- Joe Flacco won his first home start for the Bengals. Will it be the first of many this season?
- Cincinnati has embarked on a three-game homestand but will see the Steelers again very soon.
- As for the Browns? Expect their decisions to continue impacting their division’s outcome in 2025.
Week 18. Jan. 4, 2026. “Sunday Night Football.” Joe Flacco vs. Shedeur Sanders, flexed into prime time at Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium with the AFC North title hanging in the balance.
OK, maybe this crystal ball is about as accurate as Flacco was with his previous team. But after watching the Bengals’ new/temporary/galvanizing/graybeard QB1 knock off the first-place Pittsburgh Steelers 33-31 on Thursday night while ending his latest club’s four-game slide, it’s already worth wondering: Are the lowly Cleveland Browns ultimately going to determine their division’s champion?
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin already gave the notion credence, seeing it coming from a mile away when he uncharacteristically lashed out Monday.
“Andrew Berry must be a lot smarter than me or us because it doesn’t make sense to me to trade a quarterback that you think enough of to make your opening day starter to a division opponent that’s hurting in that area,” Tomlin said of Cleveland’s general manager, who traded Flacco to the Joe Burrow-less Bengals last week.
“But that’s just my personal feeling.”
And it probably was a little bit … personal?
Tomlin, the NFL’s longest-tenured coach – hired by Pittsburgh in 2007 – has been combatting Flacco, 40, with mixed results, for most of the past 18 seasons. The still strong-armed Super Bowl 47 MVP has now faced the Steelers 26 times in his career, playoffs included and – yep – he’s been on the winning side against Tomlin 13 times. The Steelers coach was more circumspect amid the fresh Flacco fallout Thursday night.
“They did what was required to win – they made a few more plays than we did,” Tomlin said of the Bengals.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t compliment them, they fought their tails off.”
But you think he and the Steelers wouldn’t have preferred the opportunity to work over Jake Browning, who was mostly abysmal in his three starts following the Week 2 toe injury Burrow sustained and is now trying to come back from, potentially at some point in December?
Flacco clearly enjoyed this latest chapter with Pittsburgh, saying Thursday night that many of his football war stories involve losses to the Steelers.
“I have so much respect for Mike and the battle that we’ve had,’ said Flacco as a smile broke across his face at the postgame podium. ‘I always find a way to play them. I love playing them.
“Those games against those guys – like in my career – those games have been different than others, just the physicality and the energy.
‘Nothing but respect for (Tomlin).”
The question now becomes: Have the Browns irreversibly − maybe even disrespectfully! − changed the AFC North’s stripes in 2025? Consider:
The Bengals seem to have a new lease on life, starting a three-game homestand with Thursday’s win. Now, they can enjoy a 10-day interlude before hosting the winless New York Jets, with the Chicago Bears up after that. After a Week 10 bye, the Flacco-ful, Browning-less Bengals go to Pittsburgh, where they generally give the Steelers more problems than they typically do in Cincinnati.
The Bengals’ schedule serves up Flacco’s original team, the Baltimore Ravens, in Week 13 (Thanksgiving) and 15, by which point Burrow could be close to a return … unless Flacco is the better option. Regardless, there’s now renewed hope − for both teams − that those could now be relevant matchups.
And to extrapolate this just a bit more, Cleveland will face all of its divisional adversaries once more this season, including the Steelers in Week 17 and the Bengals in the regular-season finale. And the Browns obviously won’t be helmed by Flacco, who rolled off the couch to spark them to the playoffs in 2023 but struggled mightily last month while trying to operate a limited offense. Moving forward Cleveland will instead presumably still be evaluating rookie QB Dillon Gabriel and/or Sanders, arguably the highest-profile of their players – if one who hasn’t taken a regular-season snap. Yet. However, owner Jimmy Haslam has expressed a desire to see Sanders play at some point.
Got all that?
Meanwhile, the Steelers will have to hope 41-year-old quarterback Aaron Rodgers remains upright and can continue to dink and dunk Pittsburgh to the division crown. The Ravens hope their prodigiously talented roster, namely two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, can be sufficiently healthy down the stretch to salvage the season following a stunning, injury-marred 1-5 start. The Bengals, who finally left the gate 2-0 for the first time in the Burrow era, will have to hope he can get back – right? – to trigger the high-powered offense he advocated for before Cincy’s historically miserly front office essentially bet most of its cap space that Burrow and wideouts Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins could finally lead this 57-year-old franchise out of The Jungle and to Lombardi Land.
Chase and Flacco seem to be enjoying an already near-instant rapport, hooking up 26 times for 255 yards and two TDs – most of that after Flacco’s first-half mulligan during his Bengals debut at Green Bay on Sunday. He’s even still trying to discern some of the play calls as they’re sifted through head coach Zac Taylor’s Oklahoma accent. But generally speaking? So far, so good.
“You hope you can come in here and play well,” Flacco said after beating the Steelers. “Now to go out there and have done it for like the last six quarters, I think it’s gonna give us a lot of confidence. And hopefully we can carry that over and use it to our advantage.”
He targeted Chase 23 times against Pittsburgh, more than the rest of Cincinnati’s players combined, hitting him 16 times for 161 yards and a score. Flacco finished with 342 yards and three TDs through the air, though Cincinnati’s offense was also unusally balanced for a change − churning out a season-high (by far) 142 rushing yards.
“Honestly, it’s been amazing,” Chase said on Prime Video’s postgame set.
As for the Browns? They don’t have their quarterback of the past – as in their Week 1 starter. Their quarterback(s) of the present have yet to win a game. Their quarterback of the future may arrive via one of their two first-round picks in 2026. And Cleveland is clearly more incentivized to offload veterans like Flacco – at the mere cost of upgrading a sixth-round draft pick to a fifth next year – than trying to win as many games as possible in the moment.
It’s an approach that’s already cost the Steelers and could have further repercussions.
And Bengals fans know it, appropriately chanting after Thursday’s potentially season-salvaging triumph: “Thank you, Cleveland.”
