The 31-year-old, who has been capped 60 times for England, is back in the north-east after three years in France playing for Toulouse.
"It will be my first year in 10 years that I won't have been playing European cup rugby which is interesting and completely different," he said.
"But where this club is going I don't think it will be very long and I hope we get back into that situation.
"And with what Dean (Richards, Falcons' director of rugby) and the coaches are doing here I think we're heading down the right pathway and what could be a really positive outcome this season."
Flood, who originally came through the Falcons' academy before moving to Leicester in 2008, thinks he is now more accountable as a player than he was in his first stint with the club.
"I'm probably much more level-headed than I was when I was younger, I think I was much more a seat-of-my-pants type player, playing instinctively and having a go," he said.
"But now you have to be more aware of those around you and what the situation demands, so I suppose the development has been becoming accountable for those around me and holding me accountable for my actions and decisions."
He said hearing good things from players already at the club prompted him to come back, and he does so having learned lessons from his time on the continent.
"Probably the biggest lesson was as rugby players we can become a bit looked after and wanting to do the same things prior to kick-off, and in France nothing was ever the same," he said.
"There was no continuity, there would be nothing in the changing room or they would forget, so you had to learn to deal with the consequences of maybe not doing something before a game.
"So it was learning to deal with that sort of stuff, the mental control of dealing with that and turning up to games shrugging your shoulders and going out and playing."
