Browns' Joe Flacco admits Texans beating was 'absolutely a shame'

Joe Flacco said that it's hard to process the Browns losing to the Texans as badly as they did.

The Cleveland Browns impressed the football world by making it to the NFL playoffs despite continuous churn at the quarterback position and an early-season injury to Nick Chubb. Joe Flacco added to the feel-good vibes by coming out of nowhere and producing at a very respectable level. But they were quickly flung out the door by rookie sensation C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans in the opening game.

The final score was 45-14 in an absolute drubbing from the Texans. Flacco threw three touchdowns…but two of them were to Houston and came on back-to-back drives in the third quarter. Those blunders ruined what was just a 10-point deficit for the Browns, who were unable to score in the entire second half. Stroud threw three touchdowns (all to his team) and was able to rest on Houston's final two drives.

A Cleveland team that had the makings of a Cinderella run crashed and burned early. Flacco said that even though mounting hopes deeper in the playoffs make losses difficult to deal with, being stomped out immediately doesn’t feel good for anyone on the Browns' side, according to Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal.

“Usually, the further you go, the more heartbreak there is just from my experience,” Flacco said, via the Akron Beacon Journal. “It's a lot of fun along the way, but if you do get beat, it's hard to deal with. I don't want to let everybody in the locker room, but there is part of me that wishes you could see just how much everybody cares and how much everybody cares about each other and just what kind of team that was. So, yeah, it's definitely a shame the way it went down and hard to deal with at the moment.”

While this season was fun for the Browns, their future is not nearly as bright. They will again have to turn the keys over to Deshaun Watson, who was very bad when healthy this season and is recovering from an injury to his throwing-side shoulder.

As for Flacco, he's not yet thinking about what next season could bring. This run with the Browns could very well have elongated the 38-year-old's career a little bit.