 Quick Slants is presented by your local New England Honda dealers. I got a confession to make here. I am enjoying the Patrick Mahomes experience. Maybe I'm a little late, but I really think that he is transcendent. And not the Patrick Mahomes experience that is the brother and the wife and the state farm ads, Travis and Taylor, and that sneaky loathsome Kansas City fan base. But Mahomes, I like them and it all crystallized for me last week when trying to analyze the game and decide who my pick for the winner would be. It came down to one team having the transcendent player. Mahomes is a thumb on the scale of competitive balance, the same way Jordan or Gretzky or Montana or LeBron or Magic, Larry and Brady were. For me, he's in that mix with those guys and the Tigers and the Titans and the Sugar Ray Leonard's sneaky dominant. Seriously. Sorry, I spent 20 years looking at the greatest to ever do it. And Mahomes still is in halfway to what Brady did. But even if he has just less than half the resume, he's more than half the player. When it comes to the best to do it that these eyes have seen, Mahomes is right there with Brady and Montana. Phil, Phil, Phil, it's Phil Perry. Hey, what do you think? I'm right there with you and what makes Mahomes interesting relative to those two great quarterbacks that you just mentioned, Brady and Montana. Tom, it's his ability to make plays with his legs. What did we see at the end of the Super Bowl, fourth and one with the game on the line. They put it in his hands and let him scramble for yardage. What was the play that got them deep down into Niners territory in that overtime? Just a few plays later. It was a Patrick Mahomes scramble. He can make plays within the pocket that we know, but it's his ability to transcend from outside the pocket off schedule. That makes him truly great. He has taken the goat baton and scurried further up the mountain with it as goats will do. All right. It's time now for the game plan. What are we giving out after this one? First things first, quite a back. That's Patriots related polls, comments, and we got more Mike Lombardi that you might not have seen because it's real good. We wanted to share it with you. But right now it's time for Quick Fire. It's presented by your local New England Honda dealers. Check this out. This is Kyle Shanahan's record in Super Bowls. Now it's not what you're looking for, but he's been to three, he's been to three, 25 point lead, a 10 point lead, a 10 point lead, all up in smoke. All right, Phil Perry, goat in terms of Patrick Mahomes dominating the game or goat as in our guy Kyle Shanahan peeing down his leg. I'm going to lean more towards the Chiefs winning this game rather than the Niners losing it. Tom, though they did have a 10 point lead. They were the favorites coming into this game. They had kind of a historic offense over the course of the regular season. They should have been able to win this one if not for a few plays. But when you're going up against Patrick Mahomes, it makes you do weird things. For instance, I would have taken the ball second in overtime because you have to know who you're playing against in the regular season going first. Your defense is tired. I get the reasoning. You're going against Mahomes. Don't give him four downs. I think that gave the Chiefs an advantage. We're going to revisit that conversation, but I want to just throw this stat out. It's Mahomes. It's not Kyle Shanahan. It's Mahomes. This is six for seven on conversions in the fourth quarter and over time. There was a run by Isaiah Pichico, but that's a handoff on either third or fourth down. Six for seven down the stretch in that game. And they were singularly outstanding plays. Meanwhile, undercover keys to this game. Check this out. Check out the dots. This is the Trent McDuffie Blitz on a third and four with two minutes left. Watch that Blitz. Number 22. And if you're watching again, he sneaks underneath of just a well timed Blitz. Steve Spagnola was, as we talked about, Phil, perhaps the most important coach going into this game. So forget about Shanahan. Forget about Reed. That was an unbelievably well disguised Blitz, and there was nothing that Brock Purdy could do because the little fella was invisible until he was right in his kiss. And he tends to get a little bit invisible, Tom, when the pocket closes down on him. This is unfortunately just something that Brock Purdy is going to have to live with. The reason he was Mr. Irrelevant is because he's not all that physically impressive, right? So how many muddy pockets did we see where things got really tight for him in there and made it difficult on him? The Chiefs blitzed him and blitzed him and blitzed him again. 19 blitzes and all. It was the most he has seen all year since week 11. I think Spagnolo understood, if we can pressure this guy, his physical skill set won't allow him to shoulder everything he needs to shoulder to succeed in those situations. I'll push back a little bit in saying that I don't think the Purdy was victimized by Spagnolo because he's a less than player, because we saw Spagnolo do it in 2007 to Tom Brady. He could do it with Ford. That game he barely blitzed, but all of these guys were pocket passers, and I'm not oversimplifying with Purdy. He can move around a little bit, but a pocket passer you know where he's going to be. That play like that with McDuffie, there wasn't a lot that he could have done even if he was an elusive guy. Meanwhile, my friend Stephen Govan, he sometimes tweets in. He had this to say about the overtime decision. You can't receive an overtime with the new rules. It's like a baseball team choosing to hit first and extra inning. Stupid! Nice work, Shanahan. Did they not understand the rules? Phil, I mean, who knew? I mean, did you know that it was two full possessions, touchdowns, don't matter, etc.? You knew. The rule changed. The reason why the baseball analogy, Tom, it doesn't work is because this would be a baseball game that could end in an inning and a half. And that's what Kyle Shanahan was getting at. He wanted the opportunity if the game was still tied after two full possessions to get the ball third and therefore be batting last if you want to try to continue on with the bat analogy. That was the reasoning against Patrick Mahomes to me. It doesn't work because you gave him the chance to understand, okay, this is how many points I need. Now I'm going to have four downs to make sure I go and get that thing. And with a quarterback who's that talented, Tom, you can't give him that kind of info. You make him go first. I get what you're saying, but I do understand the in the vacuum logic. Sometimes your point is well taken. You have to say, this is my opponent. I have to reconfigure my logic here because of who I'm going against. But if you have the chance to just tie that team, like, you don't know, you're going to get a field goal and not a touchdown on your first possession. Presume a touchdown. Presume a touchdown. We can end it after that. To me, it did make sense. I cannot assail him for the decision. All the sale. All right. Fine. We can talk about this. We'll talk about this on the Patriots Talk podcast. Meanwhile, Travis Kelsey, really terrific. Not since Pedro Martinez whipped Don's image of the ground have we been more slack jawed at any kind of elbow abuse on a sideline or out of out of play area. Travis Kelsey said, I'm going to keep it between us unless my mic dump tells the world. But I was just telling them how much I love them. Easy there, Trav. Easy big fella. To me, this is multi-layered because now you have however many million, tens of million fans watching because Taylor Swift's boyfriend is playing in the game. And then he goes and acts unhinged. That to me makes it so much more fascinating, in addition to the fact that in a normal, normal player, his ass would have been benched. Yeah. Well, you know what my reaction to that moment was good on Andy Reed because there might have been other coaches, Tom, that would bench him if not for the entire game, maybe for a quarter or maybe for a series or two until he cooled down and Andy Reed said, no, you're one of our best players going to continue to roll you out there. He only had one catch in the first half, but he ends up making a couple of key plays late in that game, helps him win the game. Good on Andy Reed for not overreacting to that situation. But he had a right to react. And if he had overreacted, it would have been a reaction that might have held the team hostage. You're right. Okay, Patriots. Meanwhile, let's talk a little Pat Stuff. We are closing in on a completely fully staffed quarterback group. Excuse me. Coaching staff. You get your mail. You get your van Pelt. There's the offensive side right there on the left. Taekwondo Underwood coming in with the high, high, high fade. The kid in play, Bobby Cougler, of course. Then we have new additions like Jerry Montgomery, Dante Hightower, Drew Wilkins, and Jerry Meespringer. Phil, we got a full reset and it's going to be fascinating because we'll be talking to these individuals pretty soon, but now the off-season starts. Oh, it sure does. And there are a couple of hires here that really interest me, Tom, on the offensive side. It's Scott Peters who worked under Bill Callahan, one of the best coaches, offensive line coaches specifically in the history of the game. I mean, he may be right there, a half a rung below Dante Scarnecchi in terms of all-time offensive line coaches. He is that good. And if this guy is his protégé, that's a good thing for the Patriots than Dante