The Browns make their coordinators available on Thursdays in the small room off the cafeteria, at a table rather than a lectern, which is why these run long. Rutenberg was hired on February 16 from Atlanta, where he ran the pass game for the defense. This is his first coordinator job and his twenty-first season working in the league.
Transcript lightly cleaned. Two questions about the practice squad are not included.
RUTENBERG: Injury first so nobody has to ask me. Jeremiah is out for the year and he was in our meeting this morning, in the front row, which he has done every Thursday since May. Maliek did individual work Wednesday and again today. I would not plan a defense around him this week.
Whatever you have.
Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comGrant Delpit is your starting nickel Sunday. He has been a safety for six years. Walk us through why that works.
RUTENBERG: I’ll start with what the job is, because I think the title does more damage than good. In 2026 the man lined up inside in most of the league is not a small quick receiver. On first and second down he is a tight end or a second back or a big receiver reduced inside the numbers, and he is being asked to block you or run a short crosser off a run fake. On third down he is either setting a pick or running away from one.
So the requirements are, in order: can you fit a run from an inside alignment without waiting to be blocked, can you carry a seam route for twelve yards before you pass it off, and can you tackle a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man in space with nobody behind you. Grant does all three of those at a high level and has for four years.
Last season sixty-one percent of his snaps came inside the numbers and within nine yards of the ball. He was already doing this job. We wrote it down and gave it a name.
Mary Kay CabotAnd what does he give up?
RUTENBERG: Two things, and they are real. He is not going to run a two-way go with a hundred-and-eighty-pound slot receiver on third and eight in the middle of the field, and I will never ask him to. When we are in that situation the coverage changes underneath him and he has help inside. If you see Grant alone on an island against a fast man in the middle of the field, I have made a mistake, and you should write that I made it.
The second one is that we lose him at the back end. He has played a lot of split-safety football here and he was good at it. That is now Emmanuel McNeil-Warren’s job in a rotation with Ronnie Hickman, and Emmanuel is twenty-two and has not played a regular-season snap. So I have taken a strength and moved it forward, and I have put a rookie where the strength was. I did that on purpose and I would do it again, and if it goes badly Sunday it will look obvious to all of you and it should.
Daryl Ruiter · 92.3 The FanDarnell Savage has played 4,918 of his 5,241 career snaps at safety. He is your starting boundary corner Sunday against Brian Thomas Jr. How is that not a problem.
RUTENBERG: It might be. I would rather you ask it that way than the polite way.
Here is the honest version. Of the coverages we will call Sunday, the boundary corner is playing an outside third with the sideline helping him in a large majority of them. That job is eyes and leverage and a long stride, and Darnell has done exactly that job from twelve yards deep for seven years. Depth changes. The read does not. He has fourteen career interceptions and he did not get those by guessing.
What changed is his stance and his first three steps, and that is not a small thing at thirty-one years old. Brandon Lynch put him outside in July, before any of this, and they have been on the jugs at seven in the morning every day since. That is Brandon and it is Darnell. I did not do any of it.
Daryl RuiterPress man. Is he going to play it.
RUTENBERG: In defined situations. Backed up, third and short, inside the ten. We are not living there.
And at some point Sunday afternoon he is going to be by himself on the outside against a very fast man with the safety rotated the other way, because that is what happens when you disguise. If that throw is completed for fifty yards, that was my call, my rotation and my down. It will have nothing to do with him.
Zac Jackson · The AthleticThe arrangement here is unusual and people are going to keep picking at it. Nick shapes the defense, you call it. Describe the division for us, and describe it so it still holds after a bad Sunday.
RUTENBERG: He owns what we are and how it gets taught. Every call in this defense comes off four rules, and those four rules are his, and they are the reason a second-year linebacker can carry thirty-one calls into a stadium instead of nine. I have been in rooms where we ran less than that and taught it worse.
I own Sunday. I make the call, I make the check, I decide when we go get the quarterback and when we sit. He is on offense on Sundays and he does not talk to me during a series. He has never once tried.
Zac JacksonWhat happens the first time the two of you disagree in a real week?
RUTENBERG: It has happened four or five times already. In July I wanted to carry more man coverage against twelve personnel than he did. We spent an hour on it with the July practice cut up, and he was right and I was wrong and we run it his way. In August we disagreed about how much we blitz on early downs and he moved.
I have worked for men who said they wanted to be argued with, and some of them meant it. I have never had the July conversation with somebody who outranks me. That is what I have got on it.
Camryn Justice · News 5 ClevelandAround the league you get described as a head coach in waiting. Is that something you think about?
RUTENBERG: No.
I have a defense that has four edge rushers on it and plays in ninety-degree heat in seventy-two hours. Ask me in January.
Camryn JusticeHe said something similar when we asked him.
RUTENBERG: Then you have both of our answers.
Tony Grossi · ESPN ClevelandMike, in February you were reported to be a candidate to leave here before you ever coached a practice. Seven months later, will you tell us what kept you?
RUTENBERG: No, Tony. February is not something I am going to talk about.
Tony GrossiIs it something we would understand?
RUTENBERG: Probably. February is mine. Give me one on Jacksonville and I will talk to you until they turn the lights off.
Ashley Bastock · cleveland.comFour edge rushers. How do you get home Sunday?
RUTENBERG: We have to win early downs to make them throw it on a down where the count helps us. Only one team in football set itself up worse on third down last year than Jacksonville did, and that came out of what they did on first and second, not out of anybody hitting their quarterback.
Jared plays a lot of football Sunday, he knows it, and he asked for more. Isaiah McGuire is the one I would watch. Alex Wright and Julian Okwara are going to be out there in the fourth quarter in that heat and the game is probably decided while they are.
Zac Jackson · The AthleticTrevor Lawrence, over the back half of last season. What does he do now that he was not doing?
RUTENBERG: He gets to his third choice on time. That sounds small and it is the whole difference between a good quarterback and a hard week.
Fifteen touchdowns and one interception over his last six. Their coordinator gets him a clean look before the snap more often than almost anybody in the league, so if we show him one thing and stand in it, he takes us apart by two o’clock. We are going to have to be a nuisance.
And Travis Hunter plays both sides, so on the weeks we prepare for him we are watching two different tapes of the same man. Sunday he is a receiver problem for us. In October somebody has to block him.
Daryl Ruiter · 92.3 The FanCarson Schwesinger has the green dot. He is twenty-three.
RUTENBERG: He is the reason any of this is possible. Every disguise we run costs somebody a communication, and he makes those calls at a level I have seen from men in year nine. I have coached two of those men.
He says nothing in here, which I understand you find frustrating, and a tremendous amount out there.
Camryn Justice · News 5 ClevelandLast one. First game as a coordinator, at forty-seven. How are you feeling about Sunday?
RUTENBERG: I have been in this league since 2006 and I have stood on twelve sidelines for openers and every one of them I was responsible for eleven or fifteen guys. Sunday I am responsible for the whole thing and I will find out something about myself in the first twelve minutes.
My mother is flying to Jacksonville. She has never been to a professional football game. She asked me on the phone Tuesday whether she was allowed to wear brown, and I said yes, and she has apparently bought a great deal of it.
Thanks, everybody. Say hello to your daughter for me.
Rutenberg took twenty-two minutes and did not check a clock. He is the only coordinator on this staff who has never held the job before, and the third question of his availability was about a man he will not coach for another eight weeks.
