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00:00 What were some of your thoughts real quick on Demarcus Covington and Jeremy Springer?
00:04 Covington, obviously someone we're familiar with, but we got a little more insight into how he wants
00:07 to run the system, his philosophies. And then Jeremy Springer, just the energizer buddy,
00:11 the guy who's his passion and energy. We got to hear that he's got some connections to
00:16 Brendan Skuler, which is pretty interesting. Got some insight into how much he values the
00:20 Patriots history and their dominance in special teams during the dynasty era.
00:23 So what did you think about those guys? Yeah. So I think with Covington first,
00:28 cause it's just an easy one. I wasn't surprised with really anything he said.
00:32 And I mean that in the best way possible. I've talked a lot about, and Taylor, we've talked about
00:36 keeping a continuity on the defensive side of the ball, where you had worked and not changing too
00:42 much. And Covington kind of made it sound like, yeah, you know, we, you know, we want to be
00:46 aggressive. We want to be physical. We want to play technically sound, but I don't think we're
00:50 going to get out there and be like, wow, this is a whole new defense. This is a whole new scheme.
00:54 It sounds like the idea is to just kind of maintain what's been successful as it should be.
00:59 And he, like I said, Springer football guy, high energy, super passionate. He reminds me a lot.
01:04 Like if I, if you were to ask me what coaches he reminds me of that I've interacted with,
01:08 I would probably name five or six college coaches before I got to an NFL coach. Like he is a big
01:14 time college and that's not surprising. I mean, he's been in college most of his career. He joined
01:18 the Rams a couple of years ago after about a decade working at different division one colleges.
01:23 I think for a special teams coordinators in particular, where we hope the Patriots are
01:28 going to build their special teams a little differently, where it's more, you'll still
01:32 have one or two, I think core guys, but a lot of it's going to be younger guys who are maybe
01:38 backups elsewhere that are looking to earn more playing time. So those are guys, you know, having
01:44 a coach like that kind of can help them adjust to the NFL level. So I love Springer's attitude.
01:48 I love the energy he approaches it with local. See if he can actually coach. We weren't going
01:51 to learn that in a press conference, but I think my big takeaway from all the pressers yesterday
01:56 were these guys get it. I think there's a real understanding of, I don't think anybody is
02:04 ignorant to the situation the team is in and it's not, Hey, we're just going to walk in here
02:10 and it's going to take care of itself. And we're going to be contenders. Like
02:13 there's going to have to be work from the coaching staff in order to kind of maximize
02:17 what the unit they have. And I think that there's a real understanding of that, which isn't always
02:21 the case. Now, understanding that and actually being able to act on that understanding and
02:26 produce results are two different things. So we'll see if it actually pans out, but I think the
02:32 mindset is right for whatever that's in. Some people may say that's worth nothing. And if you
02:36 want to believe that that's perfectly fine. I don't think it's worth everything. Cause I think
02:40 the last couple of years, they had some guys that like, I don't want to pick on cam accord,
02:44 but like, I thought cam accord got it. I thought he was a guy that really understood
02:48 what he was there to do, what he was supposed to be doing, the approach, all that. It just
02:50 never translated. So I think the understanding is right. I think the mindset is right with the
02:55 coaching staff, how it translate is ultimately going to decide whether or not they're a good
02:59 staff as it should. And I'm not going to punish them for things they haven't done. I'm not going
03:03 to celebrate them for things they haven't done. We'll have to see, but it was, it was just nice
03:09 seeing that like they're all on the same page with each other and they're all on the same page
03:13 with reality as crazy as that kind of sounds. Yeah. I mean, no, I think you hit it on the
03:17 head because with all the uncertainty, like you said, that we're going to be dealing with,
03:21 especially before the coaches were announced, we had no idea what the staff was going to look like.
03:24 And after hearing from the coordinators, it's very clear. They have the same vision. You know,
03:29 they want to use more empathy. They want to have relationships with these guys. They want
03:33 the collaborative effort. And I feel like that was something we heard time and again,
03:36 as these people want to work together. And, you know, I've seen some people kind of turning this
03:41 into, Oh, well, they're kind of like poo pooing how Belichick did things. You know, Gerard Mayo
03:44 was talking about having a bigger staff because it was so small in the past and how they want to
03:49 have all these, you know, again, the relationships and things like that. And like how to push back
03:53 on that a little bit, because I think that Robert Kraft and Gerard Mayo have gone out of their way
03:58 to credit Bill Belichick for what he did and for building this organization up to what it was.
04:02 That said, it is impossible to ignore the fact that that kind of closed off system where like
04:06 Gerard Mayo says, I don't want there to be silos. I want everybody to feel heard. We've seen several
04:11 reports about the fact that people in the building, especially scouts and people like that
04:15 didn't feel like their work was valued or that they had a say in opinions. And we kind of,
04:20 obviously there's the fear of having too many cooks in the kitchen, which is totally fair.
04:24 Again, we'll see how these guys gel, but having that collaboration, getting differences of
04:28 opinion, if you can manage those, they can be a huge asset. And not everyone is Bill Belichick,
04:32 where you can have that small staff, kind of keep your hands in several different pots and
04:36 oversee a bunch of things and do that effectively. The Patriots still have a small staff. It's
04:41 not like a 49ers. They have a lot of assistant coaches, a lot of people. It's still relatively
04:46 small, but Gerard Mayo needs help with like the senior offensive advisor, like bringing in people
04:51 where he doesn't have as much on his plate. I really do like the direction they're going in.
04:54 And this is just a part of the process where you don't want to see red flags. Like you just don't
04:58 want to have anything that you're actively worried about because of something someone said, or like,
05:02 it doesn't sound like they're really on the same page. So for a first year head coach like Gerard
05:06 Mayo to have this kind of early buy-in where you do hear a pretty clear message from everyone.
05:12 I think that's exciting just, you know, from what we get at this point where we're not seeing any
05:15 football, we're not seeing drills and we don't get to actually see what the product's like on the
05:19 field. Yeah. I think the other important thing is just like, I understand why some people saw it as
05:26 shots at Belichick. I think the thing yesterday about the size of the staff could have definitely
05:30 been worded differently, but one, they have a bigger staff. They don't have a big staff like
05:36 by NFL standard, they had the smallest staff in the league last year at 17 coaches, which became
05:40 15 by the end of the, it started as the smallest and they lost two coaches during the course of
05:44 the season. The average staff size last year was 23. They're at 21 right now. So they're still on
05:51 the smaller side and maybe Mayo doesn't realize that the other thing is the way some things are
05:59 changing in terms of the way they're being done and, Oh, well, bill did it this way.
06:02 And he had so much success. Well, this is, this isn't the team bill had
06:05 bill didn't really have teams with this talent level. And when he did, they weren't good. So
06:12 even bills one rebuild, which was, you know, 29, uh, 2009 to 2010, 11, like those years where
06:23 they're drafting Slater and Gronk and Edelman and McCourty and Hightower Chandler Jones like that,
06:27 they were still always good enough to be. They re he managed to rebuild without tearing it down,
06:32 which was incredibly impressive. This was a tear down rebuild and it just
06:38 Belichick system works when you're winning games. I don't think it translates as much
06:43 when you lose it. Now, I don't think bill Belichick ever planned on losing games, nor should he
06:47 and to go as long as he did without having to tear the things down.
06:51 The thing down to the studs is a, one of many tremendous testaments to what he did,
06:55 but you need a different approach with a young team. It's coming off a four win season than you
07:00 do when you're contending for super bowls every year. What would be really interesting to see
07:04 is kind of when they get, hopefully when they get to like the precipice and they are in contention
07:12 again, how much that Belichick stuff comes back. And I hope we get to have that conversation.
07:17 It would be a very fun conversation to have. Obviously if the team never gets good, we don't
07:23 get to have it. Gerard Mayo's out and we move on from there. But that to me is really where the
07:28 Belichick stuff starts to come in. Get your buckets with your first bet at FanDuel, America's
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07:51 And then also one thing I didn't touch on yet, but was the culture of,
07:55 you know, wanting to build those relationships. I kind of touched on it, but also because,
07:59 you know, Belichick had his way where it was really kind of my way or the highway, more kind of,
08:03 I want to say dictatorship, but we all know how Bill ran his ship. And also when we think about
08:08 the kind of players he had under him, that kind of thing worked. And then one thing we keep hearing
08:12 is how this is a different generation of players. And even Brady, you know, it was a different thing.
