Joe Flacco found himself thrust into a five-man quarterback room this season after signing a contract with the Cleveland Browns in free agency. He was asked about being a mentor this week, to which he gave an honest answer.
When the Browns signed Joe Flacco to a one-year, $3 million deal, they knew they were going to be without Deshaun Watson and had just traded for Kenny Pickett. What Flacco didn’t realize was that they’d draft two rookie QBs.
37-year-old Flacco still wants to compete in the NFL
Joe Flacco didn’t sign a contract to mentor rookie quarterbacks. He came back to Cleveland to compete for the starting job on a team that doesn’t currently have a starter for the 2025 NFL season.
The 17-year veteran is a Super Bowl champion, he’s been a franchise quarterback, and he knows a thing or two about the process of becoming one. Naturally, his role within a young QB room in Cleveland has been put under the microscope.
Flacco was instrumental to the early development of Lamar Jackson, who took over from him as the franchise quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. Since that 2018 season, Flacco has spent time with the Denver Broncos, New York Jets, and Philadelphia Eagles, back to the Jets, and then onto the Cleveland Browns in 2023.
The veteran was in Indianapolis for a year with rookie Anthony Richardson in 2024, before returning to Cleveland on a one-year deal for 2025.
Flacco has been honest about not watching the NFL draft, and said on Wednesday that his wife told him the team had drafted two rookie QBs.
He was asked about his role as a mentor to both Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, to which he gave an honest answer:
“It’s a good question to bait somebody into answering, and no matter how they answer it, it makes the guy answering it look bad. If I say I don’t want to be a mentor, I look bad. If I say I do want to be a mentor, I look like an idiot who doesn’t care about being good and playing football.”
He continued:
“I tend to try to be honest. I’ve said I’m not a mentor. I play football, and in a quarterback room there’s a lot of times, already, already a ton of times where there are 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. Hopefully, you have a really good relationship with the guys in the room, and you naturally want to do that.”
Flacco and the Browns have a lot of decisions to make
Kevin Stefanski has told the media not to pay any attention to the quarterback reps and rotations during OTAs, as they could change daily. Many are still running with the narrative that Kenny Pickett is the frontrunner for the starting job, as he took the first snaps of the offseason program.
Rich Eisen believes that Flacco will be the Week 1 starter for the Browns matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals, leaning on his experience to get the season started.
Joe Flacco has started 207 career games in the NFL, including 16 postseason games, one of which was the Super Bowl win over the San Francisco 49ers.
The Browns will need to decide whether they want to go with the experience early in the year, versus opting for a young QB that could become the franchise quarterback of the future.
With two first-round draft picks next year, Cleveland will have 17 regular-season games to decide if either Dillon Gabriel or Shedeur Sanders can be the guy they’re looking for, before deciding how to utilize those picks in the 2026 draft.
It’s a crucial year for the franchise as they prepare for life after Deshaun Watson, and right now, there is very little indication of how it will all play out. What we do know is that Flacco is there to compete, and he wants to play.
