Thirty-eight minutes in the visiting locker room at EverBank Stadium after Cleveland beat Jacksonville 35–7. Twelve players answered questions. Most of them had nothing much to say about it.
Sunday, September 13, 2026 · EverBank Stadium, Jacksonville, Florida · 4:12–4:50 p.m. ET
The visiting room at EverBank is long and narrow with the training area partitioned off at the far end, and it was opened to reporters at 4:12, about eighteen minutes after the horn. Music was on before the doors and somebody turned it off as they went. There were around twenty of us in there, and most of that number had got on a plane on Friday.
Shedeur Sanders was not in the room. He was at the travelling backdrop out in the corridor for twelve minutes and that is a separate transcript. Harold Fannin Jr. did the backdrop first and was done in a minute and a half, then came back in here and stood at his locker for longer than that.
What follows is most of what was said, in the order it was said.
(He had his pants on and one shoe off and was going through a bag on the floor when the group got to him. He stayed on the floor for the first two questions.)
First NFL game. Six catches on six targets, 119 yards.
Is it six? I thought it was five.
(Somebody says six.)
Okay. Six.
It went fast. Like the first quarter I couldn’t tell you what happened in it. I know we scored.
The fifty-five on third-and-short. What did you have?
He was up on me and he didn’t have no help behind him. So that’s the one you want.
What did you do to him at the line?
I don’t know. Same thing I do.
You don’t know?
Nah, for real. I’ll see it tomorrow. Ask Coach Jones, he be filming all that on his phone anyway.
You also had four carries and three punt returns. Did you know that was coming?
They told me Thursday. Coach came over and said you’re back there Sunday, and I said okay.
First one somebody hit me before I had it and they didn’t throw anything. I looked over at the man and he wasn’t looking at me.
(Quinshon Judkins goes past behind the group with a plate in his hand and says something short. Concepcion’s voice comes up about twenty percent.)
I ain’t saying nothing! Bro. You got two, I got zero, I ain’t saying nothing to nobody.
(Judkins keeps walking. Concepcion turns back and the volume goes down again.)
Sorry. What was it.
You were the tenth pick and they moved up from twenty-four to take you. Is a day like this an answer to any of that?
Man, it’s the first game.
Y’all asked me that in May too.
Anything about today you’ll remember?
The grass out there is cut real short. I was sliding around in warmups and I had to go change before we started.
Fifteen carries, ninety-six yards, two touchdowns.
Definitely feels good.
They finished last season with the best run defense in football and most of that group is still over there.
Definitely. And they fast, they real fast up front, and the first four times I got the ball I got about two yards a pop and I’m thinking this is gonna be a long one. Then it’s the second quarter and I come out of a pile and their nose is down on a knee, and the next play he’s on a knee again, and after that you can feel the whole thing get soft. It was a hundred degrees out there and they’d been on that field for a real long time by then, and that ain’t me, that’s the offense staying out there and not giving it back.
By the fourth they were done. You could hear it.
On the thirty-yard touchdown you ran through a couple of people.
It was a crease.
There was more to it than that.
It was a good crease.
Your season ended in Week 16 last year with the ankle. Was there anything today?
No. I got hit on the first one and after that I wasn’t thinking about it.
My mom’s been asking me about that ankle since January. Every time I call her. That’s the first thing, before hello.
Fifteen carries. Do you want more than that?
Every back wants more than that. Fifteen is fine.
(He was dressed before the room opened.)
You had Josh Hines-Allen most of the afternoon.
He’s a good player. I had help twice.
Twice in the whole game?
Twice.
What gave you problems early?
Speed.
First start in the league. Anything you want to look at tomorrow?
All of it.
(He was asked two more and the answers did not get longer.)
Three touchdowns in an opener.
Yeah. It was a good day.
Did you keep any of them?
No.
Not one?
They’re not mine. I gave them back.
You didn’t do anything after any of the three.
I don’t really do that.
(Pause.)
I wouldn’t know what to do.
The one-yard run. That is not a normal way to score with a tight end.
That one’s been in since June.
It’s twelve personnel and I’m the second guy in, off Max’s outside hip, and the whole picture is what we’ve been running on the goal line since the spring. They walk their will backer down inside the five, they did it all last year, they did it against Buffalo in the wild card game. So he’s down there and he’s got his hand in the dirt, and once he does that he’s got no way to get back out. Their safety is at eight instead of ten, which he was all day, that’s a Campanile thing, he wants him downhill. So the safety is the only man who can be right and he has to come across two bodies to do it. I just have to get to the edge before he does. It’s a yard. I don’t have to beat anybody, I have to be there first.
We ran it four times in camp and it looked the same all four.
(Nobody asked a follow-up for a couple of seconds.)
Your phone is going to be busy tonight.
It’s in the bag. I’ll look at it on the plane.
Cleveland was 0-for-2 on fourth down and there were short-yardage snaps where the front did not move.
We didn’t get it. That’s five of us.
Was there something specific in there?
No.
You gave up four sacks.
Line was fine.
Anything you liked?
We got out of the huddle. All day, in that heat, in a road stadium. That room’s been together five months and we were lined up with time on it every snap. That’s the one I’ll be happy about on the plane.
(He was pulling a shirt on before the next question and answered it with his head inside the shirt.)
