Browns defensive coordinator provides glimpse on plans for next season

CLEVELAND — Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz provided a peek into his playbook at organized team activities Wednesday by describing how he’ll use his defensive linemen such as Za’Darius Smith, and safeties such as Juan Thornhill.

Schwartz has been doing the job for so long — it’s his 27th year in the NFL and his 15th as a coordinator — that he’s not worried about giving away the state secrets of his unit.

Take his defensive line, for instance. It’s Schwartz’s marquee position on defense, and he wasn’t shy about his approach, which will include plenty of five down linemen and lots of guys rotating in.

”We’ll play a lot of guys up front,” he said. “We’re not just going to play four guys. We’ll roll through eight, maybe even nine guys at times trying to keep guys fresh and keep ‘em throwing 100 mph fastballs.

“You guys will get tired of my baseball analogies. But a lot of the D-line is a lot like throwing relief in the major leagues now. These guys coming in from the ‘pen throwing 100, 101. I watched that guy from the Guardians last night and the guy from the Orioles last night, both of them were throwing over 100. You can’t, unless you’re Nolan Ryan, you can’t do that stuff for seven, eight innings.

“Same thing with the D-Line. The tempo that we want those guys to play, we’re going to need to rotate fresh troops in. Offensive lines don’t sub, but we can keep the pressure on those guys and we can play to a high standard with that depth and that’s an important part of what we do.”

Schwartz’s philosophy has traditionally netted big numbers from his pass rushers, and stout defenses as a result, including the Eagles’ unit in 2017 that he took to the Super Bowl. As Bills coordinator in 2014, Buffalo led the NFL in sacks (54) and limiting third-down conversions (33.2), while finishing second-best in opponent scoring (16.9 points per game).

Three Bills pass rushers finished the season with career highs in sacks, all in the double-digits: Mario Williams (14.5), Marcell Dareus (10.0) and Jerry Hughes (10.0). All three also made the Pro Bowl, while Williams and Dareus added first-team All-Pro honors.

With premier pass rushers such as Myles Garrett and Smith, and an up-and-coming edge such as Ogbo Okoronkwo, Schwartz is eager to get after it.

“We’ll find our personality in training camp and that’s part of what training camp’s going to be for us, is finding out what our best combinations are and how guys play off of each other,” he said. “That’s going to be important. I think that we do have some flexibility there.

“Particularly a guy Za’Darius, who is a very effective inside rusher. We have some young developing players here that have had good offseasons so far. Alex (Wright) and Jordan (Elliott), both of them have stood out and a lot of stuff and I think both of them can contribute inside. But the flexibility is important for matchups in the game. Moving guys around a little bit, you’ll probably see a little bit more moving guys around maybe than they’ve done in the past. But it’s all about just creating good matchups and finding out what the guys can do the best. We’re going in with an open mind. We’re not making any determinations on May 31.”

Schwartz is excited about the addition of Smith, who’s averaged 12.0 sacks in each of his last three full seasons, not counting 2021 when he underwent back surgery.

“He can play right. He can play left,” Schwartz said. “He’s had a lot of success in this league. He brings great veteran leadership to us. There’s plenty of positives right there. But again, I just go back to that multi-dimensional ability. You can move guys around.”

With so much talent up front, it only makes sense to load up the line.

“I won’t keep any secrets,” Schwartz said. “You’ll probably see five guys in pass rush a lot of times. We’ll drop a guy occasionally, but we’ll play some down-five stuff and that all goes back to the corners that we have. It’s hard to play five down if your corners aren’t any good, but we’ve got good corners and we’re going to rely on those guys too. So that’s all part of the pass rush.”

In addition to at least one more lineman than most teams use, Schwartz will often utilize three safeties — in part because his top three are so good and so versatile in Grant Delpit, Juan Thornhill and Rodney McLeod, who played for Schwartz for five seasons in Philadelphia.

