And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

After Doug Pederson was asked three times about the 3rd and 8 play where Nate Gerry got torched by Chase Claypool, defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz delivered his evaluation during Tuesday’s media session.

You’ve seen the play 100 times by now, and probably don’t want to see it again, but for the sake of the story, it’s worth repeating that the Eagles were in dime personnel, playing zone, and Ben Roethlisberger audibled to a straight shot down the middle of the field that split both safeties and sealed the Pittsburgh win.

Paul Domowitch asked if Rodney McLeod should have shaded closer to the middle of the field or if Nate Gerry should have perhaps backed up a little bit, leading to this Schwartz answer:

“Well, backing up isn’t in our lexicon when it comes to that situation. We’re trying to hold them out of field goal range. It’s a two point game. We had just missed that field goal and we got chance to get them stopped, you know, maybe force them to do a long field goal of their own. We’re trying to stop the first down there.

And we had an injury at corner, trying to protect the corners a little bit more at that point and we put the stress on the inside players,  which was different than what we had been doing in that situation. What we had called was good against what they had called, but Ben recognized it, probably inside of the 15 seconds for being able to change the call.

I think it just turns into (something where) every defense has a strength and they have spots that aren’t as strong. Ben went to the spot right there and made the play. But as far as being aggressive, we’re trying to stop the first down right there, and that’s what Nate’s trying to do. So he sits down on that route because that’s where the sticks are, and (Claypool) goes over the top. It’s similar to a corner giving up a double move. There’s probably different things we can do, but that puts stress on other people in the defense. You blitz, you put pressure on the corners. You play man, you run into pick problems and put the pressure on those guys. There’s no magic answer for any of those situations, but I think the bottom line is we’re playing aggressive and trying to keep them out of field goal range right there. They made us pay for that aggressiveness.”

That’s a typical Jim Schwartz answer. He’s not going to throw anybody under the bus or reveal too much schematically.

The situational explanation is something that Doug Pederson really didn’t touch on, and it’s important to note that the Eagles were down by two points with 2:59 remaining on the clock. If they stop the Steelers there, and hold for a field goal, the offense has plenty of time to come down the field and score a game-winning touchdown. If not, the game is more or less out of reach. So instead of sitting back too far, they had four defensive backs and the linebacker within five yards of their matchups, even as Nickell Robey-Coleman was asking Gerry to give Claypool some cushion:

It was a good audible and good play by Pittsburgh. The Eagles are in dime and don’t even have one linebacker who is a bona fide NFL starter, so at the end of the day the blame is shared, with Howie Roseman deserving his appropriate portion of the pie.

Ben Solak’s breakdown of the play is probably the best one out there: