{"id":206354,"date":"2025-07-14T12:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T12:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/206354\/"},"modified":"2025-07-14T12:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T12:25:09","slug":"from-afterthought-to-frontrunner-joe-flaccos-shocking-rise-in-browns-qb-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/206354\/","title":{"rendered":"From afterthought to frontrunner? Joe Flacco\u2019s shocking rise in Browns\u2019 QB battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"PLOFBC7XLVBMJCIAERIOAYCKFU\">CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 When the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/browns\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"http:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/browns\/\">Cleveland Browns<\/a> traded for Kenny Pickett earlier this offseason, the narrative seemed clear: the former first-round pick was brought in to be the presumptive Week 1 starter, with Joe Flacco, signed a month later, serving as the veteran backup. Fast forward through spring practices, and that presumption has been dramatically flipped on its head.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"AYF4SWMUEFAULAADIXCKVS32CU\">What happened? Simply put, Joe Flacco happened.<\/p>\n<p>Football Insider newsletter free trial: Take a minute and <a href=\"https:\/\/link.cleveland.com\/join\/6fe\/newsletter-football-insider-sign-up-emailform\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sign up for a free trial<\/a> of our Football Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive content from cleveland.com&#8217;s Browns reporters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--center skimlinks\">If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advancelocal.com\/advancelocalUserAgreement\/user-agreement.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advancelocal.com\/advancelocalUserAgreement\/privacy-policy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 When the Cleveland Browns traded for Kenny Pickett earlier this offseason, the narrative seemed clear:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,29284,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-206354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-cleveland-browns-veterans-minicamp-2025","12":"tag-clevelandbrowns","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114851579505528557","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}