“There’s going to come a lot of times where we play three safeties on the field and he’s a part of that,” Schwartz said. “How that happens, I don’t know whether it’s Grant Delpit going down low and playing like a dime position or Grant staying deep and a guy like Rodney going down. We value flexibility in those players. We value multi-dimensional skills. Right now they’re all playing all the positions. But again, by the end of training camp, we’ll sort of get a feel for where we are and what our best matchups are and we’ll go with that.”

He explained his three-safety reasoning, which will likely happen more frequently than three linebackers.

“Whether it’s first and second down or third down, the league is trending toward more wide receivers on the field, more tight ends that are really wide receivers,” Schwartz said. “And you need people that can neutralize those guys. You need guys that can cover these tough matchup running backs, these tough matchup tight ends and they can play in the box, play deep, play man. And I think our safeties fit that.”

He said the three-safety looks will be prevalent in training camp, which begins with eight days at The Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, July 22-30.

“In training camp you’ll see a significant amount and then how much we play, it’ll depend on if it’s our best matchup and who we’re playing and all those things,” he said. “But our job in training camp is to get ready for all those different situations. And again, you can’t play three safety packages with sort of one-trick ponies. Your guys have to be flexible, have to have some multi-dimensional skills.”

He already knows full well that McLeod, 32, has that diverse skill set.

“He could play a game right now,” Schwartz said. “We changed the terminology. You try to roll terminology and signals over just so people you’ve played before don’t have a good grasp. So the first couple days that sort of threw him for a loop. But veteran players like that, that have played the techniques, it comes quickly for those guys.”

He noted that he’ll also use different defensive backs in the slot, depending on the matchups. On Wednesday, Denzel Ward spent some time inside in sub-defenses, and Schwartz will cross-train most of them for the chore, which means it won’t all fall on Greg Newsome II.

“It’s probably not going to be rotating guys within a game, but depending on the matchup, you might see different players playing nickel in different games,” he said. “A bigger guy that plays more physical, we might have one guy in there. A small, shifty quick guy, we might have somebody else in there. The way we play our coverage, there’s a lot of carryover between corner and nickel. It’s not its own specific position. So I think it’ll make us compartmentalize and be able to move guys around a little bit more, just to play some matchups.”

Schwartz is in the process of changing the culture of a defense that was splintered much of last season, and underachieved. He’s doing it, in part, with his tough-as-nails approach during practice and games. A disciple of Bill Belichick and Nick Saban, Schwartz won’t put up with any nonsense or lack of buy in, and he’s developing a hard-nosed, physical unit.

“We’ll develop it in individual periods and then we’ll develop that through training camp mentality,” he said. “And then just the setting a standard. We have some physical players and we want to play with effort. We want to be physical and we want to have a little personality. And those are the things that we’re going to emphasize as we go. All the good defenses have those things.”

On Wednesday, he had to bark a little to get his players to bite.

“We were pretty crappy early on,” he said. “We needed a little kick in the butt to get going a little bit today. But communication, getting some things under our feet, we’re getting a little bit better there. But the road will hit the rubber when training camp comes and we can play with toughness and effort and physicality.”

It’s also why he’s right in the middle of the action during practice drills, physically demonstrating some technique and yelling when necessary.

“I’m just out there right now just trying to hear guys communicate and just to have a little presence out there and those things,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll be out there all the time. Right now when things are new, I can get my ears real close to ‘em and I can hear where the communication is. And that means you can feel the players.”

It’s the same reason he likes to call the game from the sidelines.

“You don’t make calls in a vacuum,” he said. “You have to really feel the players, you know? As much as we’re trying to put in new schemes and communication and things like that, us as coaches, we’re learning the players and we’re learning their different personalities and we’re learning where they’re going to need to be pushed and where things are going to fall. So it’s a learning experience for us, too. And I like to be out there just in the mix and I think there’s a lot of good information out there.”

So far, his players have responded well to the tough love approach.

“That’s what we need,” said Ward. “We need to be coached up. Whether that’s in a hard way or not, it’s good criticism. Guys have got to be out here knowing what they’re supposed to do and doing our job, and he’s making sure that he’s holding us to that standard.”

And with a resume like Schwartz’s, who dares not listen?