Could the Cleveland Browns pull off a Nick Foles-like Super Bowl run with the acquisition of scrappy Joe Flacco?

In a way, a routine Thursday night last month saw an unexpected social media alert that set off Joe Flacco’s unlikely NFL comeback and the Cleveland Browns’ explosive finish to the 2023 regular season.

The “Cleveland Sports Fans” X account shared a blurry photo taken inside a commercial flight late on November 16. Looking at it, it looked like any other cattle-call photo taken from inside an aircraft, with people lining the aisle and stumbling to find their seats. An extraordinarily tall man stood in the back, staring down everyone else with that thousand-yard stare and empty eyes that some NFL fans could not help but notice.

Joe Flacco was clearly the one.

“The Browns next starting QB is currently boarding a flight to Cleveland,” was the only caption on the post.

If you could travel back in time, we knew two things about two entities that were about to unintentionally come together, about a minute before that photo surfaced on social media: After losing Deshaun Watson for the season, the Browns were faced with a major quarterbacking issue. Dorian Thompson-Robinson, a fifth-round rookie, was brought in to manage the veteran roster, while Flacco, who had been a marginal backup for the previous five years of his career, was quarterbacking their living room couch.