GMFB Monday — The card five rookies carried on Friday, Battista in Jacksonville, Kurt Warner and the tape, and a crown for a one-yard run

SCHRAGER: Monday, the fourteenth, and all four of us watched the same one o’clock window yesterday. Jamie has the league at twenty past, Judy Battista is in Jacksonville after her, Kurt Warner is here in the second hour w/ the tape. I am starting in Cleveland.

ERDAHL: You had them losing by a touchdown.

SCHRAGER: I had them losing by a touchdown.

BRANDT: I had them losing by more than that and I am not doing anything about it this morning.

TE’O: What would you do about it?

BRANDT: Nothing. That is what I said. I said I am not doing anything.

TE’O: You said it like there was a menu.

ERDAHL: Trivia is out today, we are long already.

BRANDT: We are not long. We are choosing to be long.

SCHRAGER: We are choosing to be long. Cleveland.

SCHRAGER: Thirty-five to seven, in that building, as a plus nine-and-a-half dog. Four thirty-four total, 8.3 a play, twenty-two first downs, zero turnovers and one punt. One, in three hours, in a hundred degrees. Jacksonville, who won thirteen games last year: two hundred and eighteen yards and ten first downs. Ten. And the number I keep going back to is third down -- eight of eleven, w/ a fifth-round rookie making the line calls.

SCHRAGER: Five rookies started that football game. Concepcion, Boston, Brailsford, Iheanachor, McNeil-Warren... five, in a season opener, in that heat.

SCHRAGER: Here is what I have this morning that I did not have at four o’clock yesterday. Two people, and I made the second one say it twice. On Friday, before that team flew, those five rookies were each handed a card. Their own copy of the first fifteen calls, in order, w/ the four looks the staff expected on the back. Printed. On paper. The veterans did not get one. It is not the head coach’s idea -- both of them say it came from Dom Capers, who did it in Carolina in 1995. Capers will not talk to me. He has not since 2011 and it is not personal.

SCHRAGER: I asked both of them whether the card did anything and neither would give me a yes. What one of them gave me instead is that Max Iheanachor had his folded in his back pocket at the Saturday walkthrough and somebody had to tell him to leave it in his locker.

ERDAHL: Whose call was it to hand them out?

SCHRAGER: Signed off Thursday. That is as far as either of them would go.

ERDAHL: Then the follow-up is the one the audience has. Does a piece of paper on Friday do anything at all on Sunday?

SCHRAGER: Probably not. I will not tell you it won a football game. What I know is the ninth pick in April was matched on Josh Hines-Allen all day and there is nothing in the game book about it, and at that position nothing in the game book is the job. Manti. Take the safeties.

TE’O: Two men moved position on that defence inside six weeks and Sunday cut two ways, and it is the same coach’s idea both times.

TE’O: Grant Delpit is a seventh-year safety who lines up over the slot now. Nine tackles. A ball knocked down, a hit on the quarterback, one behind the line, and a forced fumble. That is a man playing from four yards instead of twelve. You are in the run fits. You are the one in the way. It is the hands that get guys who move up like that, not the eyes.

TE’O: Darnell Savage moved outside. Boundary corner, two weeks of August to learn it. Five tackles, two balls broken up, and one of the two is the best football that secondary played all day. He also got stacked by Travis Hunter and gave up sixty-six, and there is nobody behind him on that snap, because in that structure there is nobody behind him at all.

TE’O: Delpit has the whole defence behind him. Savage has a sideline. Two safeties, one month, two jobs that are not the same job.

TE’O: And that defence got home one time all afternoon. One sack. Jared Verse was still the best rusher on that grass — seven tackles and three of those came behind the line — and Tyson Campbell ended it with an end-zone interception against the team that shipped him out.

BRANDT: That is Rutenberg.

TE’O: Rutenberg calls it.

SCHRAGER: Mike Rutenberg, who I want to say one thing about before we get out and I am going to forget, so somebody make me. Jamie, the other half.

ERDAHL: I do, and it is what I would be worried about this morning. Twenty-eight carries for a hundred and seventy-three, 6.2 a pop. And nought for two on fourth down, four for six in the red zone, four sacks for fourteen. Zion Johnson had a hard afternoon and one of the four is his. Parker Bra—

BRANDT: Bradford.

