BEREA — Elijah Moore wouldn't take the bait.

The third-year receiver spent his first two seasons in the NFL playing for the New York Jets after they made him a second-round pick (34th overall) in the 2021 draft out of Ole Miss. The time didn't necessarily end on the happiest of terms between the two, which included a in-season blowup at the offensive coordinator and an off-season trade to the Browns.

Moore's new team faces his old team on "Thursday Night Football" in Cleveland. He played it coy, though, when asked about his past meeting his present.

"I don't really have emotions," Moore said Tuesday. "I mean obviously everybody knows I just came from the Jets. But it's just another game."

That was Moore's initial response. It was the one he stood firm behind for half of his conversation with reporters Tuesday.

However, the tone changed just slightly when Moore was asked the question a slightly different way. Specifically, what does it mean to have a chance to clinch a playoff berth by beating the Jets.

"Yeah, of course I want to win more than a little bit extra this week," Moore said. "But at the end of the day it's another game and I play for the Browns and the only thing that matters is what we do here."

Moore is third on the Browns with 54 catches, on 98 targets, for 579 yards and a touchdown. Since his former Jets teammate, Joe Flacco, took over as the Browns starting quarterback in Week 13 at the Los Angeles Rams, he has been targeted 25 times with 11 catches for 161 yards.

While Moore hasn't quite had the game he had in Flacco's debut — 12 targets, 4 catches and 83 yards — since then, he's maintain enough involvement to make at least one big play a game. During this past Sunday's 36-22 win at the Houston Texans, he had a critical 18-yard catch on a crossing route on third down to keep the chains moving on what turned into the Browns' third scoring drive.

Yeah, I feel like it's everything," Moore said of Flacco's addition. "It just allows everybody to open up and be themselves. It allows everyone to have a moment to make a big play."

It's allowed Moore a chance to say "I told you so" as well. Not to his former teammates and coaches, but to his current ones, in case they had doubts about Flacco when he first signed with the Browns practice squad on Nov. 20.

Moore was one of Flacco's favorite targets during their two seasons together with the Jets. In seven games, Flacco targeted Moore 41 times, completing 25 of those, for 336 yards and two touchdowns.

So before Flacco accumulated three consecutive 300-yard passing games over his last three starts — all Browns wins — while throwing for 1,307 yards in four starts, the never-too-shy Moore had let his teammates know what he already knew. Although, it wasn't so much about how he verbalized that knowledge.

"Truly no," Moore said. "I felt like in practice I would just give them a look. Like I'm telling you."

Something similar to the way Moore has tried to convey his feelings as he gets ready to face the team that originall drafted him. As well as the one that got rid of him.

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Elijah Moore on Jets: 'It's another game and I play for the Browns'