DC Jim Schwartz (8.1.23)
Jim, last time we talked to you back in May, you talked about the difficulty in really assessing things until you really started to play football, until you got the pads on. I know you haven’t had them on for long, but what have you been able to discern from the time you have so far?
“That we’re not ready yet. That’s probably the biggest thing when the style of defense we play depends so much on playing off of another guy, as opposed to just sort of hunkering down and playing your responsibility. And there’s only really one way to practice that, and that’s full speed. So, we’re still a work in progress. We’re making progress, but it’s something that doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve had very limited opportunities and full pads, by plan. But particularly for the young guys, Thursday would be a big step for them. We’ll keep it simple for those guys, and we can see where they are right now, but we’re only a couple of weeks in. We’ll use the whole training camp to be ready for the opener.”
Where do you think you have made the most progress?
“Well, I’d say more in blitz responsibility and those kinds of thing because with all the walkthroughs and everything else that we’ve been getting, Jeff (Schudel), we can use those reps. You don’t have to be full speed to get to your right gap, to blitz in the right spot and things like that. So, we don’t restart our installation when we come to camp. We start off the first day with everything that was installed in the spring, and the guys did a good job of responding to that, and we’re able to hit the ground running with that kind of stuff.”
Jim, when do you evaluate your guys during camp? Do the game reps weigh more heavily than a single practice day?
“It’s the whole body of work, Tony (Grossi). It’s game reps, it’s practice reps, it’s walkthrough, it’s meetings, it’s the weight room. It’s all part of the evaluation process. How you do something is how you do everything. And we preach that. Obviously, games are going to mean more, but it’s not the only thing that we evaluate.”
How do you feel in those padded practices? Two padded practices, that the technique that you guys worked on translated?
“It’s still a work in progress. When you’re learning a new technique, a lot of times when all of a sudden it becomes pads or it becomes a first preseason game, you tend to resort back and then you just got to plow through that. I think anything (that) any of us have tried to lose weight, you’re on that diet and you’re feeling good, and then all of a sudden that afternoon comes and you cheat, and next thing you’re set back, and then you sort of regroup and you start again and you just keep making progress. So, we’ve had setbacks, but we want to trend like the S&P 500 where over time we’re making progress. We don’t want to be that cardiac rhythm where we’re up one day and down one day.”
Jim, when you say we’re not ready yet, how much more ready might you have need to be?
“Well, we’re not ready for an opening, but we’re ready for a preseason game and ready for practice.”
But my question is, how does it change anything, if anything, that you have those three AFC North games in the first four weeks, does that accelerate what things you might have to do or how much more ready you have to be?
“Yeah, I mean, we see so many different things in our division that we do have to cover a lot of ground in training camp. But if you ask these guys about the first three opponents today, I would hope that they wouldn’t know any of the three. Because they’re just worried about practice today and the emphasis of practice and competing and their technique. And if we do a good job of that on a daily basis, then we’ll be ready for those first three opponents. If we’re here August 1 – yeah, if we’re here August 1 and we’re thinking about week three, we’re in the wrong business and we’re not going to make any ground. So, I like where the guys are, come out on a daily basis and work. But your point is we do have a lot of stuff, not just in the first three games, but there’s a lot of things that are going to come up over the course of the year. A lot of different styles of offense, a lot of different things that when we play a middle of the season game and there’s something that we put in the game plan, hopefully, it’s not the first time we’ve executed that. We’ve covered that ground at some point in the offseason in training camp.”
Jim, a lot of these guys on defense have talked about how they wanted to have better communication this year early into training camp. Where do you think that stands with you taking the reins and how has that kind of developed so far?
“I think that falls into Jeff’s question about the blitz. I do think we’ve made progress there, and communication. We streamlined a lot of communication and things like that and what we just did in our walkthroughs and things like that, where you’re quote full speed before the snap, all that communication has to be urgent, and we’ve made progress there. And I don’t think – you don’t need full pads to improve communication. Now, when we were at Greenbrier, our first day in pads, our communication was the worst, right? And we made mistakes on things that – we made more mistakes that first day, mental mistakes than we did the whole week before that because there was a guy in pads lined up next to you, just changed the dynamic. The more that happens, the players will get comfortable. It’s one thing getting comfortable in a meeting, getting comfortable in the walkthrough, getting comfortable in a non-padded practice, getting comfortable in a padded practice, and now real games, you know? We’re somewhere in the middle of that progression.”
