DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Joe Schobert

Schoebert, Kirksey and Collins make me the live the idea of a 4-3. If any of the guys have read my thoughts on defenses, you would know I hate the 4-3.

I loved this kid coming out of Wisconsin, and was glad when we drafted him. I think that Schobert made a incredibly huge jump from year 1 to year 2 .... and I expect him to make another from year 2 to year 3 as well.

He has a really good football mind, and he has speed to go with it. I look forward to this coming season.

Yeah, I actually love our LB core... Kirko gets as much credit as Ogbah... which is minimal at best.

It'll be interesting to see how the rotations and etc work themselves out. I think we'll see a lot of snaps from everyone. Kirko may be our only LB that plays most downs.

It will be interesting to see how the LBer unit unfolds. We basically have 4 starters for 3 spots. I wonder who will be the odd man out?

Shocbert is a possibility, but I would not be shocked if something happens w/Collins.

Gregg and Blake Williams excited to add LB Mychal Kendricks: 'I wanted to draft him when he was coming out'

Patrick Maks

Staff Writer

Gregg Williams liked linebacker Mychal Kendricks so much coming out of college he wanted to draft him.

So it goes without saying the Browns defensive coordinator was pleased was when Cleveland's front office signed the former Eagles standout earlier this month, giving one of the team’s most talented position groups another proven veteran.

“It’s kind of the circle of life. I wanted to draft him when he was coming out, but we did not get him picked soon enough at the other place that I was at,” said Williams, who has followed Kendricks’ career ever since Philadelphia selected him in the second round of the 2012 NFL Draft.

“This is going to be fun to have a chance to coach him this time around.”

Kendricks, who spent the previous six seasons with the Eagles, gives the Browns’ already-impressive unit of linebackers, at the very least, additional depth and experience. While the Browns return starters Christian Kirksey, Jamie Collins and Joe Schobert, Cleveland’s coaching staff has made clear there’s no such thing as having too many good players — especially for a team coming off a winless season.


“He’s a great addition to the mix. I don’t think that you could have enough good players,” Williams said. “I think that he fits in perfectly here. One of the things that we do here – this staff will be better about this than they were last year because I kind of caught a couple of them off guard – is every player has to play more than one position. That’s how we have the flexibility of the ‘next man up’ during the season and how you play the next best athlete, not the next best on the depth chart. It is the next best athlete.”

“With our alignment sometimes, that guy does get in the middle. You’ll see that, all of a sudden, if you just drew it up there, Christian Kirksey is there and Joe Schobert is outside of him or Joe Schobert is now standing at a defensive end position or something like that as we move around. In terms of a home position, that’s where he will initially start out,” Blake Williams said.

Like his father, Blake, who was the Rams’ defensive coordinator and linebackers coach in 2012, said he’s long been a fan of Kendricks.

“I wanted to draft him badly in 2012 at the Rams. When we first got in there, we were in the market to draft a linebacker,” Blake Williams said. “I spent a ton of time with him when he was coming out through that process. Have always kind of kept up with him a little bit. Followed his career, watched his career.”

Now, he’s excited to coach him in Cleveland.​



https://www.clevelandbrowns.com/news/gre...ted-to-draft-hi

Shocbert is a possibility, but I would not be shocked if something happens w/Collins.

D'Qwell is how you spell it.

Just in case anyone else wants to reminisce on him.

I'm not trying to be an ass, just trying to put some respect on his name.

Collins is vastly overrated and IMHO,garbage... One of the first, if not the only player that was traded by BB and he didn't have a good word for him.

Hope we cut/trade him some time soon...

Willy Mac was my favorite LB... so I know I'm being harsh on Collins, he's just the kind of Lb I don't like.

In the span of about year, Joe Schobert went from playing mostly special teams to being the Browns’ lone representative in the Pro Bowl last season.

That was in large part thanks to an unusual ability to understand the game, said linebackers coach Blake Williams. It’s why he and Cleveland's coaching staff expect big things for the former Wisconsin standout moving forward.

“He's got a chance to probably be the most intelligent player and most intelligent MIKE we’ve ever coached in this system — his capacity for understanding and thinking quickly and knowing what the offense is doing,” said Williams, who spoke of Schobert in the same breath as linebackers and former pupils such as London Fletcher, Jonathan Vilma and James Laurinaitis.

Schobert, a fourth-round pick in 2016, is among a trio of starters returning at linebacker for the Browns, a group that includes Christian Kirksey and Jamie Collins Sr. In an effort to create perpetual competition in the room, the club also added former Eagles standout Mychal Kendricks last month and selected former Memphis star Genard Avery in the fifth round of the NFL Draft.

In last year’s winless campaign, Schobert was a bright spot, leading Cleveland with 144 tackles en route to playing every single snap. Along the way, he found his voice as the team’s middle (MIKE) linebacker, which more or less acts as the quarterback of the defense under coordinator Gregg Williams.

“There’s a really good feeling in my heart for him because you guys don’t see how hard he’s worked behind the scenes and how far he’s come,” Gregg Williams said in December, shortly after Schobert was named to the league’s annual all-star game as an alternate. “I tease him, and I’ve teased him this week from on June 1; he was a third-team middle linebacker on this roster. What he's done and he's just scratched the surface.”

Part of Schobert’s job is to make sure the defense lines up correctly, putting his teammates in positions to make plays. “What you don’t get to see is how much better he makes people around him,” Gregg Williams said. “If you were ever to have time to sit down with him and now ask him what he knows about offense, it’s not that he understands what we’re doing on defense, he has to understand what the opponent is doing and listen to what the opponent is saying. He becomes a sign-stealer, a voice-stealer.”

Cleveland hopes Schobert continues to do that. The next jump, his coaches say, is to make more impact plays that change the outcome of games.

“His next step is continuing to free himself up and go make game-changing type plays, not just protecting the entire defense plays, which he does so much of the time,” Blake Williams said.

“He sees what the offense is doing and he’ll just completely change the defense and he might not make the play himself, but that tackle for loss by a D-lineman was because he changed everything we were doing. He’s special from that standpoint.”

Remember Wali Rainer ??

At worst, he'd be a backup, and we'd cut him at the end of the season. At best, this competition lights a fire under his butt and he shows up and has a wonderful 2018 season.

Just looked him up, no mention of a Pro Bowl in his Wikipedia profile. It did mention that he was AFC defensive player of the week one time. Ya think if he made the pro bowl even as an alternate it would have been mentioned.

I didn't read it but it there was an article that he contemplated suicide...Concussion related???

Lots of tackles.. but so what? Andra Davis had a ton of tackles, but they were all down the field. Same thing I see with Schobert. I need impact plays.

Still confused as to how he made the pro bowl.

However, not often is it that an off-ball linebacker gets identified as an up-and-comer and/or building block for a defense.

Two linebackers who showed huge jumps in PFF grades from 2016 to 2017 and could equally find themselves on a list of future stars with another year of great success are Green Bay‘s Blake Martinez and Cleveland‘s Joe Schobert. Both were drafted in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft. Both were part-time players during their rookie seasons. Both posted replacement-level play (49.3 overall grade for Martinez and 48.8 overall grade for Schobert). Both showed great improvement in 2017 with Martinez vaulting to an 80.2 overall grade while playing 93.1 percent of Green Bay’s defensive snaps and Schobert grading at 77.4 overall while impressively playing in every single one of Cleveland’s 1,068 defensive snaps.

Digging deeper, where the two players really excelled was in run defense. Starting with Schobert, who led the league in tackles made in run defense during 2017 with 73. Even more impressive was his league-high mark of 44 run stops, which are tackles that result in a ‘win’ for the defense (further explained here), and a ‘loss’ for the offense. His 81.6 run-defense grade (24th) took a hit primarily due to his nine missed tackles, tied for second-most, which he’ll have to clean up in 2018.


Further highlighting his instincts is the fact that he also led the league on making first contact on run attempts (66 times). Even though Schobert is new to his off-ball linebacker role after playing on the edge in college, he played an integral role in Cleveland finishing with PFF’s seventh-highest graded run defense a season ago.


The cumulative effect of all these run stops on first and second down puts unwanted stress on the opponent’s offense, putting them in obvious passing situations on second- and third-and-long, essentially keeping them off schedule. If both these third-year players want to take their games to the next level, they will need to show marked improvement in pass coverage moving forward. Both had their struggles in this area in 2017, as Schobert posted a 70.7 coverage grade and Martinez posted an alarming 44.0 coverage grade.

Schobert was around league average when dropping into coverage, allowing 1.04 yards per coverage snap (16th out of 30 qualifiers) and 41 receptions on 54 targets. He wasn’t a prime target for opposing quarterbacks as his 8.4 snaps in coverage per target was the league’s 18th-lowest mark.