At 40 years old, with gray in his beard and wisdom to share, Joe Flacco could easily be mistaken for a coach.
Kenny Pickett, one of Flacco’s three competitors for the starting quarterback job, made it clear that’s not how anyone thinks of Flacco, who throws the best ball of anyone on the Browns.
“He’s not a coach. I don’t want anyone to say that, but it’s like having another coach, a guy that’s played that much football,” Pickett said last week during organized team activities. “You could bounce ideas off of, ask him what he saw, how he would read certain things earlier in his career. There’s just so many things, small things that you can learn, just having that normal open dialogue that we have in the quarterback room.”
Not a coach. Got it.
The mentor discussion gets a little trickier.
Pickett is in his fourth season in the NFL, and Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders are rookies. Flacco is in Year 18, was Super Bowl MVP for a championship team and has won 105 games and thrown for 45,697 yards.
He’s willing to share his valuable experience and knowledge. Just don’t expect that to be his top priority.
He gave an insightful answer when asked why reporters often question an older quarterback about his willingness to serve as a mentor.
“It’s a good question to bait somebody into answering and no matter how they answer it, it kind of makes the guy that’s answering it look bad,” Flacco said. “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, that’s why you end up having to try to avoid them.
“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 my job to make sure they listen to me. And, hey, hopefully you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room and you naturally want to do that.”
The basis for Flacco’s stance is that he believes he can still play at a high level.
“I see myself as a guy that can play in this league, so if your main focus was just like, ‘Hey, bud, I’m going to get you ready,’ you’re just not taking care of business,” he said. “The best way to be a mentor, honestly, is show people how you go to work. And, like I said, hope that they pick up on that stuff but not necessarily force them to pick up on the things that you do.”
Pickett is considered Flacco’s top competition for the starting job, and the battle will continue this week with the second round of OTAs and next week at mandatory minicamp. Despite the high stakes of the competition, the foursome gets along well and works together to improve.
“It’s open dialogue in the quarterback room where he’s not a coach but you know have so much respect for his time in the NFL where you’re asking questions, he’ll ask you questions of what I saw when he was in there,” Pickett said. “It goes both ways. So, not a coach, not a coach, but he’s an awesome guy to have in the room to really talk through this system that he’s been in before especially, and systems like it. It’s been good.”
Flacco said Sanders has asked him about footwork and Gabriel has tried to mimic his cadence.
“There’s questions and things and conversations that are happening and they’re fun,” Flacco said. “We spend a lot of time together. That’s the nature of the beast. When you’re in this business and you’re in a room together a lot, you better find ways to get along and find common ground with people and that’s what we’re doing in there. They all seem to be great guys, and guys that want to play well and get better. And so I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Flacco’s redux with the Browns has more layers than an onion.
He came off the couch in 2023 to lead them to the playoffs by throwing for 300 yards in four straight December wins. He wasn’t re-signed in 2024 despite wanting to return, with the Browns choosing Jameis Winston to back up Deshaun Watson, partly to avoid fans and perhaps teammates wanting Flacco to start over Watson.
Flacco was signed this year after Pickett was acquired in a trade with the Eagles and before Gabriel and Sanders were drafted. Flacco could very well provide the best chance to win, especially early in the season, but isn’t the long-term answer the franchise hopes to find.
He has great familiarity with the offensive system coach Kevin Stefanski’s returning to and will benefit from an entire offseason with the team as opposed to his November arrival in 2023.
“There’s probably some validity to that,” Flacco said. “I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t any level of being a little bit more comfortable being here just because you’re familiar with your surroundings and things like that.
“It’s lot of similar concepts. There may be some new names and new ways we’re kind of teaching things, but ultimately a lot of the core stuff is pretty similar.”
Given his experience overall and with the offense, the coaches could give some of his practice repetitions to his competitors without him falling behind.
“There’s probably some truth in that,” Flacco said. “At the same time, I like getting reps. I love, I have fun going out there and I want to throw to these guys.”
Not coach them.
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