92.3 has the Browns broadcast and the morning drive, and on the Friday before an opener it has every line
lit before the second sponsor read. Carman has had this shift since 2015. Lima came over from weekends in
2017 and has never once been on time. Nick Zubelewicz, whom the show calls Zubes, runs the board and the
drops. Three callers made air out of a screen that Zubes says was forty-one deep at one point. Cut for length
from the video simulcast; the 9:40 Guardians block is not here.
6:41 a.m. · The open
CARMAN: Before the phones, and I want this on the record, because in about eleven weeks somebody is going to play me back and I want the tape clean. Are you ready. Two first-round draft picks is a piece of paper. It is a piece of paper in a drawer in Berea. You cannot line it up at corner. You cannot ask it to tackle Brian Thomas Jr. in the flat. Nothing that happened in August has ever won a football game in this city, and I have been here for all of the Augusts, Anthony. All of them.
LIMA: You liked Colt McCoy.
CARMAN: I loved Colt McCoy.
LIMA: You had a Colt McCoy —
CARMAN: Do not. Not this morning.
[DROP: CARMAN, 2010 — “THIS KID IS A WINNER, AND I WILL NOT BE MOVED OFF IT”]
CARMAN: Zubes, you have had that cued since six o’clock. You came in early to cue that.
ZUBES: I came in early for the coffee.
LIMA: There is no coffee. There has not been coffee in this station since the ice machine thing.
CARMAN: We are not doing the ice machine.
LIMA: Somebody took an ice machine out of this building and no one has ever explained it to me.
CARMAN: Sunday. One o’clock, Jacksonville, ninety-one degrees, nine and a half points. That is the largest number this football team has been given in an opener in my lifetime, and Zubes looked it up after me because he does not trust me, and he got the same answer. Nine and a half. Five rookies starting. The center is a rookie. The right tackle is a rookie. And in behind them is a kid that half of this country wants to watch fail on purpose.
LIMA: Here we go.
CARMAN: And I am fine! I am fine, Anthony, I feel great, I slept like a baby, because after twenty-seven years the only thing that can hurt me is hope, and I have been inoculated. I am a man who has been vaccinated against this franchise. Let’s go to the phones.
LIMA: That is four minutes.
CARMAN: Deb in Strongsville. 92.3, go ahead, sweetheart.
7:04 a.m. · The phones
DEB, STRONGSVILLE: Hi, hon. First off, we have had seats since 1985, my husband’s company had them and then we had them, and I do not know as much as the men who call you.
CARMAN: Nobody who calls me knows anything. Go.
DEB: I want the fullback to get the ball.
LIMA: Burton.
DEB: Michael Burton. He is thirty-four years old and he is older than everybody out there and I saw him on the internet carrying a rookie’s pads and I said, that man is going to score a touchdown for us. So on the one-yard line, give it to him. Not the little guys. Him.
CARMAN: Deb, I have had this job for a long time and that is the correct answer to every question ever asked about the goal line, and every coach who has ever worked here has been too embarrassed to do it.
DEB: And can I ask you what the big slot is? My son-in-law keeps saying Delpit is in the big slot and I could not tell you the first thing about it and I did not want to ask him.
CARMAN: Deb, I am going to tell you what matters about Grant Delpit, and it has nothing to do with where he stands. In 2020 they drafted him and he tore something before he played a down. He has been here for the sale, the firing, the Watson thing, the stadium, all of it. He is the last man standing from before, and Sunday he is going to be the oldest thing about this football team, and he is twenty-seven.
DEB: So it is a position.
CARMAN: It is a position. Thank you, Deb.
LIMA: She asked you a yes or no question and you gave her a documentary.
CARMAN: Bolt Roofing, Middleburg Heights, family owned since 1994, and they did my mother’s roof in March and did not charge her for the gutters, and I did not ask them to. Bolt Roofing. Tell them the Fan sent you. Hold on, everybody, we are going to traffic and then we are going to Berea.
8:35 a.m. · Back to the phones
CARMAN: Donny in Wickliffe has been holding since seven-ten and Zubes says he is hot. Donny. 92.3.
