Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz (11.14.24)
I know it’s been a week and a half now, but the (Los Angeles) Chargers game, we haven’t talked to you since then, is it right to call those two breakdowns just miscommunication?
“No, one was just really poor execution. The third and long, I run a defense that we should be able to play that play, and we got a little bit squirrely trying to make an educated guess on where the ball was going instead of just executing our part of the scheme and doing our job. And I’ve said this before, it’s one of those times where you’re trying to make a play, you’re trying to make an interception, and you end up sometimes hurting the defense on that one. The other one was just 100% breakdown in communication, and we had eight guys playing one thing, and we had three guys playing another. And when it’s all said and done, communication is my responsibility. That’s something we haven’t had a whole lot of and we take a lot of pride in keeping everybody on the same page. But we broke down there and we paid a dear price for it.”
Rodney (McLeod) was talking about that second deep pass to Quentin Johnston, and he mentioned how there was an audible or like a check. With that, is that something that’s built into the play, or do you kind of give the players the kind of leeway to kind of change based off what they see on the field?
“No, everything we do is built into the scheme. Yeah, we’re not taking suggestions in the middle of the game on what to do. And, again, I mean, there’s no excuses. There can be reasons, but there’s no excuses. And the guy that, in that particular play that’s in charge of making the check was late to communicate and he sort of hesitated and that was where the breakdown was.”
On Derek Carr, now that he’s back in the lineup…
“Yeah, I mean, just watching our first two games of the year, and I think he’s played really well when he’s been in there. He’s a guy that has a great arm, he can challenge all parts of the field, he has tremendous confidence in throwing deep balls. I think he’s an outstanding quarterback and they sorely missed him when he was out of there. That and losing some of his playmakers at wide receiver really affected their offense. Put a little bit more on Alvin Kamara’s shoulders and his shoulders were big enough to handle it. But, I mean, they lost a quarterback, they lost two best receivers, had a lot of injuries on the offensive line. Pretty easy not to look good on offense when that stuff’s going on. But they’re closer to being healthy except for the wide receivers. Their offensive linemen are sort of coming back from theirs and he’s going in, so he’s got our full attention.”
No interceptions by the DBs and the one by JOK (Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah), what’s your theory on why that is?
“I mean, some of them are just finishing plays. We’ve had our hands on some balls and finishing plays. There’s been a couple other times we’ve had tip balls where you got to come down with some of those, and they’ve sort of fallen on the wrong side. I think our pressure rates are down just a little bit from last year, so I think that can have a lot to do with it, getting quarterbacks to throw before they’re ready, forcing overthrows, forcing bad decisions. I think it’s all tied in. I wouldn’t necessarily put it on the secondary even though they’ve had their chances on some and we need to come down with some of those.”
Do you see Ogbo (Okoronkwo) as a first down guy?
“Oh, yeah, no he can play to run for us, and he’s done a good job. He plays a little different than Isaiah (McGuire), but he certainly has effectiveness. He does it with a little bit more quickness and things like that and some movement skills where Isaiah gives us a little bit more size and length in there. But I feel very confident that the guys we have can step up and fill Z’s (Za’Darius Smith) shoes and produce well for us, not just against the run, but against the pass, also.”
With depth at end, I guess who do you see is also kind of stepping up? Like Sam Kamara, obviously, practice squad, but is he a guy that maybe will play him a little bit more at end as opposed to D-tackle?
“Yeah, we got a couple of guys that can do that. Mike Hall played a little bit of end for us, too, and he’s got enough athletic ability and some speed and some power. So, I think both of those guys can be some change up players for us. It’ll affect our rotation a little bit, but Myles (Garrett) generally plays the bulk of our snaps and then we can spell him when we need to and get a good rotation at the other side. We’ll miss a lot about Z is he was a productive player but just he brought a lot of energy to us, good personality, good leader for us. So, we don’t just have to step up on the field but also off the field to fill that void a little bit.”
How severe is JOK’s injury? Will we see him back this year?
“Yeah, that’s not my land farm. I’ll defer to Kevin (Stefanski) and AB (Andrew Berry) on any comments on injuries.”
The off the field stuff, are there guys that you’ve kind of pegged as up and coming vocal leaders or maybe even like show by example leaders that could be in a bigger role like that?
“I don’t really peg them, they peg themselves, you know what I mean? Everybody has a little different style, and some guys provide leadership in a way that’s sort of behind the scenes and by example, other guys are a little bit more vocal. I think it’s important for players to develop their own personality and most of that stuff happens organically. Those guys sort of rise to the top and whether it’s from production, whether it’s from respect, whether it’s from their personality combination of all those. Hard to be a leader when you’re not a good player. So, playing good is probably the big part of that, but there certainly are guys that have the capability to step up. But yeah, I mean as a coach you’re not trying to force that. You can try to facilitate that, but players, that’s a bootstrap thing for them.”
With the (New Orleans) Saints leaning so heavily on Alvin Kamara both in the run as well as the pass game, just what type of a headache does that present to you?
“Yeah, he’s a really good player and they fit the offense really well to them in the run game. They are a wide-zone, clinic tape. And he fits it really well, they block it really well. He can get the edge, he can cut back, he can break tackles, he can make you miss. I think reports, I say the reports of the death of running backs has been greatly exaggerated. Is that the way — I mean, we’ve had Saquon (Barkley), we’ve had Derrick Henry and now Kamara and these guys that really carried a load and really set the tempo for their offenses. He’s different than those guys. Saquon is strong and a jump cutter, and Derrick Henry is just a freight train straight ahead and stiff arms and things like that. Kamara is a different player. He can run inside the tackles, he can run wide, he’s really good in the pass game, he’s dangerous in screens. Anybody that’s the leading rusher and leading receiver is going to get your attention. We sort of have to know every time where he is on the field, you know, where and why all the time. You guys know I’ve used this too many times, but fortunately we know he wears number 41, so we should be able to find him. But that’s a great challenge for us and our ability to hold him in check will go a long way to getting a win on Sunday.”
