NFL offseason thread

Level 1: Brady, Manning, Brees, Rodgers = ELITE
Level 2: RG3, Luck, Kaepernick, Ryan = not ELITE
Level 3: Flacco = Not even close to ELITE.

Gotcha.

 

FWIW Is Kaepernick the first QB to throw for 300 yards in a Super Bowl without having started 10 regular season games? If so, that's an HOF trajectory

 

You're much better at reading comprehension than LTL.

 

He's putting that out there to mock how stupid you're being.

And you also had Roethlisberger and Eli in that elite-or-maybe-so category too.

You should try to figure out what the fuck you're trying to say before you get three pages deep into something.

 

Oh. I thought you were joking.

But now that I'm sure you're not....what makes Matt Ryan more ELITE than Flacco?

Is it his 2 extra % in completion rate?
Is it his 4 more INTs than Flacco?
Is it his 25 extra TDs?
Is it his 1,200 extra passing yards?
Or is it Ryan's 8 fewer playoff victories? I bet it's that.

And what about RG3 is more ELITE than Flacco? It's gotta be his ability to make it through a 16-game season completely healthy, right?

 

Not to interrupt this lovefest, but Yahoo! is saying that San Francisco is the most likely landing spot for Percy Harvin.

 

Harvin would certainly be a fine addition. In the meantime, we can all sit back and let the magic of the marketplace determine whether or not Flacco is elite. If he gets paid like he is, then the NFL thinks so, and our opinions are irrelevant.

 

Not sure paychecks are the best way to determine who is or isn't an ELITE quarterback, but whatever fires you up.

 

Well, unfortunately, Sanchez is paid like he's an elite QB. Doesn't he make $17 million a year?

I'm wondering what it would take for the Niners to get Harvin from Minneapolis. I'm guessing a No. 1 and a No. 3, and then you have to pay him.

He could definitely help them. He also gets injured a lot and isn't known for getting along with his coaches or teammates...

 

I'm sad I appear to have missed the heart of this Flacco discussion. Someone should have thrown up the Bat signal.

Perceptions are really hard to change once people decide what you're capable of doing. Flacco was definitely a "game manager" during his rookie season, in 2008 when the Ravens went to the AFC Championship game, but he also made a few big plays along the way that showed you he could -- potentially -- be something much more.

I've said this plenty of times here, but it's worth repeating: Fantasy football skews the way we perceive quarterbacks. Matt Ryan is a pretty good player, but I definitely would not take him ahead of Flacco, and it doesn't have anything to do with Ryan's alleged playoff failures vs. Flacco's alleged playoff coat tail wins. (This was definitely the perception prior to this year.) It's funny that people make comments like "Well, Flacco has had talent around him every year he's been in the league." If you gave Joe Flacco Roddy White, Tony Gonzalez and Julio Jones, and you let him play in a spread offense in a dome for a different head coach, I absolutely believe he could put up the kind of numbers that make everyone think Ryan is "borderline elite." (Mechanically, Ryan is a pretty QB. He still has a jello arm compared to a lot of QBs.) I think Flacco's performance in the playoffs this year is evidence of that. Not all stats are created equal, except in fantasy football. The Ravens have held Flacco back in a lot of ways in recent years. Every time something has gone wrong, they've freaked out and tried to simplify the offense, often because the big egos on the defensive side of the ball couldn't handle a few growing pains. If Flacco had been given free reign to fuck up and grow from it like Ryan and Stafford and Cutler and some of the other guys trying to claw their way into the "elite" category, I think people would perceive him differently. (It might also be different if his personality was something other than that of a wet napkin.) He spent two whole seasons where a broken down Derrick Mason and Todd Heap were his main targets. That's kind of criminal. For a lot of years, here is what Flacco was asked to give the Ravens: Durability, stability, low-risk throws and very few interceptions. He couldn't call his own plays, and he frequently was not allowed to audible at the LOS. His head coach didn't know dick about offense, so he let his offensive coordinator run the entire show. This offensive coordinator -- not coincidentally -- was also the brain that brought Drew Brees and Philip Rivers along when they were young. And, not coincidentally, both of them did fine. Then they made monumental leaps forward once he left. You can look it up.

