The Cleveland Browns organization hasn’t been the funnest team to play for over the past couple of seasons.
Cleveland is 5-19 in its last 24 regular season games and slogging through a rebuild hindered by salary cap concerns largely tied to and epically bad contract for injured QB Deshaun Watson that doesn’t officially end until the 2026 campaign does, and will likely remain a financial burden for several years after that.
Superstar Myles Garrett wanted out, partly for that reason, until the Browns offered him a pile of money so large that he could snowboard down it if he wanted. And it’s part of the reason that veteran quarterback Joe Flacco — the leader of the offense down the stretch in 2023, the last time the team made the playoffs and being in the locker room actually was fun — was so happy to land with the Cincinnati Bengals.
“Listen, it is fun. It’s enjoyable when you’re doing things like last night,” Flacco told Albert Breer of SI on Friday, October 17, one day after throwing for 342 yards and three scores in a late-game win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. “And there’s a lot of pressure, man, with this game. And even though I’ve been playing it for so long, I still get those feelings before a game. They’re not that much fun — I don’t want to have those feelings. But fighting through that, you don’t get to experience the level of fun that I had last night unless you’re able to get over those feelings. And, yeah, that takes it to a whole other level.”
Joe Flacco Dealt With Consistent Criticism, Calls for Browns to Bench Him for Dillon Gabriel, Shedeur Sanders
GettyCleveland Browns quarterback Dillon Gabriel.
Flacco wasn’t taking a direct shot at the Browns. But he undoubtedly felt the same pressure before his four starts in Cleveland this year, and only one of those ended in a win.
Even the victory over the Green Bay Packers wasn’t particularly pleasurable until the very end, which Flacco noted during the postgame. Green Bay held the Cleveland offense to zero points for more than 56 minutes of game time, and it was the Browns defense and special teams unit that really paved the way to a 13-10 victory.
For more than a month, Flacco dealt with boos and media criticism and an itchiness from just about everyone involved for the team to move on to rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders before the coaching staff eventually benched him.
Joe Flacco Grateful to Browns for Trading Him to Bengals
GettyFormer Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco.
That said, Flacco acknowledged to Breer that he is grateful to Cleveland’s leadership team for their consideration regarding his circumstances as a 40-year-old QB whom the coaching staff had recently sidelined.
“Flacco’s actually thankful to the Browns, who told him before trading him that they’d do the trade if it were something he’d be interested in,” Breer continued.
“Now I don’t know if they would’ve done it anyway, if I wasn’t interested,” Flacco told Breer. “If I said, ‘No, I really don’t want to do that, guys,’ I don’t know if they would’ve said, ‘OK, yeah, that’s cool, we won’t do it then.’ But it did seem like [GM] Andrew [Berry] was like, ‘Listen, man, we appreciate what you’ve done. Would this be something you’d be open to?’ So we had a conversation about it, for sure.”
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