BEREA, Ohio — Browns quarterback Joe Flacco knows a counter to every coverage scheme, but the media blitz can still beat him.
Entering his 18th NFL season, Flacco has seen every defense and heard every question that coordinators and click-baiters scheme. Experience wins the day on third down, but it sometimes works against him at the microphone.
Exhibit A: The mentorship question, for which most veteran quarterbacks have a neat, boring, headline-allergic answer. How can veteran X help rookie Y? By sharing notes, answering questions, etc. Flacco helps his teammates too, but he explains it differently.
“... I’ve said I’m not a mentor. I play football,” Flacco said after Day 2 of Browns OTAs, and this is all some will infer from a 60-second answer. It’s easy to digest the story of an old man who can’t let the glory days go, but Flacco’s philosophy runs deeper. He explained as much on Wednesday, when I asked why his mentorship has become a fixation.
Hear him out, in full:
“It’s a talking point. You can kind of, like, use it,” Flacco said. “It’s a good question to bait somebody into answering, and no matter how they answer it kind of makes the guy that’s 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, 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. There’s a lot of questions like that, and 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, you know, hey, hopefully you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room, and you naturally want to do that, but that was a long-winded answer. But that’s ultimately why I think you guys ask it.”
No “gotcha” intentions this time. Honest. I asked Flacco this question intending to reset his blurry track record on the subject.
Last season, he told the truth about his role in the Colts quarterback room (compete first) and his struggle to cede a starting job when the Ravens drafted Lamar Jackson years earlier. In both cases, questions arose about his leadership. And when Flacco returned to Cleveland last month, I used his honesty to argue he didn’t fit in a younger quarterback room.
No wonder this subject irks Flacco. Too often, take-spewers parrot preconceived notions without allowing players the chance to change our minds. And when they do, we fail to correct the record.
In an effort to break the cycle, here’s my truth: I was [wrong about Flacco’s fit](https://www.cleveland.com/browns/2025/04/joe-flacco-signing-is-the-wrong-browns-bridge-quarterback-move-from-every-angle-jimmy-watkins.html) in Cleveland’s quarterback room. I mistook his competitive spirit for selfishness. And from what reporters heard Wednesday, you can already see the veteran disproving such notions.
Flacco said that rookie quarterback Dillon Gabriel recently asked him to critique Gabriel’s pre-snap cadence. The third-round pick wants his own to sound like Flacco’s. The veteran obliged. On another occasion, fifth-round pick Shedeur Sanders asked Flacco for help with footwork on a certain drop back. Once again, the veteran obliged.
Even fourth-year quarterback Kenny Pickett, presumably Flacco’s chief Week 1 competition, praised the veteran’s presence in the position room.
“... He’s not a coach, I don’t want anyone to say that, but it’s like having another coach when a guy that’s played that much football, you could bounce ideas off of, ask him what he saw, how he would read certain things earlier in his career,” Pickett said Wednesday. “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.”
Like Flacco’s been saying: Teaching occurs naturally during meetings. Mentorship can exist alongside competition. Two things can be true: Flacco wants to play _and_ help his teammates.
Frankly, I bet many a “bridge” quarterback has shared Flacco’s mindset over the years. They just haven’t talked as openly about it. And after reading, misreading and re-reading Flacco’s truth, I see why.
“... You’re acting like I wouldn’t want to be a mentor,” Flacco said. “Once again, it’s not really about that. It’s just not the main focus. I see myself as a guy that can play in this league. So if your main focus was just like, hey, I’m going to get (a young player) ready, you’re just not taking care of business. 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.”
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