All the talk around the Cleveland Browns has been about the crowded quarterback room. The Browns have four quarterbacks (five if you include Deshaun Watson) on the roster that are competing for spots on the depth chart.
Joe Flacco is the oldest signal-caller on the roster by a wide margin. At 40 years of age, he is the elder statesman of the group. During a press conference at Browns OTAs, Flacco was asked about being a mentor to the younger guys like Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel, to which he gave a very brutally honest answer.
"It's a good question to bait somebody into answering and no matter how they answer it, it kind of makes the guy that's answering it look bad," Flacco said. "If I say, 'I don't want to be a mentor,' I look bad. If I say, 'I do want to be a mentor,' then I look like an idiot that doesn't care about being good and playing football. So it's one of those questions that no matter what I say, you guys can write what you want to write about it. And there's a lot of questions like that. That's why you end up having to try to avoid them. I tend to try to be honest, and I've said, 'I'm not a mentor. I play football.' And in a quarterback room, there's a lot of times, already, there's been already a ton of times where there's learning experiences and I have a lot of experience, and I can talk on things, and hopefully they listen. But it's not necessarily my job to make sure they listen to me."
This type of honesty is a breath of fresh air from all the other cookie-cutter answers from around the NFL this time of year. Flacco is there to play, not to teach and give away the job. It's refreshing to hear that point of view.
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