Joe Flacco may be 41 years old, but he still thinks he has plenty left in the tank.

The Super Bowl XLVII champion signed a one-year deal with the Cincinnati Bengals to be Joe Burrow’s backup, but he wants much more than that.

“Not being one of those guys to go sign somewhere, yeah, it pisses me off a little bit,” Flacco said.

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He then added a parting shot at just about every team in the league.

“And believe me, I wish I was the guy somewhere, and I think teams are dumb for not having me be that guy,” he said.

Flacco started last season for the Cleveland Browns and was their Week 1 quarterback, but with two rookies in Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders in the wings, the writing was on the wall.

Cleveland traded him to Cincinnati after Burrow suffered a serious turf-toe injury, and he found some success. Flacco played well despite going 1-5 as a starter with the Bengals. He threw for at least 200 yards in four of his six starts, and the Bengals’ offense averaged more than 27 points per game.

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But with his success, despite his wishes to be a starter, it’s a good consolation prize.

“I feel like I have unfinished business. That’s part of why I’m here and still playing and doing all those things…” he said. “I had a lot of fun with Joe, and Joe’s the guy.”

Flacco, who was Super Bowl MVP with the Baltimore Ravens during the 2012 season, has played for the Broncos, Jets, Eagles, Jets again, Browns, Colts, Browns again and the Bengals.

He has thrown for 48,176 yards, 272 touchdowns and 172 interceptions in 19 seasons. He is 10-6 in the playoffs with 3,530 yards passing, 26 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Top Democrats in the California state legislature pressured the University of Southern California (USC) to cancel its planned gubernatorial debate after its framework for who got to participate included five White candidates, but disqualified four minorities who were not polling or fundraising as well per the university. 

The “data-driven” candidate viability framework produced a lineup of Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, as well as Democrats Tom Steyer, Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell – all White candidates. The same criteria, developed by a USC professor and defended by the university, ended up axing Xavier Becerra, Antonio Villaraigosa, Betty Yee and Tony Thurman, all Democratic Party minority candidates, due to lower polling and fundraising scores, they said. 

After news of who made the candidate pool and who did not, the excluded candidates expressed outrage over what they claimed was a racist candidate viability system created by USC that targeted people based on their race. 

One candidate, former Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra, even likened it to when his father used to talk about “the days when he would encounter signs posted outside establishments that read ‘No Dogs, Negroes or Mexicans Allowed.’”

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Among those expressing outrage besides the candidates themselves were California state Senate President pro Tempore Monique Limon, Speaker of the California State Assembly Robert Rivas, and a handful of other Democratic Party members within the state legislature who called the decision-making framework “biased” in a letter they signed that also included concerns about one of the selected candidate’s donor ties to the university. They also referred to candidate’s complaints, such as from Becerra, as “valid.” 

“If USC does not do the right thing, we call on California voters to boycott this debate. If the university will not give voters a fair shot at evaluating everyone running for governor, voters should find other ways to learn about the candidates,” stated the letter, which included letterhead with the logos of about half-a-dozen Democratic Party caucuses in California. 

“We are asking you, President Kim, to exercise the leadership this moment calls for: expand the debate stage, and trust California’s voters to make up their own minds.”

Meanwhile, in an announcement less than 24-hours ahead of the scheduled debate, USC said that KABC, the Los Angeles television station broadcasting the debate, could not come to an agreement to allow more candidates and, as a result, decided to cancel the debate.

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“If you run anything in California, the legislature is very important to you and at the top of the letter, the top signatories to this letter, Robert Rivas, who is the Speaker of the Assembly, and Monique Limon, who’s the head of the Senate, the State Senate and the State Assembly. And that came very late on Monday. They sent this letter to USC. Then what happened? 

“As we understand it – they’ve been pretty open about it – they get this letter from the legislature, they think, ‘Oh, sh–t, we better do something. This is now a real threat. This isn’t just the candidates complaining. This is the legislature, which, you know, regulates and affects everything we do,'” Hilton, one of the GOP frontrunners in California’s gubernatorial race, said about the situation.

