The Really Big Show

RIZZO: Thirty-five to seven. Thirty-five to seven, they were getting nine and a half points, five rookies started, and this football team punted one time. One. Grossi’s in at nine-fifteen, the phones have been gone since about four-thirty yesterday afternoon, Chris says the text line broke. And Pittsburgh lost at home. It’s the Really Big Show on ESPN Cleveland. Get in here.

GOLDHAMMER: Thirty to nothing.

RIZZO: Thirty to nothing! At home! To Atlanta!

OLDACH: Their whole stadium sat there and watched it happen.

RIZZO: Chris, put the standings up for the stream. Cleveland one and oh. Cincinnati one and oh, we’ll get to them. Baltimore oh and one. Pittsburgh oh and one, with Denzel Ward playing corner for them. Their first-round pick in 2027 is ours. Their 2028 is ours. I’ll be saying that four or five more times today.

GOLDHAMMER: Please don’t.

GOLDHAMMER: Can I be the guy? This is a bad day.

RIZZO: Here we go.

GOLDHAMMER: Hear the whole thing. Twenty-eight points on the road, great, wonderful. It’s September, the Jaguars were flat, the country watched them quit somewhere in the second quarter, and now the story is that a man who was making videos for sixty thousand people beat an NFL football team by four touchdowns. That’s like letting a guy who watches a lot of medical shows take out your gallbladder and it goes fine.

OLDACH: It went fine.

GOLDHAMMER: It went fine, and you’d still never let him do it again.

RIZZO: You would if it went fine!

OLDACH: That’s the reason you’d let him do it again.

GOLDHAMMER: Forget the surgery. The surgery is not what I mean.

RIZZO: You brought us the surgery.

GOLDHAMMER: I’ll come back to it and I’ll do it right. Phones. Give me a minute.

RIZZO: The General is in the chair and he has not taken his coat off. Tony.

GROSSI: The nice thing first. That was outstanding. Twenty of twenty-four, eight for eleven on third down, in a hundred-degree stadium, with a rookie snapping the ball. The kid they took ninth, the one every board in America called a reach, had Josh Hines-Allen all afternoon and Hines-Allen was not out there. I liked all of it.

RIZZO: There he is!

GROSSI: And then I got in the car and put on the national, and there is not one person on television this morning saying the word Cleveland with a straight face. They’re doing bits. It’s a segment about a YouTube channel with a score in the corner of it. We won a game by twenty-eight points in somebody else’s stadium and we are still the punchline, we’re just a different punchline than we were Saturday.

GOLDHAMMER: Because it is funny, Tony.

GROSSI: I know it’s funny. I’m not arguing it isn’t funny. Marty was the coach when I started on this beat and I have sat through a hundred of these Mondays, and the ones where we lost, at least it was ours. Dom Capers is in that building. Dom Capers built two football teams out of nothing and coached a defense in a Super Bowl, and he is a senior assistant, and yesterday he stood on a sideline in Jacksonville and watched that. I would give a lot for four minutes with that man and he wouldn’t give me four seconds.

RIZZO: [pause] All right.

GROSSI: Anyway. Phones.

RIZZO: Ronnie in Elyria. Go.

RIZZO: Skip the seats, Ronnie, I’ve got forty of you holding.

RIZZO: No. Nope. Ronnie, we won by twenty-eight and you called a radio station to name a guy. Not today. Next.

OLDACH: He had two breakups.

RIZZO: He had two beautiful breakups and I’m not doing that on a Monday. Dominic in Seven Hills.

RIZZO: One punt.

GOLDHAMMER: You watched who?

RIZZO: [laughing] Chris, are you getting this?

GOLDHAMMER: Dominic, I love you. Jacksonville quit in the second quarter. That number was nine and a half for a reason and it is one game in September against a team the whole market had already —

GOLDHAMMER: — had already written off before the season started.

GOLDHAMMER: I’m not trying to take it off you.

