First Take

Good morning, two hours, and our board has been rewritten three times since seven o’clock, so, if I'm honestI think it is still moving. Cleveland won fifty-four to fourteen in Tampa yesterday as an underdog and they are 2–0. Four Cleveland blocks on this board and one of them was a basketball block on Friday. Stephen A. it is all yours, go ahead.

Holla at your boys! Shae, good morning to everybody at home. Now, before I do what I am about to do — and you know what I’m about to do, everybody in this building knows what I’m about to do — let me be fair, because I am always fair. Look. A football team went into somebody else’s stadium yesterday and put fifty-four points on that scoreboard, in September, in the second week of a season, and I would never stand up here and tell you that a thing that happened did not happen. However. Shae, I need everybody at home to hear the however.

There it is.

However, I am not going to Cleveland, Ohio this morning, I am not doing it, I am going to Tampa, and I am going to talk directly to a quarterback, because that man can take it, he has always been able to take it, and you know that is one of the things I have respected about him. Baker. Baker Mayfield. That organization put a piece of paper in front of you in July and you said no, and that was your right, that was absolutely your right, and I have never once criticized a player for going and getting his and I am not starting now. And, you know, then — and then, Shae — you walk out onto your own grass, in front of people who bought a ticket, and you hand that football to the Cleveland Browns four times. Four times, I mean, in your own building, in front of your own people. And you are tied for the lead of this league in interceptions thrown and it is September the twenty-first, and eighty-six points surrendered in fourteen days, more than anybody, and you have not won a game. So what that is — and listen, I want to be precise — what that is, is a football operation coming apart on television two Sundays in a row, and Cleveland happened to be standing there. Cleveland just happened to be standing in the room.

Stephen A. hold on, can I get one thing in about the winning team before we go down there? Because there is a number on that game nobody has put on television yet and it has been, you know, eighteen hours.

Go ahead, Chris.

Cleveland ran it twenty-nine times for eighty-four yards. Two point nine a carry, against a defense nobody in this sport has scored fewer points on, and they won by forty. I played nine years, you know, and I don’t have another one of those. Vita Vea was in their backfield six times on his own, six, so Tampa never had a reason to put anybody extra down in that box, and Cleveland put fifty-four on them anyway. So somebody over there, I mean somebody on that headset, decided in the second quarter they were never handing it off again, and from there they just —

— threw it. Chris, that’s the — okay, can I get four plays up? Four. They’re cut, they’re in order, and if you give me, uh, four plays I can show everybody exactly what —

Danny. Danny, I love you, hold on, hold that tape, because I am not done being disgusted and I want to be disgusted in the correct direction. Todd Bowles has been running that football team since 2022, and by his own choice, I mean, nobody made that man do it, nobody walked in and forced him, he is the head coach and he is also the man calling that defense. Look, I have sat in a building where one man was doing two jobs and I know exactly what that looks like on a Wednesday. Listen, eleven third downs yesterday and they did not convert one of them, and they did not cross the twenty after the first quarter, not one time, not one time in three quarters of professional football. And what that is, and I want to say this the right way, what that is, is an organization telling its own locker room that nobody is coming. And nobody is coming, and they know it.

Man, you know who Cleveland is right now? Nobody’s going to like this and I’m saying it anyway. That’s Golden State in 2015. That is exactly what that was.

It’s week two, Perk.

Nobody believed that either.

They won sixty-seven games.

I said what I said.

Okay, I am going to read this one out, because, you know nobody has touched it. Zero for eleven on third down. No trips inside the twenty. And they were ahead eight minutes in.

Fourteen to seven, and then not one more point! That is a FRAUD. I mean, that is a fraudulent football team and it has announced itself to the entire country on two consecutive Sundays. And there is a group of men in that locker room, you know, who will not be on that roster in February, and listen, those men did not ask me to say one word on their behalf, they did not call me, and I am going to say it anyway. Look, those are professionals, they have families, they moved to that city, and they are being asked to walk out there on a Sunday afternoon and be the reason America is having a wonderful time about the Cleveland Browns. That is blasphemous, and I do not use that word every day. I do not use that word every day.

