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00:00It's Tommy Tuesday. Tommy Curran of NBC Sports Boston joins us right now on Jones and Keefe.
00:05He's brought to you by D'Angelo's Sandwiches, New England's sandwich shop and the sandwich shop of
00:10Jones and Keefe every Tuesday. A bunch of Thanksgiving subs already dropped off. Oh,
00:13polish that off. Yours is all gone. I'm about halfway through mine over here working on it.
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00:30weekly weight loss at Awaken180weightloss.com. Tommy Curran, what's up? Good afternoon, boys.
00:37How are you? Happy Thanksgiving week. Oh, happy Thanksgiving to you as well. What's your must
00:41have at Thanksgiving, Tom? What is it? You know, I really like a pumpkin pie with a dollop of
00:46whipped cream. Sure. Not cool whip. I'm a big stuffing guy. Not as big on the turkey, but
00:54stuffing in the gravy. Drizzle gravy. No celery in my stuffing, please. No celery, please. Thank
01:00you. That seems like a fair request. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Tom,
01:07what do you think of the Patriots performance against the Dolphins that second quarter?
01:11Perhaps the worst quarter of the entire season? Yeah, I wrote a column and said that it was soup
01:17to nuts incompetence that really undid the four weeks of semi encouraging progress that had been
01:25made. And that's what's unfortunate about it, I think, is, you know, the Jacksonville game was
01:30a nadir. And this really returned right to where the Jacksonville game was, perhaps with a little
01:36less physical ineptitude. That Jacksonville game, they just got to run down their faces.
01:42This game just featured too many mental mistakes, focus mistakes, pre-snap penalties,
01:47communication mistakes, stuff that you really hoped if they were desiring to make the progress
01:53where they wanted to be a team that was smart, tough and disciplined, they would be able to
01:57excise from their game, especially back in the division for the first time in a little while
02:03against a team that should be a peer if you are trying to get better. So it was very,
02:09very discouraging, I think. Tommy Curran's latest is up now at NBC Sports Boston,
02:14Patriots ineptitude at every level signals need for greater urgency. He was citing some of that
02:19there. You also cited in the column, Tom, between May, another top five pick and a huge amount of
02:25cab space. There's absolutely a way for the franchise to get back to dry land. How how
02:30soon do you expect them to be competitive again to find that how you want? How soon do you think
02:34that'll be? How soon do I think it'll be? I mean, I, I can't predict. I'd have to see what they do
02:41and how soon, how soon would be, let me rephrase, how soon would be acceptable next year? They
02:46should be competitive next year. They should go from being whatever they're going to be. And it's
02:50a tough five game finish that they have here, except for the Colts. They're probably going to
02:56finish with three or four wins. You have to be seven, eight, nine wins next year. You have to
02:59be signaling competency and be the tough out that Gerard Mayo said that he wanted his team to be.
03:04You have to be potent on defense, far, far, far greater than you are now. And I guess that's what
03:11troubles me about where they are, is I felt the cornerback and edge would need positions going
03:16into this draft. You know, Marcus Jones and Jonathan Jones are fine, but they are physical
03:22mismatches at times against bigger receivers. So I think they needed another boundary corner.
03:26They definitely needed another edge rusher even prior to Matthew Judon leaving. So you add those
03:32two positions to offensive tackle and wide receiver, and you have the four positions that
03:36aside from quarterback are the most coveted and highly paid in the league. And they need to staff
03:41all four of those positions. So that's why I say they need extreme urgency to address these things,
03:48because it's not year one of a rebuild. It's year five of a rebuild. So they need to be more
03:57proactive than they have been instead of just this year has basically, and you guys would agree with
04:01this and we've talked about it. We're just going to roll it out there and see how it looks. And
04:05then we'll make some decisions afterwards. Okay. They better be hard decisions swiftly made.
04:12What do you think of the, uh, or what is the status of DeMarcus Covington? I feel like
04:16throughout the year, you know, we talk about Mayo every day. We talk about Wolf a good amount.
04:21Van Pelt clearly with, you know, him working closely with Drake May. The defense hasn't been
04:27very good. You know, Tua is another one of these quarterbacks in a long line this season that had
04:31another, you know, great career high type of day. Covington's name doesn't get brought up a ton.
04:38Uh, what do you, what do you think his sort of status is here now and going forward?
04:43First of all, I think the reason he wasn't brought up so frequently was, you know,
04:47the absence of Peppers, Barmore and Bentley for so long was cited as a reason that of course,
04:53there's going to be backsliding in the removal of Judon. So there was, to me, at least I would say,
05:00well, what do you want? That's going to look that way. Um, but when you see the communication
05:05issues and when you see how overmatched they are in the lack of, um, innovation during games,
05:11for instance, I still think one of the worst ideas I've seen coaching wise this year was
05:18an all out blitz on Matthew Stafford. When you're down 14, 10 on the first possession of the second
05:24half, he's a 16 year veteran and you've already seen this movie with Gino Smith and DK Metcalf
05:30in week two. What did you think was going to happen? What was the reward for the risk that
05:34you were going to put out there? Because the risk was a touchdown, which they got.
05:38So I think as the season has gone along, there's more focus has switched to Covington because of
05:45the nature of the mistakes. They're not physical mistakes. They play hard. They're just confused.
05:52And if they're confused, you have to ask, well, are they prepared adequately? And why are they
05:58not able to switch as a deftly? And I think the Steve Belichick and Gerard Mayo, Mayo now spending
06:03less time, obviously, with the defense because he's more of the CEO and obviously not having
06:07Bill there to oversee or at least tinker. And Bill spent more time on offense the last couple of
06:12years because Steve and Gerard would have it locked down. So I think Covington was not in a
06:17great spot, but that's sorry. I mean, it is what it is. You're not in a great spot. You can't just
06:25say, well, what can you do? You have to do something. Time now for Tommy Curran's Flex
06:30of the Game is presented by Flexcar. You can ditch the dealership and save thousands with
06:35Flexcar. What's your flex of the game this week, Tom? Oh, it's a tough one. I'm going to flex to
06:41you're going against the quarterback who you should be able to have your way with to an extent
06:45with Anthony Richardson. You should be able to do with him, perhaps to an degree, what you did
06:52with Caleb Williams. What defense will Covington call upon and what kind of improvement will you
06:57see? We'll see whether or not Jabril Peppers is on the field. I honestly, and we've talked about
07:01this as well. I thought he was the best player on the team the last two years. The most productive,
07:07brought the most attitude and leadership on the defense. If he is on the field this week,
07:13we do not know. And we'll start to see on the injury reports, his participation level.
07:17But if he's on the field, does he help to make a difference for them? You know, Tom should going
07:23forward with five games left to play, should they be overall more aggressive offensively?
07:28I know the first drive, this isn't the most egregious example of it, but fourth and one,
07:33you'd already been a penalty on the drive. It's fourth and one at around your own 40 yard line.
07:39Do you maybe consider going for that there? Knowing that your defense isn't great,
07:43knowing that you're going up against a team that's probably going to score some points.
07:46We've talked about it at the end of the Tennessee game and other times, but it just feels like
07:51the winds might not be there. You're not a playoff team. Does it do more for the team to
07:56be aggressive and allow your rookie quarterback to try to get a yard or two yards in certain
08:02circumstances throughout the game? In a vacuum, that decision is not offensive. I agree with you,
08:08but I spent last week saying that in using Dan Campbell as an example,
08:12their default move, the Detroit Lions was to be aggressive at every turn.
08:18We have anything confronting us that said the 2022 Lions and we are in attack mode.
08:23And the Patriots want to be a game plan team. They want to be versatile. Well,
08:26if you want to be a game plan team and switch from this type of scheme to that type of scheme,
08:33to this set of decision making, you have to be good enough to toggle back and forth between them.
08:39We all remember Bill Parcells and to a degree Bill Belichick, they would be stubborn about
08:44mindset. And I think that the Patriots need to have a default setting. And I don't know
08:50what their default setting is. Is it aggressive? Is it conservative? I just don't think you can
08:58lick your finger and check the wind before every decision. You have to have a default. And I think
09:02that you're exactly right. When you're not a good team, you should go for it if you have a point
09:07flip situation against Tennessee to win the game. Because yeah, maybe the offense is tired,
09:13but the defense was chasing for 12 seconds. We're on play. Try and get the win. You need a win.
09:19So I fully agree with you on the idea that they should have a default aggressive
09:25approach offensively right now. Well, we saw Harbaugh do it a couple of times last night on
09:30Monday night football, including a fourth and one from zone 16. So other coaches are doing it.
