Philadelphia Eagles: Jim Schwartz’s defense is just too inflexible

Is the Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive scheme… broken?

Now I don’t want to add insult to the near-constant injury that is being a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, but have you heard how well Rasul Douglas has been playing for Matt Rhule and the Carolina Panthers this season? Dude has been balling out, showing up, and has been ranked the 10th best cornerback in the league by PFF as a result – higher than any defensive back left in South Philly.

At what point does this feel like a cruel joke? I mean Avonte Maddox is hurt and Douglas is suddenly good, and the Eagles don’t even have Craig James to fall back on? Kicking Nickell Robey-Coleman to the outside certainly isn’t going to look good when facing off against YAC specialists like Deebo Sweeney, super-sized targets like Chase Claypool, or speedsters like Marquise ‘Hollywood’ Brown.

*sigh* But do you want me to let you in on a little secret? I doubt the Eagles would have even given Douglas a chance to see the field, let alone be schemed into a perfect role for his physical limitations.

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Why? Because Jim Schwartz‘s scheme is just so gosh darn hard to execute.

Since joining the Eagles’ coaching staff in 2016, Schwartz’s defense has been wildly inconsistent based on their personnel. Granted, isn’t every scheme at least a little reliant on having good players? Most definitely, a 3-4 scheme needs a good nose tackle, a Tampa-2 front needs speedy linebackers, etc, but when literally every position across the defense needs a near-perfect schematic fit to run smoothly, it’s really, really hard to maintain any level of sustained success in a league notorious for injuries.

Presently, the Eagles have holes at cornerback two, linebacker, and whichever poor unfortunate soul gets tasked with covering opposing tight ends. How do opposing teams attack the Eagles? With their running backs, tight ends, and receivers manned up on 5-foot-9 Maddox.

Mind you, that isn’t particularly uncommon. The Eagles sort of attacked the Bengals’ defensive weakness with Miles Sanders between the tackles and lit up Washington’s second level with exceptional tight end play of their own, but what did those teams do throughout the game? Make adjustments. For Schwartz, the biggest adjustment he routinely makes is going to a prevent, ‘sticks’ defense on 3rd-and-15, a look the Eagles somehow allow teams to convert at an alarming clip.

But how can this be? Is Schwartz a bad coach? Simple answer: Yes and no.

On one hand, Schwartz’s scheme has a clear track record of success. His defensive tenure with the Titans convinced the Detroit Lions he was the man to turn their franchise around, and the Eagles’ 2017 success was arguably more driven by their defense than either Carson Wentz, Nick Foles, or ‘Philly Philly’.

With that being said, Schwartz’s scheme may simply be too rigid, too specific, and too idiosyncratic to be consistently successful in a league built on near-constant change.

When the Carolina Panthers’ number two cornerback, Jersey’s own Eli Apple, went down with a leg injury in the lead up to a Week 1 contest against the Raiders, Matt Rhule didn’t just insert Rasul Douglas into the ex-LSU Tiger’s spot and expect the ex-Eagle to play the same role. Apple measures in at 6-foot-1, 203 pounds and ran a 4.40 at the 2016 draft combine, whereas Douglas is 6-foot-2, 209, and ran a 40 in the mid-4.6s, expecting those two players to fill the same role is just crazy. While we can’t know exactly how Rhule planned to use Apple since he’s yet to play a game in his system, Douglas has been given plenty of chances to play with safety help over the top and is typically lined up well off the line to avoid getting burned on a double-move go route.

Had Schwartz been willing to change things up, switching over to more zone-based, off coverage looks, maybe he too would have been able to get the most out of Douglas, but instead, he kept putting the young cornerback in press situations near the line of scrimmage and was rewarded for his rigidity with 10 surrendered touchdowns on 1,127 combined defensive snaps from 2018-19.

Through three games of the 2020 season, Douglas hasn’t surrendered a single touchdown and is allowing a career-low 78.4 QBR to opposing passers throwing his way. Though the sample size is relatively small, 182 on the season thus far, there’s a reason PFF has lauded Douglas’ efforts thus far this season, he truly is playing like one of the 10 best cornerbacks in the NFL.

Jim Schwartz is the Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive coordinator. He was hired to bring his defensive mastery to the City of Brotherly Love, and one could argue that said scheme is a big reason why Super Bowl 53 broke in the team’s direction. With that being said, Schwartz is also a coach, and the very definition of coach is “a person who teaches and trains the members of a sports team and makes decisions about how the team plays during games”. While remaining committed to a finely-tuned scheme is vital to being a good coordinator, doesn’t putting your players is an inadventagous position kind of make you a bad coach?