CLEVELAND — Joe Flacco is heading back to Cleveland.

The veteran NFL quarterback agreed to terms with the Browns on a one-year deal on Friday. Flacco will have a base salary of $4 million but can earn more with incentives.

He won the league’s Comeback Player of the Year award in 2023 after leading an inspiring late-season surge that carried the Browns to the playoffs for only the second time since their return in 1999.

Flacco’s Comeback Season

Flacco, 40, spent last season in Indianapolis, throwing for 12 touchdowns and seven interceptions in eight games, including a 2-4 mark as a starter.

The Browns are in flux at quarterback with Deshaun Watson potentially missing the entire season as he recovers from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in January, just three months after he initially injured the tendon against Cincinnati.

Cleveland acquired former Pittsburgh Steelers first-round draft pick Kenny Pickett in a trade with Philadelphia. Pickett started one game last season for the Eagles while backing up Jalen Hurts. He was 14-10 as a starter in two years with the Steelers.

Quarterback Situation Unclear

The well-traveled Flacco has bounced around since his prime in Baltimore in the 2010s, a stretch in which he led the Ravens to a Super Bowl. He spent a year in Denver, three with the New York Jets, one in Cleveland and one in Indianapolis.

Now it’s back to the Browns, who made the somewhat curious decision not to re-sign him after he went 4-1 as a starter in 2023 and averaged more than 300 yards passing per game. They decided to stick with the problematic Watson instead, a decision that has backfired repeatedly since they sent a bevy of first-round picks to Houston for him and then signed him to a massive deal that looks like one of the worst in NFL history.

Cleveland owner Jimmy Haslam admitted recently that the team took a big swing for Watson and missed badly.

Ownership Admits Misstep

“We’ve got to dig ourselves out of that hole,” Haslam said in March.

The Browns hold the second overall pick in the NFL draft in two weeks following a disastrous 3-14 season. While there may be a couple of high-profile quarterbacks available in what is considered a quarterback-light draft, there’s a good chance Cleveland sees what they have in Pickett and decide to add talent elsewhere on the roster.

“I think the message is if the right person’s there, we’re going to take him,” Haslam said. “If not, we’ll figure it out for a year or two until we get the right person. There’s good football players in this draft and we’ve got to make sure we get the right ones for us.”

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL