Donnellon: Schwartz has 'D' ability to make Pederson look smart

WE DON'T know much about Doug Pederson as a head coach yet, but we do know this:

He doesn't have to be the smartest guy in the room.

Actually, it might be in his best interests if he isn't. The best avenue for Doug Pederson to succeed in his first foray as a head coach - his best chance to buy a little time to get a feel for the job - is if Jim Schwartz comes in and proves right away that the Eagles' defensive personnel are much better than last season's effort and record would suggest.

The narrative for Chip Kelly here might even have been different if Billy Davis had proved to be a find. Of course, the same could be said on behalf of Davis, whose underwhelming defense was on the field an average of 34 minutes last season, haunted by big plays, an inability to get off the field on third down and a head coach whose rat-a-tat approach sabotaged more drives than it ignited.

So enter the 50-year-old Schwartz, as much a proven entity as Pederson is not. More proven, too, than Davis, who left here with the same résumé he entered with - the coach of a 3-4 scheme that either relied on players he did not have, was fatally flawed, or a chunk of both.

There is no such vagary surrounding Schwartz. His 4-3 worked in Buffalo, it worked in Detroit, it worked magnificently when Jevon Kearse and Kevin Carter were setting the edge in Tennessee, getting the Titans to within a foot of a Super Bowl title. "We've done it with a little different flavor each stop along the way," Schwartz was saying after practice at the NovaCare Complex on Tuesday, reeling off a slew of defensive ends he has coached in each place - names like Kyle Vanden Bosch, Antwan Odom, Cliff Avril, Mario Williams, Ziggy Ansah.

"All those guys have different skill sets. And it's all about trying to put them in a position that they can execute the scheme. There's probably some things that fly below the radar from just an alignment standpoint. But there's a lot of differences between what we're doing right now, what we did in Buffalo, what we did in Detroit, what we did in Tennessee."

Here's what is the same for the Eagles: The personnel up front. They have once again reshuffled their secondary, and the strength of their linebacking corps leans heavily on the strength of Jordan Hicks' pecs, hips and Achilles'. But the defensive line was actually a strength under Davis, and it should be even more so without the read-and-react hesitation implied by the 3-4.

So says Schwartz. He won't directly criticize Davis, but he will take a few shots at the 3-4. "When you're playing 2-gap . . . You're generally building that wall along the front," said the Eagles' defensive coordinator. "Guys are falling back and linebackers are generally shuffling laterally because your defensive linemen are going laterally. When you're playing attack up front, your linebackers are coming downhill. They have to plug those holes.

"We attack in level . . . You have guys who are disrupters, guys who attack the blocks and other guys and you have guys who play leverage off of them. If we're going to attack, the linebackers have to be tied in, the safeties have to be tied in. They need to be able to play off the guys up front. And when they see a hole, they have to be able to step up and fill because as you say, if you don't, you're lateral, you can create some gaps in there. So if our linebackers are playing well, our safeties are filling well, you're going to see those guys attacking downhill. Rather than waiting and catching blocks."

The operative word there, of course, is playing well. When they weren't plugging those holes, in the Juan Castillo-Jim Washburn days, it looked just as ugly as any 3-4. And concern is not a strong enough word to describe their cornerback situation.

But Fletcher Cox should be even harder to defend in a 4-3. As Schwartz noted Tuesday, Brandon Graham and Vinny Curry played in it too under Castillo. "And Connor (Barwin) did a lot of this when he was with Houston earlier in his career."

"I think it fits the guys really well here," he said. "I think if you ask them, they'd rather attack than read. It puts us in a little better position to rush the passer. A little bit (of a) better position to set hard edges."

Good coordinators hide flaws, or at least minimize them, by playing to their team's strengths. Unlike Davis, Schwartz has a long history of doing just that in a relatively short amount of time.

If he can pull that off here, this season, Doug Pederson has a shot to look real smart in a relatively short amount of time, too.

@samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon