Bengals Film Breakdown: How Browns' New-Look Defense Could Play Under Jim Schwartz

"Wide 9" is mostly used on passing downs to get his defenders in space. The edge rushers can fire off of the ball and pin their ears back to try to get after the quarterback. Even on second down, Schwartz would run a similar but less wide variation of this front.

I would expect to see this front plenty from the Cleveland Browns on Sunday. They want to get Myles Garrett into a 4-point stance in space against any of the Bengals tackles. Za'Darius Smith could play this role too, although he's made a career out of the spinner role where he rushes from a 2-point stance on the interior.

You can see it’s mostly about rushing these guys in space straight ahead. It’s tough to give help to the tackles in this front because both guards are covered and have a man of their own to deal with. Schwartz even frees up his ends more on this play by slanting both interior defensive linemen inside. Now the guards and center have to deal with those guys and the tackles need to hold up on their own.

Speaking of slanting those interior guys, Schwartz will even run a T-T stunt with them where one slants inside and the other loops around him. This really weaponizes the space created with this front because it’s very tough to ask those guards and the center to pass this off when the stunt is coming from extremely far away.

His first down front is not the "wide 9." but rather this over G-look.

He tightens it down so there is a nose tackle in a 2i alignment (inside shoulder of the guard) away from the run strength. He still likes his 3 technique (outside shoulder of the guard) to be looser and almost between a 3 technique and a 4i (inside shoulder of the tackle). The ends of this front are still fairly wide as well. Even on early downs, Schwartz likes his guys to be wide and to play in space. He tightens it up some, but his philosophy as a coach is to get wide, weaponize space, and to attack the offense.

Schwartz asks his front to play attack react and fast rather than react attack and slow. Most teams in the NFL are playing slow and asking their guys to eat multiple gaps to defend the run. Schwartz really plays gapped out and mainly asks his guys to take a single gap in the run game. The run game philosophy from him can be broken down into a few key components. He wants to get penetration with his front. Any penetration can disrupt a run play, he wants to tackle well, and he wants to force everything back inside.

The last common front that he gets to is this overload look where he places three defenders on the same side of the offensive line. This is a third-and-long call only from him but it’s a great one to get a one on one rush with the isolated edge and to run twists on the opposite side with three defenders near each other.

Here they work the N-T twist which occupies the entire interior of the Saints offensive line and both edge defenders have a one on one with the tackles. When you protect with five against a Schwartz defense, he will respond by getting his players one-on-one opportunities.

To attack the front, every team attempts to run trap against it.

The angles line up very well for traps and the 3 technique typically starts the play trying to penetrate. They had varying degrees of success in the games that I watched, but I assume the Bengals will attempt to run some type of trap against this front. Cincinnati did not often run trap with the guard on the 3 technique though and ran this tackle trap instead.

The Bengals possibly installed trap this offseason as a way to get after loose 3 techniques penetrating up field, but maybe they will just stick with this variation of trap with the tackle pulling to the nose instead. The angles line up against an over G-front for this to work either way. Schwartz’s defenses know this though and if they smell the trap coming, they will take on that puller with aggression.

The Back End

When it comes to coverage, Schwartz’s fastball was single high-man coverage.

Even if he did not necessarily have the horses to run this at times, he would get to this coverage because it allows him to be gapped out on the front end and physical on the back end. Single-high was also more common back when Schwartz was a defensive coordinator, so this could be a product of the time. This example has an underneath hole defender, but he also would send 5 and play man on the back end with just the single-high safety.

The advantage here is that the pass rush is even more potent because all five offensive linemen are occupied with a pass rusher. They could even get a free runner if the offensive line is not careful. Schwartz even dabbled with having his hole defender tag the offensive line to occupy them before dropping into the zone.

The strengths of this lie in getting a pass rush home while everything is covered early in the play. The weakness of this coverage idea is that the defenders are mostly one-on-one against the receivers. The Bengals torched this coverage in 2021 by just tossing go balls on the outside to Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.

If these opportunities are there, then this game could come down to the Bengals receivers against the Browns cornerbacks. Those two position groups wouldn't have it any other way.

Schwartz does carry a change up that he likes to utilize as well in Tampa 2.

Specifically, he likes to get into rotations from a one high pre snap look into Tampa 2.

Here he rolls the single high safety over to take the deep half to the field while the boundary corner is asked to take the deep half on the other side. This is commonly how a team will roll into Tampa from one high because it does not ask the corner to try to play the deep half where there’s a ton of space but rather where space is limited.

The other way Schwartz will get to Tampa 2 is by playing inverted 2.

This concept has the single high safety drop to play the intermediate middle of the field while both outside corners drop back into the deep halves. Another concept that is designed to look like the Schwartz fastball of single high before changing things up. Both his fastball and his change up look similar which can cause some quarterbacks to hold onto the ball an extra tick to make sure they know what coverage is being played.

Sometimes these inversions and rotations can be too much though.

While the defense is scrambling to new assignments, tight end Hayden Hurst sits down in the soft spot and picks up an easy first down. The defense in that clip is the Titans defense which Schwartz was a part of their defensive staff last year.

Lastly, let’s look at something that Schwartz did in 2017-2018 that he could ramp up now with the Browns.

Creepers are zone coverages where a defensive lineman drops into coverage while a linebacker, corner or safety blitz. They have been popular for a few years now but Schwartz was running them back in his time as a defensive coordinator as well. 

The Titans ran a ton of creepers when Schwartz was there and it would not be surprising if he brings that with him to Cleveland. The response from the Bengals offense has to be to remain patient against those looks. Creepers do a good job against quick game and RPOs, but you don’t want a big guy out in space covering defenders for very long. The design is to make the quarterback feel like they are hot and to throw it quick despite the defense having a full coverage shell. The Bengals have had mixed results against these looks in the past.

Defenses change what they do all the time against the Bengals. That’s what happens when you have such a potent offense. Schwartz could sit back in Tampa 2 this game for the most part and force the Bengals to slowly march the ball down the field. 

He could also try to punch them in the mouth with 5-man rushes and Cover 1 behind it. Maybe he takes a note from his time with the Titans and runs a bunch of creepers like they did in the divisional round against the Bengals. 

Either way, Cincinnati needs to be prepared for what he’s going to do. Schwartz is a fascinating defensive coordinator with a signature style. How he calls the game on Sunday will be interesting to watch and how the Bengals respond could decide the game.

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