- 6 months ago
Felger and Mazz, with Paul Perillo of Patriots.com filling in for Felger, shares their impressions of the Patriots' performance against the Commanders in their first preseason game.
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00:00we start with that play because that's how it began and i will tell you that paul perlow i do
00:05believe in omens i don't know whether this i you know i don't know what this uh i'm not telling
00:10you this is one i'm just telling you i believe in omens uh it was a nice way to for them to start
00:15pure karma or pure energy i thought the patriots played with some level of i get energy enthusiasm
00:22i thought that looked good but if i asked each of you you and jim murray give me your one biggest
00:29takeaway from the entirety of the night okay and you can add in the brady thing if you want
00:34one major takeaway from the entirety of the night i'd prefer to be about football but if you want
00:40to go brady that's fine no what is it it would be just the overall professionalism of the operation
00:46the the energy the physicality uh the toughness the seriousness that they took you know not a lot of
00:52mistakes not not perfect obviously but not a lot of penalties not a lot of alignment problems
00:59just um they they went into the game with a thought process of finishing finishing runs finishing
01:05plays the tackles uh i i thought that they played with some physicality on on both sides of the ball
01:11obviously the other team didn't the other team didn't come to play and that's why you end up with
01:17a 48 to 18 game i don't care about the result but i care about how the result came about and i think
01:23that that came about because the patriots played in my view with a a sort of a re-energized folk re-energized
01:31focus that i haven't seen the last couple years murray anything to draw from this game for you
01:35yeah i mean it's with preseason games everything you're going to take usually with a grain of salt
01:38but i agree with paul and that if there is anything you can can take out of it that could be real for
01:43the season i do think it is it's the physicality uh specifically a couple of the running backs there
01:48was plays like whether it was tribune henderson or antonio gibson really lowered their shoulder to
01:54set a tone or take the soul of the opposition and i think that starts with the mentality of the head
01:58coach so i think the physicality is real i think that will carry over to the regular season and the
02:03speed of certain guys whether it was henderson on that return uh or even uh williams the wide
02:09receiver who didn't you know show up on the stat sheet but if you looked at him and there was one
02:13where josh dobs and we'll get to him later throws behind him down in the red zone but he completely
02:18torched the defensive back that was on him and got separation so i think the physicality and speed
02:23that you saw in certain areas will be real for this team this year and that's a good thing they ran hard
02:28they ran hard so here's what struck me uh from this game and again we have a show to do today paul
02:37let me just interrupt you real quick just didn't you get yeah go when you said they ran hard and it was
02:42everybody everybody who had the ball in his hands ran hard which tells me that was an edict that was
02:50that was part of the plan going in for mike rabel that's what he wanted to see because it wasn't
02:54just ramondre stevenson carrying tacklers it wasn't just antonio gibson it was efton chisholm it was
03:00uh you know jeremiah webb you know the guys on the bottom of the roster on wide receivers that are
03:06dragging tacklers for extra yards they moved the pile forward on virtually every uh play that they had
03:11the ball so to it'll illustrate your point on how hard they ran and i mean they did they initiated
03:17contact when they ran so i saw after the game mark daniels who's one of the beat guys that covers the
03:22team for mass live tweeted in the locker room now there's a sign patriots team identity effort and
03:28finish ball security and ball disruption details technique and fundamentals make great decisions
03:32but that first thing effort and finish you saw that friday night yes so again that's an edict like
03:37paul's saying definitely you could definitely see that as one of the more noticeable things
03:41and look i'm baiting you guys here a little bit but work with me if i were to say to you
03:46what's the best position group on the team what would you say
03:50best position group on the team
03:54i mean for me maybe d tackles i can't i think they get good depth of corner okay give me one on
04:02each side of the ball i was gonna go corner um but i i like d tackle too um i like their running
04:08backs running backs would be the one on on offense okay so to me that that's what i took out of it
04:13their best players on offense that's why i asked for one on each side of the ball yeah their best
04:18players on offense are the running backs they are now look i know digs didn't play hunter henry didn't
04:24play but i'm not i don't believe in that line's ability to pass block i still don't based on what we
04:30saw the other night i thought the passing kind of sucked frankly i didn't see much of an improvement
04:35from from uh last year with regard to the pass game well to your point i don't think a pass was
04:40completed to a wide receiver until dobbs was in the game late in the second quarter bingo
04:44yeah again drake may had three completions they were all the running backs in fact were they all
04:50to travion henderson or two of them were anyways two okay so at least two of them were to henderson
04:55so henderson's explosive we know what ramondre stevenson is if he holds on to the ball gibson was
05:01pretty good for them last year all things considered he's sort of the guy in between the
05:06two and i would say stylistically and otherwise like you know you can do a little of both yeah
05:11he is he's kind of the hybrid of those two players i there i guess what i'm getting at is this
05:17get ready for a lot of running because i think they're gonna have to and i said this at felger
05:24earlier in camp and you know i'd be eager to see what his interpretation of the whole thing is
05:29but if you're expecting drake may out of the gate now i can't tell you what he's going to be at the
05:34end of the year but out of the gate if you think drake may is going to chuck it all over the field
05:39and they're going to be able to pass protect and he's going to find open guys without the benefit of
05:45a running game to set him up no shot no shot i don't think that they're going to be able to block
05:50they're already the left side is entirely inexperienced as we already know to me they're
05:56going to have to run the good news is they might be able to with some level of effectiveness
06:01because i think we saw that uh campbell will campbell can run block i think we know that uh
06:09overall michael whenu can run block i think they're big and athletic on the offensive line i don't know
06:15how skilled they are in the pass blocking but get ready for them to run the ball and slug it out
06:21because i think that's what they're going to have to do well that's what they did with the mike
06:24rabel teams in tennessee i mean this is how it kind of looked when he's with the titans and i do
06:28think that i mean i was never a ryan tannahill guy but i'd like to think that drake may projects to
06:32be better than ryan tannahill ever was so yeah i mean if it sets up some play action and maybe he'll
06:36be able to air it out here and there to digs or kyle williams or demario douglas whoever it happens
06:40to be fine but i can live with that okay but but didn't don't you think a lot of people murray
06:44are expecting more yeah because of drake may yeah of course they are and paul how would you assess drake
06:50may's performance uh not just in the game but overall to this point yeah in the game i think
06:55it was i mean obviously you saw the turnover and that's the thing that really you know sticks out
06:59to you that that can't happen you know i would like i i watched that and i immediately got
07:04disappointed like i i wanted that kind of a turnover to be in the past but it wasn't it's you know this
07:11is the time of year that you you know if you're going to make them make them now when it's not going
07:14to come back and cost you a football game but that was disappointing otherwise just kind of meh i thought he
07:19made good decisions to run with the ball but i know we can do that i would rather see some execution
07:25in the passing game that we didn't get a chance to see now he didn't play that much he only played
07:28two series 14 plays snaps yeah 14 um i would like to have seen um you know some some balls not
07:37necessarily deep down the field but maybe some you know deep in cuts you know some over routes
07:41you know maybe 15 yards you know stuff beyond the sticks um unfortunately we started a couple of
07:48check downs now i think he looked to go down the field at least twice and on the positive side i
07:55thought he had time on a couple of occasions to to find someone what what kind of worries me is no
08:00one's really uncovering and that's i think we've been there with this wide receiver group they're
08:05limited talking about the one to hollands down the right side yeah i mean that had really no chat was
08:09the one yeah one ball that they threw down the field that had no chance but um he he checked a
08:14couple down to henderson after looking downfield um didn't find anybody maybe when digs comes back
08:20that changes a little bit maybe he draws more attention from the from the secondary but i would
08:25say he's been okay there have been days that he's looked really good at practice and days and today
08:31was was one of those days not not so good i mean the running ability is obvious like when he ran for
08:35that touchdown like that's great he could run if you run strategically i'm okay with you running
08:39just don't do it every time the play breaks down i wanted to see him throw but i mean that
