Joe Flacco Hoping To Sign With Team During Season

Veteran QB Joe Flacco tells Jamison Hensley of ESPN that he’s still hoping for an opportunity to sign with a team this season. 

“Listen, I can still play,” Flacco said. “That’s me talking, obviously. I’m hoping that there’s the silver lining that I’m not anywhere right now and that I can be available to anybody. I’m not saying it’s going to be the truth, but if I was tied up with somebody as a backup and just didn’t play at all when all of a sudden three guys go down, well, I’d probably be in the back of my head be thinking, ‘Oh, man, would I have had an opportunity to go there?’

“So I do think that at the point that my career is in, it is a positive thing in a lot of ways that I’m not anywhere right now, because if somebody does need somebody, at least I’m available.”

Flacco says his agent reached out to some teams in the spring, but “there didn’t really seem to be too much that was biting.” The veteran quarterback thinks he’ll have a better shot to sign with a team during the season. 

“When people are really pressed to win some games, if they have to call on somebody, then they’d be more willing to get somebody like me who can hopefully come in and learn an offense pretty quickly and at least give you a fighting chance,” Flacco said.

Flacco added that he spends his mornings working on his mechanics in preparation for another opportunity. 

“I still believe that I have all of the athletic and physical tools to do it,” Flacco said. “In terms of the quarterback and the mental part of it, I’ve only gotten better over the last 15 years. So I feel just as physical as I ever have. I mean, not to say that I’m not 27, 28 years old anymore. But I’m in great shape and I don’t see a real drop-off.”

Flacco, 38, is a former first-round pick of the Ravens back in 2008. The Broncos agreed to trade a 2019 fourth-round pick to the Ravens for Flacco.

Flacco was in the fourth year of a six-year, $125 million contract that contained $44 million guaranteed and set to make a base salary of $20.25 million for 2020 when Denver released him with a failed physical designation.

He signed a one-year contract worth $1.5 million worth up to $4.5 million with the Jets in 2020 before joining the Eagles last offseason. Philadelphia traded him to the Jets ahead of the deadline for a conditional sixth-round pick. 

Flacco later re-signed with the Jets on a one-year, $3.5 million deal last year. 

In 2022, Flacco appeared in five games and made four starts for the Jets, completing 57.6 percent of his passes for 1,051 yards, five touchdowns and three interceptions.