BEREA, Ohio — Jim Schwartz made a miscalculation on Sunday.
The Browns defensive coordinator wasn’t fully taking into account his surroundings when he accepted a game ball on behalf of his entire unit, after besting the Miami Dolphins in a rainy showdown, 31-6.
After rain poured for most of the afternoon, Schwartz was taking his shell off when head coach Kevin Stefanski began giving a fiery postgame locker room speech and invited him to join while the team’s in-house cameras were filming.
“My biggest sort of error in that is that I mistakenly believed that we were in the locker room, not in the TV studio,” Schwartz quipped on Thursday. “So, you know, shirtless, certainly acceptable in a locker room, wasn’t really prepared for it to be a TV studio.”
“Shirtless Schwartz” began to go viral after the Browns’ official social media accounts posted the video.
He hasn’t heard the end of it since.
“College friends can be brutal,’ he continued. ”Men are a lot brutal, to their friends than they are to others. I got a message after the game like, ‘Yo Schwartz, leave the shirt on until you lose 15.’ So yeah, there’s that too. But yeah, happy for the players success in that."
Even Stefanski couldn’t risk giving him grief in the aftermath.
“We do have a dress code now,” Stefanski quipped on his Monday Zoom call. “The entire defense got a game ball, but I just wanted to point out, Jim, I thought it was a really smart plan and obviously very well executed.”
The Browns held the Dolphins to 1 of 13 on third down and kept them out of the end zone in the win.
Schwartz played more zone than man, blitzed a lot more, and moved Myles Garrett around more than he had all season.
The Browns had six total QB hits against Tua Tagovailoa in that game, and also sacked him four times. Garrett ended a three-game sackless streak with a 7-yard takedown of Tagovailoa.
The defense recorded three interceptions from Tyson Campbell, Rayshawn Jenkins and Ronnie Hickman — Campbell returned his for a touchdown at the beginning of the third quarter.
“I did blitz more on Sunday,” safety Grant Delpit said. “It’s something that I can do and I give Jim crap about it all the time, like, you better call it, it’s going to work. And he was able to call it some of these plays and was able to make some plays.
“But it’s whatever Schwartz wants to do, honestly. But just know that I know he’s an open book and he can use certain players in certain schemes.”
Even after all the teasing this week, Schwartz’s focus remains squarely on his players and what they put on tape.
For him, the game ball wasn’t about a viral moment or a coaching flex — it was a reflection of what his defense did between the lines.
“I didn’t play the game,” Schwartz said. “Those guys played the game and not only did they play a clean game assignment-wise, they played physically. And I think we always talk about defensively, when you put film on, you should see guys playing physical, guys playing with great effort and guys having some personality. Those are the things we preach.
“And I think if you turn that game on, you’d see all those things.”
And maybe that’s what makes “Shirtless Schwartz” such a fitting snapshot of the moment — a coordinator who preaches effort and personality leading a defense that showed both.
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