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Sign up now at youtube.com slash bs device and content restrictions apply local national games on YouTube TV and a false Sunday ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital homemade games. Back here, Gillette Stadium, practice number 12 in the books for Gerard Mayo's Patriots Andy Jumbo Hart alongside Tom Carroll here for six rings and football things. Today's practice was a fully padded session in front of season ticket members, a ticketed event and the media. I would say smallish crowd Tom. I'm not not exactly filling out the bleachers. So to speak, on a sunny day, I wouldn't say it was hot like it has been, but it was warm at times. Officials were on hand. We had a full crew of officials who got to use their yellow flags quite a bit. We'll get into that in a little bit to kind of get some things out of the way before we delve into this practice. So how's keeping? Yes. Gerard May, I mean, excuse me. Matthew Judon continues to be an active participant, but at times shows his displeasure stretching started. He didn't have his pads on. Then he slowly puts his pads on and then kind of works his way into the practice. And then he takes part in team drills and pass rush drills and all that. So that's just your latest, greatest Matthew Judon update. Number three, DiMario Douglas, number one in your heart, was in white today. And when we get into the discussion of seven on seven and 11 on 11s later, you'll hear about Douglas a lot because he certainly seems to be the centerpiece of the offense. There was at least one stretch where three or four consecutive completions went to him. That's one of my working theories, by the way. Drake May will be better when he gets to take the field of tomorrow. Douglas, because that's an unfair advantage for Brissette. Yeah. Back end of the defense, I have what I'll deem mild growing concerns. Marcus Jones, not out there. Jonathan Jones, not really participating despite being out there. And as most people would be aware, those are your number two and three cornerbacks in some order. Also, one of them might be your free safety if you're trying to fill that void. So the back end of the defense, a little bit undermanned, a little lighthearted note, the new backup long snapper, Tucker Addington was in red non-contact jersey. Yeah, I thought that was weird. The guy he kind of is filling in for is in a white jersey, Joe Cardona. So not sure what's going on there. Another slow start to practice, Tom, where I'm going to tell you what I vulgarly wrote in my notebook. There are bombs. What do you mean vulgarly? I used a potty word. Okay. April, S-H-I blank in August. I feel like when I'm watching the beginning of practice, it's stuff that should start like the first day of the off-season program. It's all these, I actually texted my son. I was like, "Hey, you know all those plyometrics I make you do in the summer? Patriots do them in the beginning of practice every day." Cone drill and stuff like that. Cone drills and A skips and B skips and all these things, you can find anywhere on Instagram that are better for your speed and your explosiveness, why they're doing it to start a two hour plus practice. It's a new culture, it's a new era, and I'm trying to learn the way and we'll see if it works. I don't know. Yeah, and maybe it's an energy thing. Maybe they just feel like it's helping them in the energy conditioning realm, but I feel like that should already be all taken care of when you're on the field for training candidates. We're in the football realm now. You've got a really good football team coming for joint practices and pre-season action. We're in the under a month before you play real football games. You've already played a fake football game. We get that all out of the way. We're coming off of Thursday nights pre-season opener in which the Patriots got their first win, as KJ Osborne said, various guys and various degrees of participation. The Panthers rested 30-something guys. We all know Drake May, only got a series. Everybody was upset. You can take the pros and cons out of that for what you will. As a maniac, I took the positive. I thought Drake May was treated like the starter, Jacobi Bursett. Those two were put on a pedestal. They were one series and out while the lesser quarterbacks, the backups, got all the snaps. I'm kind of surprised to hear that from you. I'm taking that in positive direction. I did want to see Drake May more, but I can rationalize it for now. We'll see where it was. We're going glass half full. I think he could use the reps. I think we saw that at times today. Batted balls, interceptions, just continuing to do rookie things. I do think he could have used those reps, especially reps against no disrespect to Carolina, but a lesser roster or a lesser football team. It's great that Jerrod Mayo says Drake May is going to get more reps this week. They're going to be hard reps because Philadelphia Eagles are one of the more talented all around football teams. They especially defensively, as Jerrod said, big bodies up front. They're going to get after a little bit. Drake May may get more reps, but they're going to be difficult reps. Getting to the offense, the offensive line. I don't know what's going on there in terms of production because we all know it's an under construction, as Jerrod Mayo said. Appreciate the honesty. I'm not sure it's a good sign if you're under construction at this point. Okora 4, Chukes. I guess we just call them Chukes. Chukes is a great name. They literally announced him for his press conference, Chukes Okora 4 at the microphone or whatever. I was like, "Okay, Chukes." It's an A+ nickname. Absolutely. But he said he didn't care for what he saw on tape from self. He used a little bit of a reasoning/excuse that he had missed a bunch of practices and some of that. But I would agree with him. The offensive line, we all know it. There's two guys that are locked in on Wenu and Andrews, and then we're going to find out what happens. And I'm going to say those three other spots might include nine total bodies or