Joe Flacco is officially back in Cincinnati and he wanted to start,

but let's talk about why he returned to back up Joe Burrow for the Cincinnati Bengals.

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What up Bengals fans and welcome to a mini episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast.

He's James Rapine. I'm Jake Liscoe.

We are Locked-on Bengals and today we're breaking down what Joe Flacco had to say in his press conference

after he officially signed his contract to return to play for the Cincinnati Bengals.

We discussed Flacko's return in full in our full episode that was published about 16 hours ago or so

late on Tuesday, Eastern time.

And today he met with the media on Wednesday, and we wanted to go through everything that he had to say and why he returned to Cincinnati, according to Joe Flacco himself, after there was connection to the Las Vegas Raiders and plenty of other teams that were looking for potential

bridge quarterback options or starting quarterback veterans, but Flacco instead choosing to return

for that one year $6 million deal to Cincinnati to back up Joe Burrow, despite there being

some concern, right, that he would get one of those starting jobs and go elsewhere,

but it sounds like he was in close contact, relatively speaking, with Zach Taylor's

throughout the process, talking about when he was going to sign, what opportunity he

wanted to wait for, and he felt very comfortable, it sounds like, with the culture in Cincinnati,

with his teammates based on the locker

room experience he had last year and this coaching staff in making his decision, James.

Yeah, it's not a shock. It's not shocking that the Bengals wanted him back. We knew that. And it's

not shocking that he said, you know what? Let's go to Cincinnati. And if the scenario was the Raiders and a few other teams where, let's be honest, his backup days would be inevitable if he signed in Las Vegas. Maybe he starts week one, like maybe. And I think that's a low end chance. but he's going to be a backup on a team that

probably isn't going to be ready to go, ready to win in that division. So if those are the type of

...