GROSSI: Dominic, you’re right and I’m not touching it.

RIZZO: Chris, get his number. I want him back in hour two.

OLDACH: 271 southbound is stacked from Wilson Mills down, something’s on the shoulder past Chagrin and it has been there since seven. Innerbelt’s clean. Seventy-two today, fifties by Thursday night.

GOLDHAMMER: That’s the best read you do.

RIZZO: It’s the only true one. Land On Demand, whole show ad-free, Grossi’s daily is already up there, he cut it at seven in a bad mood.

GROSSI: I was in a fine mood.

CRUZ: Browns are one and oh. Thirty-five to seven, four hundred thirty-four yards, eight of eleven on third down, and two penalties all afternoon. Two. Tampa Bay next Sunday at one o’clock down there. Around the division, Baltimore lost, Cincinnati won, and Pittsburgh lost thirty to three at home to Atlanta.

GOLDHAMMER: Thirty-three?

CRUZ: Thirty to three.

GOLDHAMMER: They scored?

CRUZ: They kicked a field goal.

RIZZO: Hold on. He has said thirty to nothing on this program eleven times in forty minutes.

GOLDHAMMER: It’s thirty to three. Same thing.

OLDACH: It’s three points different.

GOLDHAMMER: I understand how numbers work, Chris.

RIZZO: Devin, that’s the finest update ever read on this radio station.

RIZZO: He did! He jogged off! Twenty-two years old, three touchdowns, and he walked out of there like a man leaving a bank.

GOLDHAMMER: Needs it to count? I’m the one saying it doesn’t count.

OLDACH: Hang on. Not count. He needs it to not count. There’s a not in there.

GOLDHAMMER: That is a completely different text.

OLDACH: It’s the same text. I put a word in the wrong place.

OLDACH: No.

RIZZO: Carmella in Mentor drove to that game. Carmella. You drove to Jacksonville?

GOLDHAMMER: Carmella, what was it like in there?

GOLDHAMMER: What was it like inside the stadium?

RIZZO: There it is. That’s the one, that’s the whole call.

GOLDHAMMER: We know about the bridge.

RIZZO: Let her do the bridge! She drove fourteen hours. Carmella, do the bridge.

GOLDHAMMER: An hour ago I said something about surgery and it was stupid, and the stream heard the stupid one, so the radio gets the real one. Forget the doctor. I know a guy. I’m not saying his name. Nineteen years. Five organizations. He has moved his kids six times and got two of them out of a house in eleven days once. He’s a quality control coach, which means he is in there at four-forty in the morning cutting somebody else’s tape so a coordinator can look smart at nine, and he makes less than a second-year lawyer, and he is grateful for it, because two hundred men would take it off him tomorrow.

RIZZO: Okay.

GOLDHAMMER: He watched yesterday. I know he watched it. And the hundred and seventeen million is still sitting on this year’s cap this morning and it’ll be sitting there in December. So that’s my Monday. I’m not saying they aren’t one and oh. They’re one and oh.

RIZZO: That’s better than the doctor.

GOLDHAMMER: It’s a lot better than the doctor.

RIZZO: And here’s mine, and it’s smaller than yours. Verse spent the whole fourth quarter talking at their bench with the game already gone. Judkins stiff-armed the same man twice on one run. Delpit had the best day of his career yesterday and he has stood in that locker room for all six years of the other thing. I liked that football team and I have not said that on this radio station in a long time, and I’m not handing it back to a guy in New York with a graphic.

GOLDHAMMER: I didn’t ask you to hand it back.

RIZZO: Tampa Sunday at one. Bowles down there without a defensive coordinator and Baker at quarterback, so that’ll be a relaxing week. Junction Auto Family in Chardon. Grossi’s daily is on Land On Demand. Hour two, phones stay open, and Chris has forty more of these texts and I’ve asked him not to read them.

OLDACH: I’m going to read them.