DC Jim Schwartz (9.15.23)
I know it’s just one game, but did that go about as well as you could have hoped? As far as – Alex (Van Pelt) said, you guys graded out really high.
“Yeah, I mean efficiency wise. They really couldn’t get anything started, third down, all those percentages. It was an extremely high win percentage, but I think the thing I was most proud of was the way the players played together and their spirit and the things that we’ve been talking about. I thought, like, you put the tape on and that stood out the most, not the efficiency or the run yards or the pass yards or any of those numbers. It went beyond numbers. And it’s what we’ve been sort of pointing towards since day one, is to operate as a cohesive unit to work well with each other. I have a stupid saying that our job as a defense is to find a way for one plus one to equal three, meaning that the sum needs to be greater than our individual parts. And I thought we did that. That’s what I was most proud of.”
Martin (Emerson Jr.) said off that, like loafs, when you don’t see the guys celebrating with their teammates after a big play, when did you sort of kind of come up with that? What part to kind of implement that with your defense to get that?
“Well, first of all, Martin shouldn’t be talking about what goes on in our meetings, so we’ll just start with that. But every coach has different things like that. There’s a lot of kind of loafs on a field. You get passed by a teammate, that’s a loaf. There’s all sorts of different – change of speed loaf. You get a guy that’s running and then all of a sudden change of speed, that’s a loaf. But we sort of added celebration loaf and that we want to celebrate guys making plays, and we want to have energy. And it’s easy when you play a game like we did. Sometimes it’s harder when you’re getting kicked in the teeth, but we still want to see that, and we still want guys to play hard, play together, and we’re going to find ways to get that done. And if it means something silly like that, then mission accomplished.”
How about Myles (Garrett), crossover dribble? Your thoughts on that? And some of the things that he did in terms of standing up over the center and stuff like that?
“Yeah, I mean, he’s a great player, and he’s going to get attention wherever he goes. We’re just trying to move around, get good matchups. And I think the thing I liked the most about him was just the way he was an unselfish rusher. Like on that play, he didn’t get the sack, but if you watched him, he was celebrating Ogbo (Okoronkwo) and AWalk (Anthony Walker Jr.) and all those other guys that got in it just as much. And up front, we’re trying to sack the quarterback, they didn’t give as many opportunities that the ball was coming out so extremely fast. You can’t really judge the way we rushed based on that. But it’s all about what the group does, it’s all about what the defense does. And when you get guys to buy into that and they can celebrate their teammates and they can be unselfish, I think that’s the thing that stood out the most about the way we used him.”
When you move him around and you go with the 5 D-lineman and you move Za’Darius (Smith) all over, how much of that is about creating confusion for what the line and the quarterback are looking at?
“Well, yeah, but when it’s all said and done, they know Myles wears number 95 and he’s 6’5 and 270 pounds. I used to say that about Calvin Johnson. It’s like you move him around. Yeah, but he still wears number 81 and he’s 6’5, 235. I think they know who our players are. But I think if we have the ability to have guys that are well, we have guys that are multidimensional, have multidimensional skills, and that gives us the ability to move guys around in different ways. And we talked about that when we signed or traded for Z (Za’Darius Smith) from the very beginning. That was an important part of his profile. And having guys, flexible guys like that allow you to sort of move pieces around.”
Jim, I know you mentioned that the sacks necessarily weren’t there because of how quickly the ball was coming out, you still get the pressures, especially Myles and Z, how valuable that ended up being, especially for those to come early?
“Yeah. I mean the whole idea, get off the field on third down and keep the points down and things like that. I mean, if you’re a power hitter, I’ll use my tired baseball analogies. But if they’re not giving you a pitcher over the plate, hard to hit homerun. When the ball was coming out so quick the Bengals really couldn’t get any kind of development to their passing game and that had just as much of an effect. And like I said, I was proud of the guys and the spirit that they played with. There was nobody getting frustrated. They were getting third and fourth down stops and keeping the score down and the things that we talked about, and the numbers will come. But the whole idea is to play team football, to have some camaraderie, to play with some spirit. And I think, like I said, that was what I was most proud of.”
Is it easier to get guys to buy in on selflessness when you have a talent like 95?
“I don’t know. I think that’s part of a coach’s job. That’s part of a player’s job. A coach needs to sell his plan and his vision, and he needs to come up with ways to put his players in the best positions. And then when you’re doing that, it’s easier for players to buy in. But then players have a responsibility to buy in also. It’s a two-way street. I don’t know that it has anything to do with a certain jersey number or anything else. It’s just high school football, peewee football, NFL, college, you know, playing together and everybody operating as one, operating efficiently, communicating. Those things are probably below the radar when it comes to…people love to talk about the scheme and the chess match and everything else. I mean, that’s important, but that’s pretty far down on my list.”
This summer you said you wanted the team to lead the league in some intangibles like effort and passion. Did you see enough of that in week one? And how does that translate into week two in another tough division?
“Yeah, Week one is over with. That I don’t know. That was week one, it was what it was, I don’t know if you say you’ve seen enough of it. We have a 17-game season, and hopefully we play more after that. So our job is to go out and do it every week and to be consistent. And I think we set a good standard for how we’re going to play. And I think it didn’t just stand alone. I think if you saw some of our practices from training camp, you felt some of the same thing. And if you saw our preseason games, I hope you would see the same thing. You know, it’s just a start, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s Pittsburgh and this is a huge rivalry, an away game, a primetime game. We’ll keep the focus on that and not what happened last week. We want to carry over the effort and the toughness and the swag and the badassery and all those things that we talk about. But that game is over. And our challenge is to do it again this week because this is a big game for our team, for our franchise, for our city.”
Jim, Anthony Walker got hurt a year ago. He said he wasn’t sure he’d make it back. So just how glad are you? What has he meant to the whole operation here?
“I mean, I think it speaks for itself that he’s one of our captains. I mean, he wasn’t part of the whole most of the season last year, wasn’t part of most of the offseason program, sporadic in training camp. But he found a way to make his presence felt. He’s an experienced player. He’s super smart, understands situations. He’s a really good communicator, makes life easy for the other guys around him. I’m going to run out of time saying nice things about him, but he better practice good today.”
What kinds of problems or challenges does Kenny Pickett present to your defense?
“Yeah, he’s a guy that people talk about 50-50 balls, but I don’t know they’re necessarily 50 balls with him. He wins probably 70-30 of them and that’s going to be a big challenge for our guys. I think our guys showed the confidence that they can play on the outside part of the field against some pretty tough characters in (Tee) Higgins and (Ja’Maar) Chase. Every week it’s a new challenge and I wouldn’t just stop with (George) Pickens. Allen Robinson is an experienced player, (Pat) Friermuth, big target for the quarterback. We have a lot of ones that we have to win and it’s not just going to know just one player. We’ll have zones, we’ll have man, you know, if we can have a performance like we had last week and we can be confident on the outside part of the field. Now that being said is the NFL, they’re going to make plays. Every guy, these guys are really good and they’re going to make plays. The thing that we’re going to need to see, and we saw it one time on Denzel (Ward) when he got the PI right, we bounced right back, stopped him right after that. Held them to a field goal on that one, right? I think that’s what it was. Either that or the missed field goal, I can’t remember. But there’s going to come times when they’re going to make great catches. That guy has made some insane catches and he’s strong, he’s got a good frame. That’s going to be a great matchup for the fans to watch on Monday night.”
Last week you talked about the importance of tackling after the catch and it felt like Grant Delpit made a bunch of those, even on some third downs. How impressed were you with what Grant was able to do?