ERDAHL: Brailsford.

BRANDT: Brailsford. Fifth round, Alabama.

ERDAHL: Fifth-round rookie at centre in Week 1, cannot anchor yet, and you can watch it happen twice. So how does a line go for 6.2 a carry and be the problem in the same game?

BRANDT: Because those are not the same five men doing the same job. Six-two a carry is angles and the edge and Judkins making the first guy miss. A yard on fourth down is three men in the middle moving a defensive tackle eighteen inches, and they could not do it. Twice. Or in the red zone, which is why it is four touchdowns in six trips.

BRANDT: And since I have been reading the internet since eight o’clock last night, let me get the rest of it out. Jacksonville were flat. The market had that team priced to come down before Labor Day, and the people telling you this morning they did not see it coming saw it coming. And two snaps carried a quarter of that game. I am not arguing with any of it. If I skip past it today, then in three weeks when I tell you something is real you have got no reason to believe me.

BRANDT: Here is what I am keeping. Eight third downs out of eleven is twelve possessions of work. And a rookie right tackle stood in front of Josh Hines-Allen for three hours and nothing happened to him, and nothing happening is the highest thing you can say about a man at that position. The rest of it I want to watch again against somebody who is awake.

SCHRAGER: Care. Patience. He watched it twice before he said a word about it in public. Jamie, the rest of Sunday.

ERDAHL: New Orleans 42, Detroit 36, and Chris Olave had fourteen catches for a hundred and eighty-six and two. Kansas City 21, Denver 20 — Bo Nix for four sixty-six and four interceptions, Courtland Sutton eleven catches for two hundred and three and two scores, and Denver lost by a point. New England 31, Seattle 20, Christian Gonzalez with three. Atlanta 30, Pittsburgh 3.

BRANDT: Four sixty-six and four picks. The best day and the worst day of a man’s life inside the same three hours.

BRANDT: Pittsburgh scored three points at home. Denzel Ward played corner in it. Cleveland has the two first-round picks he cost.

TE’O: Denzel Ward did not give up thirty. Be fair to the man, he is over there working.

BRANDT: I said what happened. I did not add anything to it.

ERDAHL: The Insiders have all of it tonight at seven. Cleveland has no injury report worth reading this morning, which is its own news after a game in that heat. Judy Battista is next.

ERDAHL: Judy, good morning. You were in that stadium. Start wherever you like.

BATTISTA: Good morning. Two things. The first is that this building is not hiding behind anything. What they will tell you, and Liam Coen has said a version of it twice since Sunday, is that the plan was fine and the football was not. They went four for ten on third down and never got off the field, and a front that finished number one against the run last year let an offensive line with a rookie in the middle of it go for 6.2. Nobody down here has said the word flat to me.

BATTISTA: The second thing is what I got from other buildings last night. They still separate the two questions. Can he evaluate players — a fair number will hand you that one, and they were handing it to me in April. Whether he can run a football team across seventeen weeks is another question entirely, and I did not get one person to move. I called four.

ERDAHL: Is that a new sentence, Judy, or is it the sentence you had in June?

BATTISTA: It is the June sentence. From two of them, close to word for word, and I have the June notebook here, which is how I know. One of them told me to call him in November.

SCHRAGER: Judy Battista , in Jacksonville. Thank you. Come back to us before Sunday.

Break. Hour 2 opens at 9:00. Madden Trivia was cut and Brandt mentioned it twice more.

ERDAHL: Kurt. Twenty-four attempts, twenty completions, 275 yards, two touchdowns and nothing the other way, 142.2. A year ago: seven touchdowns, ten interceptions, and a QBR fifth-worst in a six hundred and ninety-six season sample. Which one is Sunday closer to?

WARNER: Let me say the honest thing first, because if I say the good thing first somebody clips it and I spend Tuesday explaining myself. Twenty-four attempts! Most of them were there before the snap. On schedule, first man open, get rid of it. That is point guard. And the second I say point guard, half of you hear game manager, and that is not what I said. It is not close to what I said. Point guard is a JOB, and most young quarterbacks are bad at it.

