While defenses are often built from the front back, it\u2019s Rutenberg\u2019s coverage background that might make him the ideal successor to Schwartz. Rutenberg spent last season with the Falcons as defensive passing game coordinator under Jeff Ulbrich (another Saleh connection). With a great post safety in Jessie Bates III on the roster, the Falcons played a ton of single high: 61% of their snaps, to be exact. Third in the league to only the Saints \u2026and the Browns.<\/p>\n
The Browns\u2019 secondary is built to play single high, as Schwartz (often to his detriment) committed to playing with an extra body in the box while the rest of the league permitted light boxes, as is the modern style. The Browns\u2019 secondary of cornerback Denzel Ward and safeties Ronnie Hickman and Grant Delpit was talented enough that Cleveland could just line up and play with great success.<\/p>\n
But disguise does not need to be the opposite of aggression. Schwartz\u2019s coverage approach has long been predictable, and predictable is exploitable even when Garrett is breathing down your neck. Last season, nobody ran less quarters or fewer zone blitzes in the league. The Falcons were top five in both under Rutenberg in 2025 by Next Gen Stats\u2019 coverage model.<\/p>\n
Rutenberg will breathe schematic freshness into Cleveland without sacrificing the identity of what has been a phenomenal unit in the past few years. And with the Garrett trade, that schematic freshness might suddenly become more necessary. The Browns cannot rely on a four-down rush nearly as much as they used to because they don\u2019t have the generation\u2019s best pass rusher on the roster any longer. Schwartz would have had to change even his near-permanent stripes — with Rutenberg, the Browns have a better chance to make that change quickly and effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While defenses are often built from the front back, it\u2019s Rutenberg\u2019s coverage background that might make him the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":930253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,1864,2337,7,6],"class_list":["post-930252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-browns","tag-browns","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-cleveland-browns-news","tag-clevelandbrowns","tag-football","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116822484141450218","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930252","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=930252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/930253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}