Hightower. How can you not like that hire at the linebacker level? Who better to drop into Drawed Mayo's scheme, which is Bill Belichick's scheme, which is the scheme Hightower thrived in to teach these guys how to play off the ball? Fascinating. They want to culture change. They are getting it. Meanwhile, from the stands, coming at you right now, we unveiled this poll earlier today. Did the Chiefs win the Super Bowl or did the Niners lose it? Look at my guy, Rob Snyder Buckets. He actually did a color-coded. That night is blue-it, 67.1 percent. The Chiefs won it, 32.9 percent. I put it out there because I knew it was going to be this ridiculous assortment of responses. First up, we got our guy, John. It's always a little both. Agreed. But in the end, the best player in the world made more plays. Completely agreed. Thank you, John. Tim Koska. Pat Mahomes is 12-2 as an underdog. You need a weak QB to compete with this guy? I don't know. They competed. I do push back on that, Tim. Chiefs won because Shanahan chose to take the ball in OT and dare Mahomes to beat them. He did. Phil, this was a great Super Bowl. I know that the product might not have been over the top. We might not have had a million memorable plays, but it was a great strategic Super Bowl. It was. No question about it. And I will push back on your pushback. Brock Purdy, you need a little bit more out of that guy near the top of the league in terms of every statistical category coming into this game, 6.7 yards per attempt, 60 percent completions. That's not enough, Tom. They were horrible on third down. At some point, your quarterback has to make plays from the pocket in critical situations, especially to beat Patrick Mahomes. They had 19 points in four quarters, Tom. You've got to do more if you're going to beat Patrick Mahomes. Yeah. Got a guy who's fumbling on the two, whatever it was. Yeah, they both fumbled. Both teams fumbled inside the 10-10. Well, we're not talking about the Chiefs' offense. We're talking about the Niners' offense, and you're assailing it. Senior assail. Meanwhile, coming up after the break, we're going to talk about the New England Patriots in the quarterback position. Oh, my God. They haven't done that yet. The Patriots have two months to fix a quarterback room that was demolished. Here's some of the free-agent quarterbacks available. Cousins, Minshew, Mayfield, Brissette, Tyron, Taylor, and even Sammy Darnold. Draft prospects, you know the first three. Then you've got Michael Pennick. You've got Bo Nicks. You've got J.J. McCarthy. Going to need one. Going to need one from both of those lists. Time now for MySlamint. Watch out. Organizationaly, make no mistake. From the top down, the Patriots understand that coach and quarterback, they sun and the moon for their planet. They underpin everything. Yeah, I know. But it's worth noting, as people like me agitate for them to maybe take a beat on taking the quarterback, that the Patriots' vision is actually very clear. And if they see the quarterback, the very clear sense I'm getting is that they're going to go quarterback. Do they have the coach? Time's going to tell if they have that right. And it will take time. But they have no quarterback right now. So how do they actually go about this? Because they have free agency in March, and they get the draft in April, and they don't know who they're going to bring in. Here's Dan Orlowski last week talking about that. What do you do when you're a blank slate, but you have two checkpoints, free agency and then draft? Yeah, I think if we're talking the veteran quarterback, I think you go with the scheme first. Like what guy do we think can come in and play at a, give us a chance to win level in this scheme, because that's obviously the goal. If we're talking young player, like a draft quarterback, you quarterback over everything. I like that quarterback over everything. That's very tight. Free agency, though, is first. So what Mayo, Wolf, Grove, Van Pelt and McAdoo have to determine is what kind of veteran do you want. You want a placeholder who's similar to the quarterback that you think you're going to get, like Tyrod Taylor, if you have Jaden Daniels, or Sam Darnold of it's Drake Bay. Do you want a guy who can maybe win some games and get you to the playoffs like Mayfield or Cousins or even Gardner Minshew? Do you even consider Mack or Zappy? This all should have been done last year, of course. It was absolute malpractice to go into the 2023 season with Mack by himself on the roster and then you reclaim Zappy and Cunningham with a straight face and you say, yeah, here's our quarterback room, especially when Bill was actively loathing Mack. But the hole has been dug. What's the plan for getting out of it? Phil, a very simple question. I know you pay close attention while