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Jake Trotter, ESPN Staff WriterDec 28, 2023, 06:00 AM ET
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- Jake Trotter covers the Cleveland Browns for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2011 covering college football. Before that, he worked at The Oklahoman, Austin American-Statesman and Middletown (Ohio) Journal newspapers. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Trotter.
BEREA, Ohio — Twice a week, Joe Flacco met his brother and dad on a Pee Wee turf field with an unlocked gate just a couple miles away from their homes in Haddonfield, New Jersey.
Their ritual began with tossing a heavy baseball, 10 ounces heavier than a normal one. Then, switching to a football, Joe and his brother, Tom, would place their dad, Steve, around the field to simulate receiving routes. While catching passes, Steve, who wore gloves to keep his hands from stinging, would recap the NFL weekend that was, which seemingly always featured a major quarterback injury.
“You’re going over that past Sunday, the guys who went down, and we’re like, ‘Has anybody reached out? They got to have called you, right?” Tom recalled. “And Joe’s like, ‘Nah, no one’s called me.’ And it’s like, ‘What the hell?'”
As the weeks passed, Joe kept waiting for that call to play in the NFL again. But still, Joe, his dad and his brother kept meeting up to throw and help keep Joe’s big right arm ready. Sometimes they went until their arms got tired. Other days they had to call it early to chase down Tom’s toddler son, Joseph, who would wander off to a nearby field on his toy bike.
Finally in mid-November, Joe got that call. The quarterback-needy Cleveland Browns wanted to fly him in for a workout following a season-ending shoulder injury to starter Deshaun Watson. So Joe, Tom and Steve met to throw one final time before Joe boarded a flight from Philadelphia to Cleveland that night.
“You could tell he was excited he had this opportunity,” Tom said. “That was cool to see. Like, all right, this is sweet.”
A little over a month later, Joe improbably has propelled the Browns to the brink of their first postseason appearance since 2020. Thursday night, Cleveland (10-5) can clinch a playoff berth in its regular-season home finale against the New York Jets (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime).
“We’re just happy as s—, as you can imagine,” Steve said. “We want to see those Cleveland fans win, baby. And we’re very appreciative of the organization for bringing him in.”
Since he took over at quarterback for the Browns in Week 13, Joe leads the NFL with 1,307 passing yards. Before that, while rotating between Watson, PJ Walker and rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson at quarterback, Cleveland had ranked 28th in passing.
Suddenly, the Browns have won three in a row. Joe, meanwhile, who turns 39 next month, became the third-oldest quarterback behind Tom Brady and Warren Moon to pass for more than 300 yards in three consecutive games,
