Browns QB Joe Flacco: “Being a mentor and coming out and just kind of going along for the ride isn’t getting me off my couch”

Joe Flacco is back with the Browns. The 40-year-old, who spent the last few weeks of the 2023 season in Cleveland, agreed to a one-year, $4 million deal to return as a free agent.

Originally signed to the practice squad, he ended up starting five games during a brief first few months with the Browns. Whether he will get as much action this time around is hard to say but for know, he says it’s great to be back.

“To see familiar faces and a lot of guys that we did some cool things with is always refreshing,” Flacco said after rejoining the team in April. “You look at the past and there’s something that makes you feel good about it, but it mostly just comes down to the people. Not necessarily like the results that we had last time, but the guys in the locker room, having some familiarity with them is a big, big part of it.”

Fierce competition for the quarterback role

What kind of role Flacco will play this time around and whether he will end up as starting QB remains to be seen. He will be competing for a place with Kenny Pickett, Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel - as he wryly told reporters this week, it will probably the first time he has found himself competing for a starting place “since high school, probably my sophomore year”.

Joe was asked how he feels about fighting for the starting QB role when he attended the media after the Browns’ second day of voluntary OTAs. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Listen, I’m not really thinking about it that much honestly. I’m just kinda going out there and doing what I do - everything else is out of my control so all I can do is go out there and play football, that’s what I’m doing”.

During last week’s session, Flacco was regularly seen chatting to Kenny Pickett, who also recently joined the team and the two appear to have already forged a rapport. “We spent a lot of time together, all the quarterbacks do,” Flacco explained. “I think that’s the nature of the beast. When you’re in this business and you’re in a room together a lot, you better ways to get along and find common ground with people. And that’s what we’re doing in there. We’re having a blast and having a lot of fun, talking football and then just laughing at things that come up on a daily basis".

Out of the four candidates for the starting QB position, Flacco is by far the most experienced as well as being the oldest. Pickett is 26 with 30 regular season games and two postseason games under his belt; at 24, Gabriel was selected in this year’s Draft and has yet to make his NFL debut - just like Shedeur Sanders - the 23-year-old who was selected in the fifth round.

Flacco willing to help out younger players but doesn’t see himself as a mentor

Flacco has stated on several occasions that he is not a fan of veteran quarterbacks acting as a mentor for younger players. He elaborated on that on Friday.

“It’s a talking point. You can kind of, like, use it. It’s a good question to bait somebody into answering, and no matter how they answer it kind of makes the guy that’s answering it look bad,” he began. “If I say I don’t want to be a mentor, I look bad. If I say I do want to be a mentor, then I look like an idiot that doesn’t care about being good and playing football...

“So it’s one of those questions that no matter what I say, you guys can write what you want to write about it. And there’s a lot of questions like that and that’s why you end up having to try to avoid them,“ he reasoned. ”I tend to try to be honest and I’ve said I’m not a mentor. I play football. And in a quarterback room, there’s been already a ton of times where there’s learning experiences, and I have a lot of experience, and I can talk on things, and hopefully they listen, but it’s not necessarily, like, my job to make sure they listen to me. And, you know, hey, hopefully you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room, and you naturally want to do that, you know, but that was a long winded answer. But that’s ultimately why I think you guys ask it.

For now, Flacco and the Browns continue working on their game. The players return Tuesday for the last three days of OTA practice then will take part in a mandatory minicamp set for June 10-12.

As for the preseason schedule, Cleveland will travel to Charlotte to face the Panthers on August 8. They then will head to Philadelphia to play the Eagles on August 16 before hosting the Los Angeles Rams at Huntington Bank Field for the final preseason game on August 23.

Date with the Vikings in London

The Browns will play in their first international game in London since 2017, facing the Minnesota Vikings at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on October 5 - the third regular season matchup of the international calendar in the new campaign.

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