Recent reports have indicated that Joe Flacco is the favorite to win the Cleveland Browns’ quarterback competition over Kenny Pickett, 2025 third-round draft pick Dillon Gabriel and 2025 fifth-rounder Shedeur Sanders.
Former Vikings head coach Brad Childress, who previously worked with Browns HC Kevin Stefanski in Minnesota, spoke with Tony Grossi of ESPN Cleveland/The Land on Demand about how Flacco’s mastery of selling fakes in the play-action passing game gives the 40-year-old a “big edge” over the other three signal-callers in the battle for the QB1 gig.
“I think it’s big,” Childress explained. “Particularly with the version that [Stefanski is] employing, you know, kind of the Gary Kubiak version of that. And it’s really most effective from underneath the center.”
Flacco had Kubiak as an offensive coordinator when the two were with the Baltimore Ravens during the 2014 season. As Bill Barnwell once noted for an ESPN piece, Kubiak’s offense was known for having “an emphasis on a simplistic zone-blocking scheme giving way to slow-developing play-action passes.”
Kubiak was with the Vikings as an assistant head coach in 2019, when Stefanski was the club’s offensive coordinator.
More recently, Flacco played under Stefanski and led the 2023 Browns to four wins in five games, guiding them to the postseason. According to the “Orange and Brown Talk Podcast,” Stefanski is expected to adopt an offensive scheme for the upcoming season similar to the one he utilized in 2023.
“It has to be worked on,” Childress added about any team perfecting its play-action skills. “…It’s a buy-in from your linemen as well. You know, you’re telling me to fire out, but it’s hard to fire out and still pass protect. It has to really be hand in glove. And then you’ve got to trust the fact that the quarterback’s not going to get caught with the ball in his hand either against the (expletive) look, you know, or something that changed when you turn your back on the defense.”
Some Browns fans believe Stefanski and his team would be wasting their time playing Flacco this fall, as he is in the twilight of his career and isn’t a long-term solution at the position for any team.
Nevertheless, it appears that the Browns currently believe Flacco would give them the best chance to secure a Week 1 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 7.
