Eagles' Schwartz right man for 'D' job

BEFORE ANDY Reid hired Jim Johnson to be the Eagles' defensive coordinator in 1999, Johnson had had just one previous opportunity to run his own defense in the NFL.

That was with the Indianapolis Colts in 1996-97. It wasn't exactly a rousing success. The Colts won just 12 games in those two seasons and Johnson's defense finished 18th and 25th in points allowed, respectively.

I mention this not to besmirch the reputation of Johnson, who is one of the best defensive coaches in NFL history, but to show that even the very best football coaches aren't magicians. They need talent to be successful.

That goes for another highly regarded coach, Jim Schwartz, who has been brought in by Doug Pederson to oversee the reclamation of the Eagles' defense; a defense that stunk up the joint last season.

To refresh your memory, the Eagles finished 30th in yards allowed, 28th in points allowed, 32nd in yards allowed per rush attempt, 28th in passing yards allowed, and, oh yeah, gave up a franchise-record 36 touchdown passes.

The question Pederson, Schwartz and executive vice-president of football operations Howie Roseman had to answer this offseason was exactly why did the defense play so badly last season?

Was Schwartz's predecessor, Billy Davis, to blame? Was his two-gap 3-4 scheme a poor fit for the players he had? Was the talent just not good enough? If you answered "all of the above," you win; uh, OK, you don't win anything.

Pederson retained five assistants from Chip Kelly's staff, but Davis wasn't one of them. The two-gap 3-4 was deep-sixed and replaced by the Wide 9 4-3 that Schwartz favors.

Roseman traded away two of the defensive players Kelly brought in last year - cornerback Byron Maxwell and linebacker Kiko Alonso - and used free agency to add several defensive reinforcements, including three guys who played for Schwartz in Buffalo two years ago when he was the Bills' defensive coordinator - linebacker Nigel Bradham and cornerbacks Leodis McKelvin and Ron Brooks.

But heading into training camp, there still are a lot of lingering questions about the defense. Such as:

Is the pass rush, which is the key to the success of just about any NFL defense, but particularly one coached by Schwartz, going to be good enough?

Are the Eagles deep enough at linebacker?

Can the new and supposedly improved again secondary cut down on the number of touchdown passes?

Will the Eagles finally find a way to get the hell off the field on third down?

Pederson has essentially done the same thing with Schwartz that Reid did with Johnson in 1999. He's given him the keys to the defense and told him to run that side of the ball as he sees fit.

Pederson will focus on the offense along with offensive coordinator Frank Reich. For all intents and purposes, Schwartz is the Eagles' head coach-defense.

"He's implementing his defense and his structure and his style," Pederson said. "Do I love his structure and the aggression that he's brought? Yeah, that's what I wanted. That's what we needed to get back here.

"He's the professional on that side (of the ball). My expertise is on offense. His is over there on defense. He's the master. He's done it for a hundred years. It's proven. Just like the (West Coast) offense I've been in is proven. I wouldn't expect him to come over to the offensive side and make suggestions, whether it be about personnel or plays or play-calling or any of that.

"And I'm going to leave that up to Jim (on the defensive side)."

Again, Schwartz isn't a magician. He can't make coq au vin out of Spam. He has spent nine years in the NFL as a defensive coordinator and another five as a head coach (2009-13 with Detroit). Give him good players and he'll give you a good defense. Give him poor players and it will be 2015 redux.

He inherited a defense in Detroit in '09 that had finished dead last in points and yards allowed and had just four interceptions the year before he got there. In his first season there, they finished last in points and yards allowed again.

In Schwartz's one and only year in Buffalo in 2014, the Bills' defense improved from 10th to fourth in points allowed, 10th to fourth in total defense, 20th to first in touchdown passes allowed and second to first in sacks even though they had three fewer (54) than the previous season.

His defenses have finished in the top 10 in points allowed four times. They have finished in the top 10 in total defense (yards allowed) four times. They've finished in the top 10 in touchdown passes allowed just twice and in rushing average four times.

What they have done on a pretty regular basis is get pressure on the quarterback. Schwartz's defenses have finished in the top 10 in sacks eight times in his 14 years as a coordinator and head coach.

Jim Johnson was a master at exploiting the weaknesses in pass protection with blitzes. That's really not Schwartz's thing.

His defenses regularly have one of the lowest blitz percentages in the league. He's going to try and beat you by rushing four people most of the time, with his ends lining up wide, and dropping seven into coverage. His 2014 Bills defense, which had a league-high 54 sacks, blitzed a league-low 12 percent of the time.

"It has depended on the years and what you've got," Schwartz said. "Some years we blitzed an awful lot. Some years we blitzed 10 percent of the time. When I was in Tennessee (as the defensive coordinator from 2001 through 2008), I didn't blitz very much with those guys because we had Kyle Vanden Bosch and Albert Haynesworth and Jevon Kearse and all of those guys. So it wouldn't have made a lot of sense.

"If you can pressure the quarterback without blitzing, you can devote more (people) to coverage and you probably won't give up as many (big) plays."

@Pdomo

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