“Yeah, I had a great time.”

MANSOUR: Okay. Health first, because you’ll want it. Nobody came out of that football game, nobody is getting looked at tonight, I have nothing for you, and the real report is Wednesday.

Yeah, I had a great time. That was the most fun I have had in a long while.

Two things before you start. The reason that game looked like that on third down is Travis Switzer, and he had it Monday morning before I had anything. And if you watched us run the football today, you watched George Warhop and Duce Staley since May. That is theirs. Go ahead.

Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comNick, you were 8-for-11 on third down against a defense that was first in the league against the run last season and picked off twenty-two throws. This offense averaged 16.4 points a game a year ago. What is that in one afternoon?

MANSOUR: It’s Travis, and it’s also — okay, let me back up and give you the boring one first, because the boring one is the true one.

We were in third-and-four and third-and-five most of the day. That is a completely different job than third-and-nine. Third-and-nine you’re asking a receiver to beat a corner who knows it’s coming. Third-and-four you can hand it off if you want to. So a lot of what you’re looking at happened on first down.

What Travis did is build the third-down menu off the same first-down pictures. Same formations, same motion, same people standing in the same places. Anthony Campanile is very good at making you tell him something before the snap, and Travis spent his week making sure we weren’t telling him anything. Twelve personnel on third-and-four looked like a run four times today, and one of those times it was.

He came in Monday with it drawn. I wanted to change two things Thursday, and he talked me out of one of them, and he was right about that one.

Daryl Ruiter · 92.3 The FanYou went for it twice and didn’t get either one. Take me through the second one.

MANSOUR: The two fourth downs are mine, and the second one is the worse call.

First one, I put us in a run into a front that had an extra man in it. I liked that call before it happened and I’d make it again, and it didn’t work, so I’ll wear it. It’s the second one I’ve been sitting with since it happened. I called something that needed four guys to be perfect at the same time. There were two other things on that sheet that don’t need anybody to be perfect and I didn’t call either one, and I couldn’t give you a good reason tonight for why not.

Daryl RuiterThe spot on that one. The broadcast spent two minutes on it.

MANSOUR: I’m not going to talk about the spot.

The call was bad before the ball got anywhere near the sticks. I’ll go look at that one.

Tony Grossi · ESPN ClevelandI want to congratulate you, and I mean it. I have been coming to these since 1984. I have watched this football team win in September and then go somewhere in October and forget which end of the field is theirs. Twenty-eight points, in this building, against that team, with that quarterback. So what is it? Is it anything?

MANSOUR: Thank you, Tony. I don’t think it’s anything yet, and that’s not me being modest about it.

We’re at Tampa Sunday. Todd Bowles calls that defense himself, he didn’t hire anybody to do it for him, and he’s right to think he doesn’t need to. Baker has beaten better teams than us with less than he has right now. We land at nine tonight, the staff is in Tuesday morning, Tampa goes in Wednesday. If we play Sunday the way we played on those two fourth downs we’ll get beaten badly and it won’t be interesting.

Tony GrossiThat’s not an answer, that’s a schedule.

MANSOUR: It’s the honest one, though. I’ve got one Sunday to look at and so do you.

Zac Jackson · The AthleticTwo things. Procedurally, on the defensive side — Mike Rutenberg calls it and you built it, and it just held a thirteen-win team to seven points. Whose day was that? And separately, does the way the offense held the ball make that number look better than the tape will?

MANSOUR: Yes to your second one. Sorry, I’m doing them backwards.

Seven points overstates what we did on defense. We had the football for most of the afternoon and that is not the same thing as stopping somebody. There were three or four snaps out there where the picture I put us in did not hold up and it didn’t cost us anything, and I don’t get to count those as us. Fine and not good. That’s where I am on it tonight.

The parts that were real are Mike’s. Mike Rutenberg has had that red-zone install since the spring, and Jacksonville got down there and did not score, and Tyson Campbell’s interception is in the end zone. Grant Delpit played the best football of anybody on that field today, in a job he has been doing since camp, and he’s at nine tackles from a spot where you’re supposed to be the fourth man to the ball.

And Jared didn’t have a sack and was still the best rusher out there. They built the whole afternoon around where he was standing.

Zac JacksonAnd the first part. Whose call is that defense on a day like today?

MANSOUR: His. On Sunday it’s his, all of it, and I don’t talk on that channel unless he asks me something. He asked me one thing today, I told him I liked it, and he did the other one.

Camryn Justice · News 5 ClevelandIt was over a hundred degrees on that field at kickoff. What was it like down there?

MANSOUR: Oh, it was horrible. It was so much worse than I thought it was going to be, and we practiced at one o’clock four days a week for a month, so I thought I had some idea.

I did one smart thing all week and it was for the sweat. I printed my call sheet Saturday night and I laminated it, because I own a laminator, and then I put it in my back pocket at twenty to one and I never took it out. Not once. It’s in there right now.

Byron Storer’s guys and our equipment staff were out on that field at ten this morning hauling coolers, and they were still doing it at four. I got to stand next to a fan. So.

Albert Breer · Sports IllustratedTwenty-of-twenty-four, 275 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, a 142.2 rating in his first Week 1 start, a year after seven touchdowns and ten picks. What did you see from him?

MANSOUR: He played well and I’m not selling him to anybody tonight.

What he did today was mostly point guard. Get us in the right one, take what they leave, throw it before the receiver has won and not after. That’s a hard job that looks easy on television, and he was very good at it for three hours. Then on the third-and-short we asked him for the other thing, which is a shot into a one-high look with a corner pressed on KC, and the ball was gone before I’d finished saying the word.

The four sacks are what I’ll be looking at, and those are mine. Two of them are pictures I gave him that don’t have an answer in them if the first thing isn’t there.

