BEREA, Ohio — Joe Flacco and David Njoku sat on the end of the bench late in the Browns’ preseason finale over the Rams, kicking their legs up and down like two 4-year-olds at recess instead of the Super Bowl MVP quarterback and Pro Bowl tight end that they are.
Earlier in the game, with the veterans done for the night and the backups in, Flacco tried on Njoku’s color-changing smart glasses, and marveled at how it made the Rams’ blue even more vibrant. He looked like Joe Cool in his shades, and not the 40-year-old, Kohl’s cash dad from New Jersey that he is.
They’re an unlikely pair, the 29-year-old wild child with the two-toned braids, and the buttoned-down, neatly-coiffed father of five. But there they were a few weeks ago, cruising around in a decked-out ATV while singing along to ear-splitting classic rock.
“JOE FLACCO!” Njoku belted out mid-song, drawing a hearty laugh from his salt-and-pepper bearded friend.
Heading into his 18th season when he opens Sunday at home against the Bengals, Flacco is fitting right in with these Cleveland Browns, even in the midst of a youth movement. He’s laughed in the face of Father Time, and is gearing up to become the 18th NFL quarterback to start a game after his 40th birthday. He’s also the eighth 40-something to start on opening day.
“You want to be a kid, hang around with kids,” Flacco’s dad, Steve, said. “Do what the kids do.”
As Flacco likes to say, he’s old enough to be some of these guys’ father. In fact, Shedeur Sanders was born the same year Flacco was throwing 90 mph fastballs on the Audubon High baseball team in New Jersey as a senior.
But the 17-year age gap didn’t stop Sanders from attaching himself to the hip of Flacco in training camp, making him crack up between drills, and trying to get him to do the “schmoney” dance. Flacco refused to “hit” the arm-flapping, knee-bending moves, and won’t be dancing on social media anytime soon.
But the clock isn’t TikToking on Flacco the way it has most of his contemporaries, and that’s no accident.
Tom Brady’s famous avocado ice cream? OK, that’s cool, but did he actually grow his own avocados like Flacco will be able to do soon when the huge garden being built in the backyard of his new home is done?
And Aaron Rodgers’ darkness retreat? Flacco will raise you one Ojibwe sweat lodge ceremony, with huge benefits in a fraction of the time.
Flacco the Fitness Freak
While Brady, who played until he was 45, and Rodgers, who’s starting for the Steelers this weekend at the age of 41, have made plenty of headlines for their woo-woo age-defying methods, Flacco comes off as a meat-and-potatoes, boy-next-door type who must have been blessed with great genes.
Truth is, he’s as much of a wellness freak as the other two.
During the NFL lockout year of 2011, Flacco and his brothers started training at a facility in Barrington, New Jersey, where Brian Kane, a certified athletic trainer, worked. With plans to start his own wellness business in the works, Kane offered to personally train Flacco, but the young QB, drafted by the Ravens at No. 18 overall in 2008 out of Delaware, wasn’t interested at first. About a week later, Kane and his wife attended an Alzheimer’s fundraiser in Philadelphia, and were seated right in front of Flacco and his now wife, Dana.
“I turned around and I said, ‘Hey, Joe,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, you’re the guy from the gym,’” Kane said.
The conversation quickly turned to training, and Flacco asked Kane what his certifications were and if he thought he could handle the job.
“I said absolutely,” Kane said. “He gave me his number and we started training the very next day,” Kane said.
So began a transformation of 25-year-old Flacco into the now Ageless Wonder who can still hurl the football like it was shot out of a Jugs machine set on high, and run circles around his younger counterparts in camp.
On one 90-degree day last month, while some teammates wilted in the heat, Flacco showed up for his podium interview looking cool as one of the cucumbers in his green smoothie.
“There’s part of me that wishes we were doing three-hour practices because I could show that I could last through those, too,” he said. “It’s not that much of an accomplishment to kind of come out here and make it through a training camp, but I do feel like if I were grinding three hours, two and a half hours every day, I could still go through that. I wish I could show that a little bit.
“A lot of it is taking care of your body and learning how to do that. You gain knowledge as you’re in the league. Throughout my football career I’ve had a couple injuries, but most of all I’ve been pretty fortunate on just what I’ve been given and the situations I’ve been given.”
During camp, Flacco was the only one of the four quarterbacks involved in the battle for the starting job not to get injured, despite the other three being 14 to 17 years younger. Kenny Pickett suffered a hamstring injury on Day 4 that cost him his big opportunity here (he was traded to the Raiders for a fifth-round pick), and rookie Dillon Gabriel suffered one about a week later that set him back. Sanders sustained an oblique injury (side abdominal muscle) that robbed him of a chance to participate in pivotal practices against the Eagles.
