Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz (11.2.23)
If you don’t have Greg (Newsome), how well has he been playing slot for you this season so far, and do you feel good about Cam (Mitchell) or whoever else is up?
“Yeah, Cam’s had to come in and play for us in the past. He’s been reliable to do his job. Come in in some situations where he hasn’t got a lot of practice reps and gone in, and if he has to play this week, he’ll have gotten a lot of practice reps. And I think I’ll stay in my theme of evaluating all our players, as 4-3.”
You mentioned, I don’t know if it was last week or the week before, how you weren’t pleased with the red zone defense, and it obviously gave up so more touch ups against Seattle. What do you see that’s not getting done down there?
“I think the biggest thing is we have to stop people from running the ball across our goal line if we’re going to take pride in being a physical defense that starts with run defense and it gets accentuated in the red zone, the field shrinks a little bit, and we have to do a better job of stopping the run. I think that’s probably the biggest thing.”
Does it matter to you who plays quarterback for them? Two guys who haven’t played all year.
“Well, yeah, it matters who’s playing left guard. It matters who’s playing wide receiver. We’re going to take it all into consideration. I think that we have eight games of their offense on film and with (Josh) Dobbs running, you know they ran a lot of quarterback runs. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s anything different with Kyler Murray if he plays, and I would expect, you know if the rookie plays for them to stay with what they’ve done, I don’t imagine that they would change entire game plan just for one guy. I think there was a reason that they wanted to fit Dobbs into that role. So, we’re going to look at the scheme. We’re going to take into account players individual strengths and weaknesses as we put our scheme together, but we’ll be ready whatever they decide to do.”
He’s a big guy, does he run the same stuff?
“Well, he didn’t in the preseason, they ran the offense, but he didn’t run a lot of the quarterback runs. But a lot of teams don’t run those quarterback runs in the preseason. Right? Well, they have a lot of stuff on tape from the first eight games. We’re going to prepare for that scheme, and then we’re going to prepare for the individual talents of players. So, (Clayton) Tune played a lot in the preseason, threw a lot of passes, so we have pretty good evaluation of that stuff. And like I said, we have eight games of what they do on offense, and we just got to melt those together. If that’s the guy, if it’s another guy, then we have to melt it together with the individual strengths and weaknesses of that player.”
How good was the Maurice (Hurst) interception on tape? Just how good has he been for you guys this year?
“Yeah, Mo’s been, I don’t want to say a pleasant surprise because he’s been a good player. He had a setback with injuries the last few years and had a hard time getting started in training camp because of some injuries. But now that he’s healthy, he’s really made good strides. He’s attacked before, he was with San Fran, so he’s played in the scheme before. So, his development is probably a little bit ahead of some other guys that have never done it before. Gives us some pass rush, and that was just a really outstanding play. We sort of sandwiched really good play with really poor play. We started off the first three series and we had a lot of fires to put out. We made a few adjustments, and we sort of found our stride and went seven series of playing about as good a defense as you can play. Like punt, interception, punt, interception, punt. And then it was just so disappointing to leave it there at the end of the game. Our offense needed us the most right there after an interception, they needed us the most, and we didn’t get the job done, so we feel tremendous responsibility for that. But the more plays we can make like Mo made an interesting thing with that. He had never practiced that position. We had some injuries with Za’Darius (Smith) and some other guys, and we had sort of mix and matched our defensive line guys. And he went in, and I mean at most he had got mental reps on that blitz but went in and executed it really well and then athletically made a really good catch. But we need more of that. We need more of that middle of the game. We can’t be a feast or famine defense. That’s not a way to play defense. And our run game was feast and famine, too. We played most of our snaps really good in the run game, but then we gave up three big plays in the run game, and that’s not going to get it done. That’s not where we want to be. That’s not where we need to go to take this team where we want to go.”
When you weren’t getting any turnovers, you were worried that if you started going for them, you’ll (?). Now you’re getting the turnovers, the tacking is falling. Did you fall victim to your fears?
“No. Not in those cases, Ton (Tony Grossi). I mean, like, Mo was doing his job in the scheme. MJ (Emerson) was doing his job in the scheme, playing really good technique. But I think you did see some examples that some of the gaps in our run game were us chasing boots and our eyes got distracted. Instead of doing our job in the run game, were trying to make a sack and hard to get a sack on a run play. I think that we have had to guard against that. And I think that there’s a fine line between doing your job and then trying to do too much. And we’ve talked about that ad nauseam here and everywhere else. If we just do our job, if we just be us the best that we can be, the plays will come to us. We don’t need to hunt plays and we can make those. I was disappointed in the game that we missed two or three sacks. I think that really could have changed the complexion of that game. And we can’t now change personality because we’ve missed those sacks. We just got to finish those plays when they come up next time as opposed to trying to do something different. And I think that it’s probably a tale as old as time from peewee to high school to college to NFL, where playing your job and letting the plays come to you as opposed to trying, it’s not like our guys trying to play outside the scheme or anything else. It’s all right. I see this split. This is what routes coming. And instead of anticipating and playing your technique, all of a sudden you can jump things a little too much and then you end up with feast or famine football. But for the most part, I don’t think that was the thing in this game. We just had a hard time getting started. Took us a few series to really find some footing. We changed an awful lot in those first three series, and I was really proud of the guys because they really found their footing. But then the way we ended that game was extremely disappointing for all of us.”
About the starts, (Alex) Highsmith, I know from Steelers got down one touchdown but still but still, you guys are giving up more points in the first quarter than any other quarter. So, do you have an explanation for that or what can be done to get better starts?
“Yeah, I mean, you can look at a lot of ways. Maybe we make really good adjustments. Yeah, we talk about starting fast, but you’re going to have things when a game is new that an offense is doing something maybe a little bit different and we have to make adjustment to what that is. I think in those first series, we just have to play our technique and our responsibility. And if we do that, our message is that’s enough. If we do those things. The game is 60 minutes. Long seasons now are 17 plus weeks. There’s going to be a lot of adjustments and ebbs and flows of a season. Right. There’s going to be things that an offense does. They try to take advantage of what you do and then the defense takes countermeasures and then the offense. That’s a constant thing throughout a season, but also throughout a game. But, yeah, we need to start better. We need to start faster and we need to stop the run. In the games that we’ve stopped the run, we played really well. In games that we’ve been leaky in the run game, whether it was this last one given up a few big plays, or a game like the Colts where we just gave up a lot of smaller gains, but we didn’t control the run game. Baltimore, we didn’t control the run game. When we control the run game, good things happen for us on defense, and that’s our focus.”
Knowing your personnel so well, and then Jonathan Gannon, having taken over for you in Philadelphia and probably knowing a lot of the nuances of your scheme, do you just do what you do, or do you have to change up some of your looks and fronts to kind of cross them up a bit?
“Well, he was here, too, so we have a lot of experience in our building with him, too, so that probably works both ways. I’m sure all my playbooks were on the server when I left Philadelphia, but people change terminology. They adapt to their players. What we’re doing now is probably about maybe 40 or 50% different than what we did in Philadelphia, not just because we have different players, but because the league goes through ebbs and flows and different things like that. And we also have a significant number of different faces on defense. When it’s all said and done, it might help with a little bit of preparation, might make our preparation a little bit easier at times. But when it comes down to it, it’s Sunday. It’s going out and performing and executing and playing physical and playing with effort and playing with some passion for the game.”
Not being able to get that last stop after the interception, what did you identify as what was the biggest issue?
“Yeah. Well, it was the one play missing a tackle. They throw a short pass. We end up in zone on that play. And we had played a good technique in the zone to force them to throw a three or four yard and then missed tackle, and that put them in field goal range. And then all of a sudden, they’re in field goal range and you know, the game completely changes. So that’s probably the exact same thing happened to us in San Fran. San Fran was man, right, but it got a completion. We’re going to do some more stuff in some two-minute situations in practice, you and just add to our periods a little bit more, because when the games on the line like that, we have to perform better.”
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