Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz (12.7.23)

Jim, heading into this game, what’s it like? Kind of not knowing whether you’re going to face Trevor (Lawrence) or C.J. (Beathard). How does it impact your preparation? 

Yeah, there’s a lot of uncertainty going into this game from just the weather. How sloppy is the field going to be? How much is rain going to affect the game? How much is wind going to affect the game? And then, you know, maybe Trevor Lawrence plays and he’s himself, he has his full mobility, maybe he plays and he doesn’t have his mobility and then maybe he doesn’t play at all and Bethard plays. So I think that our game plan is probably about 25% bigger this week, and it’s not actually going to be 25% bigger within the game. It’s going to be 25% bigger to be able to handle all the different things that have come up. Fortunately, this time of year, adding stuff that maybe you’d done earlier in the year doesn’t take as much gasoline to get to the game plan, but it’s definitely got to be on our radar with how the game is being played from a personnel standpoint and then also from a weather standpoint, and we got to prepare everything in between. Maybe it’s so windy that it’s hard to throw the ball. Maybe the wind’s not having an effect, maybe it’s raining, but it’s really not having effect and the field is still good. Maybe the field is sloppy and change the direction means a lot, so you know, all that stuff goes into consideration in this game.”

 

Jim you sat Myles (Garrett), I think for one series last week, I don’t know if he was on any kind of pitch count or anything like that. He didn’t feel like the shoulder bothered him too much. Just what was your take on that? 

“I mean, I’ll just let him speak for himself when it comes to that stuff, but the information was full steam ahead and go. They certainly took a lot of concern for him when he was in the game. I’m talking about the Rams and then (Matthew) Stafford was throwing the ball so quick, so you know, I wouldn’t see, you know, him not getting any sacks or even not having any tackles have anything to do with anything other than the way the game plan and their game plan went down. But I think you look back, we’ve been two weeks now without a defensive line sack, and for us—that’s not us. We’re not built that way. We put a lot of resources up front. We have a lot of good players up front. We have a lot of talent up front, and we’re at our best when we can generate pressure with four man pass rush. And in that game, the only time we were really able to generate any pressure was some blitz stuff. So, we get to get back to that. We get to get back to clocking the quarterbacks and to building everything off of our four man pass rush. And that’s just not Myles, that’s Z (Za’Darius Smith), Ogbo (Okoronkwo), Dalvin (Tomlinson) and everybody else. We play eight guys up front. Everybody gets significant reps up front. So we just haven’t known one guy not to have sacks for a couple of weeks. We’ve had eight guys not have sacks for a couple of weeks, and that’s something that’s definitely on our radar. And when we’re at our best, we can blitz on our terms as opposed to having the blitz to get pressure. We’re built that way. I expect to get back to it.”

 

Looks like you have Denzel Ward back when you didn’t have him in the last two weeks. What kind of ripple effect does that cause in the secondary? 

“Well, it does change some of your positions. Like Greg Newsome went from playing the slot to outside, and then we’re replacing the slot, and then the next week he went back to the slot and then the other guys were outside. So, continuity-wise, there is a little bit of that, but he’s just a really good player and was playing at a really high level. And anytime you take a player like that away from you or away from your group, there’s going to be some adjustments and things like that. We don’t have any excuses. Our standard is the same regardless of who’s playing. But excuses and reasons are different things. Right? And Denzel means an awful lot to us. If we’re able to get him back this week, I’m sure that’ll give us a boost. If he’s not, then we’re going to have to figure out other ways to compensate and to be able to play, because the other teams also know when Denzel’s out there. And like I said, he was playing at a really high level. And as he’s getting closer, whether he’s able to go this week, how much he’d be able to go this week, or if he’s not able to go this week, we just got to be able to play that as it comes out.”

 

You mentioned the lack of defensive line sacks. Is it something schematically they were doing to kind of limit that, or when you kind of look back, what was it?

“The last two weeks, so Denver I thought was a different situation because Denver didn’t throw the ball very much at all, like 20 throws or whatever. And Russell Wilson. We had some good rushes in that game but weren’t able to finish the quarterback. He was scrambling around. So, with that is number one, there wasn’t a lot of opportunities. Number two is he was tough to tackle and was able to either buy time to make some throws or be able to scramble even if he didn’t get the first down. Like the one fourth down, he got the first, but we caused the fumble. I thought it was different. They took an approach of trying to nullify the pass rush with quick passes and getting the ball out of his hand quick. We got to be able to play it both ways. I think every game sort of stands alone. It was just when I say two weeks, it wasn’t the same thing from week to week. But I would say this. We expect our D line to be the driving force of our defense. They are the engine that drives us. We get our energy from them and regardless of a mobile quarterback or quarterback going quick, we have to still be effective in pass rush. Sometimes it might look a little bit different, but we have to be effective in our pass rush.”

 

How is it when the quarterback gets rid of it so fast, and they have three guys blocking? 

