at 6-2 and 332 pounds<\/a> in the middle of the Bolts defensive line.<\/p>\n“Some of the plays, you watch film on him and you just see him toss bodies. It’s really impressive,” Hortiz said. “He does a really good job staying square, physical, strikes with his hands, he’s got feel. Big man, quick feet.”<\/p>\n
Caldwell now joins a position group that features the likes of Teair Tart, Da’Shawn Hand, Naquan Jones, Otito Ogbonnia and others.<\/p>\n
“We’re one of the bigger defensive lines in the NFL. Everybody is excited about that,” Harbaugh with a smile.<\/p>\n
5. Where Caldwell fits into the defense<\/p>\n
Caldwell began his college football career at a pair of community colleges before ending up at Houston.<\/p>\n
He tallied 8.5 total sacks in 2022 and 2023 but didn’t have any in 2024 when he transferred to Oregon and was asked to take on more of a run-stuffing role.<\/p>\n
The Chargers said they expect Caldwell to line up as a the nose tackle in base defense and then shift to 3-technique in nickel situations.<\/p>\n
“He can play both and that’s the great thing about him,” Hortiz said. “He had more sack production at Houston and you see the feet and that burst when he played in that role. We do think there’s some untapped pass rush with him.”<\/p>\n
Harbaugh added: “That makes a defensive tackle a three-down player.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4. Caldwell catches Chargers eye on film The Chargers did not draft Oregon defensive tackle Derrick Harmon, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2064],"tags":[39,37,3460,241,7,34,38,1014,262,2444,2443,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-6090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-2025-draft","9":"tag-app-homepage","10":"tag-articles-5-takeaways","11":"tag-chargers","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-homepage-cp","14":"tag-homepage-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-losangeleschargers","19":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114413769101653108","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}