6 Rings On Air: Turpin on A.J. Brown, Drake Maye vs. the Jets' Blitz & the AFC Race

Well, in studio with us, we love having Justin Turpin, top tier Turp. Tier one Turp. From weei.com, who has been with the Patriots all season long, including the pre-season. First, let's get to this Jets game. And what are you hearing, and what is your feeling after spending some time down there about AJ. Brown, and whether you think he's gonna return? I'm still leaning that he doesn't, just with the short week, obviously going to Chicago on Thursday. I think they would like to give him the extra couple days to rest up, and obviously the quick turnaround between the two games. I also think Mike Vrabel is very realistic when looking at these things, and they probably shouldn't need him against the New York Jets. You can wait until next Thursday against the Bears, so I lean that he doesn't play, but he was out there during the portions of practice, open to the media, was limited all week, enters on Sunday with a questionable tag. So I guess we'll see what happens. They'll have to make that move tomorrow, but I still lean he probably doesn't play. Is there somebody that would be easily chopped off the roster if they could make him, even if he says 10 snaps, would you make like Kyle Williams inactive or somebody deeper on the special teams chart or how does that come? I mean, it had been Efton Chisholm before then, and I don't think it would be Efton Chisholm. So I think it probably would be Kyle Williams. I think he would be the guy which would be weird after the week that he just had. Yeah. Obviously, what he brings. I mean, he might be a one-trick pony with just a deep ball, but that's a hell of a trick to have if you are going to be a one-trick pony. So I think it would be Kyle Williams just because I don't think you can put Efton Chisholm back in that spot. Kyle Williams did have an impressive. I know Ted doesn't love giving a lot of credit, but he beat that sucker off the line. That was good. We highlighted that play in the breakdown. That was a nice little get-off, as we called it, when you can get off the line of scrimmage without getting jammed. It was press coverage, too. So look, that's exactly what Keishon Booty did for Drake Maye last year. It was that nine-route press coverage, no safety over the top. So look, I mean, we know he can run fast straight. You know, when he has to throttle down and cut is when he has problems. So, I don't know, they seem to give him a lot of opportunities to kind of figure it out, because that was their first wide receiver that they drafted, right, in the variable era. So he's going to get all the chances to make, improve and he just needs to improve on his route tree. Can you do comebacks? Can you do curls? Can you do end cuts? He's still, you know, he's just a one trick pony right now. Speaking of that nine-route, I found this super interesting put out by NextGenStats this morning. Romeo Doubs has run a vertical route on nearly half of his routes this season, 48.3 percent. Wow. They're trying to make a lease on that kind of 40 percent. It just has the number for the entire year. Because Rich called this out a couple weeks ago, like he needs the, who wrote that story about him? It was Tice, I forget what his name is. From Yahoo. Yeah, from Yahoo. He wrote something in saying that he was using, he was being used in a completely different way that when he was successful, when he was in Green Bay. Like, as a matter of fact, the minute that he started running the type of routes that he was doing in Green Bay, all of a sudden he's becoming successful. That was in weeks 4 and 5. I think getting AJ. Brown back would just be huge for him. Puts him more in a role that he's more comfortable. Like, I don't think he's necessarily a number one wide receiver. He's more fit to be that number two behind AJ. Brown. And just the presence that AJ. Brown would bring, like going back to his first game, like two of his catches on third down, like that's so important to have that kind of pass catcher. So if he is ready to go, that his impact will be felt right away. Tell me a little bit about this Jets defense and whether they're going to make Drake's life, because you look at like the rankings and they seem to be what number four in yards allowed. On PFF, their secondary ranks pretty well, pretty high. Yeah. So how tough are they going to make Drake Maye's day? I mean, they're going to blitz a ton. That's what they've done throughout the early part of the year here. In their last two games, they've blitzed over 50 percent. Now, I don't know if they can do that against Drake Maye. Even with his struggles early in the year, he's still excellent against the blitz. I think four touchdowns, just one interception, completing almost 70 percent of his passes in those situations. So I don't know if they're going to be able to stick to their identity and blitz him because of how good he has been against the blitz. I expect them to pick on Caleb Lomu, although I don't think Bailey, the second overall pick there who's been awesome, is top five in sacks and pressures generated. I don't know if he'll necessarily be against Caleb Lomu, if it is Caleb Lomu because he has traditionally lined up over the right tackle. So you blitz him at your peril. He's just, he has issues when it's when you flood the zones, or you drop more guys and then you rush. You know, teams that have been getting, having success with Drake, getting pressure on him, rush four guys and they keep two safeties deep. That's the formula for stopping Drake. So if you want to blitz, he'll carve you up, man. The kid can find the open guy and usually teams are playing man to man behind them, behind the blitz and Drake Maye's a much better passer against man to man than he is. The numbers against the blitz this year, he's completed 33 of 46 pass attempts at 71 percent. The third highest completion percentage behind only CJ Stroud and Patrick Mahomes, four touchdowns, one pick in those situations. So he's been very, very effective against the blitz, and that's including the first two to three weeks that he was struggling three weeks. What are your impressions with, I'm going to do a two for here. Give me your impressions on Efthin Chisholm and the role he has, and then also Eli Raridon. What do you think about the rookie titan Eli Raridon? I've been very impressed by Eli Raridon in both the pass game and the run game. I think he's been a much better blocker than I thought he was coming out of college, where he's been very effective in that regard. Last week had a breakout game in the receiving game, five, what was it, five catches, over 50 yards. An athlete, man. Both team highs, like clearly he's built some trust in that, with his chemistry with Drake Maye. So I've been really impressed with Eli Raridon, just what he's been able to do in a lot of the facets of the game. And same thing with Efthin Chisholm. He's made the most of his opportunity come in, there's a reason they've been so high in their belief for him, because they believe he can be this type of impact player. And I think we're seeing that through these last couple of weeks where he's gotten more opportunity. A couple of weeks ago it didn't look so great. It's amazing how a few weeks switched things, Teddy, but like looking at their draft classes from last year and this year and the banana contributions they're getting from this crew, like look at just last year, their first five or six guys all playing, Campbell, Trevion Henderson, Kyle Williams, Jared Wilson, Craig Woodson, go Marcus Bryant's been a swing tackle and then obviously this year's class, Raridon's playing a lot, Actus better than we thought. Huge. Pretty good from Vrabel's draft. You get two drafts back to back where you have a handful of guys that contribute from each draft class. Now you got some. You get to compare the errors, but the Patriots' 95-96 draft. It's not the 95 draft. It's hard. Yeah, a couple of Hall of Famers in there. So if you can have like two draft classes back to back where you hit on a few players, man, that does so much for your depth and it saves you money so you can put the resources somewhere else. Frable wasn't even there for one of them. He was in Utah for a couple of days. He was just like, yeah, I'll just call this one in. Speaking of that, I do, Gabe Ackes. Just the outside pass, Ponder, Ackes, what are your thoughts on the outside line? I think this could be a huge game for them. I thought it was really interesting the other day that Kevin Byard offered this up, that Geno Smith has been very intentional in not trying to throw interceptions to a point where he's holding the ball too much. I mean, he's been pressured on almost 44% of his drop backs. He's been sacked the fourth most times in the NFL. He's holding onto the ball a ton, which- So Byard said that? Byard offered that up at the podium, which you really don't hear from players at the podium. You know why he's doing that. He's gonna make one hell of a media personality one year. He's already doing NBC Sports Boston, like he's going right as soon as he's done playing. Yeah, your show as well, as soon as he's done, he's just gonna go right onto media. He's gonna be great at it. Joe Bucs partnered with the Night Football. That's gonna be Pat McAfee. But he's obviously saying that, yeah, I know, probably. But he's obviously saying that because he wants Geno to hear that. So he makes some dumb mistakes and tries to get rid of the ball. Yeah, I mean, maybe it could be that, or also he could just, they really do think this is something that they can exploit. I talked to Gabe Ackers about it, and Raymond Jones, and they both said that that is something that they believe they can take advantage of and get to the quarterback because he's holding onto the ball too long. So, it's much different than Kirk Cousins. Last week, we see Kirk Cousins where he's just getting the ball out super quick, trying not to get sacked, would not want to get hit, whereas Geno Smith is trying to not throw interceptions when he led the league in interceptions last year at 17, hasn't thrown any in the first five weeks here. All right, Turp, I want you to think about this, and when we come back in two minutes, I want you to answer it. If on Monday, we're sitting here talking about how the Jets won, I want you to tell us what went wrong. What do you think would lead to a Jets win? We have a top tier Turp here in studio with us, and I was asking you before the break, if Monday morning, we're sitting around talking about how the Jets won, why would that be? Why would be a reason that the Jets might be able to, against all odds, beat the Patriots this weekend? The Patriots don't take care of the football. That has been the issue in both their losses this year. They weren't able to take care of the football. If they're able to do that, I think they'll be fine, and they should be able to against the Jets. I mean, they have forced five fumbles, recovered five, or they forced more than that, recovered five, and they have one interception this year. They went all of last year without an interception. They got an interception this year, so it shouldn't be a problem, but we talked about that pass rush, led by Bailey there, and if they can kind of take care of the football there, I think they'll be fine. Okay, so from what you've seen from Drake Maye, I mean, obviously, two weeks ago during the Bills, he had a couple of the slippery fingers thing with the, at least, under center. Last week looked great. Blood on the ball, blood on the football. Of course, blood on the football, but last week looked great. That picture was pretty damning. There was so much blood on that football. I couldn't tell if it was real or not. No, that was a real picture, like sopping with blood. It might have been edited a little bit, where they're messing with the