Belichick: Mayo mismanaged end of half against Seahawks

Seahawks have lengthy injury report going into Week 3

I feel bad for the everyman podcaster. Overnight, I became addicted to NFL content from Bill Belichick and Jon Gruden, two former head coaches who never warned us that when their careers were over (or on hiatus) that they’d be stealing two or three hours of our time every week. Time that I have to take away from other content creators, but I can’t help it.

I am addicted. Especially to Gruden. You can listen only to Belichick’s podcast, but you have to WATCH Gruden to fully appreciate him.

If you were subscribed to Seaside Joe last year, you probably remember “the most important 8 minutes in football”, which is based on studies and a philosophy that teams that win the middle of the game are more successful than teams that win any other eight minutes of the game: That’s the last four minutes of the half and the first four minutes of the third quarter. That idea got some confirmation from Bill Belichick in his evaluation of why the Patriots lost that game to the Seahawks, insights we would have never heard from Belichick at any point in his football life before now.

The reason for that was evident on Sunday: The Seahawks got the ball back just before the end of the half and would be virtually guaranteed of back-to-back possessions even if they scored. All possessions matter because you might only get 10 or 11 per game so if you expect 11 possessions but you get 13, that’s a HUGE difference.

I said in the Seaside Joe live chat at the time that Seattle got the ball back that if the Seahawks could just manage to get 10 points out of this, they would win the game. Could they score a field goal and a touchdown on back-to-back possessions and completely turn the tide of the game in their favor?

No, they managed just three points on back-to-back drives, which is a big reason why the Seahawks nearly lost and the Patriots probably should have won.

Here’s what Bill Belichick said on his podcast to Michael Lombardi this week on why his former team and former protege Jerod Mayo lost to the Seahawks in Week 2:

“Lombardi: New England just really violated the whole middle eight. I mean, they’ve got a chance to go into halftime but they decide to throw two passes and basdically give two timeouts back to Seattle to kick a field goal at the end of the half to come back in, then Seattle gets the ball to start the half.

Belichick: That’s a tough one. New England threw for 100 yards total, so the chances that them passing the ball down the field with a minute to go in the first half, why would you do that? Give it to Stevenson, get a couple of first downs, get out of there at halftime and start over again. Especially with Seattle getting the ball in the third quarter. Those ended up being three big points.”

Here’s something Belichick else said about the game earlier in the podcast:

“Same thing in New England and Seattle. New England had two three-and-outs at the end of the game, one regulation and one in overtime, and then Seattle drove down for the tying field goal. Then drove it 75 yards for the winning field goal in overtime. So that fourth quarter, whether that’s a combination of conditioning, coaching strategy, figuring out what’s going on. Whatever the case might be, it’s a combination, but that fourth quarter stands alone and you gotta be able to play well to close out games in the fourth quarter in this league.”

Belichick basically says that the Patriots should have beaten the Seahawks except that Mayo’s coaching staff, and quarterback Jacoby Brissett to some degree, mismanaged the situation at the end of the first half, the end of the regulation, and in overtime. Even just the decision to run the ball in the second quarter instead of passing it, that might have been enough for New England to beat Seattle. According to the six-time Super Bowl-winning very recent head coach of the team that lost to the Seahawks.

Another former NFL head coach with a ring, Jon Gruden, just posted a breakdown of what he expects to see on Thursday Night Football’s matchup between the Patriots and Jets and here’s what he had to say about how New England making uncharacteristic unforced errors is what led to Seattle’s victory:

“Last week against the Seahawks, the Patriots had some uncommon busts. They blew a coverage and DK Metcalf got a 60-yard touchdown. It had nothing to do really with Seattle, it was just an error. That’s very uncommon with this great secondary of the Patriots. They had two pass interference penalties to setup scores. Uncharacteristic. They had another blown coverage where they got picked off (the NBA kind of “pick”) in man coverage. They made four or five mistakes last week that really cost them in a tight ball game.”

I’m not going to tell any of you who to like, but nobody else is as “born to talk about football” as Jon Gruden, as per the title “Gruden Loves Football” he really does love football and to be honest he’s very nice:

For those of you not as interested in commentary content about other teams, here is another All_22 breakdown about the Seahawks, a short eight-minute segment about Julian Love’s blocked field goal (I’m really sorry that I left that out of the post-game recap, it’s an embarassment that I overlooked it through all the madness of what happened towards the end of the game) and some extra content on Byron Murphy and Leonard Williams.

Richard Sherman was on the St. Brown Brothers podcast with Amon-Ra St. Brown. The interview starts at 34 minutes:

He talks about the best players he ever played with and mentions a lot of Seahawks, but doesn’t mention Russell Wilson. I don’t really get involved with Seahawks history drama, but I definitely think Wilson is one of the best players that Sherman ever got to play with. What do you think?

Trench Talk

At 23 minutes in, offensive line analyst Brandon Thorn talks about the Patriots offensive line going against Byron Murphy and Seattle’s defensive line for about 15 minutes:

Seahawks injury report

The Seahawks have a lot of players on the injury report today, but I wouldn’t expect this list to look even half as bad on Friday.

Did not practice: Ken Walker, Laken Tomlinson, Brady Russell, Jerome Baker, Uchenna Nwosu, Boye Mafe, K’Von Wallace, Leonard Williams, DK Metcalf

Limited: Pharaoh Brown, Noah Fant, George Fant, Tyler Lockett, Derick Hall, Devon Witherspoon

Full: Laviska Shenault, Tyrel Dodson, Jarran Reed

I won’t speculate which players will be ready for Sunday, but the ones who are probably in the most danger of being out are Walker and Nwosu because they’ve already been missing games. It’s positive that Brown is a limited participant, same for George Fant, because Seattle could use more help upfront and those situations looked fairly bad.

Overall, I’d be surprised if more than one big unexpected name missed the game on Sunday and it could be zero.

Every coach should be watching Belichick’s podcast

Imagine if in 1989, the year after he retired, Bill Walsh started calling every coach in the league and talking to them about what they did wrong for about five minutes every week. That’s what it is like to get a podcast from Bill Belichick. We’ve NEVER had this level of weekly access to football’s most well-educated minds before. If a team doesn’t hire Belichick next year, he should start his own football network.

I think Jon Gruden will have a harder time finding a job, which I think works out well for NFL fans who enjoy his brand of talking about the game. His show could end up being bigger than Pat McAfee’s and can you imagine the irony of ESPN trying to buy his show to become more relevant again?