Caldwell’s numbers were solid in Year 1 as he totaled 31 tackles, a sack and five tackles for loss.<\/p>\n
And a closer look shows that his rookie season was even better than those numbers.<\/p>\n
The defensive lineman finished the regular season second among all rookies at his position with nine tackles for either a loss or no gain, a figure that was 12th in the entire NFL. He also tied for fifth among rookies with 16 run stops.<\/p>\n
It led him to finish with the best Pro Football Focus’ run-defense grade among rookie defensive linemen with at least 300 snaps (67.1), a figure that was also in the Top 20 among the rest of the league.<\/p>\n
The 11th player taken in his draft at his position, Caldwell showed the ability to outperform his draft slot.<\/p>\n
Now with added depth in the room in this year’s Chargers defense that could allow him to show even more versatility, Solak believes Caldwell is ready for a breakout year in 2026.<\/p>\n
The Chargers added Dalvin Tomlinson, a quintessential run-stuffing nose tackle, in free agency. It’s easy to infer they’ll give Caldwell a few more pass-rush opportunities besides Tomlinson, and he has the requisite quickness and flexibility to be a quick penetration player who creates cleanup opportunities for other rushers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caldwell’s numbers were solid in Year 1 as he totaled 31 tackles, a sack and five tackles for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[73575,7710,128495,7708,7709,122708,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-406628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-2026-offseason-editorial","tag-app-homepage","tag-articles-bolts-buzz","tag-homepage-cp","tag-homepage-headlines","tag-jamaree-caldwell","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}