the program is on. So from that free agent slash draftable quarterback tears that I had at the beginning, what would be your ideal duo? Well, let's work off of what Orlovsky told us there on Radio Row. When it comes to the veteran, you're going to want a guy who can run the new Patriots scheme. That is the old Brown scheme. Alex Van Pelt, Kevin Stafansky, the marriage there. I really like Jacobi Brissette. I think he's going to be cost effective, Tom. Not going to be able to use up so much money on him that you can't pay a receiver, for instance. And then go get Jaden Daniels in the draft, because I think he can run that kind of scheme. Again, the comp for Daniels that we got from Orlovsky was CJ Stroud. And Stroud is an a similar offense in Houston. So I love that tandem because it doesn't kill you in the pocketbook and it gives you a lot of upside. Yeah, that's the interesting point that you make because when we talk about winning now, look, Gardner Minshew could sniff around the playoffs. Baker Mayfield can get you there. He got the bucks there. I'm not saying the Patriots are a playoff team next year. And certainly Kirk Cuskins could. But your point's well taken. Jacobi Brissette is not as good as those guys. You might say, oh, there's a good Gardner Minshew. He isn't. But he's a cut above the Sam Darnolds. And he's a cut above Tyrone Taylor, for instance. How about this, Phil? I'm going to throw this one at you, because I've been thinking a little bit today. What about a Sam Darnold? Drake may duo. I don't love it. I don't hate it. And here's why. Again, it's not going to cost you very much. Sam Darnold just spent a year in Kyle Shanahan's system. Similar systems. It's interesting. That whole list there, Darnold, Cusins, Mayfield, Brissette, they all have played in this system at one point or another. And then the Drake May situation, if that's how it comes to pass, if he falls to number three because Daniels goes to, Tom, I'm OK with that, too. Would I prefer Daniels? Yes, right now. But I am OK with it. Big prototypical size can throw that ball through the conditions that he's going to see here in New England. And I think he would work in this scheme, too. Phil, as Frank Curran used to say, hold the phone, Charlie. What about Mac Jones sticking around? We asked both Mike Lombardi and Dan Arlofsky about the possibility of that differing opinions. Should the Patriots keep Mac Jones and see what he can be in this new scheme? Yes. Now, everyone says in my industry, you're not allowed to have biases or whatnot. I obviously believe that Mac Jones is a good player. I think he's a much better player than he's been shown. So I say yes. And the counter to my question, what's the downside? Well, who's going to play quarterback if we move down? Who's going to play? Mac. You're not going back. You're going to lose the team if you go back with Mac. You'll lose the team. That look that Lombardi gave you when Mac Jones' name came out of your mouth. Oh, my gosh. It's like that little stuffed teddy bear or monkey or whatever it was in the GIF. Anyway, I'm wasting time. Phil, it can't happen. They're making the decision fairly soon. Do you think that Mac will make it into May on the Patriots roster? I do not. I think maybe on draft weekend, you could see a move. Maybe there's a team that hoped to draft a number two, and they see Mac Jones sitting there. And they say, well, instead of drafting a guy in the fifth, why don't we use our fifth on Mac Jones? Because he might be able to succeed in this scheme. Remember when Kyle Shanahan wanted to draft him at three overall, Tom? There may be teams that still view him in that like, despite what's happened the last couple of years. I don't see him back. I don't know if he wants to be back here, Tom. Quite frankly, next year. I mean, it's too much chaos. It really is. Check out the latest Patriots Talk podcast for a much more Super Bowl chatter and further resets of the roster. You can scan the QR code on the screen, or you can find it on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube. More after this. You think you might have had your fill of Mike Lombardi crossing swords, as it were, with Michael Felger and even here and on the Patriots Talk podcast. But I don't want you to miss out on some of the team building stuff that he and I explored last week in Las Vegas. So I send it forth to you right now, Mike. When you fill the receiver position, once the rest of your team's really good. Because if you have it, I believe it completely. You don't think it's inverted yet? No. I think Bill Walsh were here today, do the same thing. Look at the team in the Super Bowl. Debo's a second round pick. Ayuk's a low first round pick, right? When have they ever really spent for a receiver? They tried to spend on quarterback