“So who moved it?”

Eight catches, a hundred and five yards, and the one over Zyon McCollum in the third.

Yeah, that’s the one, that’s the one right there, that’s the one.

So he was on my back hip the whole way down, right, and once he’s sitting there it ain’t a race no more at that point, it’s just who wants to go get it more, and I put my arm across him and got him behind me and then I went up and it was mine. That’s a big boy corner too, he ain’t small, that ain’t me going up on some little dude.

Did you know you had both feet?

Yeah, I knew. I knew right away.

I ain’t look at the ref or nothing, I just got up and went back to the huddle like it wasn’t nothing, and then we scored two plays later off it so don’t nobody even say nothing to me about it till we got in here.

Both of you went over ninety. Two rookies.

That’s cool.

I mean me and him been in the same room since May, so. Yeah, and it’s cool, it’s cool.

You came out early in the fourth.

It was fifty-something to fourteen, man. I’d take me out too.

Fourteen carries for twenty-seven.

Yeah.

What was in there?

Fifty was in there.

He’s probably the biggest problem I’ve had to run at since I got in the league, to be fair, because he don’t get moved and he don’t stay in one gap neither, so, you know, you block him, like you actually block him, and he’s still standing right there. I hit it back one time in the second quarter and he was already in the back door waiting on me and I’m thinking, how. How did he — I still don’t know how.

Defense got four picks though, four, in one game. Y’all been over on that side yet? Go over there, they had a day and don’t nobody need to hear about the run game from me.

The fumble on the second drive.

I had it and then I didn’t have it. That’s the second one I’ve put on the ground since I got here and I could tell you the week and the quarter and the down of the other one right now if anybody in here wanted it. So I don’t need to see it.

Two straight games over a hundred degrees.

Nah, I’m done talking about heat. Ask me in Cleveland.

Rueben Bain was a first-round pick and he finished with nothing.

He’s strong.

That’s two first-rounders in two weeks and you haven’t given up a pressure yet.

Okay.

Is there anything from today you want back?

The run game.

Meaning what, specifically?

(He looked at the man who asked it, thought about it, and did not add to it.)

The run game.

(Four questions, twelve words.)

Vita Vea had six tackles for loss.

He did. Yeah.

Twenty-nine carries for eighty-four. Second week where there was nothing inside.

Ask me about me. I’ll stand right here and talk about me all night, I don’t care how long y’all want to go.

All right, and you.

I was late out of my stance twice in the first quarter, and then after that he had my hands off me the rest of the afternoon, and I don’t need the tape for either one of those, I know exactly what they looked like.

What I’m not doing, though, is putting somebody else’s name in your notebook. Y’all have come down this row asking that four different ways now and everybody in here can hear you doing it, so.

Second straight week without much movement up front.

Yeah. We’ll watch it Tuesday.

Ten tackles, six for loss, four hits on the quarterback.

Yeah. He’s a good football player.

Anything you’d point at?

No.

(He stood up while the next one was being asked and went past the group to the training side.)

Fourteen points in eight minutes and then nothing for three quarters.

We were in a lot of man early. That was the plan, and I liked the plan, we had a good week of work on it, and, you know, they hit two.

Then Coach Rutenberg came down off the top and we went off, and disguised it, and mixed the pressure in from depth, which — that’s not new, we’ve had that call since the spring and we ran some of it in Jacksonville too, we just weren’t in it as much as we were today.

And it was before the second quarter, not at halftime. I think people are going to have that wrong tomorrow. It was four sentences on the sideline, like four, and then we went out and played the rest of the game in it.

How much of that is you at the line?

Some. Mike gives me two things and I pick between them off the formation, and then if they motion I’ve got a third one, so that’s the whole job, it sounds like more than it is.

Quincy talks more out there than I do anyway.

Eleven tackles, four for loss, two interceptions and four balls knocked down.

I had a good game.

I’ve never had two in one game, not at UCLA either. The first one is really Quincy hitting him as he throws and I’m just the only one standing there, so I don’t know how much of that one is actually mine. The second one, he never looked at me, and I was in his throwing lane for a while before that ball ever came out and he threw it anyway, which — I don’t know what he saw.

I’ll take them either way. I’m not going to stand here and give them back.

They went 0-for-11 on third down.

I saw it on the board coming off. Zero for eleven. Yeah.

