NFL teams have embarked on 39 drives against the Cleveland Browns. One has resulted in a touchdown. Those opponents have yet to run a play inside the Browns’ 10-yard line and have combined for a grand total of four plays snapped inside the red zone, totaling minus-12 yards.
While their first three opponents — the Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans — did not provide the highest level of offensive competition, the fact that the Browns are allowing just 4.7 yards per pass (ranking first) and 2.8 yards per rush (second) is significant. Top pass rusher Myles Garrett (leading the NFL in pressure rate) may be the embodiment of their metamorphosis under new defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, now even more consistently impactful in the “Wide Nine” scheme with the ends lined up as far from the tackles as possible. Things are going so swimmingly, in fact, that a Browns media contingent accustomed to probing defensive ineptitude was pondering the relative lack of turnovers forced during its weekly meeting with the defensive coordinator Thursday.
“You guys are really scraping for criticisms,” quipped Schwartz, whose NFL journey began as an entry-level personnel assistant for the Browns under Bill Belichick in 1993.
Cleveland’s defensive ascent has been fueled by a talent influx, with newcomers along the defensive line (Za’Darius Smith, Dalvin Tomlinson, Shelby Harris and Ogbonnia Okoronkwo) and secondary (Juan Thornhill and Rodney McLeod) playing their part. But within NFL circles, much of the attention is going to the man in charge of harnessing and deploying it. After a year-long sabbatical from coaching following a long run as a defensive coordinator or senior assistant (and as head coach of the Lions from 2009 to 2013), Schwartz’s early work has been a master class, pairing some tried-and-true tactics (like the Wide Nine he learned during his early days in Tennessee) with a new propensity for varied blitzing and a greater reliance on man-coverage schemes.
“That’s a totally different defense with Schwartz running it,” said an executive for a team that has faced the Browns, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he isn’t permitted to comment on rival rosters. “They added some players, yeah, but you have to give him a lot of the credit. That’s a major upgrade at defensive coordinator. They got a lot smarter with him running the defense.”
The Browns host the Ravens’ reeling offense Sunday having won their previous two home games by at least 21 points after going 70 straight home games without a win of that margin. Heady times indeed for this forlorn franchise, with the turnaround spearheaded by a relatively low-key coaching upgrade and not the disgraced quarterback they landed in a blockbuster trade, lured by the largest fully-guaranteed contract in NFL history.
The production of the Deshaun Watson-led offense remains muted at best. But Schwartz is adding wrinkles, melding what he does with the strengths of his roster. In his career, per TruMedia, Schwartz’s defenses have blitzed a modest 23 percent; this season they are doing it about a third of the time. He has favored zone coverages throughout his career and only played man about 22 percent of the time, but this season he’s playing man 36 percent of the time, fourth most in the NFL.
“I’ve known him forever. I know his defense so well,” said longtime NFL coach, scout and executive Bobby DePaul, who now scouts the Browns among his duties for SumerSports, a scouting and quantitative analysis company led by former Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff. “He’s definitely changing some things. Oh, yeah. He’s a lot more aggressive, and there’s an art to how a coach utilizes his talent.
“He’s taking a guy like Myles Garrett, who used to be a left end there, and he’s moving him around and now he’s everywhere. He’s looking for matchups. He’s a left end. He’s a right end. He’s standing him up [like a linebacker] and moving him around so the offense can’t get fixated. He’s changing his coverages around.”
Longtime NFL coordinator Gregg Williams, who hired Schwartz as a quality control coach in Tennessee in 1999 and later coached Garrett in Cleveland, said a defense needs “the right personnel around him if you’re putting Myles over center — and Jim understands that, and they have that now.” And Williams, a protégé of blitz-addicted defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, is most enthused about Schwartz’s late-found appreciation for going to extremes to generate pressure.
“I’ve been bragging on him for all the stuff he’s doing,” said Williams, who still lives in Cleveland. “He’s doing a lot of the stuff I love. He knows that running more man forces [the quarterback] to hold the ball longer and takes away the dink-and-dunk stuff. He’s blitzing more than ever and has a great feel for when to take your shots and what range of the field to do it. …
“I told him he’s finally [being bold] and he always texts me back a smiling face. He’s bringing the fire zones with five-man pressures and man-to-man six-man pressure and doing a great job of creating down and distance advantages.”
The Browns’ film this season also has entertained DePaul, who has known Schwartz since 1989 when he was a graduate assistant at Maryland looking for an NFL break and DePaul was just getting started as a coaching assistant under Joe Gibbs.
“Some of the stuff he’s doing is funny as hell,” said DePaul, a former linebacker at Maryland and longtime personnel exec with the Bears, Eagles and Browns, among others. He was particularly tickled last week, when the Titans were taking the unusual step of double-teaming Garrett with two tight ends.
“So Jimmy puts Garrett in motion, like he’s the tight end, trying to tell if the defense is in man or zone,” DePaul said between chuckles. “Except it’s the defensive end, and he’s going left and right, in motion, and the Titans don’t know what the hell is going on and then both tight ends go with him.
“I’ve been watching film since the early 1980s, and I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life. Who comes up with that? I couldn’t stop watching it, and then on the coach’s film you get the sideline shot and you can see him with this [expletive] grin on his face. You can tell he’s having fun. Sometimes when guys take a year off like that, it ends up being the best thing they can do. You get refreshed and you get an overview of everything going on in the league and you get reeducated on your concepts. I know this much, Jimmy Schwartz is coaching his a-- off right now.”
In the first month of the season, the Browns’ defense under Schwartz is the most improved unit in the NFL. With running back Nick Chubb lost for the season and Watson, so far, a shell of what he was in Houston, they may have to keep it up to give Cleveland a chance in the AFC North.
