Joe Flacco is one of four quarterbacks competing to be the Cleveland Browns’ 2025 starting quarterback, the other three being Kenny Pickett, a 2022 first-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and rookies Dillon Gabriel (pick No. 94) and Shedeur Sanders (pick No. 144).
Of that bunch, the 40-year-old Flacco has, by far, the most starting experience (191 NFL starts) and played for the Browns under head coach Kevin Stefanski in 2023.
Does Flacco think he should be a mentor for the team’s otherwise young quarterback room? He provided a detailed answer.
“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 on Wednesday, according to 92.3 The Fan. “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 a lot of times, already, there’s been 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. Hopefully, you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room, and you naturally want to do that.”
Flacco also said that “the best way to be a mentor, honestly, is to show people how you go to work.”
[Related: Browns’ Kenny Pickett on Eagles’ stint: ‘Was shown how it’s supposed to be done’]
The veteran signal-caller spent the 2024 NFL season with the Indianapolis Colts. Starting in six games and appearing in eight games altogether, Flacco totaled 1,761 passing yards, 12 passing touchdowns, seven interceptions and a 90.5 passer rating, while completing 65.3% of his passes.
In what became Flacco’s final season with the Baltimore Ravens (2018), the franchise selected quarterback Lamar Jackson with the No. 32 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, and Jackson later became the team’s starter down the stretch of the regular season with Flacco suffering a hip injury; Flacco was activated later in the season, but Jackson remained the team’s starter. Baltimore traded Flacco to the Denver Broncos in the ensuing offseason.
Flacco was also with the New York Jets from 2020-22, with him being in the same quarterback room as Zach Wilson, whom the team selected with the No. 2 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
In his first stint with the Browns (2023), Flacco started five regular-season games, totaling 1,616 passing yards, 13 passing touchdowns, eight interceptions and a 90.2 passer rating, while completing 60.3% of his passes. Cleveland went 4-1 in those five games, with Flacco helping it earn an AFC wild-card berth.
Flacco and the Browns open the 2025 regular season at home against the AFC North and in-state rival Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 7 (1 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app).
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