I mean, is any of this Cleveland, though? At any point today? Because that’s two segments now and I have been looking at the same page of my notes.

Chris, everything I have said this morning is about Cleveland.

None of it has been about Cleveland.

Okay, it is ten-nineteen in the morning and we are all in Florida. After the break, the head coach, and Skip has been in that chair since a quarter past nine with a sheet of paper he will not let me look at.

You may look at it after.

I will not be looking at it after.

Okay, before anybody starts. Tampa, last night, he got asked about the coaches and the ex-players who have been saying out loud that a job like his is an insult to the people who did the thirty years. A piece of the answer. Roll it, and Skip, you’re next.

YES, SIR. Thank you for playing it, because that is the only honest sentence anybody has said about this football team since January, and it came out of the mouth my own business has spent two days handing trophies to. Play it in every building in this league tomorrow morning. He told you. Look, he stood up there in a wet shirt after winning by forty and he told you himself.

He’s 2–0.

Shae, here is what happened in Florida yesterday and it takes eleven seconds. Twenty-six of thirty-five, three hundred and twenty-eight yards, two touchdowns, nothing handed to anybody, and he ran one in from fifteen himself. And a defensive coach changed a coverage. That is the game, that is frankly the entire game, and everything since four o’clock yesterday is my business making a forty-point win about a man in a headset, because a man in a headset is a better story than a second-year quarterback, and I have watched this business do that for thirty-five years. Nick Uploads did not throw a football yesterday.

We’re not doing that.

Nick Uploads did not catch one either.

Skip. Skip, hold on, because — seven touchdowns on eight red-zone trips. Four for four on fourth down. That is a call sheet, man. That is a man deciding things on a Wednesday and having the stomach to do them on a Sunday, and you can hate the hire and still —

I’ll take your fourth downs. Look, here are mine: twenty-nine carries, eighty-four yards, against the worst defense in the National Football League. Chris, you said that out loud yourself in the last segment and nobody wrote it down. He has coached two football games in his life and he has been out-coached in both of them.

He won them by twenty-eight and forty.

Correct.

So what are you —

Chris, since you have pushed me, I’ll go — I was going there anyway. He is the worst head coach in the National Football League. Today, sitting at 2–0 with more points than any team in football, he is the worst head coach in this league, and I see no reason those two cannot sit next to each other. They are sitting next to each other on this paper.

And now the second quarter. Darnell Savage gave up over a hundred and fifty yards in one quarter of football, a thirty-six-yard touchdown and an eighty-seven-yard touchdown on the first snap after a punt pinned them inside their own fifteen. And the head coach left him out there. I take that man off the field at the first television timeout and I say so at the podium afterward, by name.

He finished with a pick and two balls knocked down.

Because they quit throwing it at him.

That’s not why. Shae, okay, can I — four plays. Second and eight, first drive of the second quarter, they show him one thing before the snap and they are in something completely different by the time he gets to the top of his, uh, of his drop, and it happens again on the very next one, and on the one after that, and —

Who called it, Dan?

I don’t know.

Thank you.

That’s not a — okay. Okay.

Dan.

No, I’m good.

You’ve got the tape.

Yeah, it’s cued. Four plays, a minute ten, the best minute ten anybody played this weekend. I’m going to sit here.

You’re going to sit there.

I’m going to sit here.

Let me give you a comparison and then I will take a breath. I could have coached that football game yesterday. I am seventy-four years old. Not one team, not one practice, not one afternoon of it anywhere. I could have coached that football game and Cleveland wins by thirty.

Skip — Skip, that’s his argument. That is his entire argument. That’s what those people in Cleveland have been saying since January.

It is not.

That is word for word what it is.

It is not, and listen, the difference is that I would not have taken the job. Here is the other one, free. The best thing that could happen to that young quarterback is that football team hiring a real head coach before Thanksgiving.

