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Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel are perhaps fortunate to have an experienced veteran in the Cleveland Browns quarterback room, with Joe Flacco back on the team this year after helping fire them to the playoffs during his last stint.
But they might be disappointed to learn that mentorship isn’t a career goal for the 40-year-old.
Flacco led the Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl win in 2013 and was named Super Bowl MVP, so he’s quite an accomplished QB. You could also consider the fact that he has thrown for over 45,000 yards and 250 touchdowns and has the most yards and touchdowns for a signal-caller who’s never made it to a Pro Bowl.
The NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 2023 with Cleveland, Flacco is certainly a good old head to have around, yet he will have you know it’s not why he’s there.
“I play football,” he told reporters after being asked about a potential mentorship role with the Browns.
Joe Flacco gets very candid about the whole being a mentor narrative #Browns pic.twitter.com/oBjr8CsSal
— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) May 28, 2025
“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.”
While he tried his best to avoid giving a direct answer, Flacco couldn’t help being frank.
“I tend to try to be honest, and I’ve said, ‘I’m not a mentor. I play football,’” he continued. “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.
He then admitted that getting the younger guys to listen to him is not his job, although he hopes for good relationships with all of them.
“But it’s not necessarily my job to make sure they listen to me,” he added. “Hey, hopefully you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room, and you naturally want to do that.”
The Browns have the most intriguing QB room in the NFL at the moment, simply because Shedeur is on the roster. Should he continue to impress like he has in training, he might not need a mentor.
Besides, Tom Brady is always a phone call away.
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