Postgame notebook: what the Browns’ 35-7 in Jacksonville settled, what it didn’t, and 10 things before Tampa Bay: Mary Kay Cabot

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Browns beat Jacksonville 35-7 on Sunday with 434 yards, 22 first downs, eight third-down conversions in 11 tries and no turnovers, and they did it with five rookies starting.

They were 9.5-point underdogs against a team that won 13 games last season. The score was 21-7 at halftime, 28-7 through three quarters, and Jacksonville did not score after the second.

Every man on that plane came home healthy. That is the first item every September, and it beat the score to my phone Sunday night.

Here is what the afternoon settled, what it left alone, and what it means for Sunday at Tampa Bay, which starts at 1 p.m. ET:

1The health report is clean, and two players on this roster still are not playing

Nick Mansour opened his press conference with it before a question was asked: no one came out of the game, no one was being evaluated Sunday night, and the first participation report of the season comes Wednesday in Berea.

Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah’s neck has him on reserve/PUP and he is done for the year. Maliek Collins is on the 53-man roster, has not practiced with the team since July, and did not record a statistic Sunday.

So a defensive line that traded Myles Garrett in June opened the season without a veteran tackle it is paying, and the four linemen who dressed produced half a sack between them.

The Browns got 14 stops behind the line and hit Trevor Lawrence seven times. They sacked him once, and half of that sack belongs to Ronnie Hickman, who is a free safety.

I wrote before the opener that four edge rushers would not get this team to November. It was enough for one afternoon in which the Browns held the football for most of three hours. I would still put in a claim on the first one who comes free.

2The inside of the offensive line is a real problem, and it is not going anywhere

This is the one that will still be here in December. Zion Johnson, signed from the Chargers in March, was beaten in the run game and in protection, and one of Cleveland’s four sacks came off him.

Parker Brailsford, the 146th pick in April, was better at center in his first Week 1 than a fifth-rounder ought to be, and he still gets moved backward by one man.

There were 28 carries for 173 yards on Sunday, 6.2 apiece, and four touchdowns in six trips inside the 20. The Browns could not get a yard when they needed a yard, in the same game.

Ten offensive linemen are on this roster. Luke Wypler is behind Brailsford and Zak Zinter is behind Johnson, and I do not think either of them starts a game in September.

What the Browns do have is Elgton Jenkins, who made two Pro Bowls at center in Green Bay and has been playing right guard here since early in camp. Moving him to center is the fix available to them, and it opens a hole at right guard. They are not doing it this week.

3Max Iheanachor did on Sunday the exact thing he was drafted at No. 9 to do

The Athletic’s Dane Brugler had him 23rd on his final board. ESPN’s Field Yates had him in the twenties as well, and Daniel Jeremiah of NFL Network had him 24th. The Browns took him ninth, and that has been the single most repeated criticism of this front office since April.

He spent Sunday across from Josh Hines-Allen in the first NFL game he has played, and none of the four sacks came off his side. Cleveland took two penalties in a game played in temperatures over 100 degrees.

That is one afternoon against one player, and the boards that had him 23rd and 24th are still posted. It is also the afternoon they took him ninth to have.

4The four sacks belong to the quarterback, and so does the 83.3 percent

Shedeur Sanders completed 20 of 24 throws for 275 yards, 83.3 percent, with a rating of 142.2, and threw for two scores without giving one away. A year ago he threw seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions.

He also dropped back 28 times and went down on four of them, for a total of 14 yards. That is 3.5 yards a sack, which means he was going down at or near the line of scrimmage rather than 10 yards behind it, and one of the four was an intentional grounding.

His pocket work was the one piece of Sunday that reads worse on a second viewing than it did live. The line struggled inside and the sacks are still mostly his, and the people in that building volunteered as much Sunday.

Four sacks is four possessions that stopped moving, in a game with one punt in it. Sunday was comfortable enough that the cost never came due.

5Darnell Savage’s first day at boundary corner split straight down the middle

Travis Hunter caught 66 yards on him on one throw, and Jacksonville converted third downs at him with Brian Thomas Jr. and with Jakobi Meyers. He also finished with five tackles and two pass breakups, and the second breakup was the best play any Cleveland defensive back made.

Savage has 5,241 defensive snaps in seven NFL seasons and all but 323 of them were taken at safety. Brandon Lynch, who coaches the defensive backs, put him outside in mid-July, six weeks ahead of the Ward trade. The Browns were building this before they knew they needed it.

Mike Rutenberg has to answer for a conversion that half-worked, and he will get asked about it Thursday. The corners behind Savage are Myles Harden and Tyler Hall.

I would leave Savage out there and give him a safety over the top on early downs. The 66-yarder was the play he had the most help available on and got none.

