Flacco's remarkable comeback has Cleveland buzzing
Joe Flacco still struggles to process this refound fame, an unexpected rebirth in a city where he was once despised and now adored.
It's all happened so fast for the quarterback who fell from his couch, landed in Cleveland and then the playoffs.
“Crazy,” the soon-to-be 39-year-old Flacco said.
Less than two months ago, he was home in New Jersey just being a dad — albeit the only one in the neighborhood with a 15year NFL career and Super Bowl MVP on his resume — helping his wife, Dana, corral their five kids on a daily basis.
He scrambled eggs for breakfast, packed school lunches and clumsily tried to braid his daughter's hair into a ponytail.
“I'm awful at that,” Flacco said with a laugh. “Ultimately I'm just another one of the children. I do get in the way probably more times than not.”
Fortunately for the Browns, he kept other skills sharp during an extended, and for Flacco, puzzling layoff from football.
And now here he is following a five-game stretch (4-1 as a starter, 1,616 yards, 13 TDs) in which he has outplayed every other quarterback in the league, leading the Browns, a team he tormented while playing for Baltimore, into the postseason with a wild-card playoff matchup in Houston today.
It's beyond bizarre that in a blink a QB who went 18-3 against the Browns has gone from nemesis to hero in Cleveland.
He's got one of the NFL's most rabid fan bases frothing and truly believing that this might be the season that the Browns, one of four franchises never to reach the Super Bowl, finally end their drought.
Flacco fever is rampant.
One of the local sports talk stations is playing a parody song to the Bee Gees' “Night Fever” that honors the QB's exploits since he got to Cleveland in November. Last week, a catholic priest at a West Side parish cited Flacco's unforeseen arrival while giving his sermon during a Mass to celebrate the Epiphany.
Cleveland has embraced Flacco and vice versa.
A day after he helped the Browns clinch a playoff berth with a win over the New York Jets, Flacco and his family finished dinner and were leaving a crowded restaurant near the apartment he's renting when they got a surprise.
“They were all clapping for us and stuff,” Flacco told a small group of reporters last week, almost embarrassed. “And it was just like, `Oh my gosh, what's going on here?' But it's cool. I mean, it does make you feel good, as crazy as it is.”
Flacco's comeback is not only a personal triumph, but another example of resilience by a Browns team that has plowed through an avalanche of injuries, including quarterback Deshaun Watson fracturing his shoulder while leading the Browns to a dramatic win at Baltimore on Nov. 12.