JOE FLACCO THRIVES AS WILSON AND WATSON — $472.6 MILLION — BOW OUT
Playing ball with his kids, Flacco received a phone call from the Cleveland Browns and suddenly is performing well, making us forget the team’s $230-million starter while Wilson is canceled in Denver
When megabillions justify the gross worth of NFL quarterbacks, who doesn’t squeal when Joe Flacco makes just $2.5 million this year? It’s a reminder of false sensibilities, why a team cracks in paying gross domestic products to Joe Burrow and Aaron Rodgers and Justin Herbert when they’re injured. Or weeps when Jalen Hurts and even Patrick Mahomes struggle, or expects price tags to automatically win postseason games.
This is joy, in the mothballish body of a 38-year-old fossil who was throwing a football to his four boys at their home in south Jersey. When the Cleveland Browns called him in mid-November, he drove seven hours to his new haunt, after throwing for 42,320 yards and 232 touchdowns in 15 years. “I felt like I have some stuff left in the tank,” Flacco said.
Did he believe he’d take over the sport? Who imagined Flacco, who leads the league in passing yards and is tied for first in touchdown passes this month, would flourish to a degree where we ask pointed questions? Who knew he’d become far more valuable than Deshaun Watson, who was allowed to sign a fully guaranteed, $230-million contract despite two dozen women claiming he sexually assaulted or harassed them? And who knew he’d be prominent in the upcoming playoffs when Russell Wilson’s career has been pole-axed in Denver, where a trade and $242.6-million extension are among the worst liabilities in sports history? The intrigue is beyond belief, watching Flacco carry on as Wilson wonders about his future and why life went south in Seattle and with the Broncos.
Would you rather pay $472.6 million for two washouts or $2.5 million for wild hopes in January? “It’s unbelievable to be out there,” Flacco said. “It’s really a unique experience. To have children that are of the age where they understand what’s going on, and I’m going to remember these things forever. I’m just trying to stay in the moment and be as grateful as possible and keep getting better.”
His shocking success means Flacco is a ramrod, an aging muzzleloader in the firearms of so-called stars. When top-tier quarterbacks have missed substantial time this season, his availability makes you wonder if a late-season phone call is a franchise’s marked advantage. He won a Super Bowl MVP almost 11 years ago, on a Ravens team loaded with defensive monsters. It seemed he faded out in Denver and with the New York Jets, where he went 3-14 in starts. Suddenly, Flacco has found receiver Amari Cooper as his newfound baby while the Browns, with their own defensive mastery, look to make a ruckus ahead. In the Ohio city, most people from Baltimore are loathed, recalling how the original Browns moved to Maryland. Not Flacco.
“The city has been unbelievable to me. I can’t say enough about how welcoming everybody has been,” he said. “Just coming from Baltimore for most of my career. It’s definitely been surreal in terms of how people have treated me around here.”
His presence has brought full awareness to the Watson debacle. Owner Jimmy Haslam ignored the charges of massage therapists and signed him to the highest guaranteed deal in league history, agreeing to an 11-game suspension in 2022. This season, he threw seven touchdown passes and four interceptions but was sacked 17 times in seven games, undergoing season-ending surgery to repair a broken bone in his throwing shoulder. You don’t think Haslam isn’t doing the same math equations with Watson and Flacco?
“He’s one of us. And as long as he continues what he’s doing, he’s going to stay one of us,” defensive star Myles Garrett said. “The guy is doing it all.”
“Yeah, I think a player that’s been around and has had the career that he’s had, he can really lean on his experiences, lean on his games that he’s played,” coach Kevin Stefanski said. “He just told that to the team. Just some of the things that he’s been through and, now, what we as a team have been through. It’s good for you in the end.”
It no longer was meaningful to Sean Payton to fix Wilson’s career. Money was the issue in resting him for Jarrett Stidham, though the Broncos still have a small chance of making the playoffs. Owed $39 million in guarantees next season, Wilson would make another $37 million for 2025 if he can’t pass a physical in early March. This is Payton’s way of sitting him, saving his body and shipping him away without paying the added jackpot. So much for the dreams of the team’s chief executive, Greg Penner, who signed Wilson to a contract and said, “Our organization is fully committed to winning and competing for Super Bowls with Russell as a Bronco for many years to come.” He improved this season, throwing 26 TD passes but not enough to save himself in the coach’s eyes. “God’s got me. Looking forward to what’s next,” Wilson wrote later.
Remember, Payton is the $18-million-a-year loudmouth who trashed Nathaniel Hackett for a poor performance last season. “One of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL,” he said before his own dreadful start this season. The Broncos started to win, but Payton couldn’t avoid one-sided public skirmishes with Wilson. What will the Broncos do for a quarterback? Stidham?
“I understand all the speculation and everything that surrounds a move like that. I can tell you, we’re desperately trying to win,” Payton said Wednesday. “Sure, in our game today, there are economics and all those other things, but the No. 1 push behind this — and it’s a decision I’m making — is to get a spark offensively. Obviously, it’s difficult and all of us feel like, ‘Man we didn’t do well enough.’ ”
The decision makes you wonder why Payton didn’t sacrifice some of his own wealth. Was he any better than Wilson this year? He’ll have an entire offseason to start anew, as will Russ, while a remnant keeps battling in Cleveland. Remember when he was the meme for the social-media missive, “Is Joe Flacco elite?”
He wasn’t then.
Is he now?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.