Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz (9.12.24)
Hey Jim, when you guys played the (Jacksonville) Jaguars last year, Trevor Lawrence was limping a little bit. What kind of challenge does he present to you now that he’s healthy?
“Yeah, you know, honestly, we were prepared for him last year to be more limited than he was. He was still scrambling, he still had good mobility and things like that. So, I don’t know, I’m sure it affected him a little bit, but it wasn’t as severe as we were thinking it might be going into that game. He’s a rapidly maturing young quarterback; very, very talented, both with his legs and with his arm. Makes quick decisions and you can really see his transformation as a young player to now a veteran player and just getting the ball out quick and those kinds of things, particularly first and second down, really good at IDing coverage and knowing where he’s going with the ball. We were able to force him into mistakes in the first game. We had the three interceptions and a forced fumble and then turnover on downs, and we got to do the same. It’s a great challenge for us.”
Losing Juan (Thornhill), Mo (Maurice Hurst), two linebackers all in one week, I know you hope to get them back this season, but just how difficult of a challenge is that when you lose four contributing defenders after just one week?
“Yeah, we lost four in the same game last year in the Jacksonville game. Jordan Elliott went down with a concussion, and Ogbo (Okoronkwo) and Mo tore their pecs and Grant Delpit, tore his groin and Denzel wasn’t playing, so nothing new for us. I would say with those injuries, it does give other people some opportunities and we have some good young players that can step right in and then when we get those guys back, I expect it to give us a good boost. I was telling our staff the other day, I said we got to treat it like, a month from now, however long it takes, that AB (Andrew Berry) comes down and says, ‘Hey, we just traded for Juan Thornhill’, or we just traded for Mo Hurst, or we just traded for Tony Fields, or Mohamoud (Diabate) or whoever it is. But, you know, it doesn’t change our expectations, it doesn’t change our standards. Those guys work really hard to come back as soon as they can, and when they do, they’ll be a boost for us.”
Was Hurst just playing better than (Quinton) Jefferson to earn that starting job?
“Yeah, I thought he had really consistent camp and we’re happy with all those guys, Tony (Grossi). You know that we roll those guys through a lot, and we blur the lines of who the quote ‘starters’ are and things like that. It’s really more about reps and things like that than who’s out there and which group. But, up until his injury in training camp, that hamstring, Mo had put a really, really good camp together and made a lot of plays for us, made a lot of plays last year. So, however it works out, our guys will be in there. We have veteran players, we have young players and, you guys know, we rotate those defensive linemen through, so we really blur the lines of quote ‘starters’ and ‘backups.’ We call it ‘Alpha’ and ‘Bravo,’ right? You know, it’s just like, next wave hit the beach.”
Last year Evan Engram had a big game against you guys. Just the matchup problem he creates, he’s a tight end but they also use him a lot at receiver. Just specific to him and their offense, what kind of matchup problems does he create?
“Yeah, I played him for a long time. He was at the (New York) Giants when I was in Philly and like you said, he’s a hybrid wide receiver slash tight end. There’s a lot of those guys in the league now. They use them all over the place and those things and, you know, I was actually — early in the game last year, I was happy with our coverage and then we lost Grant and Rodney (McLeod) had been down the week before and Juan was out and things like that. We were trying to minimize our matchup and we also had the lead in the game. So, I think some of that production can be a little bit twisted, but he’s a great matchup. He’s an important matchup for us just because, I mean, he was their number one target last year, number one receiver and pretty close, I mean, he led the whole NFL in tight end targets last year. So, you got to know where he is all times. It affects your nickel, dime, all your sub packages, how you’re going to treat him as a tight end or as a wide receiver. You know, we went through it last year. The players understand his role and how they use him in the run game and in the passing game.”
I know we talked about those home-road splits a lot last year, but this is the first road test. What’s been your message to the guys?
“Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just be us, the best that we can be and worry about those kind of things and probably also sort of atoning for some of our mistakes last week. We played really, really good in spots last week, but we missed some opportunities to make some more plays and both of their touchdown drives we aligned offsides. One of them negated a second-and-14, the other one negated a second-and-goal from the seven. When you got really good chances to win those drives. And it probably flew a little bit under the radar, but there were times, particularly in the first touchdown drive, that we had opportunities to intercept the ball and we didn’t get it done. And I’m not talking about Denzel’s because Denzel’s are great plays and he’ll make some of those, but there’s some other chances for us to get drives stopped and those kinds of things. What I was proud about the team last week, middle of the second quarter after we had given up that second touchdown, our guys rallied on the sideline. Coaches did a really good job of making some adjustments to some of the stuff that they were trying to take advantage of, and we came out — I think at that point we gave up like 50 yards the rest of the game from the middle of second quarter on. So, there’s a little bit of — I won’t say atone for last week, but that’s left a bitter taste in our mouth. Anytime you lose a game, you’re trying to put that in your rearview mirror. So, there’s a little bit of that. And being on the road, being in a different environment, you know, in some ways it’s having that home crowd being loud and things like that that helps us. In some ways, it can hinder us when it comes to our communication at home. It’s a little bit easier to communicate on the road. We’re striving to be consistent. We’re not there yet. ”
On that communication, going back to that Brandin Cooks touchdown, that 21 yarder, is that a communication break down and do you think that a fairly easy fix?