6Six years of Grant Delpit at safety, and the Browns finally wrote down the job he was doing

Nine tackles. A forced fumble, a pass breakup, a quarterback hit and a stop behind the line, out of the big slot, in his first game there.

At 6-3 and 213 pounds he had already taken 1,847 of his snaps inside eight yards of the football since 2022, by the team’s own count. I picked him to lead the Browns in tackles this season and he led them Sunday.

Delpit is the longest-tenured Brown on the roster and a captain. Mansour gave him the game ball on the way off the field, and Delpit tried to hand it back.

Carson Schwesinger, who wears the green dot and makes the calls, had seven tackles, two of them behind the line, and a pass breakup. Tyson Campbell, whom Jacksonville traded to Cleveland last October, ended the afternoon with an interception in his old end zone.

7Two fourth downs, no conversions, and a spot the broadcast liked more than I do

The first attempt came inside the Jacksonville 20 and CBS came back to the spot twice. Mansour took both failures onto himself at the podium before anyone asked, said his own call was the reason on each of them, and would not discuss the spot at all.

The measurement was close and the ball was placed where the officials placed it. The Browns did not lose that possession at the chains.

Six trips inside the 20 produced four touchdowns and no field-goal attempts at all. Andre Szmyt kicked five extra points on Sunday and did not put a ball through the uprights for any other reason.

8Five rookies started. One Sunday grades none of them.

KC Concepcion, Denzel Boston, Brailsford, Iheanachor and Emmanuel McNeil-Warren all opened the season as starters, and on the offensive line three of the five men were in jobs they had not held in January.

Concepcion touched the football 13 times: 119 yards on six targets and six catches, 24 more on four carries, and 31 on three punt returns. Boston had 54 yards on four catches and a 29-yard kickoff return. Both rookie receivers are on the return units.

The Browns traded up from 24 to 10 to draft Concepcion and it was called a reach by most of the industry in April. Sunday is one afternoon inside a five-year argument.

Harold Fannin Jr. caught four passes for 48 yards, scored on two of them, and ran in a third from the 1. DeAndre Hopkins, signed Sept. 3, caught two for 32. Carsen Ryan caught two for 23 and Michael Burton caught one for minus a yard.

Quinshon Judkins carried 15 times for 96 yards, scored twice and was not tackled by the first man very often. Dylan Sampson added 23 yards on four carries.

None of that is a season. A roster with five rookie starters gets graded in November, when the tape on all five of them is a month old and the opponents have it.

9The money did not move an inch

The 2026 salary cap still carries $117.6 million on Deshaun Watson, who was released in January. Only Miami has more dead money on its books, at $182.29 million. Four touchdowns in Jacksonville changed none of it.

The two trades in August and September put another $32.4 million on the 2027 cap before the season began -- $24 million of it Ward, $8.4 million Jeudy. Cleveland knew both charges were coming when it made the trades.

The Steelers lost 30-3 at home to Atlanta on Sunday with Ward on their roster. The two first-round picks Cleveland got for him are 2027 and 2028 selections, and the Giants’ third-rounder for Jeudy is a 2027 pick. Cleveland is 1-0 and Pittsburgh is 0-1, and none of those picks get made for seven months.

Three of the Browns’ 11 picks in April are first-rounders. Mansour has said nothing about the one that came from the Rams, and the league has spent seven months assuming it is a quarterback.

10Tampa Bay is a harder afternoon than the one they just had

Cleveland is at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET, in a building that holds about 65,000 and fires cannons out of a 103-foot pirate ship in the north end zone.

The Buccaneers were 8-9 a year ago and came second in their division, their first missed postseason since 2019. Oddsmakers still make them NFC South favorites at +164 with a win total of 8.5. Todd Bowles is 35-33 over five seasons and openly on the hot seat.

Bowles did not hire a defensive coordinator. He calls the defense himself, it is a decision that has been argued about in Tampa all year, and it means the Browns spend this week preparing for a head coach’s call sheet rather than a coordinator’s.

The interior of that front is Vita Vea and Calijah Kancey. Yaya Diaby rushes from the edge with first-round rookie Rueben Bain Jr., and Antoine Winfield Jr. and Zyon McCollum play behind them. Go back and read item No. 2, because that is the matchup Cleveland spends this week on.

On the other side is Baker Mayfield, who could not get an extension done with them before camp, running a new offense for first-year coordinator Zac Robinson. Bucky Irving is the back.

Chris Godwin, Emeka Egbuka and Jalen McMillan are the receivers, with Cade Otton at tight end. Tristan Wirfs was still off the practice field at left tackle in late July with a hamstring, and Egbuka hurt a toe against the Jets in joint work.

The Browns are 1-0. They practice Wednesday in Berea, and the first injury report of the season comes with it.