DC Jim Schwartz (9.7.23)
Joe Burrow is expecting to play. What are the challenges that he brings?
“Yeah, very accurate quarterback. That’s been one of his hallmarks. Accurate, has some movement ability. He’s tough, he can move around in the pocket, keep plays alive, very good accuracy and knows who his playmakers are. He’s not afraid to throw it to any of the eligibles on the field.”
Those three receivers all sort of compliment each other with what they do.
“I mean I think that’s just the way it goes. I got a lot of respect for (Tyler) Boyd in the slot. He’s done it a long time. He’s a strong player, he’s a veteran player. And (Tee) Higgins and (Ja’Maar) Chase, I mean those guys are tough outs on the outside part of the field, but sort of different things. They can both go up and get the ball, they can both body you, they can both run after the catch. And I think when it’s all said and done that’s going to be one of the keys to this game, is how well we do with run after the catch with their receivers. Everybody wants to think it’s all plays down the field, but five yard completions that they run for 25 can be just as damaging to a defense.”
How much does it help you this week specifically that you have all those different body types in that cornerback and safety room?
“Yeah, were built that way for sure. With guys in our division and teams in our division, Andrew (Berry) and Kevin (Stefanski), and everybody has done a really good job of making sure we match up well versus our opponents.”
The Browns are 4-1 against Burrow, and Burrow has attributed that to Myles Garrett just wrecking each game. So they added Orlando Brown, you added Za’Darius Smith. How do you think the dynamic works out up front?
“Well, we added Ogbo (Okoronkwo) also, and Dalvin (Tomlinson), so let’s not overlook those guys too. It’s going to be a team game. It’s never a one-on-one game. Obviously guys like Joe Burrow are great individual players, guys like Myles are great individual players, but nobody stands alone. They’re all dependent on everybody else. And part of Myles’ ability to succeed is going to depend on our corner’s ability to cover. We talked about those receivers and if they’re getting open quickly and Burrows throwing the ball quickly, that can negate your pass rush. So it’s a combination of all those things. Like I said, no player stands alone. We got to have a good team effort, but we need our good individual players to play good also. It’s a big game. Openers are always big game and we got to come ready on Sunday.”
Last time we talked to you said you didn’t think that your defense was quite ready yet. It’s not supposed to be in the middle of camp. How far has your unit come since then and how good do you feel about how closely they’ve come together?
“There’s always uncertainty with an opener. There are so many things that will come up. A lot of times the opener, a lot of well-laid plans can go awry. Somebody goes down with cramps or something happens or the opponent comes out featuring something that they had never shown before. So it’s all part of the parcel. Physically, I think we’re ready and I think that we made some progress in camp and in preseason games. But there’s nothing going against a team that’s at the top of your division that’s scheming to beat you. The games count, the games mean something. So we’ll be up for the challenge. But it is going to be a great challenge and we’re going to need our home field–we are practicing today with crowd noise and that’s going to make it hard on Cincy. It can be challenging for us with communication, but that’s a small price to pay to afect any opponent and we come out with a win our fans will have a lot to do with that. They know what time it is too. Our fans know it’s not preseason anymore. They’ll be there for us.”
When you told us about your defense early, you mentioned that it’s about guys playing off each other, not just worrying about their own responsibility. So my question is, does that leave your defense vulnerable at all when they’re not just worried about their own responsibility?
“Oh no, they all have responsibilities within. But it’s probably a little bit jeff like an offensive line. Right? It’s about the operation of the group and knowing how the guys play next to you, I probably mean a little bit more like – you know, basketball, a lot of times – I don’t know a lot about basketball and it sort of blows my mind. But when they run the triangle I can’t understand it and it looks like a mess out there, but they know what spots they got to get to and they know if this happens, then this happens and this is how you play off that. I think I’d probably put our guys a little bit more of that. It’s within the scheme. It’s not just eleven guys doing their own thing. It’s within the scheme, but when you’re rushing the passer, you got to play off the guy next to you a lot of times because he might get the center slide and he’s wide, and now you got to make him right. It’s the same thing with a linebacker. If I got the B gap, but Myles sees an opening and he takes the B gap, I got to be able to replace him to the next gap. So I’d probably put it a little bit more into that as you’re collaborating, as opposed to just doing your own thing. We’re not doing our own thing. It’s well organized, but we also give the players freedom to be able to free up and make plays. We don’t want robots out there.”
