CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When Jim Schwartz walked out of Berea, the instinct for many Browns fans was to grieve the coach. The sharp-tongued defensive mastermind who had dragged Cleveland’s defense into elite territory. The hard-nosed personality who’d earned Myles Garrett’s trust. That grief is real. But the latest Orange and Brown Talk podcast episode makes a powerful argument that the far more dangerous loss would have been the system -- and why hiring Mike Rutenberg was the right move to prevent exactly that.
Host Dan Labbe and Browns beat reporter Ashley Bastock went deep on the hire, and what emerged wasn’t just a coaching analysis. It was a declaration about who the Cleveland Browns are defensively -- and who they absolutely cannot afford to stop being.
The most striking argument? The Wide 9 scheme didn’t just make Myles Garrett better. According to Bastock, it made him historically great.
“I do think Myles needs this sort of system to some extent,” Bastock said on the podcast. “It has unlocked something in him that in two of the three years he’s been in it, he’s won the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year award, and he’s broken the sack record. Myles became a Hall of Famer because of this defense.”
Hall of Famer. Not just a Pro Bowl talent. Not just an All-Pro edge rusher. A player whose career trajectory -- the sack record, the two Defensive Player of the Year awards -- is directly tied to a specific defensive philosophy. That’s the argument Bastock is making. And it reframes the entire conversation around the Rutenberg hire.
Rutenberg has never called a defense at the NFL level. That’s the obvious concern, and Bastock doesn’t dismiss it. But as she explained after digging into his background, the more critical credential here isn’t years of play-calling experience -- it’s deep, working knowledge of this specific system. Rutenberg came up under Robert Saleh, then worked under Jeff Ulbrich in Atlanta, where he reportedly built a PhD-level understanding of the secondary and operated within variations of the same aggressive, attack-front philosophy.
“I think you have to find somebody that can run this more Wide 9 attack front style defense, as opposed to the Vic Fangio sorts of style defenses that have really become in vogue,” Bastock said. “On paper it looks great. I think the issue is obviously he has not called defense, so we’re going to have to see that before we really, really praise him or anything.”
That caveat is legitimate. Nobody fully evaluates a first-time coordinator until they actually call a game. But the broader point stands with force: Cleveland is not in a position to experiment with a philosophical defensive overhaul. Every player in that building -- from Garrett to Tyson Campbell to Maliek Collins to Carson Schwesinger -- has been selected, acquired and developed to thrive in this specific scheme.
“The problem is, I know the Browns always like to say we’re not pigeonholing ourselves in the scheme, but you kind of have. But that’s what you should do,” Bastock said. “You don’t want this team in a bunch of zone and it’s just not what they are built to do.”
That’s the quiet brilliance of the Rutenberg hire, if it holds up: Cleveland didn’t blow up what makes them dangerous. They found someone who can protect and evolve it -- someone with deep secondary expertise who might add layers of disguise and complexity to a defense that, at times, became too readable.
The position coaches are expected to stay. The player relationships are intact. The foundation hasn’t been torn up. Now Rutenberg just has to call the right defense.
Hear why Labbe and Bastock believe he might be the right man for the job. Listen to the full Orange and Brown Talk episode now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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