When you look at their offense, do you see kind of like Stefanski or Gary Kubiak or (Mike) Shanahan?
“Yeah, I mean, there’s some Shanahan run formation kind of stuff, and some of the ways that they were using Christian McCaffrey carry over to Kamara. A lot of the run game is Mike Shanahan/Gary Kubiak. So, he’s got that in his blood and a lot of it does recognize. I mean, there’s some similarities in the Minnesota time they had together. You’re sort of building your offense based on the tools that you have or the pieces that you have and things like that. But you can see the influences of all those things. But the pass game is a lot different than San Fran, run game is sort of old school. Gary Kubiak, I mean, I’m getting old here, guys. Like, I’m coaching against Mike Shanahan, I’m coaching against Kyle Shanahan, I’m calling games against Gary Kubiak and now I’m calling games against Clint Kubiak. I mean, as soon as some of your kids start writing articles, then I’m out. I start seeing people in the media — I mean, I’ve coached guys whose kids I’ve ended up coaching. Yeah, I mean but that’s just a reminder of that. But they have a really good scheme. It fits their players really well. Like I said, their pass game is a little bit different, but you can see some of the ways that they’re using Kamara and the way they carry over to McCaffrey and some similar tool sets when it comes to that stuff.”
To the interceptions for the DBs, I mean, your system is obviously so aggressive. These guys individually play aggressive. What’s the balance between finishing the plays on some of these would be interceptions, but not being so aggressive, you’re like doing things out of position or getting out of position?
“Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t consider sort of guessing on a play aggressive. I think you can be very aggressive within the technique of how you’re playing and doing your responsibilities. So, I don’t think there’s any conflict of interest when it comes to that. I don’t know if it means anything, but I remember a couple of weeks ago I was talking about our job is to create negative plays. I don’t know if this is a stat. You guys always got to fact check me because I don’t know where I get half my s***. But I saw somebody had like a thing of havoc plays on defense. You guys can go look that up. But we were either number one or number two. So, we’re still creating — and it was like PBUs, and tackles for losses, and all these different — forced holding penalties, all these different things. We’re still doing that stuff, we just need to come down with those plays, and it could just be interceptions, it could be fumble recoveries. Turnovers are a huge game changer and those kind of things. But I think we’re just a touch off of last year’s pace on third down. We’re still a really good third down team and I don’t know after the bye week where we ended up, but we’re near the top of the league in third down. Our biggest thing is just the big plays that we’ve given up and that’s really been the tale of the tape when we can play really good for 50 snaps and then have five snaps that don’t look so good. And coming off the bye week and looking, you’d like to find some commonality. Was it miscommunication? Well, yeah, one play. Was it a missed technique? Yeah. Was it a missed tackle? It’s been like a lot of different things in there, which makes it a little bit harder to just to come out and say, ‘Hey, we can get that taken care of if we do this.’ It just goes to just being more consistent doing our job in the scheme and letting the scheme work for us and making plays within the scheme, as opposed to trying and pressing to do too much. Everybody wants to make turnovers. We feel a big responsibility to do that, to help our team. But we also have to guard against doing something that could put the rest of the defense at risk. And there’s that fine line of being aggressive and being reckless.”
On wreaking havoc, have you ever seen a guy get three sacks in four plays?
“Well, no, I don’t think anybody has, right? I think that was like the first time in NFL history it had happened.”
So then are you surprised anybody tries to block him one-on-one?
“Yeah, it’s tough. He’s such a game changer and people — they started taking care of it after those couple series right there. Myles is just an incredibly talented guy that can completely change games. And again, we’ve talked about it, whether he’s having the production or he’s setting a table for other people, he still affects the game. It’s good to see him just being healthy and looking like himself again. He went a few weeks where he just didn’t look 100% like himself. I don’t want to speak for him and his health, but I think you could see it. He was trying to push through things, but he’s starting to get a little bit better as a team. We’re getting a little bit better, and it’ll be good to see us close to full strength as we go forward to the second half.”
Have you ever seen a team use a quarterback like the Saints use Taysom Hill in their offense?
“Yeah, I mean, there was a guy named Jim Jensen who used to play for the Miami Dolphins, you guys remember, Tony (Grossi) you were around him? A lot of people have had sort of specialty type quarterbacks and things like that. But he’s such a good player in all regards. He’s a really good special teams player. I’ve had games where he started at quarterback against us. I was in Philly, we played him, and he can run. I mean, he ran the whole offense. His threat as a runner, he can play running back, he can play tight end, he can play wide receiver. Multidimensional players like that make it a little bit hard to zero in on your game plan because you can’t just say, when he goes in the game, he’s a running back. We talked a little bit about Kubiak and Shanahan and some of that influence. They’re using him a lot the way that San Fran uses (Kyle) Juszczyk. Yeah, 44 and getting him on the move. Those guys that blur the lines of, ‘Is that guy a fullback? Is he a running back? Is he a wide receiver? Is he a tight end?’ The answer is yes. That’s sort of the way with Taysom. I got a lot of respect for that player. He’s tough, he plays the game the way it should be played. He takes the first play last week and goes for a touchdown, it gets called back with a penalty. But that’s just an outstanding individual play. You can’t really put that guy in a box and say he’s just a specialty quarterback or he’s only a specialty tight end or whatever it is. I mean, don’t hand him the ball in short yardage, they’ll let him be the quarterback. We talked a lot about Kamara, but that’s a guy. And they missed him when he was injured, too. He’s missed some time with that chest injury. So fortunately, we know he wears number seven