CLEVELAND, Ohio — Joe Flacco just might be the King of the (AFC) North.
When the Browns traded the 40-year-old QB to the Cincinnati Bengals on Tuesday along with a 2026 sixth-round pick in exchange for a 2026 fifth-rounder, they executed a rare intradivision trade.
These kinds of deals simply don’t happen often.
The Browns have never done an intradivision trade with the Bengals before, and have only done two since 1999 — when they traded Justin Gilbert to the Steelers back in 2016 for a 2018 sixth-rounder and then the following year when they acquired Sammie Coates from the Steelers along with a 2019 seventh in exchange for a 2018 sixth.
This deal is also only the third in-season player acquisition via trade by the Bengals since 1973, per NFL Network.
Per ESPN research, this is only the third intradivision trade involving a QB this century. The other two were the Eagles trading Donovan McNabb to Washington in April 2010 and the Patriots trading Drew Bledsoe to the Bills in April 2001.
It’s a move that means Flacco will now play for his third AFC North team, after spending the first 11 years of his career with the Baltimore Ravens and parts of 2023 and 2025 with the Browns. The Steelers should sign him next offseason just for the Tweets at this point.
The point of all this? This is the kind of deal that rarely happens. It shows the strangeness of the AFC North this year, and highlights that it’s a shame the Browns haven’t been able to get it together enough over their first five games to be in the thick of a weird title race.
Cleveland benched Flacco last week in favor of rookie Dillon Gabriel, thanks in large part to turnovers. Flacco threw six interceptions and lost two fumbles in his four starts this season.
Gabriel and Cleveland fell 21-17 in London to the Vikings on Sunday, falling apart over the final minutes and with the usually sturdy Browns defense allowing Carson Wentz to march 80 yards downfield for the go-ahead TD.
There’s been plenty of QB questions this year for the Browns with a four-way training camp competition between Flacco, their two rookies in Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, and Kenny Pickett who Cleveland traded to the Raiders in August.
But the QB questions are expanding beyond just Cleveland in this division this year.
Consider the 2-3 Bengals: They’ve started Jake Browning the last three games with star Joe Burrow out for at least three months after undergoing toe surgery.
All three of those starts have been losses, with Browning throwing three interceptions last week against the Lions for a total of eight in four games.
The Bengals now have a good enough reason to bench him with Flacco on the way, and will try and keep themselves in the thick of things until Burrow is back. It still may be a tall order for Flacco, especially given Cincy’s poor offensive line play. We saw what the looked like in Cleveland, but at least now he’ll have the Bengals’ pass-catching corps led by Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins on his side.
And then there’s Flacco’s other former team: The Baltimore Ravens.
The Ravens are currently 1-4, and fell 44-10 to the Houston Texans this week. Lamar Jackson was idle due to a hamstring injury, and Baltimore was without eight total projected starters and six Pro Bowlers in the game.
With Jackson sidelined, backup quarterback Cooper Rush started and went 14-for-20 for 179 yards, no touchdowns and three interceptions.
The Steelers, meanwhile, are quietly sitting atop the division at 3-1, with 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers leading the way.
It’s about as strange of a landscape as there can be right now, and so much is still up in the air. Nothing is locked up yet, and injuries have made the future that much more difficult to predict.
The Browns got a decent game out of Gabriel on Sunday. All eyes will be on their QB situation still (especially with plenty of fans still hoping to catch a glimpse of Sanders), but no matter who’s starting, the Browns will need more help up front and from their pass-catching corps in order to make this offense look better. They’ll also need their defense to be perfect and keep them in games.
In the end, the Browns’ trade of Flacco says as much about them as it does about the state of the AFC North — unpredictable, battered by injuries, and full of desperate teams trying to stay relevant.
It’s also a reminder that in this division, nothing ever seems to end — not rivalries, not grudges, and apparently not Joe Flacco’s career.
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