Browns Trade Pitch Flips Former DC Jim Schwartz to Raiders

The Cleveland Browns won’t have the luxury of Jim Schwartz running their defense for the fourth consecutive year in 2026, but no other NFL team will either if they aren’t willing to fork over a meaningful draft pick to buy that right.

Schwartz is under contract in Cleveland for two years and decided to resign from his position as defensive coordinator rather than work for a front office that passed him over for the head coaching job in favor of former Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken.

The San Francisco 49ers had an opening at DC before they hired Raheem Morris, while the Philadelphia Eagles had to convince Vic Fangio to return for the second consecutive offseason.

The market for Schwartz would have been stronger if either spot had remained open, given his success in Cleveland and his history as a former Super Bowl-winning DC in Philadelphia.

However, the Browns can still grant Schwartz his wish of coaching elsewhere in the NFL in 2026 while also getting a meaningful return by orchestrating a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders.

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Klint Kubiak, Raiders Want Jim Schwartz to Run Defense

Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak will assume the role as the Raiders’ next head coach following his team’s victory in the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 8.

On Monday, Jason La Canfora of SportsBoom reported that Kubiak is seriously interested in acquiring Schwartz to lead the Las Vegas defense through the coming rebuild.

“Multiple NFL executives whose teams have been engaged in hiring new coaching staffs indicated that Schwartz is thought of very highly by the Raiders and rookie head coach Klint Kubiak, and they expect that’s where the well-regarded defensive play caller will land,” La Canfora wrote.

“Raiders minority owner Tom Brady … is also a strong supporter of Schwartz, according to sources close to SportsBoom,” La Canfora continued.

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Browns Should Ask Raiders for 4th-Round Pick in Return for Jim Schwartz

A source that La Canfora described as a “high-ranking official” with another franchise said “Schwartz wants to be in Vegas” and that’s where the former Browns DC is “going to end up.”

That source believes that Cleveland will ultimately release Schwartz from his contract, but that would serve the Browns only in terms of public relations. With Monken secured and much of his staff already built out, it isn’t necessarily prudent for Cleveland to think in terms of remaining an attractive destination to other coaches around the league.

For one thing, the Browns are a small-market team in a cold-weather city with a history of losing and front office ineptitude. Translation: they already aren’t an attractive destination to coaches — or players, for that matter.

The multiple candidates for the team’s head coaching vacancy who ultimately withdrew their names from consideration, or outright declined invitations to interview for the job, to remain in OC and DC positions across the league offer all the evidence needed to support that claim.

Secondly, the league generally values Schwartz highly. The Raiders are pretty much his last chance to get on as a DC somewhere in 2026, and he’s got to be one of the top candidates, if not the top candidate, potentially on the market.

Las Vegas has three picks in the fourth round in the upcoming draft, Nos. 102 (their own), 117 (from the Minnesota Vikings) and 134 (compensatory).

Splitting the difference and sending the Browns No. 117 in exchange for Schwartz is reasonable, doesn’t hurt the Raiders’ draft class in any meaningful way with 10 total picks (including No. 1 overall) and allows Cleveland and Schwartz both to save face.

In other words, it’s a win-win-win scenario.

Max Dible covers the NFL, NBA and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. He covered local and statewide news as a reporter for West Hawaii Today and served as news director for BigIslandNow.com and Pacific Media Group’s family of Big Island radio stations before joining Heavy. More about Max Dible