Do you feel like there’s an element of surprise with you? I know you’ve been in the league a long time, but first game with this unit against a familiar opponent?
“Yeah, I don’t know. They’ll have new stuff. We’ll have new stuff. When it’s all said and done, it’s who puts their players in the best position, who executes the best? I think that’s who makes the plays when they come to them. It’ll come down to that. As opposed to us coming out with some new wrinkle or them coming out with a new wrinkle. It does add something to it and obviously it’s important to the game. I’d say probably sideline adjustments are more important in openers and games like this than they are a lot of the rest of the game, because it’s like, ‘okay, this was verified from film’, or, ‘hey, this is something new.’ Everybody always talks about halftime adjustments, but you guys know there’s no such thing as halftime adjustments. Adjustments are made after every series and sometimes within series. You’re adjusting as it goes.”
Who is your fourth cornerback right now after the new guy?
“Yeah. I don’t really want to talk about depth chart because I stress to the players that depth chart is just for guys in the media and things like that. You guys will figure it out after a while. I don’t want to preempt everybody. If Kev wants to talk about depth chart, I’ll leave it to the head coach.”
(Sione) Takitaki and AWalk (Anthony Walker Jr.) coming off those injuries. Are they 100% ready to go with a full workload, or are you going to have to kind of rotate that for them?
“I don’t want to speak on injuries, they didn’t play in the preseason. I think that’s probably more of I don’t want to say concern, but that’s where they are right now, as opposed to…I don’t see those guys as injured. I just see them as players. They just haven’t played in the preseason yet. So we’ll manage a lot of things as the game goes on. We’ll adjust to a lot of things. Depending on how many reps we play, how the game is going, there could be a lot of different ways we go with substitutions and playtime and things like that, but we’ll just manage. When it comes time to game time, there’s no such thing as injured players, right? There’s nobody that’s out there like, ‘hey, that guy’s got a sore hamstring’, or ‘that guy’s got a sore shoulder.’ They’re still going to run to you the same way, and they’re still going to try to run past you the same way. So we’ll get guys out there that can do their job and be ready to go.”
How fast this defensive line is during the preseason and that was without Myles (Garrett). Now adding Myles into the equation. Do you feel like this could be the best defensive line that you ever coached?
“I don’t know. That standard is pretty high. I mean, there’s a lot of things I like about this group. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to be around some great defensive lines, and we’ve tried to put them in really good positions, to let them use their skills and things like that. It’s a very D-line friendly scheme, but yeah, let’s leave comparisons until the end of the year. We haven’t played a game yet, so let’s not put anybody in the Hall of Fame just yet. Bill Parcels, I got to acknowledge that’s stolen from Bill Parcels. That’s one of his famous ones.”
We’ve talked a lot about your defense against the pass, but how have you seen the run defense evolve and improve in preseason?
