As the third quarter closed, Joe Flacco had thrown his third interception and, finally, this ridiculous magic carpet ride he’d been on—from his couch to crunch time of the NFL season in the time it took to fly from New Jersey to Cleveland—appeared to be reaching its conclusion.
The Browns were down 17–7 to the Bears.
The old gunslinger was 15-of-29 for 123 yards against a fast-improving Chicago defense.
Doubting Flacco? A lot of people justifiably were.
Yet, somehow, in the teeth of a wild season through which Cleveland first discarded Joshua Dobbs, lost Deshaun Watson to injury and cycled through veteran (PJ Walker) and rookie (Dorian Thompson-Robinson) backups, that was the moment when having Flacco would be more important than ever. Mostly because it’s when his experience, of 16 NFL seasons and even more so 38 years of life, would matter most.
“The biggest thing is, you can’t feel sorry for yourself,” Flacco said a couple hours later, as he was leaving the stadium. “You have to be a grownup. … If you have somebody that you really look up to, you’d hope that they wouldn’t react in a poor way. It’s your job to react and act the way that you would want them to react if you looked up to them. Not just on the football field, but I’ve experienced enough things to think like, .”
Flacco was just getting started.
“Here’s the thing that I’ve realized over the last years. Growing up, I don’t know if my dad always wanted to go out there and do that with me, but he did it anyway,” he continues. “I think your first thought is, , and then you think, . And then you realize that’s not it. Everybody has these feelings, and you put them aside, and you do what you’re supposed to do. This is a very similar situation to that.
“Believe me, I felt like s—. It didn’t change the fact that I had to go out there and do what I’m supposed to do.”
And, in short, a guy old and grizzled enough to be a team dad did exactly that: what he was supposed to do, what the Browns signed him to do and what his own dad would have had him do.
All of which went a long way for the Browns on Sunday. Flacco, of course, isn’t the first quarterback to have the kind of fourth quarter he did, going 11-of-13 for 212 yards, a score and a 144.4 QB rating. What is rare, though, for a quarterback of any age, is to do it after having the first three quarters that Flacco did.
It showed maturity. It showed resolve. It showed Flacco’s age, yes. But most of all, it showed how, just maybe, the 38-year-old is making a really good, tough Browns team even better.
