The New England Patriots are in no hurry to find a new starting quarterback. The team and fan base feels more than comfortable with Drake Maye under center for a long, long time. However, that doesn’t mean you stop investing in his future. This trade pitch brings a quarterback with a Hall of Fame resume to New England on a low cost investment. And that veteran is Joe Flacco.
“The Patriots showed interest in Flacco earlier this offseason before he re-signed with Cleveland,” Mark Sipos of Dawg Pound Daily writes. “Drake Maye has the keys now, but the depth behind him is shaky with Joshua Dobbs and Ben Wooldridge. Flacco would give New England a no-nonsense veteran who can manage the quarterback room, help prep Maye for gameday, and step in if needed without derailing the offense.”
Flacco’s career revival has been a story book ending for one of the last remaining quarterbacks that defined the mid 2000’s era of NFL football. He has proven throughout his first sting with the Cleveland Browns and his last season with the Indianapolis Colts that, somehow some way, the 40-year-old gun slinger still has it.
“With a backfield featuring Rhamondre Stevenson, rookie TreVeyon Henderson, and Antonio Gibson, this team should be leaning on the run game,” Sipos concludes. “Flacco’s experience in play-action and run-balanced systems would fit what New England wants to be.”
Why The Patriots Quarterback Room Need A Joe Flacco
Full transparency, I was on the Joe Flacco to Foxboro train as soon as the last down was played in January, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about this scenario. And on all accounts, it makes perfect sense.
No shade to Jacoby Brissett, but he doesn’t have the same resume that Flacco does. While he is technically an NFL veteran, his 11,000 career yards in nine seasons with six different teams spells a very different story.
On top of that, Maye’s first season was spent under a first year head coach who frankly, did a poor job. It looked and felt like for much of Maye’s rookie season, he was pretty much on his own out there. The front office has done an outstanding job making up for their mistake and filling the coaching staff with capable whistles. But I think bringing in a guy like Flacco could be the last step in turning Drake Maye into the franchise quarterback we all want him to be.
The Browns Have Way Too Many Quarterbacks
From the outside looking in, the Cleveland Browns quarterback situation is a mess. When they resigned Joe Flacco it felt like a statement that the team was going to wait one more year before drafting a quarterback. Then the addition of Kenny Pickett solidified this assumption.
Then draft night happens.
The team uses a third round pick on quarterback Dillon Gabriel from Oregon, and a fifth round selection on the free falling super star, quarterback Shedeur Sanders from Colorado. Now the depth chart has four signal callers who all have a rightful spot on an NFL roster and the rest of the league is waiting to see what they do.
It feels clear that they will have to trade at least one of them, but nobody knows which one it will be.
