekly grocery shopping. Dad, you're supposed to be grocery shopping. And miss the chance to embarrass you in front of your friends? I subscribe to Snacks and Wet Napkins. You know how messy you are. Dad! Walmart, subscribe to your weekly list. Hey, fantasy football owners. The road to winning your fantasy football championship starts now. I'm Matt Harmon from Reception Perception. Join me and James Co as we take a deep dive into the position that's going to make or break your fantasy roster. Wide receivers. We analyze route running, target share, and all the metrics that matter, giving you the insights you need to draft the best wide receivers. As you prep for your draft, let us give you the coverage you need. Follow and listen to Reception Perception on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Andy, let's get to some Pat's preview question since campus start next week, right? We'll just go through a couple of things that I just wrote down. Curious to know what your thoughts on these. Okay, so here's the first one. When it comes to defensive philosophy with the Patriots, how much of their defensive philosophy will be the same as last year? I am going to say 80%, something like that. I don't know if you were envisioning a percentage of an answer. No, just overall, because the mark is coming in. Is your guy now? He'll had a real set way of doing things. But we've seen over the years an ebb and flow a stamp by the coordinators, the play callers, whatever you want to say it. The dramatic one was the Matt Patricia Brian Flores shift, which became more of a blitzing team, more aggressive under Brian Flores when he took over for Matt Patricia. And Steve Belichick has been, I would say balanced in that area to some degree in recent years. Because that's like, I think they want to stay multiple game plan oriented, like some of those real cliche things from the past. But it'll be interesting to see personnel wise too. We've talked about the cornerback position. You know, like not a lot of depth there, and you're really leaning on Christian Gonzalez to be a number one corner. How does that affect what you think you can and cannot do? Your boy Callahan, we were listening to his podcast. One of the things he was talking about is they were really successful, sort of scheming up pressure last year, inside linebackers, safeties, those tweener guys, but a high percentage too. Well, you had to be because you didn't have Judon. Does that change this year? Like your personnel dictates to some degree how you play. If Matthew Judon is what you think he is, just a stud game wrecker, you don't need to blitz. Just say Matthew Judon, beat the guy in front of you, get to the quarterback and make our all our jobs easier. If he's not, if he's not here or he looks a little old, that's when you start bringing in more blitzing and games and stunts. So I think the foundational 80% will probably be very similar. You'll be like, oh, yeah, this kind of looks like the Patriots over the years. It's that other 20% what I'm wondering. Does Demarcus Covington want to be more aggressive? Does Demarcus Covington, you know, we've had the man zone questions over the years with Belichick in the back end? What are Demarcus Covington's philosophies that maybe were sort of suppressed under the Belichick regime? So this may be too tough of a question because I don't even know this probably, it's probably like, you know, layered. But what do you think is the most recognizable trait of a Bill Belichick defense? Like if you were trying to teach somebody, hey, this is how you identify it. Like, you know, the whole Tampa 2 defense, right? Monte Kiffino, God rest, you know, rest in peace. You know, that was a recognizable trait. The Tampa 2 defense, he created it. It was, it spread all over the place. No one really knew how to beat it and you really had to practice it like crazy. Is there an identifiable trait with Bill and his defense? And it's a tough question. Not really. No, and that's what he prided. And that's what he believed in. That's stupid. Why am I just going to run the same defense against different offense? Well, I mean, there were some teams like Miami, when I was in the league, like Miami ran the exact same defense because they had a really good personnel. And Brady always talked about that. Madison and Sir Tan and Jason Taylor, like, they were loaded. They were loaded. They had the personnel. Bill always says it. He didn't run a lot of defenses with the Giants because his personnel was so good. Lawrence Taylor was so good. Those guys were so good. You don't have to try to trick an offense. You don't have to try and scheme them. You just play base. You win. You win. We're all good. And cover two basic stuff, cover three. Easy to understand. Right. And it was a different era offensively, too. I think offenses have gotten more