08:16 That's a 20 year relationship. Those inevitably fall apart a lot of the time at some point,
08:20 but even he was kind of rubbed the wrong way by the fact that he didn't feel that he was
08:24 necessarily appreciated. And when you're a defender, you know, you don't really care
08:27 what Bill Belichick says or how he treats you. Cause this is one of the greatest defensive minds
08:31 in history. So when Bill Belichick tells you to do something, you do it when it's more Bill
08:35 Belichick is the overseer, the CEO, and you're not really getting the direct coaching from him,
08:40 like on offense, where we see that, you know, things got kind of cold with Mac,
08:43 we'll touch on him later. And there was just a lack of sync on that side of the ball.
08:47 It excites me as we move into the Alex Van Pelt portion of the show, where it's very clear that,
08:51 you know, he's tagged as a relationship guy and he really values like what Mayo has been saying,
08:55 getting to know them, making sure the players understand that you care about them and you
08:59 understand them and can kind of adapt to different people, treat them differently,
09:02 the way that they need to based on, you know, their personality types. And like you said,
09:06 it'll be interesting to see how this experiment works. Like, you know, this could sound great
09:10 on paper. And then once the season starts, none of it makes any difference. So we do still have
09:14 to see, but with Alex Van Pelt first, give me your overarching ideas of what he said,
09:18 because there was a lot from him. So I think the biggest thing, and I mean,
09:22 I've already talked about this. It was my big takeaway from the little video they put out,
09:26 the digital team put out, whatever it was last week, two weeks ago, the flexibility and that
09:33 he's going to have a core scheme and you have to have a core scheme. You're not going to have Alex
09:37 Van Pelt go out there and run air raid, but he has a core scheme, but he's willing to kind of
09:44 mold that around the personnel they end up with. Now, I think he'll have a say in the personnel
09:49 and I don't think they're going to bring in guys that are totally alien to what he wants to do.
09:53 But I also think that there's some flexibility there, which was maybe something that was an
09:58 issue for the Patriots last year. Something that used to be unbelievable at, but just kind of
10:02 faded. And I think if there's something that Van Pelt wants to do that they don't have the personnel
10:11 to do, he'll de-emphasize it. And if there's something else that he realizes they have the
10:16 personnel to really be lethal with, they'll emphasize that. I don't think I'm breaking
10:21 any news, Taylor, when I say the Patriots won't have the most talented roster in the NFL next year.
10:26 And even if they get to that point, and I'm sure that that's the goal, but that's at minimum three
10:32 to four years away. So if they want to really make some noise and punch above their weight class,
10:38 the way you do that is maximize the talent you have. It's finding guys, putting guys in
10:43 situations where this guy does these one or two things really well. So we're going to design
10:48 our offense to maximize these guys doing these things. And we have this guy and we want him on
10:54 the field because he does this, but he's not very good at that. So we're going to make sure that
10:59 we're scheming around him having to do that. And he's mostly doing this instead of being like,
11:04 you know, just off top of my head, this wouldn't really apply, but like, all right, we, this is,
11:09 if you listen to catch 22, you know, I am saying this. All right. We want our slot receiver,
11:14 just running fade routes all day. That's all we want them doing, but, oh, well, we weren't able
11:17 to get a slot receiver. Who's a really good fade runner. So we're just going to have somebody who
11:22 can't run fades, run fades all day. Like that kind of felt like it was the approach to the last
11:25 couple of years, especially with on offense, which they're using tight ends in the blocking scheme.
11:30 Weird. They were using running backs that didn't have a history of catching the ball as past
11:34 catching running backs. They were moving linemen in all these weird positions. It was like, these
11:38 guys couldn't do these things, but the Patriots wanted to do it. So they just kind of put their
11:43 head down and went ahead and, and that, right. I don't think van Pelt is going to be that guy.
11:48 I think it's, I think to go back to the example I used there, I don't think they'll end up there
11:54 because if they want a slot receiver that runs fades, they'll go get a slot receiver that runs
11:59 fades. That'll be a point, but maybe that guy's hurt one week. I don't think it will then be all
12:04 right. Well, you know, we're going to put Juju Smith Schuster there and have him kind of try to
12:09 run by guys. I think it'll be all right. What other things can we do this week? Can we lean on
12:14 the running backs? Can we lean on the tight ends? Can we lean on a different wide receiver? Can we,
12:18 you know, that's something I felt like the Patriots struggled with the last few years
12:22 that it seems like van Pelt keeps hammering. Every chance he gets is flexibility,
12:29 versatility, multifaceted attack. Again, he's, they're going to run outside zone.
