A few weeks before the 40-year-old Joe Flacco was set to report to his 18th NFL training camp, he invited us out to the corner of South Jersey where he and his wife grew up, where they are now raising their five children and where so much trash is talked.
(That’s right: Jerry Jeudy has nothing on Flacco’s two oldest sons. And yes, they agree with Jeudy’s take on their dad wearing a chinstrap).
Under a blazing hot sun, Flacco patiently threw batting practice to all five kids on the same little league field he once played on. He encouraged, he taught and he did it all as his kids openly shared what it would take for them to stop telling the one-time Super Bowl MVP he “stinks.” (“Win another Super Bowl,” second son Daniel said.)
We went back to the house the Flaccos just recently built for lunch — a house less than 10 minutes from his parents’ house, his in-laws’ house and even the one he and his wife Dana spent the last decade in. We played trivia, laughed and saw up close why this many years in, Flacco is still so incredibly driven on a football field — and, yes, why he has become one of the NFL’s most unexpected social media stars.
The whole video is worth a watch. Here are a few key takeaways:
1) Flacco is not merely playing out the string, collecting a paycheck or doing this just to do it. He fully expects to win the Browns’ starting job.
With Deshaun Watson still recovering from his re-torn Achilles, the Browns quarterback room consists of newcomer Kenny Pickett, rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, and Flacco. During OTAs, head coach Kevin Stefanski wanted to see what he had in Pickett (who went 14-10 in 24 starts over two years with the Steelers and then 1-0 as the Eagles backup last year) and the rookies, and therefore gave almost no reps to Flacco. He’s been told training camp will be different.
“I don’t want to be a backup,” Flacco said, not couching any words as he sat at his kitchen counter. “I haven’t wanted to do that for the last four or five years, or however long it’s been. I want to play football.”
Flacco is clear as can be when he says he 1) wants to win football games, 2) prove that he still can and that 3) both are “very important” to him.
He has always been exceptional at publicly concealing his emotions, mostly to acclaim (he’s one of the many quarterbacking Joes who have earned the “Joe Cool” nickname; Flacco earning his stripes during Baltimore’s 2012 playoff run that culminated in a Super Bowl XLVII win.
The level, the evenness, the calm, it’s all on display every time he engineers a win after subbing into a game (like last year’s over the Steelers, when he was a Colt) or a comeback (like the one two weeks after that over the Titans). At the same time, even if he’s not ostentatious in his competitiveness, there isn’t any question at this point about how deep those flames blaze. After all, he would not be in Berea, Ohio, away from his family, logging unending hours in meeting rooms, if he didn’t truly believe he has a shot to start at quarterback — and win.
*Aside: Daniel Flacco, the second son in the family, is a fierce athlete but is the opposite of his father on the field when it comes to caging his emotion. Listening to Joe talk about working with his son to understand why he shouldn’t let his opponents see them get to him was both fascinating and so relatable. Isn’t one of the (many) challenges of parenting trying to help your child when that child is wired so diametrically different than you are?
2) With age comes wisdom
When Flacco was drafted by the Ravens, the Baltimore defense featured Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Ed Reed, or, in Flacco’s words: “a lot of personalities.” Every day was both a physical and mental battle.
“Those guys were very vocal,” Flacco says of those veteran teammates. “For me, it was like, ‘Man, I want to show these guys that I can fit in.'”
Part of that was not unnecessarily earning the ire of his coaches, and being able to handle whatever coaching came his way.
These days, Flacco is no less detail-oriented, or at all dismissive of coaches (many of whom are now younger than him!). But he says he’s way better at discerning what weight to give to what critics, and it’s that that is so freeing.
“I can go out and have fun on a practice field,” he said. “I don’t have to stress about trying to do well and prove myself in those things. And that didn’t just happen over the last couple of years. It’s been that way for a little while now. I think when you get to the point where you go out to a practice field and have fun and be yourself, that’s when you really get better because you’re just not as tight.”
As this Browns quarterback battle plays out, the pressure these players put on themselves, and how they manage it, will certainly be a part of head coach Kevin Stefanski’s equation.
3) The Joe Flacco you see all over your feeds is absolutely authentically who he has always been.
Flacco literally laughed out loud when told he may be social media’s favorite quarterback. And while Jameis Winston may on occasion be more likely to go viral, Flacco laughed even more at the reality that fans can’t get enough of this hometown father of five who refuses to even try and be hip.
When he came into the league as a first-round draft pick out of Delaware in 2009, the public at large didn’t necessarily see much of Flacco’s personality. Partly because of those aforementioned defensive players.
“When you’re 22, 23 years old and you’re on a field with Ray Lewis, there’s going to be a little bit of natural nervousness because you want to impress those guys,” he said. “You have to hide it the best you can. And sometimes, when you’re doing that, maybe you’re not quite yourself. Maybe you are a little bit more in a shell, because you are a little bit more nervous.”
Part of it too, is that going viral — and the ubiquity of social media — weren’t things when Flacco was younger. But if you ask Torrey Smith — who caught 30 regular-season touchdowns from Flacco from 2011 through 2014 — the quarterback’s dry sense of humor and general disregard for how his “old guy” opinions are perceived hasn’t changed one bit in 18 years.
“He’s literally the same person,” Smith said. “Everyone is just new to it.”
There’s no hiding it now. For however long Flacco keeps playing (and the only timetable seems to be when it stops being fun), he’ll be himself. It’s endeared him to a whole new generation of teammates, it’s earned him even more open respect from opponents and it’s the easiest way for his children to tease him.
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