“Yeah, I think a lot of that also depends on coverage, and I think you saw that a little bit earlier in the year when our coverage could make the quarterback hold the ball a little bit longer and I think you go back and watch the San Fran game and I thought that was one of the best games that we had. As far as playing complementary with our pass rush and our pass coverage. There were some really difficult things in pass coverage in that game and weren’t always perfect. It was dirty a lot of times and sometimes with all that motion and changes and everything else, we lost guys a couple of times and we didn’t have quick coverage on it, but the pass rush kept the quarterback from finding it. And there were other times where our coverage bought us a little bit of time to be able to get there. So, I would say this, when the quarterback is taking an approach of throwing it quick, it does put more of an emphasis on tight coverage, right? Don’t give them quick answers. There weren’t a lot of quick zone answers in that game, but there were some things we can execute better and just a little bit in our mind. Our man leverage wasn’t great in that game, was too many times that we lost our leverage, whether it was a boot, whether it was play action or just a route or even we ran exchange zone blitz and we gave up a big play on it. The passes we gave up on that play should be five to ten yards, should never be a deep play.  We didn’t execute that well. Juan (Thornhill) is real close to getting a sack or affecting the quarterback. We didn’t make the quarterback hold the ball long enough. We didn’t execute well on that. ”

 

What was supposed to happen then? Was that a case of (Matthew) Stafford knowing you and taking advantage of it?

“No, I don’t think it’s knowing me because we didn’t run that scheme when I was in Detroit. But it’s something that we’ve had a lot of success with this year. We have a lot of different versions of it, but we’ve had a lot of different, it’s been a very high percentage play for us. We just didn’t execute it well enough. I’ll leave that to the PFF people and everything else, but we definitely broke down in our techniques. Like I said, it’s no secret that’s a zone blitz, but it wasn’t executed the way it needs to be executed.”

 

The fact that the next highest sacker after Myles (Garrett) is Ogbo (Okoronkwo) with three and a half and Z (Za’Darius Smith) only has two and a half, what are your thoughts on that and what you need to be happening there that’s not happening?

“I mean, obviously sacks are important to us, and I think one of the reasons sacks are important to us because there’s such a high incident of turnover when it comes to sacks, right? Being around the quarterback and things like that. But there’s other times I’m going to take off on my soapbox here. But if you have a great rush and you’re going to get a sack and the quarterback intentionally grounds the ball, okay, it’s loss of down and you get the yardage of the sack, but the player doesn’t get the sack. I always thought that was sort of a bad loophole there, that the player wasn’t credited for the good play that he had. But same thing. If the pass rush forces a ball to be thrown quick and they have to throw short of the sticks or they throw incomplete, was it an effective rush? I think when it’s all said and done, we’re trying to judge by more what their effective pass rush rate is, their pressures and things like that. We obviously want sacks and to be able to finish, but sometimes, again, if the quarterback decides to burn the ball and put the punt team on the field as a pass rusher, does it make it less of a good pass rush for you? So I think we look at a little bit more stuff like that. I know Z has still had a very high percentage of wins in pass rush, and pass rush for us is always a collective effort. I mentioned we lean on our four man pass rush. And when you run games, when you run individual rushes, some guys are going to get doubled, some guys are going to get one on one. As long as we’re getting pressure, that’s what we look at. We look at the four man pass rush. So, yeah, we want our numbers up. I’d like our numbers up just for the individual players. They get judged on sacks, I think, sometimes unfairly. But the other thing that comes up, I said a bunch of times, our D line’s job is to mess some stuff up, right? And that last game we had zero sacks and we had only one tackle for a loss. And when we’re playing our best, it’s six or seven tackles for losses in a game. And second and 12 and second and 14. We were never able to gain that advantage in those games. We need to get back to those kind of penetrations, disruption on the run, and this is just me on my soapbox, but if it’s a run play and you get a four yard tackle for a loss, second and 14, it’s first and ten and you get a sack for four yards. Second and 14. Has it affected the defense, has affected the play, call the next play? Probably not. The biggest thing is the more you’re around the quarterback, the higher the percentage chance for turnovers. And our turnovers haven’t been where they need to be either. And I think that can all get spurred by being around the quarterback more.”

 

I know you talked about it last week a little bit, but the third down stops and I know a little not quite on par with what you had been this past week either. Is that just a matter of still getting to the quarterback helps that a lot more?

“Yeah, I’m not big on league rankings, but our percentage is still pretty good on third down. And a bad day for us is probably not a bad day for a lot of the rest of the league. And that just goes to the standard and the way we played, and we need to be able to get back to that. But that ability to stop drives extremely important to, you know, just like Jeff (Schudel) had talked about with Denzel (Ward). Denzel means a lot to that. Our pass rush means a lot to us. We put a lot of time in our third down package. We have good players, we have a good complement of blitzes. And sometimes third down can be a good disinfectant, you know, sometimes like maybe your run defense or giving up a big play if you can get that third down stop. Just disappointed, this last game we gave up the big play, which we shouldn’t have given up. And then we played some pretty good football until there were six minutes left. I mean, basically you give up 13 points until there were six minutes left. We just got a big third down, stop, got the ball back for our offense, and then we had an unfortunate turnover. And then we just fell apart after that. And that’s the thing that was most concerning about that game. It wasn’t like, look, it’s football sometimes you don’t execute as well. Maybe you give up a big play or maybe you don’t get off the field on the third down. But I thought we were past that after that Baltimore game. But I think that after that turn, we hold them to a field goal. Thern we’ll get the ball back. Now a touchdown wins the game. We give up the touchdown right there. We don’t execute very well. We give up the touchdown. Now all of a sudden, it’s a touchdown and a two point just to tie the game, change the dynamic completely. And that’s on the defense. That’s on us.”

 

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