Joe Flacco has been around the block for a long time.
The 41-year-old quarterback will be entering his 19th season in the NFL this year with the Cincinnati Bengals, returning for a second year with the Bengals after he was traded midway through the 2025 season by the Cleveland Browns. Flacco had entered the year as the starting quarterback for the Browns after returning to the team following a one-year stint with the Indianapolis Colts.
Flacco re-signed with the Browns last offseason with the understanding that they’d start preparing for the future by selecting a quarterback in the 2025 NFL Draft. They did exactly that with two rookie quarterbacks in Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders.
The former Super Bowl MVP entered the NFL in 2008 when Sanders was just six years and Gabriel was just seven years old. Flacco has become more accustomed to the idea of being much older than his fellow quarterbacks on the team, something that fans can see first hand on the third season of Netflix’s Quarterback. Flacco, along with Baker Mayfield, Cam Ward and Jayden Daniels, are profiled on the latest season of the popular Netflix series.
When asked what it was like being in the same quarterback room as two guys who are more than 15 years younger than him, Flacco downplayed the age difference and said it was “no different” than any other quarterback room he’s been in.
“Everybody’s always curious about that,” said Flacco in a one-on-one interview with Heavy Sports. “I mean listen, it was a quarterback room. It was no different than any other quarterback room that I’ve been a part of. I usually have good relationships with those guys, and this was no other. This was no different than that. It was a group of guys, kind of working towards the common goal, but at the same time competing and trying to make each other better, and trying to come out on top of that whole thing.
“But yeah, it was a typical quarterback room,” Flacco continued. “It’s probably a little bit different than it was 15 years ago, just because I am the old guy in the room and all that. But at the end of the day, after you’ve been with each other for a little bit of time, even the age gap and all that stuff isn’t that big of a deal.”
How Joe Flacco Trade Went Down With Bengals
Flacco was traded to the Bengals as a result of Joe Burrow’s injury and backup Jake Browning’s injury. That led to Flacco immediately becoming the starter just days after he was traded in October. He actually turned in a really productive season in his six games as the Bengals’ starter before Burrow’s return, posting 13 touchdowns against four interceptions for a 91.0 passer rating. That production led to Flacco’s first Pro Bowl appearance 18 seasons into his career.
Following Flacco’s trade, Gabriel would get his turn as the starting quarterback, but it was Sanders who ended the year as Cleveland’s starter. Sanders started the last seven games and went 3-4 as a starter while throwing seven touchdowns against 10 interceptions.
Entering this season, Sanders will compete with veteran and former Pro Bowl quarterback Deshaun Watson for the starting job. Watson missed last year due to injury.
While Sanders is often the center of unfair negative attention from the media, Flacco makes it clear that playing with the then-rookie quarterback was the same situation as any other quarterback he’s played with.
Joe Flacco on Filming Quarterback Series: ‘Pretty Easy’
Flacco is appearing on Netflix’s Quarterback series for the first time and his story is interesting given that he’s obviously towards the end of his career and played for two teams last season. Meanwhile, Mayfield is in the prime of his career and Daniels and Ward are at the start of their careers.
The 41-year-old veteran reveals how he landed in the series and that he was actually the last quarterback to join.
“They typically do three guys, and they were looking for a fourth just to cover all bases,” said Flacco. “I didn’t get asked to do it until the end of training camp last year. They were kind of getting ready to go with the show, so it ended up being a pretty quick decision. Peyton (Manning) ended up calling me up and kind of seeing if I wanted to do it, and kind of giving me his two cents on why he thought it was a good idea. And next thing you know, I was like, ‘All right, let’s go.’”
Flacco said the process for filming the show was actually “pretty easy” and that he would be open to doing something like this again in the future. Flacco’s wife is interviewed during the series and his kids are shown.
“That was honestly pretty easy,” said Flacco. “That was part of the sell was that it would not be super intrusive on some of the stuff on our normal daily life. I feel like as a quarterback, you get mic’d up half the time anyway. What we did was we got mic’d up once a week during practice, and then I got mic’d up for every single game. And to me, that was like no big deal. That was fine, just put a mic on me. What do I care? I’m gonna forget about it after five minutes anyway.
“I think what made it a little bit easier for my wife to be on board with everything was the fact that I was out there by myself, so I felt like there was only a certain amount that she was probably going to be in it,” Flacco continued. “I think that kind of put her at ease a little bit, and I feel like ultimately what they said was pretty true. It was not super invasive, it was not super invasive on our privacy.”
Flacco continued to detail how easy the process was considering the close proximity of NFL Films to where he lives in South Jersey.
“I live in South Jersey, so doing some of the in studio interviews was really easy because NFL Films is right down the road, so most of those I did in the off season,” said Flacco. “For me it was just like knowing that I agreed to do it, giving a little bit of access here and there, but ultimately it really wasn’t that much. I kind of just fit it into my normal media schedule as I would kind of do throughout the course of the season.
“The media relations department in Cleveland and Cincinnati made it pretty easy for me to deal with some things during the week,” Flacco continued. “Emily Winter from NFL Films would reach out every now and then, ‘Hey, you mind if we stop by the house, or you mind if I do a car ride with you?’ But it was literally two or three times throughout the whole year, so it was pretty easy.”
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This article was originally published on HEAVY
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