With five years of experience to his name between playing with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns, linebacker Joe Schobert has seen a lot defensively. That’s exactly why he may be the most equipped player to adapt to the Jags’ new scheme as they’ve made drastic changes.
When speaking to the media this week, the veteran linebacker said he had a pretty good understanding of what was going on, but the key would be more so to get the verbiage down.
“Once you get to a certain point, all NFL defenses are the same, you just have to learn the verbiage and the language of the defense to be able to communicate effectively on the field,” he said on Tuesday.
“… It’s just tough to learn the verbiage at first. You’re always going to associate things you did in the past and there’s always going to be a way that you thought you liked the best. But once you get through OTAs and mandatory minicamp and training camp, that’s three times we’ll have installed the whole playbook and everything going forward.”
Schobert’s understanding of the playbook will be huge for the Jags as he’ll be one of their defensive leaders heading into his second season with them. This time though, he’ll be leading a scheme that’s expected to be vastly different under new defensive coordinator Joe Cullen.
In last year’s scheme, the key was to get pressure with the front four linemen, but Cullen has already shown signs that the Jags will blitz way more in 2021 based on what Schobert and company have worked on in OTAs.
“I’d say like 50 percent of the plays in spring we’ve been running blitzes, so I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure,” said the veteran linebacker “[Defensive Coordinator] Coach Cullen’s not afraid to get after it and put some guys in man coverage, get pressure on the quarterback, try to force him to make mistakes, so it’s going to be fun to see what he has dialed up in games actually in the fall.”
Schobert’s statements don’t come as a surprise when looking at the Ravens’ statistics. While Cullen was just the defensive line coach, he was a part of a unit that blitzed at a rate of 54.9% in 2019, then 44.1% in 2020. If OTAs are a true sign of what the Jags are trying to install, fans should expect to see Cullen bring some major heat this season and possibly register a rate near 50%.