Defensive Coordinator Jim Schawartz (11.30.23)
Hey Jim, you obviously saw Matthew Stafford at a very young age in terms of his NFL career. How have you seen him develop and how does his skill set fit so well within the Rams offense?
“Well, he’s one of the best throwers of the football, number one in the league right now. But in his era, just an arm that can make all the throws, an arm that can drop different arm angles, has tremendous accuracy, has great command of the offense, really good at threatening the whole field. He’s really good with his eyes, looking defenders off, you know the sort of the no look pass thing that gets a lot of attention from different quarterbacks in the league, you know. Matthew’s been doing that for a long time, you know. I’m proud of where he’s going. He’s developed not just as a player but as a leader. And we’re going to play our very best on Sunday to come out with a win.”
Hey, Jim, I wanted to ask you about MJ. Emerson and sort know, how has he grown not just as a player since you’ve gotten here, but how has he kind of become a leader?
“You know, that’s one of the things that I’ve been really happy to see is his development showing a little bit more personality and he brings a lot of excitement, he brings a lot of energy. He’s really good with the other players on the sideline and I think that’s something he has grown into, particularly this year. And I think a lot of it comes from playing well. When you’re out there, if you’re struggling as a player, it’s hard for you to bring a lot of energy into pick the other guys up. But he’s playing at a really high level. I’m proud of the way his tackling has improved. He had some well documented misses early in the season, but he’s a resilient player, like, you have to be a corner. And I think he’s already a really good player in this league. I think he’s well on his way to becoming a great player and one of the top corners in the league.”
And obviously, you have so many different body types in that room. When you have a guy like that, almost looks like a safety, how valuable of an asset is that for you as a coordinator?
“Yeah, he’s got long arms, he’s big, but I wouldn’t just put him on just being a big corner. He’s covered a lot of smaller, shifty guys this year, too, from the very beginning. I think that we do have some different body shapes and things like that. Denzel (Ward) is different than MJ, is different than (Greg) Newsome. But I think all of them have embraced what we’ve asked them to do, which is be in the one on one spotlight and not shy away from that one on one matchups. And he’s playing with more and more confidence as he goes. It’s really hard to believe he’s only a second year player right now.”
Jim, I want to ask about Jeremiah (Owusu-Koramoah). He looked like he really played well last week. I wanted to see if you assessed thought, it was maybe his best game of the year, and is it the scheme that’s kind of unlocked his playmaking abilities?
“Well, he played 7-4, you know, we’ll keep it at that, but you generally don’t want to point to individual performances when you lose a game, but I think that might be an exception right there. Twelve tackles, two tackles for a loss, a sack, a forced fumble, really, all over the field for us, and we need him to play that way down the stretch. And I think the thing I’m proudest of with Jeremiah is his ability now, and I think he’s growing into this to put bad plays behind him. Nobody goes out and goes 60 for 60 on their play chart. You’re going to have some rough spots in there. And there were sometimes early in the season where he would let one mistake sort of snowball and it would become two mistakes and three, and it would get him down. But the thing I was most pleased with the way he played was not his production on the field. It was his ability, along with Jason Tarver, to make corrections on the sideline and to put some mistakes and things like that behind. I think that’s probably the thing that stood out the most for me. But his speed, his instincts, he’s much improved in the pass game, not just as a pass rusher, but in his pass zones. Like I said, we’re going to need performances like that. We’re getting late in the season. Games become more and more important, and the more Jeremiah can do things for us or do things like that for us, the better position we’ll be in going down the stretch.”
Yeah. Jim, I watched Myles (Garrett) battling it out over there on the sidelines a little bit yesterday, trying to stretch and sprint and rally a little bit. So, we don’t have Kevin (Stefanski) today so I don’t know what you can tell us about how Myles is doing, what his mindset is like, but we watched him play really hurt in the past, and he seems determined to do so again. So, I don’t know what you can share about where he is at with everything right now.
“Yeah, probably not much. I’ll leave that up to Kevin. But I will just talk on what I’ve seen from Myles, you know, I think that’s something that maybe flies below the radar nationally with him a little bit is his toughness and his ability to play through some injuries. He’s going to work really hard to get back, and we’ll be prepared for everything and then everything in between. So we’ll be prepared. If he’s not able to make it, we’ll be prepared. If he’s able to go and play every single snap in the game, we’ll be prepared. If he just has a certain role in the game, he feels a tremendous amount of responsibility to be on the field. He’s wired that way. He wants to be out there. And I know this. If there’s any chance that he can, he’ll be productive once he is.
What was your main message to the guys after that Broncos game?
“You know, honestly, it seems like it was like a month ago. Just the way the travel works and everything else. I think probably the biggest thing is we missed three or four chances to really take that game under control. And whether it was a short yardage play where they barely got a first down or a pass interference play or after a turnover on offense, the ability to get off the field, which we did, I think second series of the game. Went out, they were at midfield, they took a shot. We defended it really well, came back home for a lost yardage play on the run, got off the field on third down. We need more of that stuff. And I think that there were just some chances that we could have really taken advantage of. There were some missed opportunities for sacks. Right. We let Russell (Wilson) escape a couple times and run through some arm tackles and things like that you know, we make those plays and we feel a lot better about ourselves and we expect that from ourselves. We expect to be able to finish and get the quarterback on the ground, get off the field on third down. That wasn’t our best third down performance of the year. And a lot had to do with not being able to get the quarterback down. He didn’t throw it a ton in the game. But when we had chances to be able to make some tackles for losses or some sacks and put them in some longer yardage situations or win on third down we sort of let those opportunities slip through our fingers a little. Probably that’s probably the biggest takeaway.
And then (Matthew) Stafford was talking to reporters in LA yesterday. I think he said you’re analytical but also feel the game and you call it from your gut. Do you agree with that assessment?
“We all try to be analytical and take in as much information. I think that’s probably the definition of analytical, is you’re analyzing, you’re using information. But yeah, things like that don’t happen in a vacuum. That’s one of the reasons I like to be down on the field. I try to be in the middle of practice. I think you really have to feel the players. And it’s not so much about gut. It’s my reaction to what is happening with the players. So, I think you have to be wired into that it’s not really how I’m feeling in the game, it’s how the players are and my ability to process that. So, all that goes into coaching, it goes into play calling on game day and all those things. And when it’s all said and done, we’re just trying to do whatever we can to limit scoring, to get off the field on third down and come out with a win. And hopefully we can do those things, whether it’s because of analytics or information or because of just a feeling out there.”
Jim, the defense at home versus the defense on the road. What do you think is going on there? There seem to be a big difference in some of the numbers.
“Yeah, really not 100% sure. I mean, obviously the home crowd helps us. It helps our pass rush. We feed off of the excitement from the crowd. I think we provide energy both ways. We provide them some energy, they provide us some energy. I think the biggest thing on the road is a little bit like I talked about before. We’ve had chances to take games under control, and we’ve just missed those opportunities. This game, half your games are going to be played on the road, and we need to come out with road wins. We understand that, we know that. And particularly, like I said before, as you get late in the season, winning road games are important to where we want to be. So we’re trying to play our best every single game, regardless of home or away. But it is something that’s on our radar and something that we do need to perform better on the road.”
And one other thing, you play your corners right and left pretty much, it looks like. Is there any chance if (Denzel) Ward is out, you might adjust that?
“You know, we’ve matched at different times this year. Maybe it’s gone a little bit below the but we’ve had times you know that we’ve matched and flipped sides and different things like that. It really just goes on a game-by-game basis. It used to be a little bit easier to match receivers, Tony (Grossi), when everybody was lining up in two backs and there wasn’t a ton of motion. But now the stuff with all the stacks and all the hop motions going back and forth and the jet motions and things like that, offenses have really made it difficult to just lock onto one guy. So, a lot of times that’s where we end up playing right and left and playing the guys. You know, whether Denzel’s in there or not, we have confidence in our corners. Our corners particularly Greg (Newsome), he knows he didn’t play his best game against Denver, and he has a lot of pride as a player. He has a lot of confidence as a player, and I would expect him to bounce back well in this game.”
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