Tough day at the office for Joe Flacco. Not all that starts well, ends well apparently. The Cleveland Browns off-the-couch quarterback was shredding anyone and everyone in his path to help the Brownies get to the playoffs and earn Saturday’s matchup with the Houston Texans. What began as a good ole fashioned Texas shootout soon turned ugly for Flacco’s team.
When you throw a pick-six on back-to-back possessions, the chances of winning are near zero. On the first one, Flacco was under duress and just got hit as he went to throw; Steven Nelson made an incredible return on that, too. The second INT was an awful, stare-down, “never saw the guy” right to Christian Harris.
Just like that, there was the Joe Flacco I remembered rooting against when he was on the Ravens. Flacco wiped out any chance of a return to Baltimore in the Divisional Round next week with those two disaster throws alone.
As you might imagine, we got some funny reactions to this whole Flacco pumpkinizing episode — including an admittedly sick burn from Skip Bayless of all people.
When Skip is roasting you and is 100% right, you know you’re in trouble.
If anyone did a modicum of research prior to this game, they’d know that the Browns allowed an average of 29.6 points per game when on the road this season. So yeah, that whole No. 1 defense in the league thing was a bit of a mirage.
But before those two picks, Flacco got dunked on arguably harder than he did all night, which I’m convinced set the stage for his drastic dip in play that resulted in Cleveland’s season-killing giveaways. Texans defensive back Desmond King laid out Flacco on a dangerous-looking open field run by the cement-cleated elite QB1. Then, he went into a whole perfectly choreographed roll over the tall, dark and handsome ball-carrier’s back:
My first thought was that I hoped Flack O’Round And Find Out was OK. Once it was clear he was, I couldn’t stop laughing at the slo-mo replay. I swear to you, reader, I was not alone.
Laughing my face off at these while in the elevated state of consciousness that comes with predicting the Texans to win outright is the stuff that dreams are made on.
Joe Flacco was a great story while it lasted. Heck, maybe he’ll be able to extend his career somewhere next season given how well he played with zero time to prepare once the Browns signed him. For now, let’s celebrate Stroud, DeMeco Ryans and the Texans for arguably becoming one of the most stunning Divisional Round participants of all-time.
