Nothing says Thursday Night Football like two quarterbacks north of 40-year-old turning back the clock a bit to combine for 64 points and a downright entertaining game. So kudos to Aaron Rodgers and Joe Flacco for kicking off Week 7 with a barnburner dry-aged to perfection. Flacco, operating in just his second start for the Bengals, got the last laugh against the Steelers by navigating his way to a 33-31 victory.
And no moment will resonate longer or be felt longer in the joints of the elder Millennials who watched than Flacco's legitimately stunning 13-yard scamper to pick up a key first down late in the fourth quarter.
I know we don’t typically cover the NFL but 40+ year old Joe Flacco just ran for 13 yards on a Zone Read pic.twitter.com/wuhdfs2ydt
— Sickos Committee (@SickosCommittee) October 17, 2025
How did Flacco, of all people, end up running a zone read on one of the most important plays of the game? Here's what he told Amazon Prime Video after the victory:
"So, listen. There were a handful of plays today that I was like, what? We have these formations that end in F and I was not getting it. That one, I read off my wristband. It was correct. Ja’Marr lined up on the ball, Noah lined up off. Ja’Marr was supposed to be off the ball. He was supposed to counter motion and bluff that end. And the play clock was down, and I said, ‘Ah, screw it.’I was just going to hand it off, but he came off the edge so damn quick I was like, ‘Alright, I haven’t done this since my first or second year but I’ll do it now.”
Necessity is the mother of invention and also a great jester as who among us did not delight in Flacco showing off his wheels?
The obvious answer is the Steelers, who could not capitalize on a golden opportunity to put even more space between themselves and every other team in the AFC North. But hey, sometimes you just run into a buzzsaw. Or a buzzsaw runs right at you.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Joe Flacco Explains How He Even Found Himself in a Position to Scramble for 13 Yards.