Three tackles for loss, two hits, no sacks.
Zero. Put it in there, I got zero.
I ain’t gonna sit here and act like I don’t want one, ’cause I want one. But they was getting it out in three, and they slid to me from the first drive to the last one. Tight end, back, tackle, all of it on my side. Somebody over there is one-on-one every time they do that. Isaiah and Ronnie got the one and I was standing there watching it same as y’all.
Was Jacksonville flat?
They wasn’t flat. Don’t put that on them. That’s a good team and we got them today.
Oluokun had eleven tackles and three for loss in a game they lost by twenty-eight. Go look at what that man did out there and then tell me flat.
The fumble.
Grant knocked it out. I fell on it.
Grant Delpit was the best player out there today. Ours, theirs, all of it.
You spent most of the fourth quarter talking at their sideline. It was 28–7.
That ain’t the sideline. That’s the bench. They was sitting down.
What were you saying?
I told they right tackle in the second quarter I was coming inside on him. Told him the whole thing. I said I’m coming inside, and then I came inside, and I got him. Told him again on the next series and got him again.
So then the fourth quarter comes and he’s out the game. He’s out. He’s sitting there with a towel on his head. And I’m still telling him.
He wasn’t even playing. I’m over there going I’m coming inside, and he’s drinking a Gatorade.
Did he ever say anything?
He said good game after and shook my hand. That’s my guy now.
(He stops mid-sentence, looks past the group and shouts across the room at Iheanachor, who is sitting down with his headphones on.)
SEVENTY-THREE. Hey. HEY. Hines-Allen ain’t have nothing today. Nothing! Rookie!
(Iheanachor takes one side of the headphones off, says something we could not hear, and puts it back on. Verse turns around at the same volume he was already at.)
He don’t talk. Twelve weeks I known him, he don’t talk.
You came here in June to replace a man with twenty-three sacks and you finished today with none.
And we won by twenty-eight.
I’ll go get some. I know what I did wrong on two of them rushes already and I ain’t even seen it yet.
First game in the big slot.
It’s the same job I’ve been doing since the first week of camp, man. I’m just doing it on a Sunday now.
What is the job?
I’m over the slot, I’m the extra man when they run it, and when they go big I’ve got the tight end. That’s it. It ain’t exotic. They put me somewhere I can see it and told me to go get the ball.
Two takeaways today. Two. We’ve been talking about that number since the spring and we got two in the first one.
The second quarter. They went sixty-six on one snap and scored on the drive.
They had ten first downs all day. Ten. And the one drive they scored on, that was us, and I’m in that, I’m not sitting up here talking about somebody else’s afternoon.
On that drive I came up on a route I should’ve stayed under. Lawrence saw it. He’s been seeing that for six years, that’s what he does, and I gave it to him for free.
They went after that side of the field repeatedly, though. Was that —
I just told you where I was.
(He waited. The question was not asked again.)
The head coach said he gave you the game ball in the tunnel.
He was being weird about it.
(Laughter.)
He put it in my hands and said something and kept walking. I tried to give it back and he wasn’t hearing it. It’s in there.
Does it mean something, seven years in?
It’s a ball from Week 1 in Jacksonville. I’ll take it, it was a nice thing to do. I’ve got to figure out where it goes.
There was a lot said about this coaching staff over the summer. Does an afternoon like this change —
Ask me a football question, man.
We won a game. Y’all have been asking me a version of that since February and I’ve been giving y’all the same answer.
You intercepted it in the end zone against the team that traded you.
It was a corner route and he left it short. That’s the whole play.
Did today have anything extra in it for you?
Not really.
(Pause.)
I got traded last October. I was over there five years, so it’s not like it was news to me.
Anybody say anything to you?
Meyers did. He’s cool.
They threw at the other side of the field a lot early.
They did.
Was there a reason for that?
Y’all got the same tape I’ve got.
(He picked up a towel.)
(Still in his pants, sitting, with a laptop open on the stool next to him.)
Seven tackles, two for loss.
Quincy played great.
How was the communication in that heat?
It was fine. We got the calls in.
And the second quarter?
We’ll look at it Tuesday.
Four for fifty-four in your first one.
Yes sir.
What was it like?
It was good.
Anything surprise you out there?
Not really. It’s football.
(Three questions, nine words, and he went to shower.)
You and Ronnie Hickman split the only sack of the day.
He had him first. I got there.
One sack in a game you won by twenty-eight.
They threw it quick all day.
The sixty-six to Travis Hunter in the second.
Yeah.
What happened on it?
He stacked me and I turned late. That’s mine.
You had two breakups after that, and one of them was going to be a touchdown.
Okay.
Third game’s worth of reps at this position, really. Is it coming?
Ask me in a month.
(That was all of it. He was polite and he was finished.)
Twelve men are in this transcript, out of thirty-eight minutes. Three of them were asked, at three separate lockers, some version of a question about the boundary corner, and none of the three answered it. Corey Bojorquez, who punted once for thirty-seven yards, spoke to two of us for about thirty seconds and is not in here. Parker Brailsford was gone before the doors opened. Zion Johnson dressed at the far end and left with the first group to the buses. The plane out of Jacksonville was scheduled for 7:05 and left at 7:10. Cleveland is at Tampa Bay on Sunday at one o’clock.
