Quiver Grassmannians are projective varieties parametrising subrepresentations of quiver representations. Their geometry is an interesting object of study, due to the fact that many geometric properties can be studied via the representation theory of quivers. For instance, this method was used to study linear degenerations of flag varieties, obtaining characterizations of flatness, irreducibility and normality via rank tuples. We provide a construction for realising smooth Schubert varieties as quiver Grassmannians and desingularizing non-smooth Schubert varieties. We then exploit this construction to define linear degenerations of Schubert varieties, giving a combinatorial description of the correspondance between their isomorphism classes and the B-orbits of certain quiver representations.