WARNER: Here is what it looks like. I am coming off the fake, my back is to the defence for a beat, I come around and my eyes go to the flat defender. He widens. My tight end is at eight yards in the window and I throw it before he turns his head, because if I wait for his head the linebacker is on it. That is a layup. Six yards, and nobody makes a video about it. He made twenty of them. You have to make all of the layups!

ERDAHL: And then there is the third-and-two.

WARNER: And then there is the third-and-two, and that is the one I cannot hand back to the opponent. Third-and-two is the friendliest down in football for a young quarterback, because there are four completions out there that all get the sticks. He takes none of them. Concepcion is in press with one man and nothing over the top, and the ball leaves on the release. Not on the separation. On the release. Fifty-five yards, and then Judkins takes the next handoff thirty, and it is a different game.

TE’O: He said afterwards it was a hard release and not a hard throw.

WARNER: Which is a nice thing to say about your teammate and it is also about sixty percent true.

ERDAHL: So what is on the board Wednesday? He took four sacks for fourteen and he brought them up himself before anybody asked him.

WARNER: He did, and I loved it, and I will say why. A quarterback who stands up at four in the afternoon with that stat line and says four sacks was me has told his offensive line something he cannot tell them in a meeting. Okay. Three things I would have up Wednesday. One, his feet stop when the first picture goes away. Two, the checkdown was open on two of the four and he knows it. Three, the grounding, which is not pressure. That is a choice he made when the play was already dead, and I would start the meeting with it, because the room does not want to watch it.

WARNER: And it is one football game! One. In September. Against a team that was not there. I have been wrong about a September in both directions.

SCHRAGER: Kurt, what is Wednesday like for a young quarterback when the tape comes back better than the building expected?

WARNER: It is the hardest Wednesday of the year. Everybody in that building is warm. The equipment guy is warm. And the four throws that were not right are the whole meeting, and there is a version of it where the coach lets them go because the score was thirty-five to seven. Three weeks later that is why you lost. He calls it himself over there, so nobody carries the message for him.

BRANDT: One yard. Second quarter. Harold Fannin Junior, who is a tight end, gets handed a football at the one and goes one yard, and it takes him a yard and a half of effort to do it, which is more anger than the play had any use for. That is surplus.

ERDAHL: Quinshon Judkins went thirty yards and stiff armed the same human being twice on the same run.

BRANDT: I am aware.

TE’O: The same guy got up and ran him down to get stiff armed a second time. Voluntarily.

BRANDT: I know about the run. I am not doing the run.

ERDAHL: Why not?

BRANDT: Because I am talking about a one-yard run. Fannin caught four balls for forty-eight yards and scored three touchdowns. Four catches. Three touchdowns. And then he puts the ball in the back judge’s hands like it is somebody’s mail and jogs off. Three times. Zero celebrations. Somebody in that family needs to sit that boy down.

SCHRAGER: Fannin FINISHES. Four for forty-eight and three scores, in a building where he was the fourth thing anybody came to see.

TE’O: The crown is for a one-yard run. I want that in the transcript.

BRANDT: His name is already on it. In marker. I did it at the airport.

SCHRAGER: Into The Booth, and I am skipping the network broadcast this week. Frank Frangie called the fourth quarter of a twenty-eight-point loss on the Jacksonville radio, to a building that had mostly gone home, and he called it straight. He had Emmanuel McNeil-Warren’s name right. He had Carsen Ryan’s name right, spelling and all. He never once told the people still listening whose fault it was. Preparation. Kindness. Not one cheap sentence in any of it... and he will be doing that job when the new stadium opens.

ERDAHL: Tomorrow, Manti has Tampa, I have the Wednesday reports early, and Kyle owes me a trivia segment.

BRANDT: I owe you nothing. It was cut. I was cut.

TE’O: You were not cut, the segment was cut.

SCHRAGER: I never said my thing about Mike Rutenberg. That keeps until tomorrow, then. Kurt, thank you for the eleven minutes and for staying for the other forty. Back at eight.

Good Morning Football · NFL Network · Monday, September 14, 2026 · 8:00–10:00 a.m. ET, Inglewood. Schrager, Erdahl, Brandt, Te’o. Insider: Judy Battista, from Jacksonville. At the table: Kurt Warner.