CINCINNATI — Coach Zac Taylor immediately welcomed Joe Flacco when he connected with him over the phone after the Cincinnati Bengals acquired the veteran quarterback from the Cleveland Browns on Tuesday.
The second thing was to tell Flacco that he’d be starting on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers.
“I’ve only met him once before he came here, but I know his game,” Taylor said Wednesday after announcing Flacco would start. “Played against him I don’t know many times, a lot of times. Very comfortable with his style, concepts he’s been good at, things that fit us that we do. The terminology there is a lot of carryover, more so than what I would have anticipated, so feel like we can get him up to speed quickly.”
Taylor benched Jake Browning after three starts that resulted in blowout losses. In those three games, Browning completed 64.1% of his passes and threw five interceptions.
With the Bengals holding a 2-3 record in a wide-open AFC North, the front office explored the trade market for a new starting quarterback and landed on the 40-year-old Flacco.
“He’s a great passer,” Taylor said. “We’ve got to expand all areas of our offense to be better, to be efficient, to run the ball better, to protect, all that kind of stuff. The No. 1 trait you’re looking for is a guy that can operate your system and throw the football. Joe’s always been a tremendous passer in this league and have seen it. We’ve got tremendous weapons he can play around and so I’m excited to watch him do it.”
Flacco debuted in 2008 and has played in exactly 200 NFL games. He opened this season as the Browns’ starting quarterback, and he nearly led that team to a win over the Bengals in Week 1.
In Week 3, Flacco’s Browns beat the Packers, 13-10. Flacco, who completed 21 of 36 passes for 142 yards and an interception on Sept. 21, already has game-planned for Green Bay’s defense, and there’s not much around the league that he hasn’t seen from defenses.
“It’s different than a young quarterback coming in trying to learn the system and understand what a defense is trying to do to challenge you,” Taylor said. “He’s played Green Bay this year, so he’s already gone through a week of prep. That’s the nice part. The communication and the weekly rhythm is maybe different and unique. He’s already prepared for this opponent. He gets a chance to refresh himself on that, while at the same time learning our system and our terminology and our verbiage and how we operate. He hasn’t played there this year, so the crowd noise and all that stuff is different, but at least he’s got some experience playing against them.”
The Bengals move forward with Browning as their backup and former Packers backup QB Sean Clifford as the third-string option on their practice squad.
Packers coach Matt LaFleur said Wednesday he thought Flacco would be able to fit into the Bengals’ offense in a short period of time.
“I think the hardest thing for them is going to be just the nuances, with your cadence, your snap count, with the rapport you have with the other players,” LaFleur said. “I think either way, whoever the quarterback is, you got to, you got to go against what they’ve traditionally put on film over a long period of time.”
Getting Flacco up to speed started quickly after the trade was finalized on Tuesday. Taylor and Flacco spoke about the game plan on the phone during Flacco’s drive from Cleveland to Cincinnati.
“He fits what we do,” Taylor said. “You don’t have to change too much. You just have to get him up to speed with the whole scope of what we have in our arsenal.”
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