BEREA — Grant Delpit made his birthday wish in advance.
An upset win over the Buccaneers and an interception of former teammate Baker Mayfield.
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“Quarterbacks like that, they try to try you,” Delpit, who turns 28 on Sunday, said Friday. “He’s been on the Browns, we’ve seen how it could go one of two ways, you know what I’m saying?
“So hopefully we do what we got to do as a defense and get some things done, man. It’s my birthday on Sunday, so I hope I get a gift.”
Browns S Grant Delpit said Bucs QB Baker Mayfield will test a secondary. Said it can go one of two ways. pic.twitter.com/pUSC5XW7LM
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Delpit, a strong safety, and cornerback Denzel Ward are the only players left from 2021, Mayfield’s last year with the Browns.
“He’s always had confidence. He’s always been talking, gunning the ball,” Delpit said. “I know he hasn’t changed. I think that’s why they like him over there. And it’s going to be cool to go against him.”
Delpit has more on his mind than the matchup with Mayfield. The defense, which ranked No. 4 last year, was torched by the Jaguars in the opening 34-10 loss last week.
Trevor Lawrence went 18-for-23 for 245 yards, four touchdowns and a near-perfect 150.6 passer rating. Jacksonville scored on its first four possessions and six of the first seven.
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“Everybody wants to make a big deal out of Week 1. I want to make a big deal out of that,” said Delpit, who had three tackles and a pass defensed. “That was a disservice to ourselves, that performance that we put out there. We’ve been planning, I’ve been planning our get back all week. It’s time to go feel good again and go get a win on the road.”
The defense had a number of areas to clean up. Most obvious were improving the pass rush, reducing breakdowns in the secondary and tackling better.
“Well, it was a lot of issues,” Delpit said. “It wasn’t pretty. Some games look like that. Obviously we work all camp to be ready for the first game, and it didn’t go our way.
“But it was some Week 1 things that happened in that game. Now that we got our feet wet, settled in, we’re starting to play faster and settling into the defense more.”
The Browns also didn’t force a turnover.
Mayfield should provide opportunities.
He lost three fumbles in Tampa Bay’s opening 33-27 loss to the Bengals and led the league in fumbles in 2024 (13) and 2025 (11). He also threw a league-high 16 interceptions in 2024 and 11 more last year.
“Any defense, you try to mess with the quarterback, try to get under his head, make him a little nervous back there,” Delpit said. “Get his feet going, get him to turn the ball over.
“I know quarterbacks in general, they don’t like getting sacked, they don’t like pressure on them.”
Defensive end Jared Verse didn’t have a pressure in his Browns debut against the Jaguars, tackle Mason Graham had the only sack and tackle Maliek Collins and linebacker Carson Schwesinger added the only other quarterback hits. Without Myles Garrett, the Browns are going to have to figure out a way to affect the quarterback after 53 sacks a year ago.
“We did struggle to get pressure,” Delpit said. “The guys upfront owned it. The backend, we owned our mistakes in coverage. So everybody knows that we can be better. And I got full faith in our front four.”
Mike Rutenberg was in his first game as a defensive coordinator and play caller and went with more zone coverage than the Browns routinely played under his predecessor, Jim Schwartz. Too many Jaguars receivers ran wide open.
“Of course, there’s growing pains. Anything new is new,” Delpit said. “So learning how Rudy thinks, learning what he likes to call in the heat of the moment, learning what he likes to lean on, what he doesn’t really like. Him learning his players.
“You can practice all you want, but in the game, when the fire’s going, that’s when you really find out about each other. Week 1, it happened. Move on. Week 2, let’s go.”
Schwesinger didn’t accept the premise that playing more zone was the problem.
“That’s not the reason,” he said. “We just weren’t executing what we were supposed to do. I think we all had turns of not being where we’re supposed to be. And when you don’t play sound like that, the result is what happened.”
Ward cautioned against overreacting.
“I don’t think it’s the end of the world,” he said. “I don’t think that we’re not capable of playing zone or we can only play one thing, but we just got to do our job.”
Rutenberg was asked if philosophically he prefers zone.
“All I care about is putting our players in the best position and letting their awesome talents fly,” he said. “And whatever we have to do to do that, we’re going to do that.”
“I think that’ll come throughout the season,” Ward said. “You’re going to learn to see what guys do best and whether we’re better in man, better in zone and certain coverages. So we may play some zones better than other zones and man better than some zones. So I think it’s a learning process throughout each game and how we match up with guys and what we do best.”
A final piece is communication.
“Whether you’re in man or zone, being able to be ahead of plays, we call it actually counterterrorism,” defensive backs coach/pass game specialist Brandon Lynch said. “We say ‘see something, say something.’ So if you’re in man, you need to say something so that we can be ahead of some of our split issues. When you’re in zone, exact same deal.
“So when an offense presents certain sets, certain field positions, we want to make sure that we’re not just holding it to ourself. We want to communicate it to the whole defense so we can arrive violent and execute.”