08:43turnover do you understand why i say the jury for me the jury's out on him and i kind of think he's
08:47a bit of a hammerhead that's a bad turnover just take the sack dude why are you changing the ball
08:52in your hands what that was so stupid colossally stupid like like astonishingly stupid very lucky
09:00that didn't turn into seven points not you know it should have been a you know if the guy the guy
09:05had realized he just kind of sat there with the ball and there was no one on him like that probably
09:09could have been a touchdown so paul what you said i think is a good point is that that's the kind of
09:15mistake a rookie makes in his first ever nfl game in the preseason it is now a year later and i know
09:23drake may missed a you know a chunk of the regular season but he played enough he should have played
09:30enough to know you don't do that plus what do you think that the message has been all summer all spring
09:36and summer from mike vrabel from josh mcdaniels from from everybody and on that protects the ball
09:42but that in in that specific way like you're gonna throw interceptions they're gonna happen
09:47you know passes get deflected maybe you you try to force one that play that you try to play hero ball
09:54and never pull the plug on a play and you turn it over that's a repeat offender now like he did that
10:00on a handful of occasions remember when he tried to do a swim move over the miami defensive lineman
10:04with the ball in his hand yeah he tried to like brick like how many times are you gonna do that
10:09it kind of reminded me of there was one very specific interception mac jones liked to throw
10:14and it was the roll to the right throw back to the left oh yeah dallas and he just doesn't have the arm
10:19strength for it he did it in like constantly in practice as a rookie and then i want to say the
10:27second year preseason game i remember talking as all about it on our broadcast i think it was against
10:32the raiders in one of those preseason games we either max second or third year roll right
10:36throwing back across the body and you always can tell when zo is disgusted when he you know like
10:41he starts grunting on incoherently and i i teed zo up on the broadcast i was like this is something
10:47we've seen a lot from him that's a repeat offender josh mcdaniels talked about it a lot today that's
10:52what you got to try to get past mistakes are good if you learn from them and hopefully this is the last
10:59time we see one of those from drake may this year so for the people who question drake may's
11:03intelligence intelligence murray yeah that was exhibit a yeah that thing was exhibit a that was
11:10a meathead play boy was that he's just so talented he thinks that his skills can get him out of
11:15anything and that's a fine line i asked i actually asked josh about that today you know is that a hard
11:20line to straddle when you're that physically gifted you never want to pull the plug on a play i think it
11:26took josh allen a couple years now he still does that josh allen still does those things every once
11:30in a while but nowhere near as often as he did his first year or so so it can be beaten out of him
11:36hopefully it will be see we are uh we're in the kind of patriot season now where people want to be
11:42optimistic they want to believe in variable they do believe in variable so they want to believe in
11:47the operation so the goods from that game on friday night are going to outweigh the bads i would tell
11:53you though that the performance of drake may should be the biggest concern coming out of that game
11:59really the performance of the past passing game yeah because uh you know when it all gets lumped
12:04together and that relates to the offensive line play the play of may the inability of the receivers
12:10to get open all of those things the past game in this game did not look to me a hell of a lot better
12:15than a year ago and add all of those things up and take into consideration who they were playing
12:18against a bunch of second and third and even lower players none of the front line players for
12:23washington played so it's even to me bigger reason for well wait a minute i mean some of that
12:28separation kyle williams got i mean if josh duck didn't suck we're talking about a touch we're talking
12:32about when may was in the game oh yeah yeah no that wasn't good murray how'd you feel the 14 plays
12:38that may was yeah how'd you feel about the left side of the line on that sack murray not great no not
12:43definitely not good no that was a calamity that was a comedy of errors that whole play wow holy crap
12:48that was unbelievable it was like a big concern sandwich like hey the quarterback might be a
12:52dummy who looked like a dummy there left side of the line might be real bad oh god it looked awful
12:56right there bad communication old short arms there didn't know what the hell was happening like it
13:00was not good no it all came together on that play no i was totally i was a tough rep oh boy was it ever
13:06holy crap