“Yeah, again, things in preseason are pretty vanilla. It’s really hard to say how well we do on Sunday and throughout 17 games this year, and hopefully more than 17 games. It’ll be with how we progress through the season, how we develop into the schemes we’re playing. I think I’ve said this before, a lot of coaches say good teams improve over the course of a season. I think that good teams find out who they are over the course of the season and what they do is they tend to funnel into a personality as a season. What that personality is going to be right now, I don’t know. I have an idea, but I don’t know for sure. My job as a play caller, my job as a coordinator is to very quickly find out what our guys are good at and to try to put them in those positions. And that’s where I think teams improve over the course of the season. They find their personality. They find what they’re good at. Maybe it’s not what I’m expecting, maybe it is. Maybe there’s injuries and it’s a plan B. But that’s our job, is to find our personality, find our stride, find out what fits us the best, what we’re good at and to accentuate that. I’ve never been around a good team or a good defense that didn’t have a personality. And I’m not just talking about their play style. I’m talking about what they did well, and you can go back and look – ‘85 Bears. It was blitzing every play. And Tampa with Warren Sapp and Ronde Barber. And although Derek Brooks and all, they played Tampa too every snap. I mean, they were so good at it, they named it after them and that’s all they did. Seattle was a top defense in the league for a few years. All they did was play single high and challenge guys. And back in the mid-2000s, Miami was a tough out on defense. Pat Sartain, Sam Madison. They had good pass rushers. They were really good. They played the same defense damn near every snap. And what all those teams did, is they found out what they were good at and they executed that very, very well. They had wrinkles, they had different things here and there, but I think that’s probably our biggest challenge, as we go, is finding out who we are and to accentuate that. So that’s probably the biggest thing. You’re always going to be alert or you’re always going to be an eye toward an opponent, right? And you’re going to adjust your things to an opponent. But if you’re a great offense or a great defense, you do what you do, right? And you take the approach of, look, they got to deal with us. So, I don’t know if we’re there yet, honestly. This is going to be the first game, but my job is to get us there.”
Did Denzel Ward get through practices?
“Yeah. I don’t talk about injuries. We’ll let Kev (Kevin Stefanski) talk about those if he wants to.”
I heard you really getting after them one day at Greenbrier.
“That’s surprising.”
How do you feel like your group has taken to your coaching style?
“Yeah, I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s all business. And I hope that I’m the guy who’s cheering as much as I am bringing some fire. It’s an urgent business. We have to be ready to go, but I would hope that you would see me congratulating guys after a play. That was one that just comes to mind, that rookie (Austin) Watkins made a great catch against us, you know, and it had to be recognized. He was against our defense, and we lost a snap and everything else, but had to go high-five him. It was great. When you keep it business and you keep it enthusiastic and stuff like that. I’m not just out there ragging on people being a jerk for no reason. It’s a performance-based business. If they’re not performing up to par, I’m not going to sit around and not say anything. I mean, my job is to make sure it’s right. And sometimes ruffled feathers can help a guy perform. If you’re thin-skinned, defense in the NFL is not the business for you. You got to go find something else to do. If you’re thin-skinned, this is tough business.”
In just the preseason games, the statistics 15% on third down?
“They keep stats on preseason games?”
15 is a ridiculous number.
“Yeah, that’s crazy.”
What do you consider good, third down?
“I’ve had some defenses, I think, going back, I think 2002, maybe 03 in Tennessee – we were in the twenties. At the time, it was at the lowest for a long time. New England a couple of years ago, tried to set a record. I mean, they were incredible. Let me put it this way. What we’re going to try to do is to keep our third-down percentage good enough that we win the game, and we’ll keep our eye on that stuff. And here’s the thing. If we come out of the game, we talked about our D line, we talk about our corners and things. If we come out of the game with no sacks, but the ball’s got to come out so quick and they can’t make any yards passing and we win the game roger, check. Love it, right? If we come out of the game with no interceptions but the quarterback’s getting sacked because he’s got nobody to throw to, man, we’ll take that. This is the ultimate team sport, and we want to celebrate guys ability to make plays, and we want all our players to have individual success. But the bottom line is team success, and whether we win three to nothing or we win 43 to 42, we’ll take it. I might not sleep as good after the 43 to 42, but this is a bottom-line business, and we’re going to try to do whatever we can to win the game. Now, to your question. Third down is very important to us, right? Red zone, very important to us. Takeaways, you’ll hear me say the stats that mean the most to me are points allowed and takeaways. Because our job, keep the points down and give the ball back to the offense. And the way you keep points down is you stop drives. And one of the ways you stop drives is on third down. So those kinds of things – red zone takes points off the board, you get a red zone stop, you’re potentially taking four points off the board, maybe seven. You turn the ball over, not only do you get the ball back, but generally, you put your offense in good position or you score yourself on defense. You saw that from our guys this year. When it’s all said and done, our job is to limit points, and our job is to get the ball back. Anything else is good for you guys to write about, it’s good for fans to talk about. But our job, we’re going to keep our eye on trying to win the game and trying to keep points down and trying to put our offense in good position.”
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