Flacco? He breezed through camp with nary a sore pinkie, and never missed a snap.
“I knew he wasn’t going to get hurt,” Kane said. “We movement screen him on a regular basis. I’m always checking his mobility, stability and symmetry. We know when something’s not feeling right, how to backtrack to the source and identify where that issue is coming from and then immediately attack the problem rather than chasing pain. I’ve been working with him for 15 years now, so I know his body inside and out.”
A bio-specific nutrition plan
Kane, who owns Evolution Fitness in Barrington, New Jersey, began by overhauling Flacco’s diet, transitioning him from processed foods to whole foods.
“Basically, nothing in a box, bag or can,” Kane explained.
He tailored Flacco’s food plan to his blood chemistry and body type, with clean, whole food delivered to his house from an Amish food co-op in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
“We had people grocery shopping for him and really just providing everything that he really needed to simplify the plan for him,” Kane said. “Because getting into a bio-specific nutrition plan can be a little challenging, we made it as simple as possible. And he’s been pretty much dedicated to that plan. Once he really grasped the concepts and understood what he was doing, he’s been pretty much working that plan on his own for the past three or four years.”
The plan includes natural supplements to support his recovery, and plenty of raw foods, including sauerkraut and apple cider vinegar drinks. The plan became a family affair, with his wife, kids and the extended Flacco Flock joining in. Kane is also building a large garden in the backyard of the Flacco’s new Haddonfield, New Jersey, home, similar to his own.
“We really built up his microbiome so we could keep him healthy and make sure his body was recovering fully,” Kane said. “It includes the appropriate types of proteins because we really had to put some weight on him so he could have the protection that he needed from taking the big hits.”
He recalled watching Flacco walk out of a Ravens game one day early on, all hunched over and in pain.
“I called him and I was like, ‘You look like a question mark, man,’” Kane said. “His posture was really out of shape. It really opened my eyes to building his structural foundation from the inside out so he could sustain his career. He had really good protection in those days and was surviving off talent, but he needed a stronger foundation for longevity.”
Now, Flacco walks out of the game the same way he walks in, at his full 6-foot-6 height, having withstood the multiple “car accidents” that take place during a game from violent collisions with the likes of edge rushers such as Cincinnati’s Trey Hendrickson and Green Bay’s Micah Parsons.
Taking the plunge and walking barefoot in the snow
Kane’s nutritional overhaul for Flacco coincided with a multi-faceted holistic body care program that has kept him operating more like his Super MVP-self of 2012 than a typical, achy 40-year-old contemplating knee surgery and reaching for the cholesterol meds.
It’s led to Flacco transforming his new home into a mini-health retreat, complete with a cold-plunge tub, sauna in the backyard, infrared bed and red light therapy, all designed for recovery and extreme wellness.
“He has mini health spa upstairs, and then his gym is downstairs,” said Kane, who trains Flacco four-to-five days a week in the offseason, and occasionally during the season. “We’re taking advantage of the morning cold plunge and evening saunas. Now we’re going to start to experiment a little bit more with the red light therapy.”
Kane also has Flacco walking barefoot — grounding — to connect to the Earth’s natural electrical field for healing, and not just on the warm, summer grass.
“When you introduce your body to walking in the snow barefoot, it stimulates an entirely new type of metabolism,” Kane said. “It activates ancient chemistry that we don’t even know too much about yet, but we know that it’s really beneficial for our health. So we’ve incorporated things like that into his training program.”
The extremes of cold and heat strengthen the body’s ability to adapt to stress, and have helped prepare Flacco for the demands of football.
“We kind of build his foundation and then every year we reset him and make sure his body’s moving really well,” Kane said. “I built him an offseason plan that’s shifts from basic training into weightlifting and building his arm back up, and then building in his mobility and getting more sports specific and explosive right before the preseason starts.”
A late bloomer who didn’t stop growing until college, Flacco’s body was still relatively young, developmentally, when Kane began working with him, and “we were able to build just a really great foundation of strength and stability.”
Flacco is the only NFL player Kane trains, but he works with numerous doctors and people from all walks of life. He recently trained Josh Rivera, who played late Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez in the FX series “American Sports Story,” and all of the football players for that 10-part series. Last year, he trained actor Glenn Powell and a bunch of NFL players and other football players for the new Hulu comedy series “Chad Powers.”
The Ojibwe sweat lodge and sound healing
While Rodgers, 41, has his darkness retreats and ayahuasca plant-based psychedelic mind-expanding experiences, Flacco has his Ojibwe sweat lodge ceremony and soon-to-come sound healing therapies.
An adventuresome Flacco has joined Kane in a powerful, healing grizzly-bear sweat lodge ceremony, introduced to him by Kane’s good friend in the Native American Ojibwe tribe.
“It’s a cleansing process that they do,” Kane said. “They usually put anywhere from 36 to 42 hot stones in a hole in the ground and you’re enclosed in a chamber and they do rounds of songs and prayers. It’s like an extreme sauna. You sweat and sweat and sweat and then they’ll open that up. They usually do about four rounds for all the primary cardinal directions, north, south, east and west.
“Expanding the knowledge of nature has been really been a benefit to me and my clients.”
Kane also plans to incorporate more sound healing into his work with Flacco and others. He plays the didgeridoo, flute, fujara and hand pan.
“We’re trying to hit all of the bases and close the loop of health for people here,” he said.
Absence made the heart grow younger
Flacco’s absence from the game for the first 10 weeks of 2023 before the Browns signed him off the couch has also contributed to his renewed vitality.
For the first time since he was a young multi-sport kid growing up in Jersey, he didn’t have a team or the camaraderie of the locker room. Now, when Njoku belts out, “I love you, man,” during a game, or Sanders demonstrates a dance, Flacco savors the moment. He knows it’s fleeting and can end at any time.
“It’s impressive because I feel old at times and it’s like ‘Oh, this guy’s six years older than me in football years,’ and so it is very cool to see him go,” Bitonio said. “And anytime he makes one of those throws I’m like, ‘The arm has not left him.’ He still has that arm and he still has that ability to move around or run. There were a couple times at practice where he was one of the faster guys out there in the mids position and it’s like, ‘Ah.’ He still loves playing the game and still has that passion, so we’re happy to have him.”
The often serious Flacco has a newfound flair and a spring in his step. He’s often seen laughing with his teammates, and enjoying his back nine.
“I think he’s showing (his personality) more and more every single day,” Njoku said. “I wouldn’t even say coming out of his shell because he’s a 20-year vet, but you see what I’m saying. Age is only a number, baby.”
The Comeback Player of the Year in 2023 with the Browns, Flacco acknowledged that returning to the game after having it taken away has brought back the fun.
“The biggest part of what keeps you feeling young, looking young and all that stuff is the mental side,” he said. “It’s being excited to be out here and doing it. And I think not playing for a little bit definitely kind of refocused that and brought those important things back into the perspective that I needed it to be.”
Bouncing around from Denver to the Jets to Philly and back to the Jets after his 11 seasons in Baltimore, Flacco recalled driving down the turnpike when he was with New York but not playing, and thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ If you’re not excited about things, you can get in a rut and it can age you.”
But even those four lean years from 2019 to 2022 before all of Browns Town went Whacko for Flacco in 2023 have been part of his rejuvenation. His combined record during those years was 3-14, including 0-4 in 2020 with the Jets — a far cry from his 96-67 mark in Baltimore and his Super Bowl victory.
“Going through those hard times made me better,” he said. “Even though there were a couple weeks here and there where the questions creep into your head, I stayed the course and got through it. I proved something to myself.”
It also gave him some new teaching points for his kids, ages 7 to 13, including three who are playing football this fall in Stephen, 13, Daniel, 11, and Frank, 10.
“They’re getting little pieces of good life lessons on how to stick things out, even if you’re not exactly where you want to be right now and stuff like that,” Flacco said.
What’s more, it’s a chance for Flacco to change the narrative for his kids, who never got to see him win big in Baltimore and earn Super Bowl MVP.
“Only the last couple of years have they really been old enough to understand, and that’s why they think he stinks,” Flacco’s dad, Steve, said. “They’ve only seen him play on bad teams. There’s an opportunity here to change that.”
It’s also why Flacco can straddle the dual worlds of “do your homework” and cruising in an ATV with Njoku.
“Those guys are closer in age to his kids than to him,” Steve said. “That’s what makes it funny. But it’s a young team and there’s an energy there.”
Besides, Steve doesn’t see his eldest son as old.
“I don’t care if he’s 60. He’s big, he’s strong, and he can play,” Steve said. “He has the ability to throw the ball. To me, it doesn’t really matter what age he is.”
The old guy narrative will follow Flacco in his return to Baltimore next week, and to Pittsburgh in Week 6 when he opposes Rodgers.
But Flacco has discovered the Fountain of Youth, and age be damned.
“Is it cool that he’s 40? Yes,” his dad said. “But it will be cooler when he’s 45.”
Now those are some powerful rose-colored glasses.
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