creative and more explosive and more diverse and different over the years. So I don't think, I think the multiplicity or the game plan nature, because they were 4-3. They were 3-4. You know, one of the Super Bowls they had played 4-3 all year. They switched to 3-4 vice versa. You know, they're a man team until they can't be a man team. Then they're a zone team because we don't have the man personnel right now. Like, if you asked me over the totality of the regime, I'd say a 3-4 front with man coverage. Yeah, see, that would be my foundation. Yeah, I mean, I even narrowed it down to even something simpler. And it would just be the whole, like, when you look at his team, it's the whole, you know, take away their number one receiver. That was the first thing I thought. That's like, I know it's like, well, it's too, it's too simple. Well, it's like, that is what he would do. He had variations of how he did it. You know, it wasn't necessarily always the number one corner. Correct. It could have been the number two corner with a safety. And then, like, Gilmore would take the number two receiver and then he would have an advantage. Yep. And take that guy out and just, but it, so I can't even, that would be what I would say. And not even just the receiver, I would say, whatever you are doing that. So, like, when they played Carolina a few years ago, I know they really, it was like Christian McCaffrey. It was very simple. Yeah. I think they called him, like, the queen. Like, they had, like, a term, like, the queen, you know, really taking away the queen. Yeah. And it's that whole thing. And if a team can run the ball, we're going to load up and say, you're not running it down on throats. See, even that, even that, just using that term, like, the queen is, like, identifying the most powerful piece on the chessboard or whatever you want to call it. Make sure, hey, listen, if you don't know where this guy is going to kill you, how about this aspect of it? For the offense, though, I'm curious, like, last year, teams played a lot of man against this offense because no one can get open. It was crazy. Like, why should we scheme against this team? I think defenses will have to attack this offense a little bit differently than they did last year. I think there's more threats. You still play, man. Are you afraid of anybody? Well, that's my point. Like, I guess until they prove otherwise. Right. I mean, I think there's a theory that Demario Douglas is going to show the ability to get open and make plays. Maybe. We'll see. Can he stay healthy? Can he do it? Can he stay on the field? Can you do it consistently? First quarter to fourth quarter, that whole thing. No, if I, and I'm stopping the run, I'm loading up to stop the run against this team. I'm saying, you're not running Ramondre Stevenson. I want to see you beat me with either Jacobi Bursett or Drake May and this group of twos and threes at receiver. So that would be my first. I'm taking away the run. And I know that's cliche. That's all you're going to stop the run first. Make a team one dimensional blah, blah, blah. That's what I would say. So cliche is because they're true. Yeah. For the most part. Okay. I'm taking away the run. Yeah. I'm not letting you beat me with Ramondre Stevenson. Yeah. Isn't he obviously losing the Queen. He's the Queen. He is the Queen, right? He's the Queen in this. And he's not as good a Queen as like McCaffrey when he's at his best. But I would take him away and then everything else. And because if you're looking at what Van Pelt did in Cleveland, if you're using that as like the genesis of this offense, the back is massively important. Yep, Chuck. Ramondre Stevenson, like he loses weight. He realized he's going to have to carry the ball more. I wonder if he'll be as involved in the passing game as well. Because I mean, he can't catch the ball. I mean, he's not James White. No, but he had 69 catches a couple of years ago. But he definitely is a threat. And if you really are going to ride him in the running game and you can get, you know, good production out of Gibbs and he can hold on to the football, he's a pass catcher. And I don't, you know, you don't want to just run Ramondre Stevenson into the ground four weeks in and be like, well, that was a good four weeks, but we got nothing left for another 13. So the other question was, you know, a lot of people are looking at Christian Gonzalez year two as like, it's just going to be like an easy transition for him. He's just going to, he's going to take over where he left off, right? Three and a half games. Would you say he won like the player of the month or something like that? For the player of the month. Defensive player of the month. Like how, how, how convinced are you that he is going to be the guy that everyone assumes he's going to be with such a small sample size of plays. Um, well, what do you think everybody assumes he's going to be? I need to know that. Like I think they think he's going to be a pro bowl player. All pro type guy. Shut down corner number one. Yeah, pro bowl or all pro? Um, let's go all pro. Let's go all pro. Uh, that's the hard one to get. Yeah, I'm not totally sold on that. I think he's a pro bowl caliber skilled cornerback. Now I don't know if he'll be that in September, October of this year. That's where we get into the, you know, Jonathan Jones, ebb and flow, ups and down road of becoming mature. Um, and the cornerback position is like, who's the best corner in football? Hmm. I feel like it changes a lot. Well, it does. Um, but now I'm trying to think of, uh, a guy. And that's my point. We're not in the Deon Sanders, Dorel Rivas. Like we know exactly who the best corner is. And I think part of that is it's really hard to play these days. So guys have stretches where they're considered the best corner. And then people realize, well, but they give up catches too. And they give up touchdowns. The days of Rivas Island and Deon Sanders are gone. Do I think that within the next year and a half, Christian Gonzalez will be in the conversation as one of the best corners in football? I do. I just don't know what this year will look like. Yeah. Okay. So the next. Gardner has to be like the closest one to Rivas Island, probably. Sure. Sure. Or Patrick's detained junior the second. Sure. But that's my point. And then I think some people in other places would say this guy, you know, Jalen Ramsey. There's been a bunch of these Marcus Peters, Jalen Ramsey. Um, you know, they make plays, but they give up plays kind of guys. Trayvon Diggs plays. Yeah. Trayvon Diggs. Perfect example. Give us a 15 touchdown. Perfect example. And I don't think Gonzalez is going to be that. I think Gonzalez is going to be closer to shut down than a like boomer bust corner. I don't think he's going to be, oh, he's got seven picks. And then you what, but the low lights are some catches. He really gives up to freak. Yeah. And you don't, you don't, do you really believe? I know we were messing around with this whole thing. Look what happened to Devin McCordy. You know, he started off as an all pro was he wasn't all pro. He was a pro, pro, pro bowl corner. And then the next year just that's, that's something that needs to be discussed at some point time. What the hell happened? And that becomes like, you know, this great safety that everybody recognizes as one of the best to ever do it. But you don't think that's Christian Gonzalez, do you? No, I mean, that would be in the back of my mind as a whole. Yeah, but the one is like, how do you even know? He hasn't played a full season. He hasn't played a half a season. You can't possibly have any idea. He can't, he was a second team all pro as a rookie. Who was? AP two, Devin McCordy. He was second team all pro and a pro bowler as a rookie at cornerback. And then the next year, who did the wheels start? Why, do you remember Joe? I don't even remember. I remember. It's like, what the hell happened? He couldn't cover. Joe Flacko was picking on him. Joe Flacko looked like he was playing high school. Just throwing lobs on him. So he can cover? Did they change the defense? Did they give him more of a responsibility? Did he put him on an island more? And then they recognized they could take advantage of it. That's a great question. I mean, that's like never gotten a great answer. It is funny. It's kind of like Malcolm Butler, not nearly as deep and, you know, interesting, but it still is something I've always thought about. Like, what actually happened? One day we'll ask him. The only aspect I think is this, um, um, the assumption that, that Jacobi Bursett is going to be your week one starter. Yeah. I asked this question to Karen Carrigan earlier when she joined us at 11 o'clock. If, um, Mac Jones was able to beat out Cam Newton, and we can assume that Drake May is talented in a better quarterback. He was drafted higher than Mac Jones. Why can't we believe that Drake May can beat out Jacobi Bursett and be the starter week one? Why does it have to be this? Oh, you know, you know, throw a dart board at the schedule after October. And that's when he's going to start. So I think he can beat him out. I don't eliminate that possibility. I think it's below 50%. I think there's a better than 50% chance that your opening day started Jacobi Bursett. But there's two issues. One, what KG said. At that point in his career, Cam Newton was not very good. Yep. And Jacobi Bursett is more capable, competent, whatever, just a game manager. You know, and somebody brought it up earlier. He does have a very good touchdown to interception ratio, like 50 to 30. So like he's not going to turn it over. And if you're a team that's looking to play defense, run the ball and not