DeAndre Hopkins, at his locker in Berea

He came out in a T-shirt with a bag of ice taped to his left forearm and stood with his back to the locker, which he does, and answered the first four questions in under ninety seconds total. Two of the seven reporters were there for him specifically. The rest were waiting for Jared Verse, who did not come out.

Hopkins is unfailingly polite at these and gives up nothing, and there is a version of him on his own camera roll that is a completely different man. Both are on display below, for about nine seconds.

How have the first week and a half gone?

Good. Been good. Everybody been welcoming.

Getting my legs under me. It’s a lot of install for a week and a half but they got it written down real clean, so.

Fourteen. Any story there?

Nah. I walked in and asked the equipment room what was open and they said fourteen and I said alright.

Quinshon came and offered me ten. Which was nice of him. I told him no, man, keep your number, you a grown man.

Where are you staying? Have you found a place?

Hotel by the airport. My cousin drove my truck up Saturday.

Seen any of the city yet?

I been here and the facility. That’s it. I’ll look at it in November.

Sunday is a one o’clock kickoff in Jacksonville and it is supposed to be about ninety-one degrees. How much does that factor in?

I’ve played down there plenty. I know what it is.

Does it change how you prepare?

I drink water.

(Two people laugh. He does not.)

I’m being serious. That’s the whole thing. Y’all want a system, I ain’t got one.

The receiver room is you and two rookies who are starting. What is that like day to day?

They fine. Boss is real quiet, works. Kace talk more.

Do they ask you things?

Some. Not as much as y’all think.

You had other offers. Why here?

They wanted me. Coach was straight with me on the phone. Felt right.

That is it?

That’s it.

What have you seen out of Shedeur in the two weeks you have been throwing with him?

He works. He in there early. He asks a whole lot of questions, and they be good questions, not the kind where a young dude just want you to know he watched something.

He told us you talked to him for forty-five minutes about leverage on a slant.

It wasn’t forty-five minutes.

(Laughter.)

It was not forty-five minutes. He tell everybody that. It was maybe fifteen and he asked me four more things after, so if he want to add all that up, that’s on him.

Coming back to it, because you did not really answer it. You are thirty-four, you had a playoff team on the table, and eleven of twelve people at this network have this team winning four games. Why Cleveland?

Y’all keep asking that like it’s a trick in it. Alright.

Last year they stopped throwing me the ball in the middle of October and didn’t nobody tell me. I found out watching it on a Tuesday, same as anybody. Thirteen years and I found out on a Tuesday.

Coach called me July fourteenth. I know the date because my daughter had a thing that night and I took the call in the parking lot and missed the first half of it. He didn’t tell me I was still great. Didn’t say nothing about a legacy. He gave me a number. Said seventy-one, seventy-two targets. Said it’d be less than that if the rookie is what he thinks he is. Said most of mine come on third down and in the red area, and then he told me the three things that would take them away from me, in order.

First honest number anybody put on me since Houston.

(He stops. Somebody starts a follow-up and he keeps going.)

Then he called me back the next morning and said he’d been high by two.

Did that change anything?

Nah. I’d already signed.

Is there a snap count on you Sunday?

Ask him.

Your center is a rookie and so is your right tackle, and they are blocking for a second-year quarterback. Does that change the timing on your side of it?

That ain’t my department, man. I run my route.

You have played behind young lines before.

I have. It’s all right.

Was anybody in this locker room somebody you already knew?

Not really. Met Delpit at a thing in the offseason one time, years back, I don’t know if he remember it. Everybody else I’m meeting.

Does that make it harder, at this stage?

Nah. Thirteen years, you get good at walking in a room.

You have played against Anthony Campanile’s defense before. What do they do to a receiver on the outside?

They gonna sit on you. They play a lot of two, they trap the flat, and they got twenty-two picks last year so somebody over there is teaching it right. You got to be exactly where you supposed to be on time or you gonna get somebody hurt —

(KC Concepcion crosses behind the group with a helmet in each hand. Hopkins stops mid-sentence and his voice changes completely.)

Hey. Hey. Kace. Nah, on that one, don’t give him the stem, you gave him the stem.

You got to make him open his hips before you do nothing else. He opened first today, you don’t got to do all that.

(Concepcion says something inaudible and mimes a step. Hopkins shakes his head once.)

Tomorrow. Before stretch. I’ll be out there.

(He turns back to the group at the same speed and the register goes with him.)

My apologies. Yeah. You have to be on time against them, is what I was saying.

Are you at all conscious of where this is in your career? Fourteenth season, a team in a rebuild —

No.

No?

I got a job Sunday. I been having a job Sunday since 2013.

Does your family come to openers?

My mother don’t fly to the first one. Never has. She watch it at home in Central with the sound down and then she call me after and tell me what I did wrong.

(Laughter.)

I’m not joking with y’all.

Last one. Anything for Browns fans before Sunday?

Nah, they don’t know me yet.

(He picks up the ice bag, says thank you to the two reporters closest to him by name, and walks toward the training room.)

Hopkins spoke for eleven minutes. Nine of them were nothing. Verse did not come out; Grant Delpit answered four questions at the next locker, all of them about Jacksonville, and none of them are here.

“He called me back the next morning and said he’d been high by two.”