Mary Kay Cabot on Joe Flacco, a potential QB change & what has to change for the Cleveland Browns

Mary Kay Cabot on Joe Flacco, a potential QB change & what has to change for the Cleveland Browns

Yeah, we got Mary Kay in the queue, so let’s bring in our Hall of Fame writer after a reminder that FanDuel is America’s number one sports book, and right now they have an incredible deal for brand new customers. If you’re a new FanDuel customer and you bet just $5 and that 1st $5 bet wins, you get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. So are you ready to play? Download the FanDuel app right now by visiting FanDuel.com/UCSS to get started. That is FanDuel.com/UCSS to place your 1st $5 bet. And with that we are thrilled to welcome Mary Kay Cabot to the show. How are you doing today, Mary Kay? — I’m
— doing great, guys. — How are you
— doing? Good, Mary Kay. When are you leaving for England? I know Zach told me he was leaving tonight. Are you going tonight also or not till tomorrow? Yes, I’m on the same flight as Zach tonight. Uh, we are flying out of Pittsburgh, uh, and we’re doing that so we can be on a, a direct flight. So, uh, we needed to get there because we have to be at practice on Thursday and, um, and so even though the Browns are still gonna be here tomorrow. Uh, they can take off right after practice and, and get there in a little bit more of a timely fashion. So we, we are leaving tonight. By the way, how ridiculous is it that you can get a direct flight to England from Pittsburgh, but you can’t get it from Cleveland. That is unacceptable. Well, when they, when they upgrade the airport in the next two years, right, hopefully there should be no reason. I know you can fly direct to Ireland but not England. Mary Kay, um. The interaction between when Scott Petrak yesterday asked Kevin, uh, is Joe gonna be the quarterback? He was noncommittal, obviously, uh, Scott followed up, still gave no straight answer. Uh, Zach’s opinion, I spoke to Zach earlier today. His opinion was that at the time of that press conference, Kevin Steansky was not sure who the quarterback was gonna be. Do you believe that as well? And who do you think is gonna be the quarterback this week? Yeah, he might not have known during that press conference, and I asked him after the game, of course, it seems like every week I ask him in the postgame press conference, are you sticking with Joe Flacco? And he was noncommittal after the game too, which in in previous weeks, he’s gone right to. Joe’s our quarterback. Uh, so that’s why it’s kind of up in the air right now. Uh, I think they’re turning it over to Dylan Gabriel, but I’m not sure. I’m really not 100% sure. Some of it, some of it can be gamesmanship because this is an important football game to win. I know that might sound crazy because the Browns are 1 and 3, but so are the Ravens. And I see you guys had a graphic up earlier that the AFC North is a mess, and that is why this game is so vitally important. If you can get to 2 and 3 and start to be hanging around and, and keep yourself in the mix a little bit, anything can happen. We know Joe Burrow is out for 3 months. We know that the Baltimore. are a mess right now. And if Pittsburgh doesn’t completely run away with this, then there is a world in which the Browns can stay in this or get back in this a little bit if they start to string together some victories. So this is a very, very important game, and I think the Browns are using whatever competitive advantage they can find to try to go out there and win it, and that’s why we haven’t heard anything yet. Mary Kay, a lot of people ask me every day. They say, listen, Dylan Gabriel is 24, 25. He played the most college games that we’ve seen in college level all preseason we talked about how, how cerebral he was, the fact that he gets the ball out of his hand quick. The Browns love him. The Browns target him specifically in the 3rd round because they love all of his traits, right? They have him as a backup quarterback. He’s, that means by default if something happens, he’s the next guy up. Why the reluctance? Even if you’re going to, to, to, even if you’re going uh to, to London, hey, get him ready. Tell him, hey, look, take a nap on the plane. Like what is the reluctance level of putting a guy with that much experience that you like in the football game when Joe’s playing this bat? I don’t know what the reluctance would be and maybe they’re not reluctant. I would go ahead and do it. I wrote a whole column yesterday explaining why I think they need to make this change to Dylan Gabriel, and there’s a lot of points in there that I made and some numbers too, uh, but one of the things, one of the biggest things I think, uh, that you should do it because of is the fact that. Dylan Gabriel can run a different kind of an offense than Joe can. I think it will be faster, zippier. Uh, I think you’re going to get the ball out quicker into the hands of your playmakers. I think you can run some RPOs. I think you can run some designed runs. He’s very mobile. He was very much like, uh, in the mold of sort of like a Kenny Pickett, and those two guys were supposed to be. The ones that were targeted to start this season. First Kenny and then Gabriel later. So that’s what they were going for, more of a game management guy, not somebody who’s