Hail Joe Flacco, the NFL’s robot football dad who might save the Browns

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images

The Browns found love in a hopeless place.

Joe Flacco is the unlikely hero of Cleveland. A man who walked in off the street, made history, then went back to his garage wood shop, or whatever I presume Flacco was doing with his time before football called him again.

This is a profoundly weird time in the NFL where someone like Flacco can return and shine. We entered this season with what be believed to be knowledge of how the league ticks. Everything told us that to win in football you needed an elite quarterback, and everything else can slot in from there. Now we’re 14 weeks into the season nothing feels further from the truth.

The teams winning right now don’t have the all-world signal callers under center, but defenses that are able to rip the souls out of their opponents — coupled with a “good enough” guy to get the job done. Part of this is due to injury, part of it is circumstance, but across the league we’re seeing elite quarterbacks struggle. This opens the door perfectly for someone like Flacco.

Nobody will mistake Flacco for being a top-tier quarterback at this point in his career, but he lack selfishness, and that’s what’s being prized in the league right now. Quarterbacks who are traditionally labeled as “elite” have this tendency to try and will plays into existence, pushing themselves and testing defenses far too much. That really isn’t working right in the 2023 NFL. We’ve seen the pendulum swing back to defense, and now the patient “take what they’re giving me” passers are thriving.

Being an otherworldly talent at the QB position is obviously preferable, and these players are still winning games — but right now the absolute best trait a passer can have for a team trying to make the playoffs is simply managing the game intelligently, doing just what it takes to win the game, and moving on.

Brock Purdy is doing this. Russell Wilson is doing it. Now Joe Flacco is doing it as well.

What Flacco and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt managed to do against the Jaguars was, well, brilliant. Going into the game the big weakness of the Jaguars was their thin secondary. It’s been stretched a lot this season, as they rank 22nd in the NFL in yards-per-catch allowed, while also giving up 22 passing touchdowns — ranked 28th in the league.

The key to beating them in a shootout is to have the quarterback spread the ball around, rather than locking in on a key receiver. If the tight end can make plays that’s even better, because utilizing the 3rd and 4th DB isn’t something Jacksonville likes to do.

Flacco threw A LOT, while also spreading the ball around a ton.

This scatter chart shows the Browns attacked every level of the defense, while also utilizing numerous receivers. Eight different receivers recorded a catch, but the interplay of David Njoku and Amari Cooper as a one-two punch is really what made this all tick. It allowed the Jaguars to never really key in on one players to cover, but more importantly Flacco punished the defense deep — but only when plays opened up.

This allowed Flacco to be the more effective passer on the day, even if nobody would pick him in a head-to-head “who’s more talented?” contest with Trevor Lawrence.

Ultimately it leads to a really interesting conversation about who the Browns are as a team, and also why Deshaun Watson has been so horrible for them. When we talk about QBs who have been trying to do too much, he’s really at the top of the list. Prior to his injury Watson was playing like a QB who wanted to make a statement with every throw, proving that he’s back, that he’s elite, and it was entirely too much wasted energy.

Flacco proved he can be every bit as successful under center understanding that the defense can win games for this team. It’s weird, because it’s not like the Browns can do anything about Watson’s contract as this point — but Cleveland is a distillation of the NFL as a whole right now. They now see that grabbing that “elite” quarterback can be a fool’s errand when you already have a solid foundation to win with the rest of the football team.

In situations like the Browns were in all you can do is hope to have someone who knows how to win. It’s something the quarterback position in Cleveland has woefully lacked for years. Joe Flacco is the robotic football dad in the right place, at the right time, and dammit if he’s not going to find a way to see this through. The Browns are now in 1st place in the AFC Wild Card, and with a pretty favorite stretch to close out the season they’re in a great place to make some noise now.

Winner: Buffalo Bills

If we want to talk about teams “making noise,” then the Bills did that — while being blissfully silent. Let’s be real: It was a horrible, no good, very bad week in Buffalo between questions swirling about Von Miller being able to play while under police investigation for domestic violence. Then it was capped off by Sean McDermott having to explain why he thought it was a good idea to try and motivate his team by invoking the 9/11 hijackers.

Facing down the Chiefs the table was set for this to be a disaster. Instead the Bills rallied to a critical win in keeping their playoff hopes alive. What we saw was a Bills team with a much better balance, leaning more on James Cook to be an offensive weapon — and it worked.

The downside to all this is that the Bills are still in a hole. The team is currently 11th in the AFC in the playoff standings, and it’s going to be pretty tough to dig out of this hole. Their Week 18 game against the Dolphins is already one to circle on the calendar because everything will be to play for.

Loser: Carolina Panthers

Another week, another loss — and the vibes couldn’t be any worse if you wrote this.

This is just legendarily bad all the way around. Look, we all knew this team was going to fully clean house in the offseason but when you have families of coordinators saying “it’s so crap to be here” you’re on a whole other level.

At this point it would take a damn miracle for the Panthers to win another game this season. Bryce Young’s rookie season has been totally wasted by Carolina, and it’s unclear if he’ll ever gain his confidence back. The team doesn’t have nearly as much open cap space a it should in 2024, they won’t have the No. 1 pick from the trade a year ago — and it’s all bad!

Great news if you’re a fan of literally anyone else.

Winner: Denver Broncos

I’ve dunked on the Broncos plenty this season, so I’ve gotta give credit where it’s due. This team has turned it around in a serious way over the last several weeks, and it’s ludicrous to imagine that it was 10 weeks ago that this team lost 70-20 to the Dolphins.

Denver is now 7-1 over the last eight weeks, and have beaten some seriously good competition along the way. I don’t really know how this team looks like a new unit, but they’re absolutely responding.

A lot of this has to do with what I discussed earlier with Joe Flacco. Instead of trying to play hero ball, Russell Wilson has settled into being a mistake-averse chain-mover and it’s leading to wins. Beating the Chargers was a critical step to assert the Broncos are the second best team in the AFC West, and weird as it sounds there’s now a very real chance this team could win the whole division.

To close out 2023 Denver faces the Patriots, Chargers and Raiders to close out the year. Three pretty clear wins on paper — while Kansas City has the same schedule. There is a hilarious outside chance that Denver could steal the AFC West and the Chiefs miss out.

That’s a credit to Sean Payton and the Broncos over the last several weeks.

Loser: Minnesota Vikings

If you want to hang your hat on a 3-0 win over the Raiders, then more sad power to you.

We’re back to the critical mistake of Minnesota not understanding the need to just punt on the season and still insist on this weird “competitive rebuild” mess. The Vikings are destined to be bounced in the first round of the playoffs again, and their weird spate of wins is going to push their draft order too low AGAIN to be able to find an impact player.

I just don’t love that being trapped in draft purgatory is the end goal here when there’s no handware to show for it. Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward, and the Vikings are just too resistant to it.

Winner: Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys are really, really good. Not much more to say, really. Having a mid-season slump was the best thing to happen to Dallas, because they got it out of their system early and now look like they’re ready to compete.

What a mammoth win that earned first place in the NFC East.