QB Carousel: Anthony Lima, 92.3 The Fan Morning Host

Step right up here!

Don't be shy! The Super Bowl is over, but the NFL quarterback carousel is just beginning. You've got to ask yourself a question.

Do I feel lucky? What does the future hold for all 32 NFL teams at the QB position? Now I'm going to give you an opportunity to spin this wheel right here. Let's spin the wheel and find out which teams we hit today. The Cleveland Browns. Alright, so we go from the Lamar Jackson conversation and we'll stay in the AFC North and talk a little brownies with Anthony Lyman.

He does a great job along with Ken Karman, morning drive on Cleveland's 92.3, the fan. Anthony, what's going on? Hey, did you calibrate that wheel? It seems a little bit off. It wasn't supposed to be me today.

Oh, it wasn't? My bad. I apologize. Total shock. Total shock.

I come ill prepared. Oh, okay. I think we were trying to get Karman on anyway and we had to settle for you. He's way better.

He's way better. The good news is he didn't have to apologize to any national figures today, so that's good. What happened there? I missed that. Oh, no. There was a story out of Boston that kind of caught fire today. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I definitely did see that one. Anytime you have to start off a show with an apology, you know that you did something wrong and that's never a good thing. By the way, I have a bone to pick with you, actually.

Perfect. So, sources tell me that you've been invited to come out to Long Island and relax with the great Stu Finer, who I know well and I love Stu, but I hear you're being the pain in the ass in why Ken Karman and Anthony Lima may not be coming to the Finer residence. Look, this is what happens when you have a new baby, a new marriage, a new house, really a new life. And I swear I'm not like undercover or anything. This all happened to me in the last three years. Yeah, I was going to say, I thought you were like the badass, like the badass bachelor of radio is what I always thought of Anthony Lima.

Yeah, now I'm washed and it's all downhill, but if I can get out to Long Island, if I can get to the fortress, the compound of Stu Finer, then I got to find a way to take advantage of it. So you have one child, right? That is it, yes, seven months. Okay, well first off, congratulations. Doesn't Ken have like a football team of children?

He can get away, but you can't? He has three, and unlike everybody else during March Madness, he has not gotten any kind of a surgery to put an end to this once and for all, so it could be more on the way, who knows? Anthony Lima here with us. Alrighty, so where's your confidence?

I know you're one, right? He had the suspension with Deshaun Watson, it was an ugly situation, came back, did not look all that well because he basically didn't play in two years. What do you expect out of Deshaun this year? I think you're underselling how poorly he played.

It was an abomination. I mean, I've watched and been a huge fan on the field of Deshaun Watson, I want to make that clear, and even when the Browns went to the playoffs in 2020 with Baker Mayfield, I was the one guy in town saying, hey, if you had a chance to get a disgruntled quarterback like Deshaun Watson, you've got to do everything you can to get him. Obviously circumstances changed, became very polarizing, a guy that was such an unbelievable quarterback and considered a great guy in the community in Houston. Well, things changed, but that was not in any way, shape, or form for Deshaun Watson in those six games that I saw that I had yearned for and that I had told Cleveland about how much I wanted him. I don't know what that was.

You would expect there to be certainly some rust, but that was more than rust. I mean, he looked like one of the worst starting quarterbacks in the NFL in those six games. And also, when I was watching him, we know how great Nick Chubb is as a running back. I know you just paid Watson $230 million fully guaranteed, but it seemed like they were trying to put a lot on his plate instead of just keeping it simple by giving the ball to Nick Chubb more. Yeah, so the confusion is what exactly was the offense last year with Kevin Stefanski, somebody who had built pretty good offenses with limited quarterbacks.

So the thought was, hey, all of a sudden you can expand the playbook. I know he wasn't in the building until October, couldn't practice with the team until December, but it felt like they really didn't make any inroads at all. And so the hope is, at least from Brown's fans' perspective, is that they are starting the new this offseason, that he's going to build up his chemistry and training camp, and even before that if he gets the opportunity with the players, and that his mechanics in terms of all of a sudden he became the most inaccurate quarterback he's ever been in his career, that those come back and that it's not mental or anything like that. We know the Bengals are the class of this division right now. Who knows what's going to happen with Lamar Jackson? I'm optimistic about Kenny Pickett and the Steelers, but they're not ready to win. And the Browns, it's all about Deshaun Watson.

