FOXBOROUGH — The Patriots held their final practice open to the media on Friday as they finish prep for the Washington preseason finale. It was a very light affair in shells, held at a jog-through pace that was heavy on game prep.
Five quickie thoughts after the 20th practice:
- The new-look offensive line stayed intact for a second straight day: The Patriots rolled out LT Chuks Okorafor, LG Sidy Sow, C David Andrews, RG Layden Robinson and RT Mike Onwenu.
Anyone reading here knows this has been my preferred lineup since Robinson emerged with a couple of really strong weeks. Jerod Mayo liked what he saw.
"I would say it was encouraging. It was encouraging to see that," he said before practice. "Anytime you can sandwich a rookie between two veteran players, that's always going to be a benefit for the player and also the team. We're still trying to figure out that combination, but I feel like we're getting pretty close."
Sidy Sow had an interesting comment on Robinson after practice.
"Very, very strong and smart,” said Sow. “Obviously, he’s young. He just got into the league. He’s like me last year. Getting here, we don’t know a lot. But physically, that guy is so damn strong. He does certain things sometimes and I’m just like, ‘What the hell?’ I wish I could do some of those things.”
- Jacoby Brissett will start, but I wouldn't expect him to play a ton based on the practice snaps.
"Jacoby [Brissett] is going to start the game off," Mayo said. "Drake [Maye] will play as well. Joe [Milton II] will play as well. Now, you guys can sleep. Bailey [Zappe] will play."
Brissett and Maye basically split reps against the scout team. I read that as Brissett playing less than Maye in this game, but I could be wrong - it's a new regime. Milton and Zappe only took reps as scout team QBs.
"If you guys remember early on, he [Drake Maye] would throw interceptions and he [Drake Maye] would get so down on himself," Mayo said. "I would say now, as we exit camp, he's [Drake Maye] done a lot better job being able to pull the nose up on the plane when it seems like it’s going down. I think that's an important quality."
- Among the players who I wouldn't expect to see much from in this game, based on practice: Rhamondre Stevenson, Austin Hooper, David Andrews, Davon Godchaux, Keion White, Jonathan Jones, Marcus Jones and possibly Christian Gonzalez.
Andrews should play, but I think he'll quickly give way to Nick Leverett.
"We do have some players dealing with small things that probably won't play and get ready for the regular season – some of our proven players," Mayo said.
- I think the Patriots have a chance to look better, more organized on Sunday night: One of the things that surprised the crap out of me in camp was the team never worked off cards until the Washington week. The previous regime did it before every game, at least a little bit, to prepare the team a bit for what they were going to see in the game. But as I'm learning, this is a new regime and I need to keep that in mind - and the lack of cards could explain why things have looked a bit disjointed, especially on offense.
Assuming all the cards they worked on this week were Washington, the Patriots should be extremely well-prepared in all three phases. They repped a ton of plays, probably even some scripted plays. I'm hopeful the QBs, WRs and TEs are a bit more on the same page with the routes after this prep. That's been an issue.
"It's more of the exercise of going through who are their go-to players, offensively, defensively and special teams, and how do we stop them?" Mayo said. "These are the things that we need to be careful of, and these are things we want to try to exploit. So, most teams talk about the post-mortem. They end up going and seeing what happened in the game. To me, it's about the pre-mortem. How do we prevent ourselves from losing the game? You can't win until you stop from losing."
Of course, if they look worse, look out.
- Patriots will once again see a third-stringer start at QB: Dan Quinn announced No. 1 pick Jayden Daniels will not play, and Marcus Mariota has been out with an injury, so expect to see a lot of Jeff Driskel, rookie Sam Hartman (and his hair) and Trace McSorley.