Did you like the energy you saw because it seemed like those last three practices down in West Virginia, the energy from the defense especially was really high. Do you like where that’s at least?
“Well, we put an emphasis on that, we’re going to try to lead the league in effort. We’re going to try to lead the league in passion for the game and things like that. And that doesn’t just happen on Sunday, you got to practice it. And I think the guys have responded well to that message.”
Browns brought in a cornerback today. Your thoughts on that?
“Yeah, I mean, we just had a spot. We’ll get him up to speed quic, and he’s already been in our meetings and took some snaps and walkthrough. So we’ll get him up to speed right away. And if the opportunity comes for him to play on Thursday, we’ll have the package ready for him to play.”
When you hired Ephraim (Banda), what was it that made you want to bring in a guy like that?
“Well, I mean young, old, black, white, hispanic, loud, quiet, all those things – none of that really matters. It’s your ability to inspire and motivate players. It’s your ability to bring energy every day. It’s your ability to teach technique and to teach scheme. And he checked all those boxes and he’d been around a lot of good people in college, and he was a guy that was on the radar and he was ready for when his time came for the interview, and he’s done nothing to dissuade us from thinking that was a good decision.”
Jim, what have you seen out of the linebacker group? Does it make it hard not having maybe two of your top guys able to be in team builds yet?
“No, I’d sort of look at it the other way. It gives more work to the younger guys who can use it, and it also forces all those guys to act like vets and to operate efficiently like vets. You can have a comfort blanket or whatever the word is, you have a security blanket. Yeah, security blanket. You get a security blanket, have an AWalk (Anthony Walker) and Tak (Sione TakiTaki) out there and then nobody else takes that next step. Nobody else really grows up. But you throw them in the pool and they have to make all the calls. You saw it last year with those guys, they had to go out and play. But now they’re getting more and going against whatever first group on offense and things like that. And our standards are standard, we don’t get graded on the curve because we have a young player or a rookie or anything else out there.”
The first practices in West Virginia, seeing Myles (Garrett) kind of work off to the side with guys, hearing how vocal Za’Darius (Smith) is, having those two guys sort of taking the reins in that regard with some of their younger teammates, what that means as you’re trying to get everyone on board?
“I’d add Dalvin (Tomlinson) in there, too. Been an outstanding leader for us and I think those guys that have operated at a high level of success in the NFL, it becomes paying it forward a little bit. I’ve been very pleased with those guys. I’ve been pleased with their tempo, practice, and everything about it. Anytime you sign a free agent, anytime you give a guy a contract and things like that, you’re telling the rest of the guys in the locker room, ‘Hey, this is what we’re all about right here.’ Right? And those guys have a responsibility to know, what’s it, Spider-Man with great…? See all you Marvel people – with great power comes great responsibility. Well, with a big contract comes great responsibility. It’s not just about play. It’s about all that stuff. And I like those guys. Those guys have all done it in their own way. Each guy is a little bit different. But when you talk about the D line, you talk about the group, and it’s a little bit like an offensive line. It’s not an individual position. One guy might flush the quarterback, another guy makes the sack. One guy might execute a game perfectly to free up another guy. It’s a group. It’s a mentality of all for one, one for all. And those guys are leading the way.”
Jim, along those lines, how important is it – not only how those guys play off each other, but those top D linemen you’re talking about, the relationships they have with each other in terms of selflessness and kind of the quest to create the best matchups that you guys see as the coaching staff?
“When your best players are also your hardest working players, I said before, we expect to hold our best players the most accountable. But that’s one thing to say, to hold your best players the most accountable. Where you’re really getting somewhere is when your best players hold themselves the most accountable. And I don’t think I answered that question, I went to something else?”
I still appreciate your point, but I was asking about the relationship between those?
“You know, it takes a village I guess. You know, it takes a village, and everybody’s going to be a little different. Like, Z’s got a lot of energy and he’s real loud. Dalvin, you don’t hear a lot from them, but they all have their own individual style, and together they all play off each other and fill each other’s blind spots and cover each other’s blind spots. I’m mixing my metaphors here. That’s a big part. We’re not just out here blocking and tackling and getting off blocks and doing technique. We’re also building a team and the synergy between players, their responsibility to each other, we’re training that as well. And I think a lot of people can overlook that when you go to training camp because it becomes all about the scheme or all about the pads. There’s a human dynamic to this and we need to find a way over this next month or so that the sum is greater than our individual parts. If we do that, then we’ll have done our job.”
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