Does that number surprise you?

Yes.

(He laughed once.)

Yeah, somebody usually catches a slant on you at some point.

The first quarter.

Yeah.

A hundred and fifty-some yards in a quarter, the thirty-six to McMillan, and then the eighty-seven to Godwin on the first play after a punt put them on their own thirteen.

You don’t have to read me the numbers. I was out there for all of them.

The eighty-seven — I’m in man, I’ve got outside leverage on him and he goes through my face and I turn the wrong way, and he’s been doing that to people for ten years, so, look, that’s me turning the wrong way. It had nothing to do with what was called, and I said that on the sideline and I’m saying it in here.

They changed the coverage rather than taking you out.

That’s the coaches.

Did anybody say anything to you when you came off?

Lynch did. He said everything off now, top of the stem, and don’t look in the backfield. That was it, that was the whole conversation, and then we went back out.

A lot of staffs sit a corner after a quarter like that.

Maybe.

(Pause. Nobody filled it, so he did.)

I’ve been in this eight years. I’ve had a whole season that was worse than that quarter and I was still starting in December, so, you know. A quarter is a quarter.

The interception in the fourth.

Yeah. It was a bad throw.

Do you feel like you got it back out there?

I don’t know what that means.

(He waited to see if there was another one, and, you know, when there wasn’t he said “all right” and went.)

Your first sack as a Brown.

Y’all got me at one now. Write it down, put it in the paper, one.

And four for loss, though. Four! In the run game, in a game where they was trying to run it to keep him off the field, and that’s the one I want y’all writing about, that ain’t the sack one, the sack one is easy, the four is the one that’s hard.

They slid to you again for most of the first half.

They gon’ do that, that’s the whole season right there, that’s every week now, that ain’t changing.

Fifty-one had three for loss. Mike Hall. Three, and, you know, ain’t none of y’all wrote his name down all year, and that’s what happens when they send two at me, somebody over there is by hisself and today it was him and he ate all afternoon.

Baker Mayfield was 16-of-32 with four interceptions.

He wasn’t comfortable one time. Not one time, all day.

And he a tough dude, he stood in there and took some, ain’t nobody over here saying nothing bad about Baker. He just didn’t know where it was coming from, and that’s not him, that’s our coaches, that’s our film room on Wednesday and our film room on Thursday, and it either works on Sunday or it don’t and today it worked.

You had four tackles for loss and Carson Schwesinger had four.

Forty-nine!

He’s twenty-three. Twenty-three years old with the green dot on his helmet and two picks in a professional football game. Y’all go figure out what that is, ’cause I don’t know what that is.

A lot of the questions in here have been about Darnell Savage.

I bet they have, yeah.

He was out there in the fourth quarter picking the ball off. Y’all was in here typing at halftime and he was out there in the fourth quarter picking the ball off, so, I mean, what else you want from the man?

(He was told the buses were at 5:45.)

I know when the bus is. I been on a bus before, they ain’t leaving without me.

Four takeaways.

Four in one afternoon. We had four all of last season, four, the whole year, and I said that number out loud in June and y’all wrote it down, so, you know, here it is again: four last year and we got six in two weeks.

And the eleven third downs.

Eleven of them for nothing. I’ve never been part of that, and I don’t think I’ve been on a defense that did that in college either, I’d have to go back and look.

Now, I got crack blocked on the second drive and put on the ground and they ran for eight behind it, so I’m in the first quarter too, don’t let me stand up here and act like I ain’t. I was way too far inside. That’s a rookie thing to do in year seven and I’m going to hear about it Wednesday.

On the change out of man —

Go ask Carson, he’s got the dot. I just do what the call says.

There have been a lot of questions in here about the boundary corner.

I’m not doing that one.

Nah, and next.

An interception in a second straight week.

Yeah, and ball came to me.

They went at the other side of the field early.

Nah. I’m not answering that.

Is the zone easier for a corner?

It’s easier.

(Pause.)

For me it is, yeah.

Three hits on the quarterback and no sack.

Three, yeah.

You had him a couple of times.

I know how many I had.

He was getting rid of it in like two seconds all day and I’m not getting there from where I’m starting, that’s just the math of it, and, I think that’s fine with me. If he’s throwing it in two seconds it’s going to forty-nine anyway.

Second week in a row without one.

Yeah.

Three catches in a fifty-four point game.