Now hold on a second. Hold on, hold on, hold on, Skip — Skip! You have done something I did not believe was available to a man on a Monday. You have put me in a position where the only way out of this conversation is for me to say something kind about the Cleveland Browns, and I will not do it, I will not be maneuvered into it. I am not defending an organization that took a hundred and seventeen point six million dollars off its own books in January and got nothing back that plays football, nothing, not one man who plays football, and that number is sitting there while everybody at this desk dances around it. Do not put me in Cleveland, Ohio, Skip. Do not do that to me this morning.

Then agree with me.

I am not agreeing with you either!

Sixty-seven and fifteen, by the way.

What?

Golden State. In 2015. You said sixty-seven, it was sixty-seven and fifteen. I looked it up.

That was fifteen minutes ago, Perk.

And I was right fifteen minutes ago.

Can I do the thing I was going to do before the — hold on. Shae, what was I on?

Fourth downs.

Fourth downs, thank you, Shae. Four for four, and here is where I am on it, and I am going to say it badly, because, I thinkI have been trying to say it since six o’clock this morning and my wife did not want to hear it either. I have watched this team twice now, twice, and I mean, both Sundays I sit down and I wait for the thing this franchise does, you know, the thing everybody in America is waiting for, and it has not come, and I don’t know where to put that. Two weeks against two teams that have not won a game is two weeks against two teams that have not won a game. But man, I have not had this much fun watching a bad idea in years, and I don’t know what that says about me.

Jacksonville and Tampa Bay are 0–4. Say that part on television.

I said it. I said it in the sentence.

Say it slower.

Okay, ninety seconds. Skip, you get the last of it and then we are going to a linebacker, and Dan is going to be allowed to speak in the second hour because I have promised him.

Yep.

Look. The last of it is this. In eleven days that team plays Pittsburgh on a Thursday night with the cornerback they sold to Pittsburgh on the other sideline, and everybody at this desk is going to find out what I have known since January. I will be sitting right here. Nick Upl—

Break.

Second-year linebacker, wears the green dot, that is the stat line. Chris, you first, you have been pointing at that monitor since it went up.

Two picks and four passes knocked down by an off-ball linebacker in one afternoon. And people should know what that does for a defensive lineman, because I was one. When your linebacker plays the pass like that, I mean, the man in front of him gets to be selfish, you know. He gets to just rush. He is not back there worrying about who’s over the back side. Cleveland had four sacks and I would give two of them to the twenty-three-year-old, and he is not on the sheet for either.

What’s a green dot?

Sticker on his helmet. The coach can talk to him.

That’s it?

That’s it.

Man, I have been hearing green dot for eleven years.

I am going to say something good and then take the rest of it back, so enjoy the first half. That is frankly the best young linebacker in the National Football League and I would have him on my football team tomorrow. Second-round pick, twenty-three years old, and he plays every snap like somebody in this sport told him no once and he has not forgotten it. I would watch that man play again tonight if they put it on.

That’s the nicest thing you have said in two years.

Now. Somebody put a sticker on his helmet. Nobody taught him to do that.

And WHO. Was he doing it. To. Because listen, this is the part nobody has said out loud all morning — two interceptions off a man who went number one in this league’s draft and has been in the business nine years, nine years, and a twenty-three-year-old took the football off him twice in one afternoon. One more thing about that organization and then I will let it go for the day.

You will not let it go for the day.

I will not, and you knew that when you booked me. Now, the Glazer family, successful people, you know, they have a trophy nobody can take off them. But you have watched two football games this season and not asked one question out loud, and you have a man down there doing the work of two men and you have let him, because the alternative is admitting something in September. And listen, I have seen what that costs a locker room. I have sat in those rooms and I have seen what it costs.

Cleveland’s head coach has both jobs too, Stephen A.

That is a completely different situation.

How?

Because I said it is, Chris!

(laughing) That’s the answer? That’s the answer he’s giving me on a Monday?

It is the answer, Perk, and you have not said one thing this morning that was about a football.

Sixty-seven and fifteen.

Ninety seconds and then final takes. Anybody hear one thing this morning they did not have on Saturday?

The linebacker, yeah.

Nothing.

I have four plays.