screw up, Jacobi Bursett might be a good placeholder for a while. The second thing is Mac Jones was sold to me and you and everybody else as the most NFL ready quarterback, coming out of Alabama, the way, you know, his mind, his work. Yeah, his accuracy was his coach. Right. Whereas Drake May is the opposite. He's got some raw talent, right? He can throw off platform. He's athletic, but he's not necessarily molded into the most NFL rim. Dan Orlovsky wanted to sit him for two years, two years, two years, Mac Jones. No, Drake May, Drake May, whereas Mac Jones was the most NFL ready quarterback in his class. We have an NFL quarterback expert, Dan Orlovsky saying Drake May needs to be sat down for two years. So that's a big difference too, where you're kind of projecting their starting from in their preparation, readiness, fundamentals, all of that. But I do think the bigger one is Cam Newton signed late because he was a guy that didn't have a home, wasn't very good and couldn't throw. Pilata couldn't throw it. Didn't know who the mic was, by the way. He was also kind of, you know, had to really learn an offense at his age. And that required him to do things that he should have learned to do when he was a rookie. So they literally got a guy that had kind of like, you know, circumvented the rules as far as, you know, how you develop a quarterback. Hey, you have to be able to know who this guy is. Nah, I just have to be able to run that guy over and throw a can into that. And that's the thing they created in an offense that was tailor-made for him. And they just said, screw it anybody else is doing, he's our guy. Well, we're going to, this is the way we're going to do it. They went to the Super Bowl. Yeah. You want an MVP? You want an MVP? Can I flip the script here and ask you a question? Sure. Who is the most important man in the Patriots organization for this season? Ooh, the important man. And I don't mean to be sexist, but it's a man. Well, they are all men. Nancy Meyer is a legend. Well, no, she is, she's worth it anymore. Yeah. Okay. I thought she was kind of done with Bill left. It wasn't sure. He's actually what happened. Sure, she was on the thing they just sent out. Okay, that's a step chart. Oh, okay. They only have a front office, a depth chart. Okay, so the most important man. Oh, I'm just going to, I'm just going to, uh, okay. So Elliot Wolf is pretty good because he's got to, you know, pick all the groceries. I would say, uh, man, I'm actually starting to feel like it's, uh, it's not that, you know what? It could be Van Pelt. Well, I got a lot of options. I need an answer. Is that your final answer? You want to hold my friend. No, I'm not going to call Gresha on the beach. Let me ask you a whole lot. Let me think about it. Do you have friends? Van Pelt, Elliot Wolf, a Gerard male. Those are my three options. Wow. Okay. There's not a full option? No, no, important man, not a player. Oh, the players are all men. No, but I'm thinking, I think you said just, uh, front office. No, no, no, I said organization. Okay. So anyone who works there, man, all 30 coaches, all scouts, all everything. Who's the most important man? Man, it is not. Is it? It's Alex Van Pelt in my opinion. Okay. Well, that's one of my options. I know that you said Mayo. Yeah. Okay. Why is it Van Pelt? Um, because he is installing an offense that is the head coach admits, I'm not really an offensive guy. I'm just going to kind of let them do their thing. And I'm learning about offense. And he has the clay in his hands. He is the voice to Drake May, who to me is the other option. Drake May could be the most important man in the organization as he goes is how the Patriots go. But early on, he's guided. All these footwork drills were watching these elongated drops and we're going to marry up his eyes with his footwork and right foot forward, left foot forward and changing everything he does. The man who's molding him. And he's not exactly a known commodity, either. Alex Van Pelt. Yeah. It's not like he or his students, like who are his pupils that he nurtured and developed. And when they get up there to give their speech, they think him first. Correct. So to me, the most important man in the organization is Alex Van Pelt because he is going to define the early days and maybe all the days of Drake May. Yeah. Because I would say is, uh, like even if you go back to Mac Jones, like not only when you look back at it, it's like, well, Mac Jones had a really, you know, uh, uh, I guess an easier situation, a better situation, a more advantageous situation because he had Josh McDaniel's. Yep. Who knew it, understood it. And look at all the backup quarterbacks had it that were starters and other teams that were developed and nurtured by Josh. So Josh gets Mac Jones, who's, you know, maybe farther ahead, you know, more that maybe more