S Grant Delpit (7.29.23)
So, Grant, can you just address being in pads, the first full-speed padded practice? How did it go once you got out there?
“It’s great. We haven’t been in pads in a year, since January. It was a good feeling to be back in action, full speed. Get some thuds and be smart at the same time. Don’t want nobody hurt. It’s good. Get out there and compete.”
How’s this first week of camp been, being down here and everything that’s gone into it?
“Yeah. First time in West Virginia, man. It’s been lovely. They are great people. They’re showing us love all throughout the resort [and] in the area. Treat them with respect. It’s good to get away from home for a little bit, be around your teammates and learn some things that you probably wouldn’t have known otherwise.”
Grant, just talk about your own season that you hope to have. How do you feel like you’ve done sort of to this point? And how much more is there to you that fans haven’t seen yet?
“It’s a loaded question. Wait and see. I missed my first year. I’m always wanting to do more, I have way more to give. As a team, we have way more to give. That’s what we’re working on right now. I have high expectations for myself – the highest, and I’m going to hold myself to that. And we need to start fast this season, especially with our three division games in the first four weeks, so we won’t expect anything else.”
What do you expect from yourself? Like, what are some of your personal goals? What are you expecting to show?
“Greatness, man. Greatness. I haven’t shown any to myself. I haven’t shown anything yet. Greatness. And that comes from being out here every day, putting in the work. You can’t have any excuses when it comes to getting on that field. You can’t take plays back when you get to the season. Right? As the defense as a whole, that’s communication, that’s technique, that’s anything. We’re going to perfect that out here. We get to week one, the game is already won by then.”
Grant, how much is your contract situation in your mind heading into the season being the last year of that rookie deal?
“That’s not on my mind, man. I play this football – I love this game with everything in my heart, man. I want that end game, the end result that we all want in this team more than anything in my soul. So that’s all I’m focused on, man. With winning comes great things and that’s what we focus on.”
This is the place you want to be long-term?
“Of course, man. Of course. I built a brotherhood with these guys. These guys are my brothers and I expect highly from them, they expect highly from me. And I’ve grown to know these guys and I love them and we’ll go out there and get it done this season.”
When you say that you haven’t shown anything yet, do you feel like a lot of that had to do with the fact that you ruptured your Achilles in your first season and it’s a long hard road back?
“No, I don’t think. A lot of guys deal with injury. I’m just hard on myself, I guess. I just expect greatness from myself, that’s all I’m saying. So y’all take that how you want to, but I just know I have so much more to give.”
What would that look like?
“I don’t know. You might be writing some good things about me. That’s what it might look like. But no, man, of course, being around the ball, getting to the ball, just making plays, being that leader in the defense, taking control. Being that voice, being that nervous center of the defense, to just get everybody on the same page and be that guy that people can see that is out there every day.”
How can Jim Schwartz’s defense help you achieve that greatness that you’re looking for?
“So we have a great D line. DBs love that. When they get after the quarterback, man, good things happen for DBs and as long as we stick in coverage and as long as we – alignment, technique, sound, it’s going to be good things for us.”
Is this a defense where the safeties can really jump off the screen or the page, so to speak, and really shine and make a huge impact?
“I don’t know. I feel like in every defense you can have that. It’s an attack defense. We’re aggressive, we’re not sitting back, we’re not conservative. We’re not playing just to tag runners and give up yards, we want to go make the plays. We want to be aggressive and we want to go make something happen.”
You have two new safeties playing alongside you – top three. Does that put more responsibility on you having been here before at all?
“Yeah. I know the lay of the land. These are new guys, but Rodney (McLeod) is on year twelve, Juan (Thornhill) is on year six and made it to two Super Bowls. Rodney’s been to one. So those guys know what it takes to get there. I know the coaching here – the atmosphere they’re going to bring and the mentality, it’s all going to work hand in hand.”
What have you learned about Juan?
“Juan’s a playmaker, man. He’s a very smart guy, University of Virginia – very smart guy, recently married, too. Shout out to Juan. And he’s just a guy that brings that same mentality every day. And he knows what it takes. Like I said, he knows what it takes to get to that big game. You want to always have guys like that around. That’s our end goal as a team.”