“Oh, yeah, that’s a super easy fix. And it really wasn’t a communication breakdown as it was a technique error. But that’s a play we expect to make. And I don’t assign individual blame when it comes to the media and things like that. But that’s a defensive breakdown on that play. That’s a play that when we got the pressure on that play and he threw off his back foot and just lobbed it up, the very first thing that went into my mind was, ‘that’s picked’. And then I was like, ‘what happened’? And that’s not a good feeling to be in as a defensive coordinator or as a player. So that’s a little bit of the inconsistency that I talked about and that’s been on my mind since the beginning of training camp. You know, when it comes to everybody being out there and playing together and nobody cares, you don’t grade on the curve. That’s not five points for a touchdown because a lot of guys miss training camp. Life in the big city. We have to perform better and our offense was struggling and if we make a turnover in one of those, I think we can change the momentum of the game and let them get some legs. And that’s our job to do as a defense. I mean, there were some tough situations, I think, on the four field goals they kicked, don’t quote me, but I think, I think they got like one first down total on those drives. So our guys were responding well to that. We just need to respond better early in the game. We can give our offense a boost, we can give our crowd a boost and respond when we need to.”
What are you sensing this week in terms of just the resolve to get this thing turned around?
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a proud group, and I don’t know if I’d say, like, ‘get it turned around’. I mean, it’s one game and I don’t know if this stat still holds, and I can’t even remember how long… I remember addressing the team one time, maybe I was in Detroit, maybe I was in Philly, maybe Tennessee, I can’t really remember, but at one time, teams that started 1-0 had a less chance to make the playoffs than the teams that started 0-1. And I couldn’t wrap my arms around, like, why that was. And the best I could come up with is the teams that were 0-1 had to confront their problems, right? They were embarrassed by the performance. It’s a big game and you have to go out and it’s an immediate self-check. You get slapped and, ‘hey, we gotta go’. The urgency to get it right. And maybe there’s a tendency if you start 1-0 maybe you, maybe you dismiss or ignore some of those same problems just because of the result of the game. So I think it’s been a little bit more of that. We have a really proud group on offense and defense and they’re anxious to put that week behind and come up with a win on the road.”
How do you balance keeping things simple and letting the guys play fast? Also mixing up your looks and not giving the defense anything too consistently?
“You know, I mean it really just depends like game wise and you know, different things like that. You know, it’s a challenge every week but we want to play fast, we want to play physical and you want to like… one of the things I try to do is eliminate as many ‘if then’ statements for each player as we can, right? Don’t give them too many, like, one ‘if this happens, then do this’, but don’t ‘well, if this happens and this happens and this happens’. You know, it’s all part and parcel to what we want to do. That being said, I don’t think particularly in that first 20 minutes of the game — we got really tired on that one drive. You know that they went down and scored — the first drive had a little bit of NFL football there, right? CeeDee Lamb, Denzel (Ward), perfect coverage. Both guys go up, they come down with the ball, man, NFL football right there. But there were some other times where execution could be an issue. The second drive, I really felt that we had lost our – not intensity, I’m trying to think of the best word, but we were tired, we weren’t communicating super fast, we weren’t playing super fast. I think it was an eleven-play drive and we got to do better in that situation. So, you know, that’s always — you guys know, like we want to be known as a fast defense and you can’t slow players down with too much. But we have enough looks to be able to balance our stuff out and all those things.”
We know the defensive line is the engine to your defenses. But in your time here, this year and one game, how are you satisfied with the production from your safeties?
“Safeties? Well, first of all, we do expect our D-line to be our engine and to drive us. You know, I think it’s like when… I generally don’t talk about individual players when it comes to production or different things, it’s more just about the group as a whole. I was not dissatisfied with our safety group in that game. Like I said, there were a couple plays in there and they might fly below the radar because it might look like a good play on film. But in our scheme there were opportunities to jump routes or to do some of those kind of things. It was disappointing to lose Juan (Thornhill) because I thought he played really physical in that game, led us in tackles and was doing a good job. And we got a lot of young players, a mixture of vet players and young players. Yeah, it’s about the group as a whole, but I was not dissatisfied with our safeties.”
Where did you come up with that 0-1 number? That’s pretty fascinating.
“Yeah, Jeff (Schudel), I don’t remember when that was, but I distinctly remember, like, telling the team that. Who knows? Maybe I made it up. [Laughter] I don’t know. It sounded good. It sounded good. But again, you know, just with human nature and things, maybe somebody fed it to me to try to…But I think the message there is anytime you lose a game, there is immediate… there might be a little bit more urgency to confront your problems and not gloss over things. And self-correct and to be more determined to go out and correct that. And maybe sometimes when you win, sometimes you can lose that. And when I took over Detroit years ago, that was a team that was used to dealing with failure. They had trouble dealing with success, right? It was like they won a game, and it went to our heads really quickly. And particularly the first couple years that was a difficult process to go through. Sometimes it’s harder to deal with success in this league than it is to a failure. But I think if we do our job as players and as coaches and you guys write the story of the 2024 Browns and if this is a successful season for us, I hope that we can all look back and say, ‘You know what? They lost that opener but in the long run, that was a good thing for this team.’ And if that’s the case, then we can turn that towards something good. If we fail to correct our issues and confront our problems and confront our execution and those kinds of things, then it won’t have had the effect that we hoped.”