One rainy day during his sophomore year of high school, Bradyn Swinson suddenly told his mom to pull the car over.

In front of them was a large snapping turtle trying to cross the road. Swinson got out of the car, walked over to the turtle, picked it up and brought it to the other side of the road.

“I thought it was the kindest thing, the sweetest thing that I saw him do,” Kelli Swinson, Bradyn’s mother, said. “He’s always just had a love for animals.”

You might not expect that from a 6-foot-4, 250-pound defensive end. You’d think he’d be an intense, hard-nosed person both on and off the field.

But Swinson’s a gentle giant. There’s a switch he often flips between daily life and the game of football.

Swinson is the youngest of three boys in his family and has a younger sister who his family adopted. Along with that, he’s the youngest of nine cousins.

Being the youngest growing up, he had to work twice as hard to compete with his siblings in video games, sports and other activities. Nowadays, though, the script has flipped. Swinson is the biggest, tallest and fastest of his family. 

“He’s such a competitor,” Kelli said. “Now when he comes home, he wants to play the video games with his brothers so he can show, ‘no, I’m not losing to you again, that’s history.’” 

Swinson’s competitiveness made him a highly-sought after recruit in high school. The former Chapel Hill High School edge rusher held 44 offers out of high school.

But he chose Oregon, which was one of his last two offers. 

“I can remember looking at him, and seeing him completely overjoyed and happy that I knew just from that first day of interacting that that was the school he wanted to be [at],” Kelli said.

On Jan. 16, 2020, Swinson made his commitment to Oregon, where he totaled 35 tackles, three sacks, three pass deflections and a forced fumble in three seasons.

After three seasons with the Ducks, he made the decision to enter the transfer portal, and with a connection he had with then-LSU defensive line coach Jamar Cain, Swinson ended up taking his career to Baton Rouge.

“I’m real big on manifesting things,” Swinson said. “Manifesting the life I want to have, manifesting the team we want to be. Manifesting everything.”

In just his junior season at LSU, Swinson was two tackles short of matching his number of tackles in his three seasons at Oregon with 33 tackles. In addition, he finished with two sacks, two forced fumbles and four pass deflections. 

With the promise he showed last season, his role in a revamped defense was expected to grow in 2024, allowing him to take a big step toward his dream of playing in the NFL. 

“Coach Baker’s just putting me in different positions every week that he believes and trusts me in,” Swinson said. “I’m just trying to do whatever he needs me to do, and do it to the best ability I can.”

On Sept. 1, the day of LSU’s season opener against USC, Swinson and his family received some tragic news.

During the first half of the game, Kelli got a call from her uncle telling her that her mother had passed away due to cardiac arrest.

Swinson received the news at halftime of the game, and he somehow managed to play through the second half. 

A day before the Tigers’ season opener, Swinson’s grandmother had given him a call, but he was unable to answer it because he was in team meetings.

“He was trying to rationalize that he had the opportunity to try to talk to her, and he wanted to have the opportunity to close things out,” Kelli said. “But I told him, ‘you don’t always get an opportunity, we don’t always know when that last phone call is the last phone call… she knows how much you loved her, you know how much she loved you.'”

On Saturday at South Carolina, he found peace.

Swinson finished with a team-high of three sacks along with five total tackles and a forced fumble in an LSU comeback win. The performance earned him the SEC Defensive Player of the Week award.

He accredits it to his grandmother. 

“I feel like that’s off the strength of my grandmother, her watching over me,” Swinson said. “I really put that toward her and gave all the credit to her.”

Between his NFL dreams and competitiveness, family and love will always prevail for Swinson. He knows the value of someone lending a hand.

Because just as he was there to gently guide that snapping turtle across the road, his grandmother will be there to guide him this season and beyond.