I think "elite!" is such a silly discussion when it comes to quarterbacks. It's such a talk radio argument, as if one day you'll cross an invisible threshold and be "elite!" forever. Would I give Flacco the same kind of money I'd give Brees or Manning or Brady? Absolutely not. I think he still struggles a little with pocket awareness and accuracy. Everyone says he throws the best deep ball in the league, and I guess statistically that's true, but there is no fucking way he's on the level of Aaron Rodgers. He can be fooled by coverages, and he's a lot better in the shotgun than he is under center. (Devil is going to chime in any second and say "He got beat by Charlie Batch! Charlie Batch!" as if Flacco should have been playing in the secondary that day.) But that doesn't mean he hasn't been extremely important to the Ravens, and a key part of their success. He would be successful anywhere. I don't think he could drag a band of misfits deep into the playoffs or anything, but I'm not sure what quarterback can, exactly. Drew Brees couldn't do it this year. Flacco torched San Francisco in ways that Rodgers hasn't been able to do the last couple years. Jim Caldwell, for all the jokes about what a wax figure he was in Indy, is clearly a better fit for Flacco than Cam Cameron was. It's maddening that it took the Ravens three years to figure out Anquan Boldin should play in the slot, and catch balls over the middle of the field (the way he was used in Arizona, when he was incredible) as opposed to splitting him out wide and having him run outs and deep ins.

There's always an element of luck involved in playoff success, so we have to pay quarterbacks based on their overall body of work, and statistically, Flacco's regular season statistics say he's clearly a tier below some of the other quarterbacks. Could he put up numbers like Brady or Manning or Rodgers? I don't know. I doubt it, but I do think he'll continue to progress and give them a chance to win a Super Bowl almost every year. Would I rather have Kaepernick or RGIII or Andrew Luck? I don't know, to be honest. I think Kaepernick has a real chance to be the best of those three, to be honest. I don't know that RGIII could take the pounding Flacco's taken the last five years, and I want to see a little more of Luck. (His completion percentage this year was surprisingly low. I think it's clear though he's likely going to be GREAT.) But what's more important? Gaudy stats? Or going 12-4 and 11-5 and knowing every year you've got a shot? I've always said Flacco is the most confounding athlete I've ever watched closely. As soon as you declare he's "elite" he'll regress. If you write him off and decide he's a joke -- which everyone did last year before the 2011 AFC Championship -- he'll make you eat your hat.

Eventually, he'll sign an extension with Baltimore worth something like $17 million per and both sides will be relatively happy. The Ravens can't let him walk, and they know it. He doesn't want to leave either. He's not stupid, even if he does play the part sometimes. This is how negotiations work. You start at $20 and the Ravens start at $14 and eventually you find something that both sides can live with. I think Flacco's agent was happy to use Peter King this week to float the idea that Flacco might just end up somewhere else if the Ravens don't get real, because he knows people in Baltimore are still haunted by the Ghosts of Stoney Case, Jeff Blake, Randall Cunningham, Anthony Wright and Kyle Boller, and that public pressure might get to Newsome a bit.

Ozzie Newsome is no fool. He's not going to blow up his team to keep a quarterback that might revert back to playing inconsistent football. But the decision isn't his alone. Steve Bisciotti won't let Flacco end up in Cleveland, or Oakland. A lot of journalists speculating about such things ought to know better.

 

Sounds great on paper but then I think about chemistry and Harvin's penchant for getting hurt and Ponder's recent words and think um maybe not so fast.

 

Flacco would be crazy to leave the Ravens and they would be crazy to let him go.

Given protection, he can carve a defense up. He was a surgeon this post season. He was throwing the football like Maddux threw a baseball, but he had all day to throw. They protected him fantastically. Throw Flacco on the Jets and he goes back to the guy who does not see Polamalu coming.

But if the Ravens think another guy is the answer, like Alex Smith, they should open up their history books to the Elvis Grbac chapter.

And they should also keep Boldin because he is the perfect receiver for Flacco; a guy who can fight for the ball when Flacco pinpoints it.