necessarily going to hit the big explosive plays, but manage the game well, uh, get the ball into the hands of your playmakers, run the ball with Quinon, which now we know they can do that, and then play good defense. So I would not hesitate. To try Dylan Gabriel and see what you have. He started 64 games in college. The moment is not going to be too big for him. He has so much muscle memory for playing this game. Uh, he, he’s seen everything. I think he can handle most situations. Uh, he’s played at a very, very high level. I would not hesitate to do it. Oh, Mary Kay, first of all, I wanna say, uh, thank you for asking the question about if he switches off a Joe Flacco would Shadoor be the backup or Joe be the backup? I thought it was an excellent question. He sidestepped that one perfectly, but it was a great question by you. I, I wanna, I wanna ask you about the tackle position because last week they signed The Mumford Go Bucks off the practice squad of the Patriots, but he was in. Active because obviously he wanted to get up to speed. They just traded for Cam Robinson and Jack Conklin is another guy that I think may possibly come back. Do you know his availability because honestly, if Jack Conklin is ready to go, and they do, I think they would start Dilan Gabriel because now he’s becomes the blind spot of Dillon Gabriel and he’s the most experienced tackle that they got. So what is the status of Jack Conklin? Well, I don’t really know yet, uh, but I know he’s progressing and he’s getting closer week by week, so maybe he’ll be ready to play against the Vikings, but he might not be. And if he’s not, then I think you will be looking at, uh, Cam Robinson on the left and Cornelius Lucas or maybe even KT Levinston or some combination of those guys. So they have to hope that Jack comes back. I think that will really, really help them. Um, but even so, I still think, you know, people say, well, how, how are you gonna want to put a rookie quarterback, uh, in there when you have tackle issues? How are you not going to want to go to the rookie quarterback when you have tackle issues and a 40 year old quarterback that can’t really move? Uh, at least Dylan can slip and slide away from some trouble. Uh, so I think it actually makes more sense to play him, not only against the Vikings but against the Steelers who, who are going to pin their ears back and come. After Joe Flacco. So I think it makes total sense to go with Dylan for so many reasons. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, then you can come up with another plan. But you have to see if the quarterback change is going to be something that can shake up your offense and get some of these receivers. Yeah, no doubt about it. If you haven’t seen Mary Kay’s article I read it this morning. Check it out, of course, as you see on Cleveland.com there on the bottom of the screen, uh, Mary Kay, obviously the Lions scored a lot of points, but I think it was similar to the Ravens game where most of that was the fault of either the offense or the special teams. Uh, it was certainly wasn’t the defense’s best game. But I, I think the defense still played well enough to win. Nobody had a great game for Detroit, except, I mean, Jamir Gibbs had a pretty solid game, but outside of that, nobody else really did that much. No, not at all. Not at all. You, you still have a championship caliber defense and that’s why if they could get some decent offense going, uh, then they could be on to something here a little bit and try to win some football games. You just have to not be giving the game away and that’s what they did again, just like they did against the Ravens. 24 of the Lions’ 34 points came off of the turnovers and the punt return for the. Touchdown. Other than that, the defense did its job for the most part. Yes, they gave up too many yards to Gibbs, and no, they didn’t have a sack. But for the most part, you can’t ask much more from what you’re getting from this defense. Uh, it’s the other two units that are, are failing for this football team right now and you know you can’t blame the defense if they’re starting to get a little bit frustrated. They are trying to hide it if they are. Um, but they need some offense to go with this, and they 100% threw that game away in Detroit. Yep. Let me ask you about the special teams unit because that’s another one of those units that’s not doing well and I’m trying to figure out how did we get to this point, you know, you, you talk about legend. We had Josh Cribbs back in the day. He talked about Travis Benjamin the other day. Like, why is it that we can’t get a dynamic returner and how at worst can they not just do the basic things? Like don’t give up a punt return or stuff like that or hit the kicks and things like that. How did, why is our special teams unit down like this? Well, it seemed as though they had turned the corner against Green Bay, uh, when they got the field goal and hit the 55 yard field goal. It was like, oh, special teams actually just contributed in a huge way to this victory. Uh, but then they reverted again in this past game. I don’t really blame Schmidt too much for missing a 56 yarder, although he Does have the leg to make a 56 yard or so, uh, you do want him to be able to make those, but, uh, but certainly the punt return for the touchdown was