The Cleveland Browns have the most complicated quarterbacks room in the NFL, and that’s rarely a good thing.
A quintet of passers breaks down into the veterans — Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett and the injured Deshaun Watson — and the rookies, third-round pick Dillon Gabriel and fifth-round pick Shedeur Sanders. Of the veterans, Flacco has enjoyed the longest career and could be seen as the favorite to start in 2025.
Just don’t ask him to be a mentor. Or, rather, don’t ask him about being a mentor, judging from what he had to say Wednesday.
Speaking with reporters at Browns OTAs, Flacco discussed a number of topics but chafed at a question about his past comments on being a mentor for younger quarterbacks. Essentially, he views his job at being a good quarterback and his younger teammates are free to follow by example:
“It’s a good question to bait somebody into answering and no matter how they answer it, 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. And there’s a lot of questions like that. 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 a lot of times — already, 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. Hey, hopefully you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room and you naturally want to do that.”
This is nothing new from Flacco. He was hardly Lamar Jackson’s champion when the Baltimore Ravens drafted the future MVP in 2018. He scoffed at the idea of being a mentor for Drew Lock with the Denver Broncos in 2019. He said he was fine with the role for Sam Darnold on the New York Jets in 2020, but made clear he still wanted to start. He said something similar about Anthony Richardson when he was with the Indianapolis Colts last year.
The 40-year-old Flacco is likely telling reporters what a lot of aging quarterbacks wish they could say. NFL players, particularly longtime starting quarterbacks, are never going to be more excited about tutoring a 22-year-old than playing.
Or as Flacco put it:
“Because of what I just said, you’re acting like I wouldn’t want to be a mentor. Once again, it’s not really about that. It’s just not the main focus. I see myself as a guy who can play in this league, so if your main focus was just, ‘Hey, bud, I’m going to get you 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. Like I said, hope they pick up on that stuff, but not necessarily force them to pick up on the things that you do.”
So the plan is for Flacco to try to win what is currently a four-way starting battle. It seems like a role that’s his to lose, considering Pickett has never even been an average QB while Gabriel and Sanders were not drafted in the “pro-ready” portion of the draft for passers.
It’s hard to say if the Browns put the group together entirely on purpose. Flacco and Pickett were both signed in the spring after it was announced Watson could miss the entire 2025 season with a second Achilles tear. Gabriel was seen as a surprise reach in the 2025 NFL Draft, while Sanders was seen as a potential first-round pick, then fell to the fifth round in perhaps the most stunning slide in draft history.
Flacco admitted to having “a little bit of reaction” to what Cleveland did at the draft, admitting he learned about the Sanders pick when his wife told him, “They just drafted another guy.”
Sanders will still enter his first training camp with an air of celebrity, though, and Flacco was nothing but complimentary about the former Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, via Cleveland.com:
“Shedeur has been great. I mean, he’s a lot of fun to be around in those meeting rooms. I think so far, there’s been at least once in the meeting room that he’s made me crack a smile, and that’s what it’s all about. You know, he’s a young guy trying to learn some football and come out here and practice well and do those things. And like I said, he’s been a lot of fun. I probably wasn’t too far away from playing against his dad, and now I’m playing with him, so.”
Flacco, who won Super Bowl MVP honors in 2013, is currently preparing for his 18th NFL season, and is in his second stint with the Browns. He enjoyed the best stretch of his post-Ravens career with Cleveland in 2023, when he posted a 4-1 record as a starter in a run to the playoffs.