Who would you say right now is the second best team in the AFC North just wondering? Well, so obviously the Baltimore thing is totally a question mark, and I don't even know if Baltimore is going to be able to recover, even if they somehow reunite and get things mended with Lamar Jackson and whoever the hell is representing him, regardless of what the NFL offices are saying. I mean, that was a bad look for Lamar to not even be with his playoff team and his teammates in the playoffs. That's stuff that some guys don't get over. I mean, you battle all year, you try to get to the postseason, and all of a sudden your quarterback is banged up and doesn't make the trip to support you during the playoffs.

I don't know that that is going to work its way out. Plus, you know, Lamar has regressed the last three years. I don't think there's any question about that, plus injury prone. But if he did come back, I think the Browns are going to be ahead of them. The Steelers, look, the Browns got totally embarrassed in the final week of the season against the Steelers, and that was a game where, yeah, you could say, all right, nothing to play for for the Browns or for Pittsburgh, but that's a rivalry game, and fans had not seen Deshaun Watson play all that well, and he ended up being under fire.

I think he got sacked seven times in that game. It could have been 15 times, and Pickett made some huge third down throws in the second half of that game, and then it became the same old story where the Browns end their season in humiliating fashion against Pittsburgh. I am thinking with some of the moves they made in the offseason, none of them were splash moves, none of them were the sexy, huge name moves, but I think they were the kind of moves, given their cap limitations that they built because they're paying so many guys, I think they do make sense, and I think they have very pragmatic off-season. I know some fans want to go Super Bowl, Super Browns on those moves.

I'm not there quite yet, but I do think that the Browns should be able to finish second in this division. I thought the Amare Cooper move a year ago was a heck of a move, and then Elijah Moore the other day. That's a solid move as well.

Yeah, solid move. He wasn't the receiver fans wanted. I mean, they wanted either DeAndre Hopkins.

There was talk of, you know, Cooks or Hardman, and in the end, they end up getting a guy who was a malcontent in New York, but certainly when he was actually thrown the football, he made plays. Now, I don't love the fact that during a three-game winning streak, he starts spouting off to the media cryptic tweets, and then telling his offensive coordinator in no uncertain terms that they're not friendly. I don't love that because the Browns have not handled players like that well traditionally, and especially in the Stefanski era. You know, we have had issues with guys like Judevian Clowney and obviously Odell Beckham Jr., so this is a bit of a risk, but if Deshaun Watson can get back to who he is, distribute the ball, get everybody involved, and make everybody happy, which is a lot of ifs, but he certainly has the talent, as you know, so that could be a very, very good formula. Where's the relationship at Anthony Lima between Watson and Stefanski?

You know, it's hard to tell. Stefanski doesn't do a lot in the way of opening up now after the season. I think he felt a little bit under fire, and he's going to come out next year when those odds come out of coaches on the hot seat. He's going to be right up there with Josh McDaniels and some of the others, but he all of a sudden started getting out of his shell. He started doing in-studio radio interviews, started going on, you know, national comedy podcasts.

I mean, so he was clearly trying to get out a little bit more. He's been very guarded, and as far as Deshaun Watson, we haven't really seen or heard from him since the season ended, so there's not a lot there in terms of that relationship being public. The big story was, you know, a year ago when the Haslems, the owners of the Browns, and Kevin Stefanski went down to talk to Deshaun Watson in Georgia that they really hit it off, that he really showed them the offense, that they're capable of running and utilizing his talents, and that was a big sales job.

At least that's the story, even though we all know the real story was a lot of money. By the way, Anthony Lima, are you good with the network? I remember last time we had you on, you said that you were upset that you basically got, like, not asked back like three or four times. And then we had to hear Ken Karman again over the weekend, which was just a despicable, despicable act.

I mean, how far down on the pecking order? How many guys called in sick? Did COVID make its triumphant return over there in New York?

I don't know, but Kenny was back. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. Maybe they'll use me for my NBA takes since I don't get to talk much NBA up here in Cleveland. Well, by the way, some people are comparing you to Lamar Jackson because they're saying the refusal to not hire an agent is why you're not back on CBS Sports Radio. That could be an issue.

You know, it's always a negotiation, so always willing to listen. Hopefully my representative doesn't get blackballed by CBS Sports Radio. Yeah, I got some weird requests today about some guy trying to sell fitness and then all this fitness gear and all of a sudden say, oh, Anthony Lima also wants back in on CBS Sports Radio.

I thought that was weird. Hey, listen, it's a lot of talented people there. There's a lot of great opportunity for growth.

Just not necessarily for me. I love the quarterback coach answer from Anthony Lima. Anthony, great to talk to you. Appreciate it. Hey, pleasure to do a great job. Thanks for having me.