and didn't do it the correct way. Because they went from Jimmy to Trey Lantz and they ended up with a seventh round pick. They weren't trying to fill that spot with a receiver. I think it's inverted. You look at Miami, they didn't get jump-started until they got Tyreek and Jalen because, well, they got Tyreek, who is the number one receiver, by the way. However, they got jump-started because they had a bell out their quarterback. Because if they would have kept going down this road with Tua, without Tyreek, it would have not been very good. But you almost have. And that's what I think maybe is the point. Quarterbacks now are less than Montana, less than Brady. So you've got to find a guy. Stroud is really good. And he made Collins good. I mean, they got Robert Woods, who couldn't do anything, in Tennessee last year. And he played for him. You've got a bunch of Tank Dell was outstanding for him. Dalton Schultz was a free agent for a one-year contract. I think you can fix it. Look, the quarterback makes everybody feel bad. I think the offense would have been better. I mean, was it? I mean, we got a guy wide open in the end zone against the Colts in Germany. If all we could do is throw the ball down. Throw it to the Colts. And, but you could, Devante Parker running a streak down the left sideline against, I don't know, I think it was Miami goes right through his hands. You get Juju against the commanders. It bounces off his hands. They're not good enough to carry the team. I don't think anybody's going to argue that with you, Tom. No, and the same thing with Matt. It's all over the joint. Can Elliott Wolfe, I guess this is a question. Can Elliott Wolfe engineer this? What do you know about Elliott? I like Elliott a lot. I have great respect for his dad. I like Elliott. I've spent a lot of time with Elliott. I think Elliott will do a really good job. Elliott's a very loyal personnel man. And when I use the word loyal to describe a personnel man, that means he'll say what he thinks. He's not going to say what people want to hear. There's two kinds of personnel men. The first kind is the one who will say what he thinks. That's a loyal one. The one who says what you want to hear is the devoted one. OK, so there's a difference between loyalty and devotion. Elliott will say what he thinks, whether somebody wants to listen to it. He could care less. He's convicted in his opinion. And that's what you need from a scout. What would you do at number three? Because, again, it goes back to the quarterback. I look at it and say, sorry, it's not us. It's not you, it's us. We're not ready for you. We're going to trade down. We're going to add picks. We're going to have two picks going in the next year. The quarterback's there. You've got to get the quarterback. And then once you know who the quarterback is, then we have to build a team around the quarterback. I'll tell you what. People don't realize this. Ben McAdoo's a really good quarterback evaluator. Ben McAdoo, when he was at the Giants, really loved Patrick Mahomes. I know this. And the Giants wanted to draft Davis Webb in that draft. So McAdoo's very good at evaluating quarterbacks. Elliott will be good at evaluating quarterbacks. I think that I don't know about Van Pelt. I don't know him. But they'll be a good read. And if there's a good one to take, you take them. Because, look, you can't find them. Who's going to play quarterback if we move down? Who's going to play? Mac. You're not going back. You're going to lose the team if you go back to Mac. You'll lose the team. Because, look, you could say it's all Bill's fault. I know. We know that. We understand that was responsible for everything. We made every bet. It was all Bill's fault in Boston. Bill was a disaster. At some point. The guy, it was Bill was a disaster. He couldn't coach. Mac's got accountability. 100%. All right. And so what happens is when the players know, they know. They know. And I'm just telling you they know. I can't squabble with that. He was a terrific interview. And God, do I interrupt him a lot? All right. So the offseason has begun, ladies and gentlemen. Super Bowl is in the rear view. Next thing, we got the combine coming up at the end of the month. Then we got free agency starting in mid-March. Then it's onto the draft. This is a pivotal, pivotal, pivotal offseason. We spent an hour and 20 minutes with Robert Kraft the other day, myself and three other individuals, Phil Perry included, in an off-the-record, comfortable conversation. You need to go on the record for a couple of answers. But the overall feel I get from Robert Kraft and ownership is that they are plowing ahead with the plan that they have. They feel they have a vision. We'll see how that vision pans out over the next two months, in particular, because it's critical.