Mitchell Schwartz knows his snap streak was largely good luck

[KC Wolf]

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Chiefs tackle Mitchell Schwartz knows he’s been lucky.

And if he wasn’t sure of it, he was reminded of it earlier this week when his brother was in the crowd of reporters interviewing him.

Geoff Schwartz played 74 games in eight injury plagued seasons in his NFL career with the Panthers, Vikings, Chiefs, and Giants. So his little brother recognizes the role of chance in his streak of 7,894 consecutive snaps — which ended last November when he missed a portion of a game against the Titans.

“The majority of it is just good fortune,” Mitchell Schwartz said. “My brother and I have the same genes, and he got hurt a bunch and I haven’t.”

The Chiefs tackle said he does try to give himself a better chance at being well by not taking too much time off in the offseason.

“You can get burned out, physically and mentally during the season,” he said. “But I think the biggest thing is not getting out of shape, being in decent shape all offseason. That’s when guys get hurt, when they’re trying to go from out of shape to in shape.”

He said he was hoping to eventually break former Browns teammate Joe Thomas‘ streak of 10,363 snaps, and seeing how far away from it he was only adds to his admiration

“Yeah, I wanted to beat Joe, because he has every other conceivable record,” Schwartz said. “I would have needed a few more years, and it wasn’t really feasible, as we saw.”

After missing those snaps against the Titans, Schwartz bounced back and played the rest of the season, leaving him a decade or so from catching Thomas again.