callahan09

You know that opponents only scored 1 TD all season on drives following a Flacco interception (and Flacco threw no pick 6's)? And that 1 TD scored off an interception was in the one of the Browns games (which we won, anyway, so it ultimately didn't cost us any games).

There is a lot wrong with this post. First of all, we've seen Flacco's wrath. Second of all, Flacco's ice in his veins approach to the position has absolutely been a net positive. Remember when he drove us down the field for a go-ahead TD drive in Pittsburgh with the division on the line? Oh yeah, the defense crapped it away, that's right. His mechanics are a symptom of a lot of flux and inexperience at the offensive line and recovering from a season-ending injury. He improved a lot as the season went on and the line got more stable and his injury was more in the rear view. He can't get the ball past the line of scrimmage and out of bounds to avoid intentional grounding? I have no idea what you're talking about. The play I think you're referring to was ruled intentional grounding because he didn't get out of the tackle box, but it did go out of bounds and past the line of scrimmage. Besides the point that the refs got it wrong anyway because there WAS a receiver in the vicinity. Mallet played in the Cincy game, not the Pittsburgh game. And he threw a quick interception on a badly underthrown ball when he had full protection in the pocket to step into the throw (something that Flacco actually didn't have the benefit of in that very same game because he was under pressure from 3 and 4 man rushes all game long). But whatever. You just seem to want to nitpick.

Not sure what the reason is for saying goodbye to OL coaches. I actually feel good about our OL coaching, I just don't like the play designs and play calls, and most of the OL problems lay at the feet of the injury bug and the front office, not the coaching. When healthy, the OL has played decently, but could be improved in my opinion with better play designs & play calling. The strength & conditioning coach being let go is very interesting and immediately rings a bell in my mind that maybe they think it's a strength & conditioning PROBLEM as far as why we have so many injuries on this team. Fascinating.

Steve Smith Sr Yards Per Game: 68.5 with Flacco, 67.0 with all other QBs Catches Per Game: 5.3 with Flacco vs 4.6 with all other QBs Catch Rate: 63.3% with Flacco vs 58.1% with all other QBs TDs Per Game: .378 with Flacco vs .368 with all other QBs ... Mike Wallace Yards Per Game: 63.6 with Flacco, 56.8 with all other QBs Catches Per Game: 4.5 with Flacco vs 3.7 with all other QBs Catch Rate: 62.1% with Flacco vs 56.6% with all other QBs TDs Per Game: .250 with Flacco vs .441 with all other QBs ... Torrey Smith Yards Per Game: 56.1 with Flacco, 33.2 with all other QBs Catches Per Game: 3.3 with Flacco vs 1.9 with all other QBs Catch Rate: 49.1% with Flacco vs 47.7% with all other QBs TDs Per Game: .467 with Flacco vs .250 with all other QBs ... Does any of that count as "elevating the players around him"? These have been his three most primary receivers since the Super Bowl. Torrey Smith has fallen off a cliff in San Francisco. Mike Wallace was awful last year and many thought he was washed up; but he just had his best season this year since his 2011 Pro Bowl campaign when Roethlisberger was throwing to him. Steve Smith Sr had better career averages in most categories with Flacco throwing him the ball than the rest of his career. And that's in his age 35+ seasons after the franchise he built his Hall of Fame career on thought he was done and they kicked him to the curb. So Flacco's got his guys putting up career best type numbers with him at QB, despite either being washed up or old when coming here or falling off a cliff when leaving him. What are you basing YOUR statement on, then?

