It’s the question nobody in football, especially those with the Browns, wants to ask.
Indeed, asking it would spoil all the fun. It would taint this wonderful journey that is the 2023 Browns season.
So, it will just stay in the back of everyone’s minds. That is, what’s going to happen next year concerning the Browns quarterback situation with Deshaun Watson and, if he returns, Joe Flacco?
The Browns, of course, are paying a king’s ransom for Watson to solve the quarterback issues they’ve had for almost all of the expansion era. They knew they had to get a big-time quarterback if they ever wanted to be a big-time team, so they outbid every other team to get Watson.
But the guy who came out of nowhere and became that big-time quarterback for the Browns, Flacco, has the Browns in the playoffs and perhaps a lot further than that before it’s all said and done.
Yes, the Browns, financially at least, it would seem, are tied to Watson indelibly. You can’t break the bank for a quarterback and then not play him when he’s healthy.
Or can you?
The name of the game is winning, no matter how it comes, and no matter with whom, and through him, it comes. That type of thing is worth almost more than the franchise itself if a guy can deliver that, then his value to the team is such that the club can’t do without him.
This season has been so much fun, and a lot of it has been because of Flacco, who jumpstartEd the team when it was in desperate need of a quarterback. Yes, he is 38, but he’s playing like he’s 28 and in the prime of his career.
The Browns have waited too long for somebody like this. Can they really afford to just let him walk because they’re paying someone else to do the job?
That will be something for the Browns to figure out in the offseason.
It doesn’t do any good to think too much about it, or talk about it at all, at this point, though, because this season is far from over, and any side discussions would take away from what is going on.
It will be a big deal somewhere down the road, but we’re not at that point now.
Steve King
