Can Patriots break “soft schedule” narrative vs. Buccaneers?

Now from WBZ Sports, this is Burton Ernie talk football with Forier. Welcome everyone to Burton Ernie talk football with For Steve Burton. Make it six straight for the Patriots and seven wins on the season. Seven and wins. Your Patriots and only in first place in the AFC East. They are tied for the best record in the NFL at seven and two. Ernie Adams alongside Christian Foyer join me now. So now they’re perfect on the road. 4-0 on the road. Now they got to go to Tampa Bay. They got to face Baker Mayfield company. Is it is this their first big test since Buffalo? Um it’s probably their Yeah. their their their biggest test. But I’ll just address right now the whole issue of soft schedule. Yeah. The players and coaches have absolutely nothing to do with the schedule. It’s all set up by formula. And anyone who thinks it’s easy to win a game in the National Football League has never been involved with. These are professional teams and winning a game is hard. And that’s, you know, you even against the soft teams. There are no soft teams. Oh, there soft teams. Some teams, there are some teams as the year goes on devolve into total dysfunction. But what but when you have, you know, it’s like they’ve played some team, you know, a couple teams who are, you know, you could see it on Sunday, you know, gave them, you know, gave him 60 minutes of good football. Um, I would say, yeah, he’s right. But you turn them soft by you start off and you just basically take their their desire to live away from them and they just lay down. That’s usually how it works with crappy teams. But real quickly for my my answer is yes with the Tampa Bay Bucks. And the reason why is has nothing to do with what the Bucks do on offense. It’s what they do on defense. I think they’re similar to Atlanta in a couple ways as far as their speed and their youth, but the one difference is they got Vida up front who is a just a big he’s like an Hawaiian version of Vince Wolffork. He is he is what we call a load. Yeah, he is a load. So is Vince Wolffork and then you have Levante David who’s a Hall of Fame linebacker and Antoine Winfield. So they have players, they are smart. You’re not going to push them around up front and they got a linebacker that can make every single play. So to me, I think this is a really big challenge, especially coming off the Bucks coming off a by-week. No. Yeah. No, no, no question about it. I mean, this is this is, you know, the the be absolutely the best team they’ve played since Buffalo, you know, and they’ll be they’ll be pushed right right to the max and we’ve, you know, we’ll see, you know, where they every it’s a test where where where are you really? Baker Mayfield, Drake May, both quarterbacks are now in the MVP conversation. agree, disagree. You know, to me there’s so much the the whole MVP thing. Um I’m not a big uh uh that’s that’s that’s more big, you know, in in your your line of work. It’s, you know, it’s just going out and playing. Well, let me ask you, what makes somebody very important? The most valuable player. Okay. What do you need to see? Okay. Well, the most valuable player because it always turns out to be the quarterback or some, you know, it could be, you know, I like the idea of maybe they could be a defensive player. Absolutely. Yeah. Who? But what makes them so special? Like what do you need to see from them? Okay. Do they have to be on a winning team? Um, it’s hard. It’s a lot harder. First of all, if you’re on if you’re a quarterback and you’re on a bad team, you probably don’t have very good pass protection because it is, you know, the passing game. It’s a team effort. It’s pass protection. It’s running routes and you every the quarterback is the force multiplier who can help everybody else who could but everybody else is helping the quarterback. MVP you got to dominate the game. You got to change the game. The last defensive player Lawrence Taylor, right, to win MVP. That’s going back. But he changed the game, right? Well, for instance, I would say you you want we we talked spent a lot of time talking about last year. How can you have the conversation and not talk about say Miles Garrett? He’s on a bad team, but I’m telling you what, playing him, you know, he’ll he he he will change the game. So, if you’re really, you know, it’s most valuable player, but it’s who’s if you had one player in the league to pick the starter team, you know, who’s it going to be? Let me just add this in kill this this the MVP talk. Yeah. Like the fact that Drake May’s in the conversation is amazing. I just and I’ll leave it at that. Like it’s amazing. Second year doing what he’s doing. And if forget about he’s on a rise what goes into it but he’s in the convers some people are talking about this guy particularly coming you know off off last year where he showed some things but he’s on a bad team to come to the whole he’s made tremendous pro the whole team’s made tremendous progress you know that’s why everybody in Boston’s interested in them it’s good stuff all right Jake May’s been sacked 12 times in the last two games 12 times. How big of a concern is this going forward? But he’s the second quarterback on the list besides Cam Ward to be sacked most in the NFL. It’s Listen, you never want your when you never want your quarterback getting hit. You’d much rather be playing the game, you know, I know they play on turf, but with a clean jersey like when he’s playing against Carolina, I don’t think they even breathed on him, at least as I as I remember the game. So, yeah, it’s always, you know, as your offensive line, you never want to see that. I I will say this. I think we’re downplaying downplaying this situation. 34 sacks in nine games. I think we’re downplaying. And I think we we all get kind of caught up in just how well the team’s playing, how good he looks, uh you know, how they how many points they’re scoring, and you forget how often he gets hit and how many times he’s in danger, whether he’s in the pocket or he’s outside of the pocket. I do think the offensive line, I mean, doesn’t get any um like they almost like just they don’t get any blame at all. Um and they’ll blame it on uh Drake May. I just feel like it’s something that they need to absolutely like look at as far as okay, moving forward, we can’t let this happen anymore. I am absolutely certain that every week, you know, out on the practice field, it’s, you know, it’s a top priority. I mean, they work on this stuff, work on getting better. They work on their blitz pickups every week. The whole I mean, like I said, today’s Tuesday, Tuesday night, they’ll have a protection meeting. What do we need to do to give ourselves the best chances as far as pass protection goes? I mean, it’s always a huge issue, you know, in in the national. And again, this is still like, you know, they’re all new. Everybody’s new except like four of the five guys are all new. Two on the left side are rookies and the the center is a free agent and then the the right tackle is a free agent. I I still think they’re going to get better to your point. They got to get better. And that’s always, you know, the biggest thing they have. I I know it’s Chris will tell you it’s coach speak, but it’s getting better every week. I know that’s the one thing I have learned from you. Coach, coach speak, you speak it well now. All right, we’re going to take a break. We are. We’re gonna take a break. He’s a good learner. When we come back, we head to the whiteboard with coach Ernie to talk about the mic. Who’s the mic? You hear the quarterback say that every game. Who’s the mic? You’re watching Burton Ernie talk football for you. We’ll be right back. [Music]

At 7-2, the Patriots sit tied atop the NFL for the best record in the sport. Steve Burton, Ernie Adams, and Christian Fauria discuss how the Pats match up against Tampa Bay, whether the “soft schedule” narrative actually matters, and Drake Maye’s MVP candidacy on the latest “Burton Ernie Talk Football with Fauria”.

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