I'm fine with keeping Marty (for now). I was also fine with keeping Trestman at the end of last season, and I believe now that this was not the correct thing to do. So who knows. But I'm mystified about why we would keep Pees. His defense really let us down in the home stretch of this season. After Week 10, this team was in first place and had a winning record, one game up on the Steelers with the tie-breaker in hand so far. The defense was the reason for the early success, yes. Through 10 weeks, they were tied for 3rd in points allowed and #1 in yards allowed per game. So this was when we needed the team to kick into gear and do some damage and claim our division title. But from week 11 to the end of the season, the defense ranked tied for 17th in points allowed and all the way down at 28th (!!!!) in yards allowed per game. Meanwhile the offense had improved from tied for 24th in points scored during the first 10 weeks to 13th during the span of the final 7 weeks. And from 25th in yards to 11th in yards. Flacco's QB Rating was over 90 from week 11 to the end of the year, despite an absurd quantity of plays where his receivers let him down leading to incompletions (many that would have been touchdowns) or interceptions that should not have occurred. He wasn't perfect! It's sad that I have to make that caveat, because some folks here will say "But what about that interception at the end of the Philly game!" OK. He had an ugly play there, that's for damn sure. Point me in the direction of the QB who didn't have a single ugly play over that span of 7 weeks? OK, so perhaps the answer is Aaron Rodgers, haha. That's the only one I can think of that MIGHT qualify. And even for him, the best in the game, it's still an eyepopping fact that we might consider him to have been flawless over the past 7 weeks. So it doesn't matter that Flacco wasn't literally perfect. If you require that of your QB in order to win games, then your team needs some work in a lot of areas, just as this team does. Flacco was good, making lots of plays, but it wasn't always easy situations presented for him on the field in those weeks but was still overall putting up better personal numbers, and the offense along with him better numbers, while the defense collapsed. I'm very upset that Dean Pees is still here.

One guy had among the best defenses, allowing among the fewest points ever in their playoff quest to winning the Super Bowl, and didn't play any better than perhaps you could say "average". The other won his Super Bowl with his defense allowing the MOST points ever in the playoffs en route to winning the big dance, the MOST points allowed in the Super Bowl game itself, and did so putting up what's tied for the best statistical post-season performance of all time with Joe Montana's 11 TD, 0 INT performance. It's night day. Flacco and Dilfer are not comparable AT ALL. Wasn't everyone mostly confident that Joe had been improving as the season went on and that he did his damn job in Pittsburgh, with the defense crapping our season down the drain with that epic fourth quarter meltdown? If that's the case, what's changed since then? Flacco played a meaningless game in a meaningless situation after an epic emotional letdown that killed our season the week before. His game was marred by a terrible offensive line performance, he was under pressure all day, the defense was terrible from word go and so we were playing from behind all day and Marty called a completely terrible and totally predictable, entirely one-sided game. That adds up to a stat line that doesn't look pretty and a scoreboard that looks even worse. And yet, this matters somehow? This matters more than how well he played in Pittsburgh. Remember him leading a 4th quarter go-ahead drive? And there were also 4 good passes that would have been touchdowns if caught that his receivers didn't help him out on, contributing to the loss and taking away the "pretty" stats that Flacco might have had in that Pittsburgh game, through no fault of his own, he played very well, much better even than the stats showed, on Christmas in Pittsburgh, with the season on the line and the whole world watching in a nationally televised game. And yet we're back to not caring about all the improvement he made in his game as the season went on, how well he played with the season on the line, all because of a meaningless game in a bad situation with terrible playcalling and useless pass protection? I just can't even fathom why the narrative is so anti-Flacco. You're making him the scapegoat, but he's not the problem.

There was no interception in the end zone in Pittsburgh. Flacco didn't regress. He was coming back from a season-ending ACL injury last year, he got off to a rocky start at the beginning of the season where we had the worst offensive line in the NFL for about the first half of the season (including like 8 games in a row with a different O-line configuration due to injuries at the position), an offensive coordinator change in the middle of the season, etc. You have a QB coming back from an ACL tear, wearing a knee brace which he was not used to having to do, limiting his mobility, and you put him behind an awful O line in constant flux from game to game due to injuries, and you saw the results, it wasn't pretty. But then we fired Marc, we had a bye week, we got a little more consistency out of the O-line, and hey, Flacco started playing MUCH better. The DEFENSE started to get far worse as the season went on. Over the past 4 games, the key stretch to end out this season, where we only went 1-3 unfortunately and lost our position for the playoffs and the defense was bottom 5 in both yards and points allowed, including an absolute meltdown allowing 21 points and a last-minute come from behind victory to the Steelers to give away a division that we could have won up until that defensive collapse. Flacco had played well since the bye week, improving statistically despite a huge supply of dropped touchdown passes and interceptions that weren't his fault (except for that head scratcher against Philly, most of the rest since the bye week were the fault of wide receiver misplay or bad luck off passes that bounced off someone else's hands ... I did an anlysis after the Philly game in case you missed that, with links to video of each INT so you could see for yourself. Check NFL.com game logs for each game, you can watch the INTs there). He didn't play inspired football yesterday, and why should that matter? It was a meaningless game after a heart-wrenching letdown to lose the season on Christmas. He was also under constant pressure and the gameplan was atrocious. Mallet comes in and throws an INT on a badly under-thrown deep ball on a play in which he wasn't pressured at all and had a long time to stand in a clean pocket and step into the throw. So the complains are pretty baseless, I think. Flacco objectively, definitely improved and was playing very good football as the season went into November & December, and he did his damn job. The team lost as a team, Flacco being among the LEAST of the problems as the season went on. People are re-writing the narrative to fit an anti-Flacco agenda right now because they're ignoring how his personal play improved as the season went on. It's easy to do because his numbers in the first half of the season were bad enough to make his overall numbers for the year look much worse than the second half of the season was. There are lots of variables at play as well, some of which I mentioned above, which explain why he improved as the season went on, as he got further distance from the knee injury and more stability at the O-line, and a new offensive coordinator. And everyone's ignoring just how awful the defense became at the same time as the offense was improving. But because the offense was the weak link in the first half of the season, the narrative that was installed in that first half of the season has continued to now, despite the roles literally being exactly reversed with the defense letting us down as the temperatures went down and the offense actually doing much better.

You know how they say in baseball momentum is the next game's starting pitcher? It's kinda like that. In a very real sense, the #1 reason we missed the playoffs is because the defense gave up 3 touchdowns in the 4th quarter in Pittsburgh. If they had done their job in the most recent game against our biggest rival in the biggest situation of the season, then we would have won that game and we'd be in charge of the division right now headed to Cincy to play a severely diminished version of that team without our biggest thorn AJ Green on the field. We'd be headed to the playoffs, don't you have ANY doubts about it. The season was a struggle from start to finish. We did enough up to about 1 minute remaining in the penultimate game of the year against our biggest rival to be in a position to be sitting there with a 9-6 record and 5-0 in the division including sweeping the Steelers, who would be sitting at 3-2 in the division, swept by us, and on the outside looking in. But the defense gave the division to the Steelers. It's really, when it comes down to it, as simple as that. Now, I understand the point of looking at every single other thing that ALSO could have been different to get us into the playoffs, because diagnosing everything is what needs to be done in the offseason to have an even greater chance of success next year. But the team was in a better position than Pittsburgh at about 7:30pm on Christmas night. And the defense gave it all away (as they have done at record-setting pace in games in which we take the lead in the 4th quarter since last year!). I am at a point where Dean Pees is the number one priority. He must be fired. We can't settle for this bend-but-break-anyway defense anymore. His defense fails us at the critical moment OVER and OVER and OVER again. Enough is enough. As players started to get over injuries, as Mornhinweg got into his role a little bit more (remember, he took over mid-season at OC), as Flacco got his legs and confidence back, as some of our new starters this year (Wallace and Perriman) got their experience and chemistry a little bit under their belts with this team, what happened? The offense started to improve. They aren't getting enough credit for being top 10 in both yards and points since the bye week. And it could be significantly higher if not for wide receiver error. We have had an absurd amount of dropped passes including touchdowns over the past few games, plus a bunch of interceptions that were the direct result of wide receiver misplays. Without those turnovers and with some more completed passes that would be caught by the more reliable wide receivers across the league, this offense would have put up even more stats and points. But even without counting those caveats, the offense improved, and with the caveats I think it is enough that I'd prefer to give Marty another chance at OC next year. Fact is, those players were in a position to move ball and put points on the boards. That's all the OC can do. And he did that. The players just messed up on their end of the bargain more often than I'd have liked to have seen. I don't pin that on the OC. If it comes down to keeping Pees or Marty... I want to keep Marty. It's insanity to keep with Pees and keep expecting different results. If we ask his defense to protect a 1-score lead with more than a minute or so on the clock, his defense WILL give it up. That's just the way it is.

Is that a fact? His interception yesterday WAS a bad play by Flacco. But I don't believe it's at all typical of the kind of interceptions he throws. It's not a typical play from him at all. If you think it is, then go pull up the tape and explain it with the evidence. Flacco's interception vs New England: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016121200/2016/REG14/ravens@patriots/watch#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000756140&tab=videos Observe at 25 seconds, the ball goes right threw Wallace's arms, he definitely should have caught this ball and it should not have been an interception. This was an interception because the receiver misplayed the ball. vs Miami: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016120401/2016/REG13/dolphins@ravens#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000750510&tab=videos Wallace doesn't come back for the ball, doesn't even attempt to make a play at the ball. He misplays it and just stands there and watches it sail past his head on the way to an INT. This is also intercepted only because the receiver misplayed it. (That's two INTs in a row that were the fault of Wallace misplaying the ball). vs Cincy: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016112701/2016/REG12/bengals@ravens#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000746511&tab=videos Pass deflected by a D-lineman who got his hands up on it, intercepted off the deflection. That's not a "terrible decision" interception, either. Just bad luck. vs Dallas: No interceptions I just looked at the past 5 games, that's 200 pass attempts and 4 interceptions, and only his final pass of the Eagles game was an example of a "terrible decision", the other 3 weren't really his fault. Now I'll be more than fair and keep looking to see what we've got out of him this year... Next up is the Browns game: 1st INT vs Browns: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016111000/2016/REG10/browns@ravens#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000737347&tab=videos He throws up a pass to a single covered SSR. That's not a "terrible decision". It's intercepted for multiple reasons: Great CB coverage, first of all (which you claimed is not usually a reason for his passes being picked off), a great play to catch the ball by that CB, and let's not forget, yet another WR misplay by SSR. He inexplicably just completely gave up on the route and let the CB have the only play at the ball for no good reason and we paid the price because of it. 2nd INT vs Browns: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016111000/2016/REG10/browns@ravens#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000737408&tab=videos This is probably the next most recent example of a bad decision. He tries to make a play, scrambles out of the pocket and throws the ball on the move, and Hayden picks him off. It's nowhere near as egregious as the Eagles interception. But it's definitely Joe's fault, but aided by the fact that the pocket collapsed and he had to run for his life and was trying to make a play, but a bad effort. This is the 2nd INT that was primarily Joe's fault, he should have just thrown it away. vs Steelers: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016110601/2016/REG9/steelers@ravens#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000734245&tab=videos He has to escape from the pocket again and tries to throw to the middle of the field while on the move, and it's just a bad effort. This is another one that's his fault, but of course it's also another example of him having to run for his life when the pocket collapses and he tries to make a play, but made a big mistake again. This is the 3rd that was primarily Joe's fault, he should have thrown it away. But both this and the one above against the Browns were still great defensive plays. NEITHER OF THESE is the kind of play that happened against the Eagles, where a defender was just sitting there on the route waiting for him to throw it in his lane, and Joe had plenty of time to read the field but inexplicably didn't see him and threw it anyway. That was the kind of thing you're trying to say is emblematic of Joe's interceptions? Still haven't seen another one this season like it and I've looked at each INT back to the bye week, because both this one vs the Steelers and the one vs the Browns were great defensive plays, Joe didn't have time and was disrupted and couldn't set his feet for the throw, so it's entirely different than the just plain bad decision and easy (not even noteworthy) play by the defender like in that Eagles INT. Let's keep going... 1st INT vs Jets: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016102306/2016/REG7/ravens@jets#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000726031&tab=videos This is not a bad decision, it's a great play by the safety and a bad overthrow by Flacco, but the decision to go there isn't really the issue. This is the 4th INT that's all on Joe (counting the one vs the Eagles, and one each against the Steelers and Browns) (this one is in my opinion the second most to-blame for him, because he had time to set his feet and step into that throw, and just made a really bad throw, there's literally no-one to blame but him on this one, so it's not like you can just say that he made a mistake because of the pressure like on the two I described above). 2nd INT vs Jets: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016102306/2016/REG7/ravens@jets#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000726468&tab=videos This is also a good decision, but yeah not a great throw, and a terrible route by Perriman who was supposed to come back for this but let himself get beat inside to have that ball taken away. This one doesn't fit the narrative that Joe makes terrible decisions and CB's don't make special plays on the ball to pick him off. This was the right decision to make that throw, and a really bad effort by Perriman and a great effort by the CB. The next 3 games in a row going back, he threw 0 picks. 1st pick vs Jags: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016092504/2016/REG3/ravens@jaguars#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000708976&tab=videos Pitta and Flacco are not on the same page about what route Pitta's running here, thus the ball ends up way behind him. It still took an absurd diving effort from the defender to tip the ball into the air, and then a dumb lucky situation where another defender is back there to catch it for an interception. Just bad luck. 2nd pick vs Jags: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016092504/2016/REG3/ravens@jaguars#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000709006&tab=videos The ball is deflected at the line of scrimmage, and Forsett also misplays it in the air and a great defensive play leads to the interception. This also just bad luck. So that's 2 interceptions in one game, both are ridiculously unlucky for Flacco that they were picked off. There's only two more picks left to look at, in the first Browns game: 1st INT vs Browns: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016091801/2016/REG2/ravens@browns#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000704251&tab=videos First of all, it's a fine read and an excellent play by Joe Hayden to intercept this ball. Secondly, it looks to me like SSR messes up this route at the end of it. It looks to me like he gave up on this one, similar to that one in the other Browns game that I discussed above. When he cuts out of his route it looks like he's on a a straight line to where Flacco threw the ball to, but SSR ends up trailing off at the end of the route and doesn't wind up at that spot. I think if SSR had committed to this route it would have been a great completion, actually. 2nd INT vs Browns: http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2016091801/2016/REG2/ravens@browns#menu=gameinfo|contentId%3A0ap3000000704509&tab=videos This throw it definitely not great, it needed to be more to the sideline over Perriman's right shoulder. It was too inside, giving Hayden a chance to make a play on it. But once again, it's a good read, a good decision, and a good play by the CB that leads to it being an interception on an imperfectly thrown ball. This doesn't fit your narrative of Flacco throwing INTs on terrible reads and it not necessarily being good CB coverage. This is *FANTASTIC* CB coverage and a great play on the ball. And Perriman's 2nd career game and he could have probably done something to break this pass up anyway, but didn't. So breaking all that down, I count 3 just plain unlucky interceptions (all deflected and then intercepted), 3 clear and obvious WR misplays that are not at all Flacco's fault, 3 more where it was a great defensive play and the WR didn't play it optimally and could have prevented an interception, 1 clear overthrow but not a bad decision, 2 ill-advised attempts to make a play and throw the ball while scrambling outside the pocket, and then that pass in the Eagles game where he just never saw the linebacker sitting there waiting to jump the throw. So I'd say that 6 of his 13 interceptions are essentially not his fault at all and should not have been intercepted, 3 more were not bad decisions and were great defensive plays coupled with poor efforts by the WR and probably shouldn't have been intercepted, and then 4 that were clearly Joe's fault, but only a grand total of ONE of them fits the mold of just being a plain old poor read and failure at scanning the field when he had time in the pocket. ONE more was him making a poor throw that had no chance to be anything other than interception, while he had plenty of time in the pocket. And the final two were just screw-ups while running for his life and trying to make something out of nothing and it ended up not working out. If you ask me, Flacco's decision making has been very safe and sound this year, with really the only poor decisions being the Eagles INT and the two interceptions where he shouldn't have forced the ball while scrambling and instead just thrown it away. One really bad throw that had no chance and was 0% the fault of the receiver.