more by the time the end of the year. Gets here at the running game, other than the 11 yard run that we saw and then the touchdown run. I still think that's a work in progress. The practice field continues to be just a blue domination in the running game. The white squad, the offense, the home squad cannot get the ball moving. So what was your biggest takeaway I guess from today's? Again, up and down, sloppy at times, not great practice session. I'll give you positive and negative. Let's go. The positive, pop Douglas. And like you said, being kind of that centerpiece guy, I think could be huge. Yeah. And especially for a new offense, having a guy that can be out there that is like your possession receiver, that speed guy, and you know, going to hopefully protect the ball better this season, stay healthy, as you said, that's going to be huge for this offense. So to have him finally out there out of the red, awesome. That was great to see. But I'm going to revert back to the negative here now. Just sloppy, sloppy. And I know Drake may's out there with a lot of the twos, but he's getting reps with the ones too. And sure, you'll have a touchdown pass here and there, but the tip balls at the line, you know, the pre snap penalties, your offense is not where you wanted to be at the moment pre snap. And then on top of that, your offensive line is still, as you said, under construction. So I don't feel good about the offense overall, even though my positive is, okay, pop Douglas is going to be a big part of what they do. Because when Drake may eventually get the starting job at some point this season, maybe, probably- Oh, he's getting- Oh, no, no, he's getting at this. Okay. Having pop Douglas out there. He's getting at the second month of the season. Okay, perfect. Good to know. Yeah. Pop Douglas is going to be massive for that. I think pop Douglas, I'm going to- If he stays healthy, I got to think he catches 100 balls. He's going to get the target, right? And even if some of them are cheap catches late in games where you're down three scores and maybe you're just throwing the ball to work on things with a young quarterback, I got to think he's going to get abs- I mean, 17 games, that's not even what? That's five points, something catches per game. I think that's very much in the realm of possibility for him. The guy that I think we need to talk to at some point, and I think by NFL rules, it's got to be coming soon. The coordinators, the assistant coaches, is the guy that Gerard Mayo called the head coach of the offense Alex Van Pelt. I'd be interested to see his interpretation of the pre-snap issues, how the installation is going. It's funny. KJ Osborne just talked about, he caught a touchdown from Jacobi Brissette on kind of a scrambled drill, and he said, "Yeah, we work on a lot of scrambled drills." Well, is that part of the offense or is that a realization? We're going to have to scramble our asses off and learn to play that type of football. So I do think hearing from Alex Van Pelt and having him sort of assess where talent, personnel, scheme, all those things are kind of coming together because as the layman outsider, it looks like we're getting well into camp for some of the same mistakes to be happening. That's concerning for a team that also doesn't have a ton of talent necessarily on the offensive side of the ball. You know, depth issues. Romandre Stevenson had a nice 11-yard run. Great. Kevin Harris found the end zone. Great. I don't know if I feel great about Kevin Harris, if he has to carry the ball 22 times against somebody. So, you know, there's a lot of questions to answer. Hunter Henry, who I think is their second most impactful offensive weapon, maybe, or third most. He's in that group with, I think, Douglas Henry Stevenson. He's looking like he's dealing with something a little limited out there. So I just, there's definitely some concerns on offense, but let's flip the script. Let's go to defense, where I think there are high hopes, and that may actually be the downside for the defense is I think some people are expecting them to carry the team. A, I think that's hard to do at all in this day and age. Certainly, I'm not sure they're talented enough to do that. My concerns about the cornerback position are well documented, especially if you're going to be without, you know, the law firm of Jones and Jones out there, and all of a sudden, Sean Wade and others are bumped up the depth chart. But defensively, I thought the front was dominant against the Panthers. It's been dominant on the training camp practice field. So at the very least, I'm pretty confident the front against mediocre and bad teams should be dominant, that they have that ability. Yeah, and something you brought up that I think is important to highlight here. People are very confident in the defense, as they should be, definitely be more confident than you are in the offense, right? Yes. But to expect a defense in today's NFL to win you outright football games, especially when they're going to be playing down quite a few scores throughout the year, especially in the beginning of the year with the new offense and the really tough schedule out of the gate. I just think that fans need to temper their expectations. Like, you're going to see some great plays from the defense, but I wouldn't expect W's because of the defense. Yeah, I always point to Nick Saban about 10 years ago, who literally went on the record saying, "I realized you can't win championships with defense anymore." And he changed his recruiting at Alabama, and I think you saw the injection of quarterback play and wide receivers and the talent that they went for because you got to play the game of being played on the field, right? You got to win that battle, and that's where we are. Okay, so let's get into special. Well, first of all, let's go over the offense blind real quick. We are, once again, staying in the Vadarian low era as left tackle. I don't know whether people like that hate that or are somewhat indifferent in between. It's kind of funny because anytime people bring up the offensive line being not