Welcome to first and 10, a roundup of all the (mostly) Patriots-related news you need to start your day:
Dante Scarnecchia turns 70 years old Wednesday. Seventy. The Patriots’ venerable offensive line coach, who just completed his 46th season as a football coach, is a local legend who should get more acknowledgement than he does, simply because he’s been so good at his job for so long and so vital to the success of the franchise. One of my favorite conversations with him came at the start of the 2016 season, when he was talking with a group of reporters about his return, riding back into Foxborough like Winston Wolf to help fix the New England offensive line.
“Look, we ain’t building rockets,” he said with a small smile, a few months after he returned to replace Dave DeGuglielmo. “Really, it’s the truth. Step with this foot, get this shoulder in there. It’s really that. That’s the approach were going to take. We’re really going to be very precise in what we do and the way we do it. We’re going to try and play as hard as we can. If we can do that, we have a chance.”
No one is completely sure just how long he’s going to stick around — a couple of weeks ago at the Super Bowl, he told me that he was still on a year-to-year plan — but the occasionally salty ex-Marine remains one of the foundational elements to the success of the Patriots over the last 20 or so years. Why is he so good at what he does? Every so often, you’ll be able to peek behind the curtain at some of his coaching methods, thanks to video of him at a coaches clinics. Here are our three favorite videos of him teaching offensive-line play.
--The first is a full, 50-plus minute video of a presentation he did at a coaching clinic at Notre Dame a few years ago.
--This features him talking about pass protection. "Pass protection is a physical act ... We're going to hit these (expletives) as hard as we possibly can."
Dante Scarnecchia on Pass Pro basics pic.twitter.com/kuunCsi1KB
— Safe Gipsy (@GipsySafety) October 13, 2016
Dante Scarnecchia : We don't try to out-athlete them pic.twitter.com/H15VlcP83a
— Safe Gipsy (@GipsySafety) May 24, 2017
Pat McAfee with a pretty amazing question for Frank Reich: "Do you hate or love Josh McDaniels for what happened?"
Reich nails the answer: "The backup role has suited me well in my career."
— Zak Keefer (@zkeefer) February 13, 2018