The future starting quarterback of the Cleveland Browns spent his time before Saturday’s preseason game in street clothes, greeting old friends in Philadelphia.
The QB in question might have been Kenny Pickett, and until about three weeks ago, there was a very good chance of that. The Browns had set up a quarterback competition — really, two of them — and it was Pickett who was expected to challenge (and perhaps prevail over) Joe Flacco to become the player who would finally carry Cleveland into the post-Deshaun Watson era. But then — like so much in this team’s tortured quarterbacking history — things started to go wrong, and the Browns’ best-laid plans for a preseason battle fell apart.
The Browns announced the obvious Monday, that Flacco will be the starting quarterback when they open the season Sept. 7 against the Cincinnati Bengals. It wasn’t that this was a poorly kept secret; it’s that there was no other apparent choice. Flacco, 40, is the only one of the four quarterbacks who started camp who managed to get through it free of the freakish compilation of non-contact soft-tissue injuries that befell the others. Flacco has practiced well in recent weeks, as the Browns increased his reps, and it seems likely he’ll get the start in the preseason finale Saturday against the Los Angeles Rams, which head coach Kevin Stefanski is treating as a dress rehearsal, with game-planning and all.
Even if everyone had been healthy, and a full-throated competition had played out, Flacco might still have been the best option to open the season. The rookies, third-round pick Dillon Gabriel and fifth-rounder Shedeur Sanders, likely had no realistic path to winning the job in camp as long as Flacco was healthy, and Pickett does not have the experience and success with Stefanski and his offense that Flacco does. The last time Flacco played for the Browns, two seasons ago, he guided the team to a playoff berth and was named Comeback Player of the Year. Five of the first six games on the Browns’ schedule are against teams that were in the playoffs last season, and the first two games are against division rivals Cincinnati and Baltimore. It would be hard to fault Stefanski for going with experience, familiarity and comfort level, at least initially.