"The Ravens could win a wild-card spot … by finishing 1-1 AND the Dolphins losing out AND the Texans, Broncos and Titans finishing 1-1. A single win by the Dolphins would prevent a wild-card spot for Baltimore." The good news here is that the Broncos have @Chiefs and then home vs Raiders, I think the odds are substantial that they lose at least one of these. The Texans and Titans finish the season against each other, so one of them is going to get a loss. It is impossible for more than one team in the South to do better than 9-7 and we hold the tiebreaker at 9-7 over all of them, so as long as we win at least one more game, we're guaranteed to be ahead of all teams from the South in the wild card standings. That just leaves Miami. They need to lose both games, unfortunately. If they win again, then the only way we can get in is if we win the division. They play @Bills and home vs Patriots. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that they will lose both, but other than the one game against us where we kicked their butts, they've been playing really well for about 9 weeks straight now, so who knows. But there is a decent chance, I think, thta we could still make the playoffs as a wild card if we go 9-7. Our only real worries are that we need the Broncos to lose either against the Chiefs OR Raiders (I think that's a very good bet!), AND we need the Dolphins to lose both games to the Bills and Patriots (not nearly as safe of a bet, but possible). So really, all scoreboard watching comes down to the Steelers and the Dolphins as far as our playoff chances go, unless the Broncos suddenly wake up and perform well against two great teams.