Do you guys talk about that, what it took those teams to get there and what it was like? The journey of the Super Bowl?
“Yeah, little things. Little things, as far as being out here at camp, some things we could work on, staying after practice, working on some things. And just making it as game-like as possible as the season goes on. Those pieces, those plays, they mean more and more. To the end is where we’re trying to get.”
Do you feel like, I know Super Bowl first, but is the Pro Bowl an individual bowl that you have for yourself this year?
“I don’t care about a Pro Bowl, really. That’s a fan bowl and I’m not worried about that.”
What’s Coach (Ephraim) Banda that brought to that?
“Coach Ephraim, he’s great. Coach Ephraim, he actually recruited me coming out of college to go to Miami. I went on a visit to Miami and everything, and he was a great coach. And in my heart, I always knew I was going to LSU, so there’s really nothing he could do to get me to go there. He makes – he simplifies things. He’s a great communicator, he makes sure that we know exactly what we’re doing on every play, man. And he’s his first year in the league, so he has something to prove as well as we do, so we’re going to make it happen.”
Were you pretty fired up then when you heard?
“Oh, yeah. I was one of his first calls. Had to make sure I still had his number saved from five years ago, six years ago or so.”
Did you text him? Well, when he got hired.
“Well, no he called me. I didn’t know. I found out like y’all. I had the number saved when I answered.”
You’ve added to your routine in terms of getting ready for a season as you’ve kind of gone through these last three, four years?
“It’s pretty much the same. Are you talking about offseason and stuff?”
“Offseason, yeah. That kind of preparation.”
“First of all, in your offseason, you want to make sure that you relax a little bit at the same time and travel a little bit. Just take time away with your family and stuff like that. That’s very important because you don’t want to get too broke up into this – you’ll never get an escape. We’re here now. But of course, you want to get your work done for those months that we’ve done. And I do a great job of that. A lot of our guys do. Make sure that we get together, too. Whenever we can, we build a camaraderie on this team that’s going to last.”
Look like you were in some cool places. What was your favorite?
“Where’s my favorite? I don’t know, man. I know you all saw probably, I went to Paris a little bit for Fashion Week. But I just do stuff just to do it, to be honest. Like meeting people and doing things that when I was young I would never thought I’d be able to do. Most people are always like, ‘We used to have safeties like Ed Reed and guys like Ray Lewis, they don’t care how about how they look when they get to the game.’ But me, I just like doing other stuff. It’s the world we’re in now, and that’s kind of a good escape for me.”
When you look at big plays and impact plays that you would like to make this year, how important are the takeaways to you? Forced fumbles, recoveries, interceptions. And do you have a number on any of those things that you’d like to get?
“The Cleveland Browns are 23 and six in the past four or five years that we are even or better in the turnover ratio. So that number needs to be higher. We need to set ourselves up right. Defense, we need to go get the ball – Ball in the air is ours. Offense, don’t give it away. That’s like one of the most important stats in football is that turnover ratio and we need to be top, leading the league.”
Is there something you can do? What is it that you can do, preparation wise to be able to increase that number in terms of as a team?
“Like I said, make it hard on the quarterback. You don’t want to make stuff easy. Stuff like bus coverages, stuff like misalignments and stuff like that. That’s going to make it easy on them. Takeaways have a lot to do with the quarterback as well. Just making a throw that he might – in sticky coverage and stuff like that. We want to make it hard on them. Quarterbacks are too good, man, it’s the NFL. They’ll tear you up if you allow them to. So we just need to be sounding.”
Grant, what were your thoughts when you saw Joe Burrow go down with the calf injury and then what are your thoughts now seeing more about it?
“I hated to see it. I think it was just a calf strain, correct? So, I’m very glad for that because if you know about that achilles and you don’t want anybody to go through that. Shout out to Joe. I think he’s doing. He’ll probably be all right by the time the season comes around. We want to see him week one too, it’s always a fun game to have and we want everybody at their full potential.”
Have you reached out to him?
“Not yet, but I’m sure I will.”
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