The Cleveland Browns signed Joe Flacco this offseason to be a veteran presence in a quarterback room that was going to feature Kenny Pickett and whatever rookie signal-caller they selected in the draft. Fast forward to today, and Pickett has been shipped out of town, Flacco is the starter, and Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders are the backup QBs.
While a scenario where Flacco was the starter to begin the regular season could not have been ruled out at the time he was signed, relying on a 40-year-old to be "the guy" running the offense was certainly not the reality that Kevin Stefanski or the front office hoped to be living in mid-September.
With the struggles Flacco has had against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 2, it is becoming obvious that this team is going nowhere fast with him under center.
Browns Cannot Continue to Start Flacco at QB Any Longer After Week 2
One of the biggest issues fans have with former player-turned-commentators is the fact that they tend to shy away from directly casting blame on their peers. Flacco threw an interception that was so bad in Sunday's game against the Ravens that Ross Tucker couldn't help but throw the veteran under the bus on live TV.
“This is just a horrible decision and worse throw by Joe Flacco," Tucker said, via Ashley Bastock of Cleveland.com. "He’s 40 years old. This is his 18th year. He knows better than that. I can’t believe he threw this ball.”
Once the Browns were down 31 in the fourth quarter against their rivals, they eventually pulled Joe Flacco, who finished the game with 25/45 for 199 yards, one TD, and one interception. His disastrous performance allowed Dillon Gabriel to make his NFL debut and score his first TD of his career.
Whether this means Gabriel might start in Week 3, however, remains to be seen.
Adding a veteran QB at this stage of the game is only going to make so much of a difference. By the time they learned the offense, Cleveland could already be too far behind the rest of the pack to do anything of consequence in the AFC North.
At the same time, throwing Gabriel or Sanders into the fire is all but an admission that this will be another lost season for the Browns. To do that in the opening month of the season would be a tough pill for Cleveland fans to swallow. With that being said, it could be the best decision the coaching staff can make.
Stefanski and the front office need to see what they have in those rookie QBs at some point. With multiple first-round picks in next year's draft, the Browns will have options at that spot if they want to hit the reset button on the position yet again. Doing that without seeing what you already have in-house would be a head-scratching decision to say the least.
The likelihood that either Gabriel or Sanders is the answer at QB is slim. If either can prove to be a reliable backup option, though, then that would be a small win for Cleveland's front office. Having to rebuild the QB room after the 2025 season would just put the Browns further behind the 8-ball in what is already a competitive division.
Flacco clearly isn't the answer, though, and the sooner Stefanski and the coaching staff come to that realization, the better off they will be.