An Unlikely Mentor for Jim Schwartz

PHILADELPHIA - The Year 2020 has been a difficult one for many reasons and the latest gut punch for scores of people was the death of legendary Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer over the weekend at the age of 80.

Like many celebrities, the Canadian-born Trebek, who hosted the game show for nearly four decades, had an influence on many people he never even knew. One of them was a fledgling linebacker in the mid-1980s at Georgetown University.

“Alex Trebek and Jeopardy! trained me to be a football coach,” Schwartz told NBC's Peter King over the weekend.

Buried in that quote that mobilized the aggregators was the context which Schwartz offered to SI.com's EagleMaven on Monday as the Eagles got back to work in advance of Sunday's game against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium, the second time the Eagles will see Daniel Jones and Co. over a 23-day span.

"I mean, obviously, I didn't think he was training me to be a football coach when it was going on," said Schwartz. "I was a sophomore, junior in college. I didn't even know I was going to go into coaching."

Known for his stoic presence and witty personality, Trebek turned Jeopardy! into the high-brow game show, the 30 minutes where smart people tested themselves.

Georgetown, of course, has plenty of smart people and Schwartz and his friends use to gather around the television and made it a competition.

The traits that kind of competition developed are something that carries over to the NFL, where Schwartz has spent a quarter-century developing into one of the most well-regarded defensive minds in the game.

"We were just playing for fun and it was an ultra-competitive environment," said Schwartz. "But, you look back and see the lessons learned from stuff like that and you see the carryovers to football.

"It's not just getting the right answer."

So Bill Belichick, who gave Schwartz his NFL start as a scout in Cleveland back in 1993, along with Jeff Fischer and Gregg Williams in Tennessee back in the late 1990s were the coaches who brought Schwartz along to the point he's been piloting defenses in the NFL since 2001.

When Schwartz does looks back, however, he sees things that were developed back on campus in Georgetown that had little to do with a classroom or a football field.

"(Defensive football) is getting the right answer quicker than everyone else," he said. "... You're reacting when you make your play calls. You guys see, I very rarely have a play sheet or a call, I might have some notes written down on one small page but that's about it.

"The reason is, you have to react to what personnel group you're getting, the down and distance, all those different things. You can't pick a play the way offensive coaches do."

And when Schwartz does checks the rear-view he sees Trebek.

"I think just looking back, that had a lot to do, and then just Alex Trebek in general his command over the game," said Schwartz. "I thought it was always interesting, you never knew if he really knew the answer or it was just he sold it because it was written on his card. You know, oh, no, Henry the VIII, Henry the VI, that kind of thing, just having command over the game and the players."

The reverence didn't stop there.

"I think the other thing, he did it for so long, he had such consistency and it didn't happen by mistake," said Schwartz. "He was such a professional. He never flubbed a word. He never flubbed a syntax. So you knew that every question he had read probably 20 times, and that's a lot of questions on the board. He prepared himself, and it showed in his performance."

Add it all up and a 30-plus year coaching career arguably got kickstarted when Trabek went to Potpurri for $200.

"I think there's some carryovers, practice is important. Big news flash there. Command is important. Thinking quick is important. Competitiveness is important," Schwartz said. "Those are the lessons that I learned from just watching a silly game show on TV."

John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every Tuesday and Thursday on "The Middle" with Eytan Shander, Harry Mayes and Barrett Brooks on SportsMap Radio and PhillyVoice.com. He’s also the host of Extending the Play on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen

Get the latest Eagles news by joining the community. Click "Follow" at the top right of EagleMaven page. Mobile users click the notification bell. And please follow @kracze on Twitter.

Add us as a preferred source on Google