Schwartz takes the blame for issues with his defense

Jim Schwartz is not making excuses for his defense’s lackluster performance through the first two weeks of the NFL regular season.

The Eagles defensive coordinator puts the blame squarely on his shoulders.

Schwartz said Tuesday that he had designed a “simple” but “poor” game plan last Sunday. The result was complete domination by quarterback Jared Goff and the Los Angeles Rams, who accrued 449 yards of total offense in a 37-19 victory at Lincoln Financial Field.

“What I thought would make it easier didn’t make it easier, it made it harder,” Schwartz said. “I really should have had a more complex game plan. It sounds funny to talk about, but a more complex game plan would have narrowed the focus of each individual player. We made a little rally, but it was too late. I take that on myself. It’s my job to put the players in good positions. Particularly in the first three series, I didn’t do a good enough job of doing that.”

Schwartz insisted that a lack of communication wasn’t the issue.

“It looked like we were having miscommunications or different things like that and that wasn’t the case at all,” he said. “It was just guys having too big a scope of what they had to do in a particular play and their attentions were divided. Playing a lot of that stuff the Rams do is a little bit like playing triple-option football. You need a person on the dive, a person on the quarterback, a person on the pitch, all those different things. And that’s sort of what you had to do to them. That’s where we got derailed. I take 100 percent responsibility for that.”

The Eagles rank among the worst teams in the league in points allowed (32.0). The defense’s strong suit under Schwartz has come against the run, but even that area is a glaring weakness after two weeks. The Eagles rank 22nd in run defense at 135.5 yards per game.

“Things that we typically have been very good at over the last four years, we’re not very good at right now,” Schwartz said. “Over the last four years, we’re the No. 1 run defense in the NFL. We’re not playing like that right now. I think we’re No. 2 red zone defense in the NFL over the last four years. Not right now. We’re like the No. 3 third-down defense in the NFL over those years. Not right now. We’re top-10 in takeaways. Not right now. Top-10 in points allowed. We’re bleeding points.

“My message to the guys was even more than those areas. We got to get back to being us. We have a track record of being good over time in those areas. But the area that I’m more on high alert for is our response to adversity. Typically, in the past we’ve been a team that can weather through a lot of different things. We can set our jaws and make a play. A turnover happens, we get out and get a stop. We can change the momentum of a game with a takeaway or a sack or something like that.

“I think even though we’re struggling in a lot of those other areas, the area I’d really like to see the most improvement is that, that ability to set our jaws and go out there regardless of the situation, regardless of anything, go out there and get those things stopped because we’re failing in that regard right now.”

Defensive back Jalen Mills has faith the defense can start to turn things around quickly, beginning this week against the winless Cincinnati Bengals.

“We have to go out there and be ourselves,” Mills said. “The biggest thing that me being here, this being my fifth year, we’ve always faced adversity and the way that we’ve handled that was having nobody do anything uncharacteristic and just being ourselves and playing our type of football. That’s the perfect solution.”

The Rams exposed many problems plaguing the Eagles defense, including their inability to adjust on the fly against bootlegs, play actions and misdirections.

“This is a copycat league,” Mills said. “Offenses are gonna run what they’re gonna run — their bread-andbutter plays. But we have to know that we are going to get attacked until we stop it a couple times from each team in each game that we play.”

Another problem for the defense right now is their inability to prevent teams from scoring in the red zone. Opposing offenses have converted 7 of 9 opportunities in those situations.

“We’ve just got to play better. That’s one of the things that we pride ourselves on as a defense — if they don’t score, they don’t win,” Mills said. “If there is a situation where they do get down there (in the red zone), we at least want to have them make a field goal and that’s it. So, I just think that’s the biggest thing.”

Mills said that Schwartz is too hard on himself and shouldn’t be the one to blame for the defense underperforming.

“I have a lot of respect for Schwartz, you don’t see a lot of defensive coordinators come out and saying those types of things, putting everything on the line for himself,” Mills said. “But also, coaches coach and players play. We have to have his back, too, regardless if he felt like he gave us a good game plan or not. We still have to go out and execute whatever the play is called and play to the highest standard. If he felt like he didn’t put us in a good situation, we have to back him up, just like he backs us up.”

••• No. 1 draft pick Joe Burrow and the Bengals visit the Linc Sunday. Mills, a fellow LSU grad, loves what he sees from the rookie quarterback, who threw for 316 yards and three touchdowns in a Week 2 loss at Cleveland.

“The biggest thing you see from him is the progression,” Mills see. “You see him at the line making checks and that’s very, very impressive. Also his pocket awareness, he’s moving out of simple sacks that you see (from) younger quarterbacks who are not moving their feet or they don’t have that awareness where guys are grabbing them and putting them to the ground. So, the biggest thing for me watching him on film is his pocket awareness and actually making checks at the line of scrimmage.”