That’s what it was today.

Both rookies went over ninety.

Twelve’s got hands. And KC is going to be a problem in this league for a long time.

Are you telling them anything?

They don’t need much.

(He was dressed before the doors opened and he was gone inside two minutes.)

The extra point at the end of the half.

It got blocked.

What happened on it?

It got blocked.

Somebody’ll show me, I guess.

Seven touchdowns is a lot of kicks in that heat.

My leg’s tired, if I'm honest. That’s a first.

When was the last time you scored?

I don’t know. I’d have to look it up.

Guess.

Twenty-two? Yeah, it was Chicago. Somebody in here has it on their phone already, probably.

Did you keep the ball?

Yeah. I’ve got three kids and one football, so I’ll figure that out later.

Seven catches for ninety-six, and forty-six of that came after you had the ball.

Forty-six? Okay, that’s — yeah, I like that one, that’s the number I want.

They played a lot of off on me after the first quarter, so it’s really just catch it and go get whatever’s sitting in front of you, ain’t nothing hard about that, and them was the easy ones anyway. Denzel had the hard ones. He was going up over people all day and I was catching it standing still.

You had one drop, on third down on the opening drive.

Third-and-four, and I was running before I had it, which I do, I’ve been doing that since I was little and I’m still doing it at twenty-one, and Coach Jones is gonna have it up on the screen Wednesday with everybody sitting there watching it.

He should though, it was third down and I dropped it, so.

You lead the league in punt return average.

The whole league?

(He is told yes, through two weeks.)

Hold on, that’s — that’s crazy, that’s actually crazy. I’m gonna text somebody about that on the plane.

I only got three today though. They was punting it away from me by the second half, which, I mean, I’ll take that, that’s fine, somebody told me that’s supposed to be a compliment and I’m choosing to believe them about it.

You’ve talked before about having a stutter, and there are people who follow you because of it. Do you hear from families?

Yeah. All the time now, since the draft it’s been like every day, every single day.

It’s mostly the mommas that message me, and they’ll send a video of they son reading something out loud, and I try to write everybody back but I don’t always get to everybody, so if I ain’t got to you yet, I’m sorry, I’m not ignoring nobody on purpose.

And I still got it, it ain’t like it went somewhere. It’s just I know when it’s coming now. So I w-, I wait, and then I say it. Like just then.

(He stops for a second. Nobody says anything.)

When I was little I wouldn’t say nothing in class, I’d take the zero. So if a kid see me up here and I get stuck and I finish it anyway and don’t nobody in here make a face about it, that’s good, that’s a good thing, that’s the whole reason I’ll sit up here and do this.

Okay. Go ahead, what else you got.

Seven catches, three carries and three returns in a hundred degrees. How do you feel?

Better than last week.

Anything about today you’ll remember?

The boat.

(Laughter.)

Nah, for real though, when they scored the first one that cannon went off and I was sitting on the bench and I came all the way up off of it, like, all the way up, I ain’t know it did that. And, you know, then it didn’t go off no more after that, so.

Twenty-six of thirty-five, three hundred and twenty-eight, two touchdowns.

Three touchdowns.

I ran one in too, so. Y’all keep saying two and it’s three. Say three.

Cleveland ran it twenty-nine times for eighty-four yards.

So who moved it?

Nah, that’s a real question, I’m actually asking. Four hundred and seventy-seven yards and fifty-four points and we ain’t run for nothing all day, so, you know, somebody moved it, and I ain’t gonna sit up here and be shy about what I just did because that’s corny to me, that was me today.

And it’s one sack, though. One, and with fifty in there taking on two and three of ours every snap and me holding it to throw it down the field, that’s one sack, so go count how many times I got hit standing up after I already let it go.

You’re now first in the NFL in completion percentage, first in passer rating and first in yards per attempt.

All three, and say all three of them out loud, that’s the fun part.

Look, I been telling people what I was since the combine and before the combine, so it ain’t new information to me, and the only thing that’s changed is now it’s on film and y’all can go look at it Monday morning instead of arguing about it in a studio.

Two games though, I know it’s two games, I ain’t stupid. I’m gonna be first in it in December too.

Mary Kay Cabot · cleveland.comYou threw it thirty-five times without a running game and you had to get the ball out. What was the answer when the run died?

Switzer. Travis had that ready before we ever got on the plane.