DONNY, WICKLIFFE: Kenny. Seats since 1969. My grandfather, then my father, then me, and I have never missed a home opener including the year I had the surgery.
CARMAN: Understood.
DONNY: Pittsburgh.
CARMAN: I know.
DONNY: No, Kenny. Pittsburgh. You are all sitting there doing the math on the picks and I am telling you I do not care about the math. I do not care if they gave us four ones and a truck. You do not hand Denzel Ward to Pittsburgh. You do not do it. My father worked thirty-one years at the plant with a man named Bill Prokop who wore a Steelers hat to my father’s funeral. To the funeral, Kenny.
LIMA: Donny, if the deal is that good you take it from anybody.
DONNY: Anthony, you are from Michigan.
LIMA: I am from Willowick!
DONNY: Then you know better.
CARMAN: He has got you. Anthony, he has got you, and you know he has got you, because there is a road that runs from here to that city and the whole middle of it is people who have to eat dinner together. That is what this is. It has never been two cities glaring at each other from a distance. It is a wedding where forty percent of the room is wearing yellow.
DONNY: Thank you.
CARMAN: Donny, one thing, and I want you to hear me. If those two picks turn into a left tackle and a pass rusher, in four years you will not remember being mad this morning.
DONNY: I will remember.
CARMAN: He will remember. Gino in Painesville, take us home.
GINO, PAINESVILLE: KEN. Are we not having the greatest week of our lives.
CARMAN: Somebody is happy!
GINO: Two ones! Out of PITTSBURGH! For a man who wanted to leave anyway! We got the 2028 and the 2029.
LIMA: Twenty-seven and twenty-eight.
GINO: Twenty-eight and twenty-nine.
LIMA: Gino, it is a first in twenty-seven and a first in twenty-eight. It was in every story.
GINO: Right, and then the year after.
LIMA: There is no year after. There are two picks.
GINO: Anthony, I am telling you what I read.
CARMAN: Let him have it! Let the man have it, Anthony, it is Friday, he is happy, he is the only happy person who has called this show since the draft. Gino, how many are we winning.
GINO: Nine.
CARMAN: Nine!
GINO: And I have not watched one preseason snap. Not one. I do not watch until it counts. My wife thinks I am insane.
CARMAN: Your wife is correct and you are my favorite caller of the year.
9:22 a.m. · The last block
LIMA: Forty minutes left and I want you to say the thing you are going to say, because you have been circling it since eight o’clock and it is making you strange.
CARMAN: I am going to say it. Anthony, this is the best week this football team has had since I have been on the radio in this city and I am counting the playoff win. Two ones. Out of that city. In August, when we were all told we would be begging in November and eating salary to do it. A future Hall of Fame receiver looked at a roster nobody has winning five games and picked us on purpose, and I have read everything written this week and I still cannot explain it. And a quarterback this entire country argues about runs out of that tunnel Sunday in our uniform, and whatever you think about him, and I have changed my mind about him four times since March —
LIMA: Six.
CARMAN: — you are going to watch. You are going to watch every snap. Nobody in this city is going to be doing yard work at one o’clock on Sunday.
LIMA: At six-forty-one this morning you told me a first-round pick was a piece of paper in a drawer.
CARMAN: It is a piece of paper. What does that have to do with what I just said.
LIMA: Nothing. It has nothing to do with it.
CARMAN: Thank you.
[DROP: CARMAN, 2010 — “THIS KID IS A WINNER, AND I WILL NOT BE MOVED OFF IT”]
CARMAN: Zubes, I will end you.
LIMA: Monday we are going to be a very different show.
CARMAN: Monday we will be inconsolable and we will be excellent at it. Bolt Roofing. Baskin and Phelps are next.
Transcribed from the 92.3 The Fan video simulcast, Friday, September 11, 2026, 6:00–10:00 a.m. ET.
Traffic, weather, the 7:52 Fix My Life block, the Daryl Ruiter hit at 8:12, the 9:40 Guardians segment
and four sponsor reads are not included. Caller names are as
given on air.