“Yeah, I’ve been watching Grant since college, watched pretty much his whole career. I thought that was probably the best game I’ve ever seen him play, including college. Those safeties that can make everybody right, they can match up in man did a great job with his disguise. Him and Rodney (McLeod) and even (Ronnie) Hickman, they did a great job with their disguise and has the ability to play down low, can play in the deep part of the field. Grant’s off to a great start and I’m excited for where he’ll go this year if he keeps it up. But again, one game doesn’t make a season. We need to be consistent. We need to keep putting it on tape week after week. But I’m really proud to coach a guy like Grant.”
A lot has been made about your comment about not being everyone’s cup of tea. We’ve heard Jim Donovan on the broadcast say, ‘I like tea,’ and Stefanski say ‘he’s our cup of tea.’ How good is that for you? Does that kind of give you the no seatbelts mantra that you’re preaching to the defense and how good does it feel to have the city and the coaching staff behind you?
“I don’t kind of pay attention a lot to it. I’d say this, I expect players to play with their personality. I don’t want to coach robots on the field. I expect them to have personality, and every guy’s different. We talked about AWalk, and he’s a little bit different than Myles. We talked about Grant, and we talked about all these different guys. Everybody’s got a little different personality, and you can’t force feed everybody into those. I am what I am. I embrace it. Sometimes I can ruffle some feathers. Sometimes I can be a little tough, but there’s a motive behind it. I’ve seen a lot of stuff in the NFL, and I have a good idea of what we want to accomplish and what we want to exceed, and sometimes you got to be willing to ruffle a couple of feathers to get that out. Our job is to inspire and motivate our players, and there’s a lot of different ways to do that. Sometimes it’s a battle in the back. Sometimes it’s a bite in the ass. So I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get our players ready to play and really to let the chips fall. I really don’t care what’s said or written about me.”
A while back you mentioned the emphasis on stopping the third down. You guys had 13 of them on Sunday. Even though Week one, as you said, has passed, has it been a certain emphasis that you’ve brought to this unit that ranked 17 last season and wanted to bring that up this season in the weeks to follow?
“Yeah, I mean, we put a lot of time in today. A lot of our stuff is going to be on third down, and we talk about job of the defense is keeping points down and turning the ball over. And one of the best ways to get off with no points is to get off the field on third-down or fourth-down stops. The fourth down stops a turnover. Turnover on downs set the offense up for a score, which we did in that game. We’ll keep our eye on those things. But redzone stops, we didn’t play any redzone snaps, but third down stops, that’s extremely important to keeping the points down and keeping your guys fresh, getting the ball back for the offense. We have a pretty good combination of rush cover and some blitz looks and things like that. But again, last week is last week. This week we’re starting off zero for zero on third down. There’s no carryover. Maybe you stats people might feel like there’s carryover or whatever, but this game’s fresh. This game’s new. We got to do the job this week as a big game on Monday night. And I know a little bit about this history from my three years here before, and this is a very important game for our defense, for our team, for our organization, and for our city. We got one more minute.”
We all hear about how great the Steelers defense has been in the past. Obviously, the Browns kind of get mixed up in that and are kind of forgotten about. Do you feel like this Monday night game is a chance for your defense to stake a claim in potentially being the best defense in the NFL?
“We don’t worry about that. We’re trying to be the best we can be on a particular Sunday. We’ll let the chips fall where they may after that. They have a great, great storied history of defense. We have a lot of respect for what they’ve done and things like that. But none of that is going to mean anything on Monday night. It’s going to be the two teams this year. These guys. Let me know if Mean Joe (Joe Greene) and Jack Lambert are playing, because if we need a plan for Franco Harris or Lynn Swann or John Stallworth or Franco or Terry Bradshaw, we’ll get that ready. But those guys aren’t playing. This is a new year. This is a new year. So what’s happened in the past, that doesn’t mean anything to this game. We have respect for them. We always respect our opponents, but we’re going to accentuate ourselves and what we do well and try to give our best performance and not worry about the rest of the league or what’s happened in the past or what’s going to happen 10 weeks down the road. Let’s keep our eyes on today and Monday night.”
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