Cleveland Browns quarterback hopeful Joe Flacco was recently criticized for his revealing his thoughts on mentoring young quarterbacks. Of which he has three this offseason battling for the starting job.
Flacco simply stated that it's not his job to mentor younger players, but no matter how he answers, he knows he'll get lit up in the media for being wrong.
“It’s a talking point. You can kind of, like, use it. 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,” he said. “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 who doesn’t care about being good and playing football..."
”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 already been a ton of times where there’s learning experiences, and I have a lot of experience, and I can talk about things, and hopefully they listen, but it’s not necessarily, like, 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, you know, but that was a long-winded answer. But that’s ultimately why I think you guys ask it.”
Not long after those remarks went viral, former teammate and current ESPN analyst, Chris Canty, decided to make remarks of his own that make it sound like he didn't hear a word that Flacco said.
"Yes! [He should mentor young players.] Because mentoring a young player is only going to make that player better, Canty said on Unsportsmanlike." Which there in by makes the team better. You're only as strong as your weakest link. So the whole point of the exercise is that everybody makes everyone better. ... It's what you're supposed to do.
"It's a ridiculous answer from Joe Flacco."
What?
It sounds like Canty didn't hear a word of Flacco's thoughts on mentoring. Flacco's point was clear, that while he may feel one way, no matter how he answers, he's going to get lit up.
And in the end, he got lit up for the strangest reason of them all.
Canty and Flacco were teammates in Baltimore for the three seasons Canty played there from 2013-15. Canty was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the fourth round of the 2005 NFL Draft, where he played four seasons before joining the Giants for another four years. He ended his professional career in Baltimore after the 2015 season.