mature has some issues, but you know, you can avoid them and you coach it out of them. So, and he's, he's up against a quarterback who really would, they were just, he was a stopgap type of guy in Cam Newton, and you made the best out of it out of it. And making no money also. Yeah, but. Remember he was making like, what was he making? Better than minimum. A million bucks or something. Was that it? Remember Bill had that comment? They grabbed him. I mean, we paid Cam Newton a million dollars. I tell you, we had no money or something or like, I think it had less to do about no money. The fact that Cam Newton was so unbelievably desperate for a job. And you remember that documentary? Speaking, we talked about it yesterday, things that were promised that never came. What was that? Newton had like the 182 days documentary. It was going to be his time out of football and like the story of how the Patriots signed him and the redemption and all that. He, he wanted to like- He promised that? No, you know what he did. No, he did. Something at his high school with his dad at night. Oh yeah, I saw that. I thought that's what he was talking about. No, no, there was a whole documentary that he promised. He was going to call it a hundred and eighty days or a hundred and eighty two days or it was the number of days that he was basically out of the NFL. And we never got it. I know that. And it didn't, because I think he envisioned like, you know, the wiggy. He was going to get a hundred million dollar contracts and he a starter for somebody. Netflix is going to pick it up. It didn't work. No, nobody wanted to watch it. But he was six nights. What is it? 86 nights. All right, I added a few. But yeah, 86 nights. It sounds like a porn or something. There's a two minute and 51 second trailer and that's it. So there's there's a there's an actual trailer, but it never was released. Well, maybe maybe it's what you said. Maybe nobody picked it up. Maybe the the funding they funded the trailer. You're probably like finding it at some like obscure like website or like like to be. Isn't to be like a thing now. T U B I for movies. Ask Terp. Terp was telling me the ways to watch things when you don't have the ability to watch them. So maybe it's out there. So it's like free cable. Yeah, nothing's ever free. There is no victimness. There used to be free. Piracy is not a victim. There's nothing better than the old days getting into the the hotel and like having like you take your key to your car. It wasn't like a little a fob. It was an actual key and you can put it in the back there and they they put those little metal like cylinders over the cable because people were unplugging it and then plugging it into the TV. So you get free cable. It was real easy. There was a cable box in your hotel room. And then they took the then they. So then they put that little like like lock system on the cable wire. And then they just removed the cable box all together. Because it was just nobody wanted. And half the features on the TV. The what half the features in the TV in hotel rooms don't work anymore either. Oh, yeah. I want to set a sleep timer a couple weeks ago and you couldn't do that. On the TV, just get a wake up call. Yeah, do what they do. Oh, wait, then you want to shut it off. Yeah. I want to look at TV to go off. You'll go off. I want to leave it to you. And you couldn't get into the menu to do it. Wow. Maybe at the wrong remote, you get free cable and I came using TV. Do you would you ever call for a wake up call? Is that a thing still? Isn't that what the alarm is for? No, no, I mean, there was always. There was always an alarm. There was always an alarm in the hotel room. Yeah, I never trusted it. The alarm because you never, you know, I never quite. But sure, the first time you use one of those old fashioned like radio alarm clocks, did I set it right? Yeah, get it right. Yeah. And you don't want the first time to be in a hotel where you're maybe on a business trip and you actually need to get up the next day. No, no, no. Now, everybody uses it right here. No, everybody uses their phone, but it would be funny. Like, if you call down, hey, listen, can I get a wake up call at 6.30 AM and see what they say? I think they still do it. Do you? Yeah. Oh, I can't. I'd have met anybody who actually like calls down, because they all have phones. They all use their phone. But they're probably like a 65 year old traveling businessman somewhere who's done that exact same thing for 40 years. And I'm not changing. When I get to a hotel, I call the front office. I mean, the front desk and tell them that I want a wake up call. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's get the big deal, no big deal, because we also have to reveal our horror of the day at one o'clock. Let's take a break and we'll do a big deal, no big deal next.
