In a way, Joe Flacco’s improbable NFL resurrection — and the Cleveland Browns’ surging end to the 2023 regular season — began on a nondescript Thursday night last month, with a social media alert that nobody expected.
Late on Nov. 16 the “Cleveland Sports Fans” X account posted a grainy image from inside a commercial flight. It appeared to be your typical cattle-call photo from inside a plane, with passengers lined up in the aisle, inching along to find their seats. But standing in the back, an exceptionally tall man towered above everyone else, with a familiar empty-eyed, thousand-yard stare that was impossible for some NFL fans to miss.
It was clearly Joe Flacco.
The caption on the post read simply, “The Browns next starting QB is currently boarding a flight to Cleveland.”
If you traveled back in time, approximately one minute before that picture appeared on social media, there were two things we knew about a pair of entities that were on the verge of unexpectedly linking up: The Browns had lost Deshaun Watson for the season and now had a serious problem on their hands at quarterback, leaving a veteran roster in the hands of fifth-round rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson; and Flacco was most recently quarterbacking his living room couch, left behind by the league after spending the previous five years of his career as a marginally effective backup.
Now through the power of a cell phone camera, a sharp-eyed fan and social media, a late-season marriage was tipped off unexpectedly. And as one would have expected, the results were mixed in the Browns’ fan base on social media.
So our choices are Flacco and RGIII? Girl, bye.
Elite.
30 INT’s incoming!
Pleaseeee be from 2017.
If you were a glass half-empty person, Flacco’s best days were long behind him, lost in a haze of “Is Joe Flacco Elite?” memes and underwhelming results with middling Baltimore Ravens teams that never quite recaptured their Super Bowl luster of the 2012 season. And if you were a…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/could-a-scrap-heap-joe-flacco-signing-conjure-a-nick-foles-esque-super-bowl-run-for-the-cleveland-browns-032546444.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2023-12-25 03:25:46
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