Entering his 18th year in the NFL, Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco has accrued enough experience to know how to play the game—and to be able to spot a baiting question from a mile away.
Flacco, who spent a short stint with the Browns back in 2023, makes his return to Cleveland this year, leading a relatively young and inexperienced quarterback room comprised of Kenny Pickett and rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders.
Whenever there's a significant age gap between quarterbacks on a team's roster, one of the most common narratives that tends to follow is whether the veteran will serve as a mentor figure to the up-and-comers. That narrative has made for some splashy headlines in the past, with one of the most prominent examples being Brett Favre's notorious refusal to mentor Aaron Rodgers on the Green Bay Packers.
In that same vein, the 39-year-old Flacco was asked a question about his mentoring intentions during Browns OTAs this week, and he gave an extremely thoughtful response on his desired role in the QB room.
"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," Flacco told reporters. "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 at playing football."
Joe Flacco gets very candid about the whole being a mentor narrative #Browns pic.twitter.com/oBjr8CsSal
— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) May 28, 2025
Flacco went on to explain exactly where he stood on the mentor-mentee narrative in the NFL:
"I tend to try to be honest. And I've said, I'm not a mentor. I play football. In the quarterback room, 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... The best way to be a mentor, honestly, is show people how you go to work, and hope that they pick up on that stuff."
Flacco made clear that he sees himself as a viable starter in 2025, not just someone to show the rookies the ropes. The journeyman has 191 starts under his belt across five teams, though he's won just seven games in his last 20 starts since 2020.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Joe Flacco Had Thoughtful Response on Being a Mentor to Shedeur Sanders, Browns QBs.