ridiculous and, you know, Grant Deput took a lot of blame for that and and said he kind of play. So, uh, kudos to him for standing up and owning that. I thought that was a pretty, uh, professional thing for him to do. Uh, but they’ve got to stop making these special teams gaffes. It’s really mind blowing. I mean, Bubba Ventron is a really, really good special teams coach. He came here with an impeccable reputation and had coached and presided over some of the best special teams in the NFL in his previous 5 years. So the fact that they keep making mistakes like this is really, really shocking, and that’s one thing that there’s no excuse for it. They’ve got to get that cleaned up. If they can get that cleaned up, and once again stop giving the ball away, uh, then they can win games. Mary Kay, I’m going to keep a buck with you. I got to keep it real. When these rookies get in here, uh, I don’t want to see people say this because there are some Joe’s been playing bad. But these drops, these drops is looking crazy. Jerry Judy, I don’t know what’s going on with him. I’ve never seen him this demonstrative on the sideline. He’s missing the balls. He’s he’s hitting his helmet, Harold Fanning, you know, I likes. Balls is hitting him in the hands, not really. Getting you Cedric Tilman is out, and I wanna be clear because what’s gonna happen is when the rookies get in there and they throw the ball and they drop them, people gonna lose their mind because they’re rookies and they’re like, you gotta help the rookies out. But what’s going on with, with, with the, with the drops? I mean, is this something that, that’s alarming to is it is to me? I, you know, I actually think it’s a combination of a lot of things. When we asked Bill Musgrave, the quarterback’s coach, about those two interceptions in week one, he said those balls could have been thrown a little bit better. And when we talked to Kevin Stepansy again on Monday, he talked about there needs to be precision. So I think there must be something going wrong with the precision of the passing game, and I don’t know exactly what it is, but certainly the Connection between Jerry Judy and Joe Flacco, that’s not there. Sometimes the ball is hitting him right in the hands and he should be catching that. So he has to work on his side of it. And Joe, uh, you know, Joe did some things that weren’t absolutely not good. There were some passes that were a little bit off target, off the mark. The other thing is, it’s not always getting out on time because he’s under so much pressure. And this is where I think that a rookie quarterback. Or a quarterback like Dylan, who does have some mobility, I think it might help. I, I envision a shorter, snappier, quicker release, uh just a faster, zippier game. Uh, I envision him moving around, using his legs, them running some RPOs and trying some things like that. It’s a, it seems like sort of a slower process to get the ball where it needs to go right now. And then also, they’re not taking as many big shots down field because they did not want Joe throwing a bunch of interceptions. Well, he’s throwing them anyways. And they’re not all his fault. We know that they’re not all his fault. Uh, Jerry Judy’s on the ground. Cedric Tillman, did he run the wrong route? Did Joe throw the wrong route? Uh, you know, it’s really hard to say, but I do think that if you get the offense moving the way that you want to and the way that it was intended. Tended to, uh, with more quarterback movement uh and maybe shorter passes and getting the ball into the hands of your receivers on higher percentage passing plays and then letting them run after the catch, then I think you’re just gonna see a whole different philosophy and you know let’s see if it works that that’s what I’m interested to see. Mary Kay, great stuff as always. Have a great trip to, uh, England, and, uh, we’ll talk to you next week. Hopefully, uh, following a win. We’ll see. Thank you. — Sounds
— good. I’ll see you guys Tuesday. Take care.

Joe Flacco has been at the center of the conversation in Cleveland, and Mary Kay Cabot is here to break it all down. The veteran quarterback has brought leadership and experience, but his play has been inconsistent, leaving many fans wondering if the Browns should consider making a change under center. With a defense playing at a championship level, the offense’s struggles stand out even more, and Mary Kay dives into how the organization views Flacco’s performance moving forward.

Beyond the QB position, the big question is what exactly has to change for the Browns to maximize this roster. Whether it’s adjustments in Kevin Stefanski’s play-calling, finding more balance with the run game, or getting young playmakers like Quinshon Judkins and Cedric Tillman more involved, Mary Kay lays out the areas that could give this offense the spark it desperately needs. The Browns have too much talent to let the same issues keep holding them back.

This conversation isn’t just about Flacco — it’s about the bigger picture. With the AFC North wide open and playoff opportunities within reach, Mary Kay explains the urgency inside the building. Can the Browns find answers fast enough to keep pace, or will tough decisions at quarterback and on offense define the rest of the season?

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