An athletic linebacker with natural instincts and physical tools to close on ball carriers, Schwesinger quickly earned the appreciation of Browns fans and the respect of those across the league as a rookie, piling up 156 tackles — good for sixth in the NFL — including 11 for loss, 2.5 sacks, three passes defensed, two interceptions and a Pro Football Focus grade that ranked him 21st among all linebackers in the NFL in 2025. He also proved himself as an ironman of sorts, playing 97% of Cleveland’s total defensive snaps (956) and pushing through a quadriceps injury in his final game of the season, a Week 17 win over the rival Pittsburgh Steelers, before landing on injured reserve for Week 18.<\/p>\n
In the first two months of his NFL career, Schwesinger won the hearts of Browns fans who were quick to draw comparisons to another legendary Browns linebacker of a past era, Clay Matthews Jr., a fellow Los Angeles product who joined the Browns as a first-round pick in 1978 after spending his collegiate years at USC.<\/p>\n
It’s a high bar to reach for any linebacker, but judging by his performance in his rookie season, such a comparison is fair.<\/p>\n
Schwesinger played a key part in Cleveland’s fourth-ranked defense and will look to build on his early success in 2026 — this time, with a new trophy in hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An athletic linebacker with natural instincts and physical tools to close on ball carriers, Schwesinger quickly earned the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[6255,4,29983,1799,3,349,6257,99],"class_list":["post-452671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-around-the-nfl","tag-breaking-news","tag-carson-schwesinger","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-no-minute","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}