Joe Flacco Isn’t Only Bengals QB Who Could Be Thorn in Packers’ Side

For the Green Bay Packers, it will be a double dose of quarterback intrigue against the Cincinnati Bengals. Will it be double trouble on Sunday?

New Bengals quarterback Joe Flacco will debut against the Packers on Sunday. / Frank Bowen IV/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

GREEN BAY, Wis. – In case you hadn’t heard, the Green Bay Packers will be facing Joe Flacco again when they host the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.

“Yeah, you know anything about him?” defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley said with a laugh on Thursday.

It’s not just the oddity of facing Flacco and the Bengals in Week 6 after going against Flacco and the Cleveland Browns in Week 3. On Cincinnati’s practice squad is quarterback Sean Clifford, who was drafted by the Packers in 2023 and has about two-and-a-half years of deep knowledge of Green Bay’s offense that he can share with Bengals defensive coordinator Al Golden.

Clifford was with the Packers throughout 2023 and 2024. While he was released at the end of the preseason in 2025, he was embedded in the offense throughout the offseason and training camp.

Coach Matt LaFleur downplayed the potential impact of Clifford’s knowledge, “Unless they got an earpiece in our huddle and know exactly what we’re doing. It’s not like we have a ton of signals and this, that and the other. They’re going to get as much and or more from watching the tape as they are going to be from Sean.

“And Sean’s got a great football mind, too. There’s no disrespect for him. I just think that’s a storyline more for the outside world than it is for guys in the building. It’s no different when we played Dallas a couple weeks ago. Micah (Parsons) had a few nuggets for us, but it wasn’t anything earth shattering.”

The Parsons example is like comparing goulash to galoshes. Parsons is an elite defensive player but he didn’t need to know the inner workings of Dallas’ defense under coordinator Matt Eberflus. Clifford is a quarterback who had to know the inner workings of LaFleur’s offense. Parsons and Eberflus were together for about a half-year; Clifford and LaFleur were together for three training camps.

So, leave it to safety Xavier McKinney to deliver the real talk.

If he were, say, Bengals safety Geno Stone, would he have talked to Clifford this week?

“Yeah, sh**, I would,” McKinney said. “I think anytime you get a guy that’s coming from an opponent that you’re about to face, it’s always good to ask him questions on what they do, how they do it, how do they play, what do they like to do. It’s always good to get that different information from the guys that were on that former team, which would be Sean in this case.”

As the quarterback of Green Bay’s defense, what would McKinney want to know?

The scheme, obviously, but there could be few better people than Clifford to get insight into what Jordan Love is looking for on any particular play.

“I think it would be cadence and, from a safety perspective, is he a guy that’s going to look you off? Is he a guy that’s not going to look you off? Is he going to stare right down the plate?” McKinney said.

At the end of training camp last year, the Packers acquired Malik Willis from the Tennessee Titans. With Love injured, Willis led the Packers to a victory over his former team in Week 3.

Green Bay’s defensive coaches didn’t try to glean any intel on Tennessee’s new offense from Willis, though that was partially because Willis was so new to the Packers that his sole focus had to be mastering the game plan.

Even if Willis knew the offense inside-out, he didn’t think any information he could provide would have been particularly helpful.

“It’s too short of a turnaround,” Willis said. “That’s something that you work on over a long period of time. You don’t learn an offense over a week. What do we get, three days to plan during the week? It doesn’t work like that. It’s just too much to focus on and these plays happen so fast and you’ve got to go out there and play fast. You can’t be thinking about, ‘Oh, I remember Sean told me, if they do this …’ We’ve already snapped the ball.”

Love said the team would have to be “cognizant” of Clifford’s insider knowledge but downplayed the impact for the same reasons as Willis.

“I think it’s tough,” he said. “Same thing on our side when we’ve got guys that have given us stuff. It’s tough to break down all that stuff in the midst of the heat of the battle.”

Clifford will be on the sideline on Sunday but Flacco will be taking center stage. In Week 3, he was part of Cleveland’s upset win over Green Bay. If he can do it again – and it would be a monumental upset – he’d become the first quarterback since 1962 to beat the same opponent but with different teams.

If Joe Flacco starts this week and beats Packers after already doing it for Browns, he will be 2nd QB since starts first tracked in 1950 to start and beat same opponent twice in a season with different teams. Jack Kemp beat NY Titans in 1962 with Chargers and Bills https://t.co/x2GxdyeFCG

— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) October 7, 2025

Same quarterback but different scheme. Is there anything the defense can take away from Flacco’s performance a few weeks ago?

“It’s funny, because I was just thinking about that, and I was kind of thinking the other way around,” McKinney said. “Kind of what he saw from us when he was with the Browns, what he’s already seen us do. So, I was thinking about ways he might try to come into this game having different players and a different scheme, already having seen what we’ve done this year.

“So, just trying to see if there’s going to be different ways where we can mix it up and show different things and play different things. So, I’m going to take a look at that. I’m probably going to re-watch the Browns game just to try and watch and see what we were doing a little bit and try to go from there.”

It’s not just the different scheme. It’s different playmakers. Flacco had decent receivers with Cleveland. He’s got great ones in Cincinnati with All-Pro Ja’Marr Chase and towering playmaker Tee Higgins.

“No offense to Cleveland, but nobody got two receivers like the Bengals,” Parsons said. “This is going to be a completely different quarterback.”

The Bengals acquired Flacco to salvage a season that was spiraling out of control following the injury to Joe Burrow and the poor play of Jake Browning. The Packers need a win to perhaps prevent their season from spiraling, as well.

“It’s not often you start off the week thinking you’re going to play somebody else and you see you’re playing against a guy you just played against two weeks ago,” Hafley said. “Yeah, we get to see Joe again. It feels like we just played him.

“Some people will ask how he’s going to get ready to play so fast. He’s played so many years. He’s been a part of so many different systems. It’s probably just going to be terminology. Look, I think he fits what they’re looking for really well. He gets rid of the ball really quick. He can throw it up. He’s got a strong arm. He can see it and they got really good wideouts. I think it’s a good move for them. It’s a good fit and we get a second crack at him.”

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