resolution, so it's more obvious that there was blood on it. It looked like it was dunked in red paint. It was bad. It was a lot of blood. He definitely had to get stitches after that, I'd imagine, with how much blood was on that football. You would think so, but it does seem like they've got a better, I mean, especially last week when all we heard was that the Raiders caused more turnovers than any other team, and sure enough, they were able to control things. And you're right, if they ended up, it was his first clean game of the season. Against a team that entered the game top with the most turnovers in all football. We were talking about that. So that was very encouraging. And also the offensive line deserves so much credit for what they were able to do last week. When you're giving a quarterback as talented as Drake Maye that much time to throw, those are the results you're going to get. Like if you look at, I think it was 8 of 11 of his passes that were over 10 air yards were completed, and a couple of touchdowns in those situations. So yeah, I think when you're looking at that, it's like those explosive plays, those are generated when the offensive line gives a quarterback like Drake Maye plenty of time to throw like that. Were you sitting in on the McDaniels analytics? I was. Pretty interesting. I thought this was going to be interesting. So this wasn't a full-fledged Ted Sloan analytics conference. But he was asked, maybe it was Andrew Cally, I don't know who asked him, but Stiz has a chunk of it here about how he uses data for devising his game plan. Here's what he said. You can slice it up a gazillion different ways, you know what I mean? All these different things, and they all sound like something that could be productive. The question is just whether or not we can actually get information to the players that makes sense to them in the middle of the heat of the battle. If they can't use it, who cares? You know what I mean? If I can't use it as the play caller, in terms, if it's a down and distance type of a thing, if it's a personnel grouping, if it's an alignment thing or a specific situation in the game, if I don't know when it's coming, then it wouldn't make any difference to me either. So and he talked about having like four plays or something that he gives Drake a week to paraphrase. Like he just, he gets it down to a couple of things, which sounds smart to me, rather than Breslow having the whole game plan dictated on a sheet of paper that you go by wrote. I like that from a coach, that it sounds like they're properly using analytics, Ted. Does that strike you that way? I guess I don't know exactly what, you know, I mean, analytics can mean a million different things, you know, whatever. They just, you know, whatever, what do they like to do on first down and 10 in the red zone? What do they like to do in third and three plus on third down? Those are all analytical type metrics. I, you know, what does the defense like to be and what coverage is its owner or man-to-man in this part of the field? So there's a millions that you really should have established kind of what the opponent's tendencies are in the middle of the week and then you just keep hammering those tendencies. And when I say, the only time you're going to give the offense or defensive players what the other team's tendencies are, if they're overwhelmingly in favor, like if it's 70% of the time or more, like if it's 50-50, well, that doesn't really help me. But if it's 70, 80% in their tendency, then that is very helpful for a defensive player to know in this situation, 80% of the time, they like to do this. That's very helpful. Okay, so Turp, there is... I'm looking now at all the teams in the AFC, and just as I'm going down it, I'm thinking of what my impression of them at the beginning of the season was and what they are now. There are so many teams that are not at all what I thought they would be. The Broncos, for example, the Chargers, absolutely not what I thought they would be at this time of the year. The Eagles. Yeah, I mean, you just take a look, and I'm looking down this list here. Texans. The Texans, exactly. One of four. Now that you are five weeks into the season, what do you think about the Patriots and their standing as to where they are as far as the AFC is concerned? I think the AFC is wide open, and I thought that going into the year where you're looking at Buffalo and Baltimore where those two are probably the top picks. Kansas City, of course, now that you're seeing Patrick Mahomes is back and healthy, but when you didn't see it, a lot of people were talking about the Bills and the Ravens being at the top of the AFC. And I need to see it from them in the postseason before you can put them up there, so to speak. So I think it's wide open. I'd probably give the advantage to the Chiefs, just given how good they look, and they've finally got a running back. It's been years since they've had a running back and had a run game as strong as they have. And Ken Walker is just unstoppable. He's never had a running back like this. No. The closest one was Williams in his first Super Bowl, but he was certainly not to this level of Ken Walker. This is the best Ken Walker has looked, and he's been a good running back in this league for a while now. So the Chiefs with their run game, I still wonder a little bit about their pass catchers. Travis Kelsey has been awesome. He was great last year as well, but obviously Tyquan Thornton going down. Can you get more out of your receivers in that regard? So I would probably put the Chiefs up there right now, but a lot can change in the next couple months here. I put the Patriots in third. I think it's Chiefs, then I got to go Jaguars because of what they did to them, and then I will put them at third. Because the Ravens, they got a backup quarterback right now. I don't believe in anybody else in the AFC North. I've never believed in the Bengals. Really? I haven't.