Inside Joe Flacco’s Road to the Browns

The former Super Bowl-winning quarterback has revitalized Cleveland along with his career. Plus, why Jarrett Stidham’s contract was the first real sign that Sean Payton was prepared to move on from Russell Wilson.

We’re down to 31 games left in the 2023 regular season. And here’s what we’re looking at going into Week 17 …

• Going into last night, the New York Jets’ defense hadn’t allowed a 300-yard passer in 33 games. Joe Flacco—available to the Jets and everyone else into mid-November—had 296 yards at the half against New York.

So the natural question, based on how Flacco has played for the Cleveland Browns: How did Flacco sit out there as a street free agent as long as he did?

Flacco was 19-of-29 for 309 yards and three touchdowns in the Browns' win over the Jets :: Scott Galvin/USA TODAY Sports

“He looked done last year,” one AFC executive texted overnight. “Good lesson.”

What, I asked, was the lesson?

“That maybe an older player on a dogshit team should receive another look,” he answered. “Like maybe he wasn’t all in with the Jets last year.”

Another exec posited that, along those lines, he didn’t get the sense that Flacco really wanted to go be a backup somewhere—and waiting did wind up uncovering a place where he could flourish.

First, credit the Browns. It started for GM Andrew Berry’s crew in looking for a third quarterback in November when Deshaun Watson went down for the year. They kept the Watson news quiet for a couple days, and Berry dispatched assistant GMs Catherine Raiche and Glenn Cook to go through—independent of one another—the team’s free agent stack at quarterback and rank their top three. Berry, Cook and Raiche differed on who was second and third, but all three had Flacco first.

Meanwhile, Berry had coach Kevin Stefanski crosscheck with Gary Kubiak, who worked with Flacco in Baltimore, and Kubiak raved about him. With all of that done, they worked out Flacco in Cleveland, offered him that third spot, and the rest is history.

Clearly, the Browns did the work other teams didn’t. Clearly, there’s a lesson there in looking deeper into a veteran quarterback’s circumstances, and motivation, because if someone had, Flacco probably wouldn’t have been on the street as long as he was. And now, he’s not only revitalized the Browns, but his career, too.

I’m told Flacco wants to play two more years in the league beyond this one. And while he played as a practice-squad promotion over his first few weeks in Cleveland, two other teams reached out with serious interest in signing him, sources said, which would indicate the outside interest will be there for Flacco to do just that. If, of course, you weren’t able to deduce that simply watching him play.

---

• Conversely, I believe there’s another veteran Super Bowl-winning quarterback who might have a little harder time finding work in 2024.

It’s not that I don’t think Russell Wilson can play. Or that I think he’s a bad guy.

It’s just tough to conjure a scenario where he fits at this juncture.

I don’t know how comfortable I’d feel with Wilson as a pure backup. As a bridge for a team drafting, say, Caleb Williams or Drake Maye, it might work—but I don’t know whether you’d want him as a caddy when it came time to go to the younger guy.

“My initial reaction is that someone is always looking, and there is always a need for bridge vets,” one NFC exec told me. “He certainly brings a lot of baggage at this point and some major questions that guys like [Derek] Carr or Baker [Mayfield] didn’t necessarily face. What does he think his role and level of play is? What is his price tag? Where is his ego at? Can he fit into a new locker room and will other players give him a chance at this stage? Would he be willing to compete or be a No. 2?

“Another issue is that there is no coaching connection for him to rejoin like Carr and [Dennis] Allen. Role, money, and stature within organization will all be things he may have to adjust to—he is potentially in a different place than he’s accustomed to.”

In other words, Wilson may need to sell to teams that he’s changed to get a good shot at resurrecting his career. Which is amazing considering what he was traded for just 21 months ago.

---

Purdy tossed four interceptions against the Ravens on Sunday night :: Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

• This is the right way to react to your first four-interception game as a pro.

“It’s just not being in the right state of mind as a quarterback, having the aggressive trigger to make the throw the big play, but also, shoot, you don’t want to turn the ball over again,” Brock Purdy told reporters this week. “It’s a sucky state of mind to be in. But that’s the learning experience of going back and taking it and saying every play has a life of its own. You have to take it one play at a time and not try to win the game with a couple of big plays.

“And when I’m thinking like that, I just wasn’t in the right state of mind toward the end when we’re trying to get back into it. So that’s the learning experience.”

Here’s what Purdy didn’t do—blame anyone else. He took accountability even though you could argue that three of the four picks weren’t really on him. And that’ll go a long way with his teammates, as the 49ers gear up for a run at a Super Bowl title.

---

• One thing I found interesting, as I was calling around on the looming coaching carousel—Panthers owner David Tepper’s conversations with people seem to indicate a positive change in his approach to hiring a head coach.

Last year, he was very focused on getting the quarterback position right, both in finding one in the draft, and hiring a coach who could work with that quarterback.

After what he went through this year, though, it seems as though his thought process on all of this has evolved, and he’ll be looking for a leader who can check off 10 boxes rather than just one. Now, there’s still a train of thought that he’s simply going to throw a bag of cash at the early favorite in his last coaching search, Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. And maybe that’s the result of all of this. But it sure sounds like his reasoning this year for it would be different than last year, which is to say it’d happen after a little more digging.

---

• Justin Fields gets his hometown Falcons this week in Chicago. Could it be an audition? The 2021 first-rounder has improved over the course of the year, but the idea that Chicago could take a quarterback with the top pick and trade Fields remains very real for a number of different reasons (which we’ve covered in recent weeks).

I also think landing with Arthur Smith would be a great result for Fields.

---

Beck had a shot to go in the first round of the NFL draft before deciding to return for another season with the Bulldogs :: Joshua L. Jones/USA TODAY NETWORK

• If you want a player to watch in a nonplayoff college football game this weekend, check out Georgia’s Carson Beck against Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Some scouts I’ve talked to believed he had a shot to go in the first round this year based on his first year as a starter. And there was enough interest to where the Georgia coaches had to relay to scouts in November that Beck was planning to stay.

He figures to go high in 2025.

---

• While we’re there, if there’s a quarterback in the playoffs who can really help himself draft-wise, it’d probably be Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy. He has first-round tools, but hasn’t often been asked to carry his team in a big spot. He’ll have to carry the Wolverines this week against a defense that has more talent than his offense.

---

• The Dolphins felt like they were able to exert their will in grinding out the final few yards to run out the clock Sunday against the Cowboys before kicking the game-winning field goal. They’ll need to do the same against the Ravens, and without Jaylen Waddle.

---

• Jarrett Stidham’s probably not the future in Denver. But based on the $5 million the Broncos gave him for 2023, it’s easy to see that Sean Payton saw something there way before making the decision he did this week to bench Wilson. And Stidham is a guy that Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels wanted to bring back to the Raiders last year. So it’ll be interesting to see how he plays.

---

• Stidham’s contract also was the first real sign that Payton was prepared to move on from Wilson as Denver’s quarterback. And this isn’t revisionist history. A lot of folks across the NFL read the Stidham signing that way at the time.