“USC apparently went to ABC, the media partner who’s going to broadcast the debate, and said, ‘We want to expand it and put these people back in,’ and USC said, ‘No, I’m sorry. ABC said no.’ Then, that midnight, on Monday night, they put out that statement saying, ‘Okay, then we’ll cancel it.'” 

Reporting from Cal Matters, a local California publication covering state politics, indicated that, directly and indirectly, Porter, Steyer and Swalwell have suggested Mahan, a tech entrepreneur and former Mayor of San Jose, was invited to the now-canceled debate despite poor performance data. 

In the lawmakers’ letter requesting the event allow more candidates or be canceled, addressed to USC’s President Beong-Soo Kim, an unnamed candidate with “notable ties to USC’s donor community” was also alluded to as part of the complaints about the debate. When Rivas’ staff was asked for clarification on whom the letter was referring to, they eventually confirmed it was Mahan.

A party-sponsored poll from Democratic State Chairman Rusty Hicks showed Mahan behind Becerra, but had all other candidates that USC selected ahead of those who did not make it. Two Republicans, Hilton and Bianco, are still leading the field at 16% and 14% respectively. Meanwhile, Porter, Swalwell and Steyer are tied at 10% and every other Democrat is still in the low single digits. Twenty-four percent remain undecided.

Neither Rivas nor Limon provided on-the-record comments to Fox News Digital for this story prior to publication.

The 2026 MLB season kicks off Wednesday night with the New York Yankees against the San Francisco Giants, and Yankees captain Aaron Judge will begin his journey toward a potential third straight AL MVP Award. 

Judge is arguably the best hitter in today’s game, but for all the accolades he has accumulated all these years in pinstripes, a World Series title still eludes him.

For a Yankees player, that’s the only measure of success. After all, the man who held the coveted Yankees captaincy before him, Baseball Hall of Fame shortstop Derek Jeter, made sure to constantly preach that during the team’s dynasty. 

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Judge sat down with a fellow high-profile All-Star, Houston Rockets forward Kevin Durant, for a Boardroom “Cover Story” interview, in which Durant asked about the pressure of playing in New York and how badly the former wants to be a champion. 

“That’s one thing I wanted to do ever since I got drafted, man,” Judge responded. “I wanted to bring a championship back to New York, and I wanted to leave the organization and that franchise better than when I got in there. I just want to leave my mark on there, and hopefully when these next guys are coming through, that’s the one thing, man. You walk into Yankee Stadium, these photos are [Derek] Jeter, it’s [Jorge] Posada, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle. 

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“It’s all these legends. So, it’s like, ‘Man, I want my picture up there. I want my teammates’ pictures up there. I want to be a part of that.’”

Judge and his teammates were on the doorstep of breaking the Yankees’ World Series drought during the 2024 campaign but lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games. It was the first time the franchise made it back to the Fall Classic since their title win over the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009. 

In 2025, as Judge went on to defend his AL MVP title, the Yankees fell short in the ALDS to the AL East foe Toronto Blue Jays, who won the American League pennant. They also lost to the Dodgers, though it was a thrilling seven-game series unlike Los Angeles’ dominance against Judge’s squad the year prior. 

Judge understands the weight of pressure. He felt it since coming up through the minor leagues, but also recently with Team USA during the World Baseball Classic, where he also served as the team’s captain. But the pressure is something that’s welcome, especially if he’s having a bad game. 

Boos rain down in the Bronx no matter the player’s stature in the league, and whether they’re wearing pinstripes or not. 

“It was never any pressure, or I got to raise my standard. My standard’s already there,” Judge told Durant. “If you guys are booing me or getting on me, I’m booing myself too right now. If I sit there and think about the pressure and what I haven’t done yet, it’s going to take me off my path of what I want to accomplish.”

Judge’s focus remains on one thing, and one thing only — winning a World Series. What awards and accolades come with that are welcome, but at this point, they’re not as fulfilling as what he hopes this new season will end with. 

“It’s almost haunting. In Yankee Stadium, they don’t have ‘AL championships,’ they don’t have ‘All-Stars.’ They have ‘World Series Champions.’ and it’s all around the stadium. I see this little empty spot past ’09. I’m like, ‘That’s what we’re chasing,’” he said. 

The Yankees and Giants play at 8:05 p.m. ET to begin the 2026 MLB season on Netflix.

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