Browns’ Joe Flacco goes on epic rant about why he doesn’t consider himself a mentor for young quarterbacks

Joe Flacco knew the question was coming at some point, and when it was inevitably asked following Wednesday’s OTA, the Cleveland Browns‘ 40-year-old quarterback crushed it out of the park circa 2001 Barry Bonds. The question was about Flacco’s desire to serve as a mentor for Cleveland’s young quarterbacks, a question he has already answered numerous times over his 18-year NFL career. 

Flacco, who is competing against Kenny Pickett and rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders to win the Browns’ starting job, issued a passionate yet nuanced response that mimicked answers previously stated by the likes of Brett Favre, Drew Bledsoe, Ben Roethlisberger, Aaron Rodgers, and Ryan Tannehill, to name a few. 

“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 said. “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. I tend to try to be honest, and I’ve said, ‘I’m not a mentor. I play football.’ 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. But it’s not necessarily my job to make sure they listen to me. Hopefully you have a really good relationship with the guys that are in the room and you naturally want to do that.”

Flacco’s response is similar to many other quarterbacks over the years that have been asked the same question. The NFL is a cutthroat business where everyone’s job is on the line. Flacco, like every player, has to focus on himself first and what he needs to do in order to do his job at a high level. If a younger teammate is able to pick up things by watching and working alongside Flacco, all the power to him. 

That is the type of “mentorship” Rodgers received from Favre when he joined the Packers in 2005. Whenever he has been asked what his years of having Favre as a teammate were like, Rodgers always points to what he witnessed when it came to how Favre went about his business, whether it was in film study, in practice or during games. 

When it comes to helping his current teammates in Cleveland, Flacco is certainly open to doing that. He just isn’t comfortable with the “mentor” label that is often automatically placed on every aging NFL quarterback, himself included. 

“The thing is, because of what I just said, you’re acting like I wouldn’t want to be a mentor,” Flacco told reporters. “Once again, it’s not really about that, it’s just not the main focus. I see myself as a guy that can play in this league. So if your main focus was just like, ‘Hey bud, I’m gonna get you ready,’ you’re just not taking care of business. The best way to be a mentor, honestly, is showing people how you go to work and, like I said, hope that they pick up on that stuff but not necessarily force them to pick up on the things that you do.”