12:33 They're going to be play action heavy. They're going to go vertical,
12:36 but those are all very general terms. There are multiple ways of doing that.
12:41 And to me, it's all right. If we have kind of going back to being a game plan offense, basically,
12:47 but sort of bigger picture too, with the personnel, which is what they did when they were
12:50 great, you know, they'd come out. Well, uh, what was the, um, in the playoffs in 14, they come out
12:56 against the Ravens. Tom Brady throws like 50 passes. I think they only ran the ball twice in
13:00 the second half. And the next week in the AFC championship, Garrett blunt ran the ball like 35
13:04 times, right? Two completely different game plans. And they were able to execute it. And I think
13:09 that's what van Pelt wants to be, which gets me excited. Cause that's what you have to do.
13:13 If you want to pull off upsets in the NFL, you have to be multiple. You have to maximize your
13:17 skill sets to be able to punch above your weight class. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of teams say
13:21 that they want to be multiple and they want to be adaptable and all these things, but to your point,
13:26 not every team can actually do it. Like the Patriots say that every single year, like you
13:30 said, past couple of years, we haven't seen that Josh McDaniels was one of the best offense
13:34 coordinators in the league at adapting to what he had, like the 2016 season, which was very similar
13:39 to what Alex Van Pelt had to deal with, where you just have all these different combinations of
13:42 quarterbacks and you have to adjust on the fly and say, okay, this is what this quarterback does.
13:47 Well, this is how the roster can kind of support him and going that way where with Van Pelt,
13:51 you know, with McDaniels, everybody was nervous because one, his head coach track record scared
13:55 everybody off. I don't think it should have for an offensive coordinator job, but there was the
13:59 Patriots and Belichick connection where it's like, okay, he's been in the system forever.
14:03 I want something fresh. Van Pelt made it a point to acknowledge how many different systems he's
14:07 been in both as a quarterback and as an offensive coordinator, or just as a position coach.
14:12 Cause you know, he operated under center. Then he was in an offense and operated a lot of K gun.
14:16 And then when he was coaching, he's bounced to all these different, really highly respected coaches.
14:20 A lot of them have kind of similar base philosophies, but there's still different
14:24 systems that had to adapt to different types of personnel. So that is something where he has the
14:28 track record. You've actually seen him be able to adapt his scheme and work around his players.
14:32 And he mentioned, like he was asked, what do you look for in offensive lineman?
14:35 And it's intelligence, it's toughness, and it's being a good teammate. And he said,
14:40 athleticism, but there was also, he said, Hey, if you're a mauler, you know, we'll adapt to that.
14:44 We're not going to ask a guy like Dewan Jones, where they adapted the scheme because Dewan Jones
14:48 wasn't a really good run blocker. So instead they put him in positions where if they did run to his
14:52 side, it was something he did very well, but they tried to run the other way and adapt that way to
14:57 make sure that they weren't trying to fit square pegs and round holes to that point with the
15:01 quarterback situation. Like that's the biggest thing you build your offense primarily around
15:05 your offensive line and your quarterback. Those are the two big ones. Cause your run game is
15:09 your offensive line. And obviously the passing game has to accentuate what your quarterback does
15:12 effectively. Also the run game, if they can do that, but that's kind of a given.
15:16 So he did mention, I'll read kind of his quote. Um, when he was asked what he looks for in a
15:20 quarterback, he said, he wants somebody who's smart, tough, and a leader. You put them in those
15:24 categories. I mean, obviously there's accuracy in the passing game in mobility and decision-making.
15:29 There's a lot that goes into it, but at the end of the day, that role is such an important role,
15:33 not just for the offense, but for the team as well. So a guy that's a true leader that can come
15:38 in and really understands his teammates and gets the best out of those guys. The physical attributes
15:43 are obviously important, but if a guy is a great leader and can come in and make good decisions and
15:47 throw the ball accurately, those are all pluses. But the guides that I've been around that are
15:52 great players often are the best leaders and the most competitive guys as well. So you can adapt
15:58 to whatever the guy does. Well, that's not really it. The core things you're looking for are a lot
16:02 of the times it's the intangibles that leadership was something you kept poking at.
16:07 [Music]