great, Vadarian low is always the first name that's always brought up. You kind of feel for him in that way. It's like he's the embodiment of the bad offensive line play, but it's the reality of the situation. He's the left tackle, and the left tackle is the marquee position. We've already sort of seen, I think, Okora 4 and Wallace get their shots, and it seems like the team wasn't comfortable with them at left tackle. Now, it seems like Okora 4 is settling in at right tackle, which he's played in the past. Wallace was at right a lot today, too. Well, and struggled at times with guys the name Matthew Judon and others. So, yeah, no, I think they're both going to be on the right side. I'm not sure they have a left tackle right now, and that's the under construction part. Now, I think it's a little late to be finding left tackles on the open market. That's a difficult proposition. On the interior, we've sort of settled back in, I think, to City so, with David Andrews and Mike on Windows. I know there was the Michael Jordan era last week, a little bit in practice. He's still in that interior mix. It looks like, I know they have concerns about backup center. It looks like Nick Everett is probably the best they have in that role. But Gerard Mayo talked about, they're all taking their chances. Antonio Maffey has kind of struggled, it seems, especially in the shotgun snaps in that area. So, that's something to keep an eye on. The kicking game, also something to keep an eye on in terms of the kicker. We saw Joey Sly hit his 42 yard field goal, I think it was the other night. Today, they had a pretty heated kickoff battle, not kickoff, kick off, kind of like a cook off. Right, like a face off, but kick off would be different. This is field goals, like a face off, where Gerard Mayo called everybody on the team not involved in either field goal or field goal block, to basically do anything they wanted around the kicker. And the music got louder. Yeah. Music was loud. There were guys squirting water bottles. Yeah. There were at one point, the crowd got into it. It was fun. The crowd got into it, but like Tavai and others were like borderline in the play. Like they were right by the holder, like getting in the kicker's faces. They went back and forth. Both kickers hit their early kicks. Then our guy Chad Ryland missed a couple. Joey Sly missed one. So in the final kick off, I believe Joey Sly was your winner at least for today. I'd call them both losers though. Again, they were... It was going to be the loser. All of us watching them kick field goals. Because if you have two kickers, you have none. Right. Although I did bring up, there was the one year in camp when the Patriots had Adam Benatieri and Robbie Gould who went on to a great NFL career in San Francisco and other places. So everyone's wanting to do have two kickers, but I... That's once in the last 25 years. Right now, it's kind of like left tackle. Somebody's going to win that battle. Yeah. I'm not sure you're going to be happy with the performance you get out of that guy. And somebody's going to win this kicking battle. And I continue to wonder if the kicker is not on the roster. If somebody loses a battle elsewhere who's actually a better kicker, let's say Baltimore. Whoever, if they have a second kicker. I don't even know. They probably don't bring a second kicker in camp. But somebody like that who's facing an elite or buttker or one of these guys who loses that battle, but maybe is a pretty good kicker because that's... I don't know if it's concerning, because for it to be concerning, you have to be in basically three-point games, one score games late. And as we talked about earlier, I'm not sure how many of those there will be. Other notable that Rob Ninkovich was on the field took part, I think, in sort of the pre-game, I mean the pre-practice hype and interviews or whatever. Anything else stand out to you from today's workout that you want to pass along to the six rings and football things listeners? I think it's just important for us to highlight how much yellow there was on the field today. Not just my city select Red Sox shirt. Yeah, not just the Red Sox shirt. On Tuesday during the joint practice, that's when you really don't want to see the yellow. I think today needs to be the last day of really sloppy football, because when a good team is on the field across from them, it's going to be highlighted to the nth degree. Absolutely. So talent's going to be a question, execution is going to be a question. If we're being honest, coaching sideline, I mean, that's a staff that is under a little bit of pressure now, but has been to a Super Bowl under Nick Sirianni. I'll be interested to see the competitive level. Gerard Mayo did say, emphasizing to his team, we're not fighting, we're not doing that. There's been fights all across the NFL. There's been fights for years in these joint practices. Part of the reason they're only doing one day with the Eagles, not two, because Gerard Mayo didn't want to boil over from one day to the next. Is Big Dom coming? We got to worry about fights. That's a great question. Let that guy in the field. But that's going to wrap up practice number 12 season ticket holder practice, full pads, up and down action, referees throwing flags, some good things as always, but probably more things that need to be cleaned up in all three phases of the game, if we're including the kicking action. He is Tom Carroll on Andy Jumbo Hart. We'll be back for practice number 13, which I'm guessing is going to be a little bit of a lighter session based on full pads today, pretty long session, joint practice on Tuesday with the Eagles. You might have a tweener session, but it is open to the public. Only two more chances for fans. If you're in the driving distance of Gillette Stadium to get down here for the final two practices of training camp, and obviously if you want the best practice and can get down here on Tuesday for that joint work against the Eagles, that's probably your best opportunity. So that's going to put it on the practice and the rap six rings and football things is out.
