Grant Delpit

Long one out there. How are the legs?

Delpit: They’re alright. It’s eighty-eight degrees, man, I’m from New Orleans. Ask me in November when it’s coming off that lake sideways at us. Seven years and I’m still not right with that part.

You came off early Friday. Is the hip alright?

Delpit: It’s fine. That was a rep count. They had a number for me and I hit it.

Three weeks in. Where is the back end right now?

Delpit: Ball. That’s the whole camp. Four picks last year, man. Four. Denzel had two of them, so the rest of us had two between everybody, and I’m in that number first. So every period has a ball piece in it now. Punch, rake, everybody runs to it. It looks silly in August. It won’t look silly the first time one’s on the ground in Jacksonville.

You’re the oldest guy in that huddle and the calls are coming from a second-year linebacker. How does that work?

Delpit: It works because he’s right. That’s the whole answer. He won Rookie of the Year and not one thing about him changed, he’s still in there before they turn the lights on. My first two years I took calls from a man who was thirty-four. Carson’s better at it than he was, and he was good.

The defensive line has been the question all summer. Where does it stand?

Delpit: You want eight guys you can put in a game and you want the eighth one to be somebody who starts somewhere else. Maliek’s on the list, Mason and Mike have been in and out, so the number is the number and everybody out here can count it same as I can. The number in August has never matched the number in October, and that goes both directions. Jared plays like there’s three of him. A man can’t be three people for seventeen weeks.

(Jared Verse shouted something from the fieldhouse door. Delpit did not turn around.)

Delpit: Bro, go in the cold tub. You’re not helping me.

Delpit: Sorry. What was the last part of it?

Any changes to the schedule the rest of the week?

Delpit: Not that anybody told me. He’s up at three, ask him.

Dom Capers is 75 and working as a senior assistant. What is that like for a player?

Delpit: He’s got a page for everything. You ask him about a concept from three years ago and he goes in the folder and it’s in there, handwritten. He talked to me twenty minutes about a snap in 2023 I don’t remember playing. Guys sit with him at lunch, which you don’t normally see with a coach that age.

Does this room believe in the head coach?

Delpit: I’ll give you a straight one, because y’all are going to keep asking it all year.

This is my seventh camp here. Every one of them opened with somebody in front of the team explaining what was different about this one. I believed a couple of those and I was wrong both times. So I’m not going to tell you this locker room loves this man and everything’s beautiful. You’d be right not to believe me, and nobody’s played a game.

What I can tell you is nobody in there is waiting on him to fail. I’ve been on a team that was waiting on a man to fail. This isn’t that one, and that’s as far as I can take it in August.

What is different in the building? Not the org chart. The day.

Delpit: Meetings are shorter. Nobody’s going to write that down, but we’re out of defense twenty minutes earlier than last year with the same install, and twenty minutes is real when you got a family at home.

Second thing. When they let somebody go now, a person tells him the day before, in a room, with the reason. That did not use to happen here and I won’t pretend it did.

Third one is the one I’d put on him. You ask him where you stand and he tells you, not the version that sends you off feeling good. Guys tested that all spring, because everybody in there has been lied to before, and he kept coming back with the same answer. That gets around a locker room in about a week.

Is that enough to win football games?

Delpit: No. Of course not. None of that blocks anybody. You asked me what’s different in the building and that’s what’s different in the building. The rest of it is Sundays and I don’t know yet.

Jerry Jeudy said at his locker a half hour ago that he doesn’t think Nick Mansour is a real coach, and that it’s the worst hire he’s ever seen. Do you want to respond to that?

Delpit: No.

That’s not me being short with you, so let me do it properly. Jerry said that himself, out loud, with his own name on it. He doesn’t need me to translate him and he wouldn’t want it. It’s not my business. And I mean that plain. I’m not saying it’s not my business as the polite way of saying something else.

You’re a captain, though. Doesn’t that make it your business?

Delpit: Y’all say captain like it’s an office with a desk in it. It’s a letter, man. My job is knowing what I’m doing on third down and telling the young guys what I know so they’re not out there guessing.

Jerry knows where I sit. He’s sat in it. If he wants to talk to me he will, and I’m not going to go start something with a teammate this afternoon because it’s the question out here today.

He also said what the coach said about Deshaun Watson in January was, his word, bullshit. You were here for all of it. You have standing to answer that one.

Delpit: I’m going to do this one time and then I’m going to ask you to move.

I stood at that locker for four years answering for a man I barely played a down with. Four years. Reporters, my family, people in the store. I’m not doing a fifth because somebody else said something at one o’clock.

The coach said what he said in January and everybody heard him say it. If you want more of that, it’s his to give you or not. That’s two on Jerry now.

Has it split the locker room?

Delpit: That’s three.

No. I know that’s not what anybody wants written down, but no. Everybody in there has known how Jerry feels since the spring. It got talked about the way everything gets talked about in there, for about a day, and then it was install.

Do you have a feel for the quarterback situation?

Delpit: Man, I don’t play offense. I’ve been saying that in front of you for seven years.

What I’ll give you is Shedeur came and found me in June to ask what a safety keys and what tips a rotation. We sat there a while. That’s a real question and not everybody asks it. Whoever it ends up being, my side of it doesn’t change.

You’re the last one here from before all of this. Does that sit on you at all?

Delpit: It means I know where the light switches are. That’s most of what it means, honestly.

There were twelve guys in my rookie DB room and I couldn’t tell you where nine of them are now. You get a new group every March and you learn their names and who needs to be left alone in the morning. I like this group. That’s not me saying anything about the record.

Buffalo comes in Saturday. What do you want out of a joint practice?

Delpit: Somebody else’s routes. That’s it. You go all camp against the same eleven and you start guessing right for the wrong reason. Whatever they’ve got printed for Saturday, I’ll read it in my locker like everybody else.

(He answered two more, one about the lower field being re-sodded in July and one about Saturday’s travel, then put his helmet back on and walked to the fieldhouse.)