09:35Will Mayo do that? I want to circle back to a Jabril Peppers. Do you think if you had to guess,
09:40do you think he plays this weekend? I couldn't even make a guess. Honestly,
09:45we'll have to wait and see because I don't know. He hasn't been in the building. Do you think he
09:49should? Do you think he should play? Maybe I should ask it that way. Do you think he should
09:52play if he's ready to if he's physically ready to play? Sure. I mean, it's I'm not into the
10:00level of moral decision making that's up to them. If they say and they're comfortable with him
10:06playing, then he's been removed from the NFL's exempt list. Then sure. Do you? I mean, I would
10:15want to have some real strong evidence to make sure he's exonerated because they're still moving
10:19forward with the trial and the accusations were pretty heinous. So I don't know what they have
10:24for information. And I don't know any details about what's going on with this trial. But yeah,
10:30I would I would be cautious. Yeah, I would be, too. So one would presume with a six billion
10:36dollar team in the most visible sport, certainly in America, certainly on the planet to a degree
10:44right there with soccer, that you would want to stride carefully when making any decisions about
10:50putting a player on the field who may have something looming over them. So you want to have
10:56every assurance that you're not going to be completely embarrassed if something comes out
11:03by now. But it's been eight weeks. So one would presume. That they somehow feel comfortable with
11:10it and they've reconciled themselves to it. So not knowing the inner workings on it,
11:16I would defer to their decision making while reserving the opportunity to go, well,
11:20what would you put them on the field for if you didn't know that, you know, one of the stories
11:24that came out of the game on Sunday, Mark Daniels and others were reporting that, you know, they
11:29just got worked by the Dolphins. And then in the locker room afterwards, guys were laughing. Guys
11:34were smiling. Is that is that a big deal at all? Or is that sort of like more of an old school
11:39mentality? Like, are you going to get to really where your loss is hard? Like, where do you come
11:43down on that? I wasn't there. I don't know, you know, absent silly string and water balloons.
11:50If guys are laughing a little bit after the game, if there's a radio on and guys are really laughing
11:55and towel snap. And I think that that would be something that would be jarring. But the guys
12:01who were in there have been in a lot of locker rooms. They found it noteworthy enough to mention.
12:07But again, are they playing hard? Are they giving an effort on the field? Are they quitting on the
12:12field and then playing grab at the locker room afterwards? I didn't see indications that they
12:16stopped playing on the field. So I don't know the context of the laughing and the joking because I
12:21wasn't there. So I I don't think it is. I don't think it's a, you know, a hanging sin. How do
12:30you feel about the turnovers with Drake May? He was asked on WEI after afternoons yesterday if
12:35they're becoming a problem. He said he didn't feel that they were. He needs to clean them up,
12:39but he didn't feel they were a problem. Do you think they're becoming a problem for Drake May?
12:44You know, I said this after the game the other day. That's the kind of game that we were talking
12:48about when saying, well, you don't want him out there for that because it could lead to regression.
12:54And I still think he played pretty well overall. But when you have jailbreaks defensively going
13:02after your young quarterback and his decision making may at times be compromised, not just
13:08the physical aspect, but the decision making. That's where you can start to undo some of the
13:13good that you did. So it's one game. As Brian Hoyer said in the postgame with us, you know,
13:19if you get to three or four weeks of it, that's an issue. And I would think that if you're losing
13:24your fundamentals in your decision making, the turnovers would follow. So. Yeah, they're they're
13:31worth monitoring in the context of how does each one come and the turnovers this past weekend were
13:39more jaw dropping and irritating, I think, given, you know, and he acknowledged that
13:43to try to do a swim move around an onrushing defensive lineman would probably just take the
13:48fact is a good example of a panic play. Okay, he's Tommy Curran, NBC Sports Boston joins us
13:55every Tuesday on a Tommy Tuesday here on Jones and Keefe. You can check out his latest at NBC
13:59Sports Boston Patriots ineptitude at every level signals the need for greater urgency. He's got
14:04quick slants tonight. He'll be on wei afternoons later in the week. Current as always, we appreciate
14:09it. Thanks so much. Thanks, guys. Take care. Thank you, Tom. All right, Tommy Curran.
14:13I've been joining us here. Oh, I should have said, you know what? Shame on me for not saying
14:16that we did. We did the thing. We did. We did. So shame. What do you think? Happy Thanksgiving,
14:22Tom. If I didn't say it, which I did.