We got into a bunch of RPO stuff and quick game, and it ain’t us giving up on running it, it’s the same run action with me keeping it in my hands, so the linebacker still got to honor Quinshon and he can’t just come get me, and now Harold’s sitting in there behind him. That was the whole second quarter, basically.

And we could still go down the field out of it, which is the part, a lot of teams get into that quick stuff and then they stuck in it.

The seventeen-yard throw to Denzel Boston in the third, over the corner.

I put that one where only he could get it and he still had to go do something crazy with it.

That’s a rookie, second round, and, you know, he boxed a starting NFL corner out like it was a rebound, and he be doing that in practice to our own guys, it ain’t a Sunday thing. Nobody believed me about him in August. That’s fine, y’all can believe me now, or don’t.

KC Concepcion had seven catches and forty-six yards after the catch.

KC.

He caught everything they threw at him and one they shouldn’t have thrown at him. He’s twenty-one and he plays like he been here five years, and I told him on the sideline in the third, I said you got to stop making it look easy ’cause they gonna start acting like it is.

Harold Fannin has five touchdowns in two games.

Harold.

The one before the half, he had a safety on top of him and I put it on his back shoulder and he took it and got in, and that’s a two-second play, everybody in the league runs that play. Ours works ’cause it’s him catching it and not somebody else.

The one sack.

Mine, and that one’s all the way mine.

Carsen was open on the swing the whole time and I’m sitting back there waiting on Denzel to come open on a dig because I wanted the big one, so that’s me being greedy on second-and-six and taking a sack for it.

And I threw two today I got away with. The one to KC in the third quarter, that should have been picked, the safety was late and he read my eyes the whole way and he just didn’t make the play on it, and I know when I get away with one, I ain’t gonna stand up here at fifty-four to fourteen and pretend that was a good ball.

National reporterThey scored fourteen in eight minutes and it looked for a while like it could get away from you. What was said?

Nothing.

Y’all not gonna believe that but nobody said nothing. Coach came over on the bench after the eighty-seven and he asked me about a look he wanted to get to in the second quarter, that was the whole conversation, and, you know, then he walked off and went and talked to the defense like it was a Tuesday. He wasn’t hot, he don’t get hot, that’s not a thing that happens.

I be watching for it too. All year I been waiting to see it and it ain’t happened yet, so, you know, either it’s coming or it ain’t in there.

Darnell Savage had a difficult first quarter and stayed on the field.

Why you asking me that? I was on the sideline with a wet towel on my head.

Go watch the fourth quarter, he got the ball. He been in this league longer than I been driving a car, so, nah, I ain’t got nothing else for you on that one.

Carson Schwesinger had two interceptions and four tackles for loss.

Forty-nine is the best player on our team.

And I’m including me in that, which I know is the thing y’all gonna clip, and that’s fine, put it up however you want.

National reporterYou’re 2–0, you lead the league in three categories, and there are people on television who spent two years saying you couldn’t play. Where do you put yourself right now?

Right now? Through two weeks ain’t nobody playing better than me, and that’s not a shot at nobody, that’s just the numbers, you can go look them up on your phone right now while I’m sitting here.

Now, them boys been doing it ten, twelve years and I got two games, so I respect all of that, truly, I do. Ask me in November and I’ma tell you the same thing though.

Cleveland leads the NFL in scoring at forty-four and a half a game.

In the league?

(He looks at the staffer at the side of the room. She nods.)

The Browns lead the league in scoring. Say that out loud in Cleveland and watch what happens to somebody’s face.

Two road games, two blowouts, both over a hundred degrees.

It was hotter last week.

This one was worse though. Last week it was just hot and this one was wet-hot, and my hands was slipping on the ball in the first quarter so I had to keep going back to the towel between just about every snap, which ain’t a thing you want to be thinking about.

Last one. Anything you’ll look at tonight?

The third-and-fours — we was five for thirteen and I ain’t happy about that at all, that’s the thing I’m gonna be mad about on the plane home. Fifty-four points and we’re punting twice, we’re just scoring so fast it don’t look bad.

(He starts to get up, then stops with a hand on the microphone.)

How many total touchdowns Harold got, five?

(Somebody says five, and that it leads the league.)

Five in two weeks. That’s legendary and I ain’t taking it back.

(He knocked twice on the table and left.)