He came off after the second one and told me what he saw before I got to ask. He was right about it. That’s what I’ve got about a Sunday in September. Ask me in December and I’ll have more.

National reporter · ESPNTravis Hunter caught a 66-yard ball on Darnell Savage and Jacksonville went at that side of the field repeatedly. He’s a few weeks into playing corner. Was that too much to ask of him today?

MANSOUR: Ask me Wednesday when I’ve seen it, and I mean that, it’s the right question.

I’m not going to stand in Jacksonville and go through one man’s afternoon in front of forty people. That one’s a standing thing with me and it has nothing to do with you.

What I’ll give you is that where he was standing on that play is mine. I wanted an extra body inside on the crossers, because that’s where they hurt Buffalo in the wild card, and the way you pay for that is a corner on an island with nothing over the top of him. I knew what I was paying when I put it on the sheet.

And Brandon Lynch has had those two corners on that conversion since the middle of July, and most of this league would not have tried it inside one camp, and there were two balls broken up out there today that a ten-year corner doesn’t get to. I’d have Brandon in my building for twenty years.

Ashley Bastock · cleveland.comFour sacks with a rookie center and a converted guard inside. Is the interior where this tape gets uncomfortable?

MANSOUR: Probably, yeah. I’d say that if we’d won by fifty.

That five is mine. I signed every one of those cards myself and I did it knowing the first Sunday of the season was down here against Hines-Allen and Walker. Two penalties in that heat with a line that has been together since the spring, that part I’m happy about, and George Warhop has been running those two through the same six things since May, and the six things are what showed up today. Fourteen yards on four sacks, though.

National reporter · NFL Network173 yards on 28 carries against the best run defense in football last year. How?

MANSOUR: Duce and George. And Quinshon.

The honest mechanism is that we doubled to the linebacker instead of trying to reach anybody. They are so fast up front that reaching them is a losing proposition, and most people who play them know that and try it anyway. Duce Staley has been teaching a footwork thing since the spring where the back is deliberately a half-second late getting there. It showed up about six times today.

And then on the thirty, Quinshon breaks the first one at the line, and there’s a guy who has him around the shoulders, and he puts a hand on the man’s facemask and the man is gone, and then twelve yards later he does it again to somebody else, and the second one is better than the first because he’s already going full —

Okay. I’m doing it. Somebody ask me something.

(Laughter.)

Camryn Justice · News 5 ClevelandHarold Fannin scored three times. Four catches, forty-eight yards, and one of them a run.

MANSOUR: Four balls and three of them are touchdowns. He caught everything we threw at him inside the ten and he ran one in from the one, and I don’t think he said a word the whole time.

He handed the ball to the official after the third one. Gave it to him and jogged off. I saw it on the board and thought, that’s a twenty-two-year-old with three touchdowns in an NFL game and he’s worried about being in the way.

He’s a good football player. He was a good football player in December when this team wasn’t any good.

National reporter · Yahoo SportsKC Concepcion went six-for-six for 119 with the 55-yarder, plus four carries. He was the tenth pick and you traded up from twenty-four for him. Is today an answer to that?

MANSOUR: No. Today is a Sunday and what you’re asking about is a five-year question. If I stood here and said something else, write it down and use it against me in about two years.

The thing on the 55 is the release. They pressed him with one high, which is a decision defenses make about rookies, and he beat it off the line before the ball came out. Christian Jones has had him on releases since the first week of the spring, and KC asks him about it in a way I think annoys him, so.

Then Quinshon goes thirty on the next snap and the afternoon changed. Neither of those happens without the other one.

Jacksonville radioYou and Liam Coen were out at midfield a while. Anything you can share?

MANSOUR: He was decent to me and he had no reason to be. He said something nice about Harold and then he asked me about my flight. The man had just had that afternoon and he asked me about my flight.

That team is going to be fine. They won thirteen games last year and they were very hard to play down here, and we caught them at one o’clock on the first Sunday of a season.

Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comSomebody put a game ball in your hands in the tunnel and you didn’t come in here with it.

MANSOUR: I gave it to Grant Delpit about nine steps later.

He’s the only man in that locker room who was here for the whole thing, and he’s had it described to him a few times as the one that fixes it. So it’s his. I was standing there holding it feeling like I’d picked up somebody else’s bag.

Mary Kay CabotWhat did he say?

MANSOUR: He tried to give it back.

(Laughter.)

Daryl Ruiter · 92.3 The FanYou punted one time.

MANSOUR: One. Corey hit it thirty-seven and it was a good ball, and then he stood over there for three hours.

Hold on, let me ask you all something, since you were up there and I wasn’t. Did it look slow on television? It felt slow to me. It felt like we were walking around between snaps in the third, and I couldn’t tell out there whether that was the heat or whether we were being sloppy getting lined up.

Zac Jackson · The AthleticIt looked slow in the third.

MANSOUR: Yeah. Okay. That’s a me problem, I’ll go find it.

National reporter · ESPNFirst win as a head coach in this league. Did anybody call you?

MANSOUR: My mother sent me a photograph of her television.

That’s the message. No words in it. A picture of a TV in a living room in Flint with the scoreboard on it and a lamp in the corner of the frame, and my dad somewhere behind the camera, presumably, and she sent it at 4:12.

I stood in the hallway and looked at it for a while, which is why I was late in here.

Tony Grossi · ESPN ClevelandLast one. Anything from today you want people at home to hold on to?

MANSOUR: Harold handing the ball to the official.

I don’t know what that is yet. I’ll think about it on the plane.

(He said thanks and stepped back, then came forward again.)

Wednesday for the report. And Tony, drink some water, it’s absurd out there.