In my opinion that ball would have been intercepted regardless of how well Steve ran his route. Even if Steve ran his route perfectly, the linebacker was still in position to jump the ball after Flacco threw it, well before it got to the point where Steve could have made a play on it. Steve's poor route only makes it look like a poor decision to target Steve in terms of Steve's openness, but it does nothing to assuage the fact that the linebacker was sitting on it and Joe just didn't see him. But I say, it doesn't matter. I get fed up with all the fans calling for Joe's head because he makes a mistake. Tom Brady threw an equally bone-headed INT while his team was also up double digits when we played there on Monday night. And ultimately, we ended up storming back in that game and had a chance to win it. Why is it that it's an inexcusable mistake that automatically makes Joe Flacco a garbage quarterback when he makes that mistake, but for Tom Brady nobody would ever say that? The fact is simply this, every QB, even the greatest of all time, can make a bad decision or a bad read or a bad throw that costs his team from time to time. Just because it happens, it does not indicate that there is an insurmountable problem with the QB, unless it happens all the time and the QB fails to ever make enough plays that helps the team. The facts are also this: Joe Flacco has routinely made plays that help this team. We are 8-6. Since the bye week, we are 5-2, while having one of the most difficult schedules in the NFL. We've had to play the Patriots and Cowboys in that span of time, the two best teams in the NFL, and the only two teams we lost to over this span of time. We played 4 out of 7 games against teams that would be in the playoffs if the season ended today. Check this out, 6 out of those 7 teams are in the top half in the league in defensive points allowed (including #1 New England), and YET we are the #5 offense in points scored over the past 7 games. We are #7 in offensive yards over the past 7 games (and 3rd in passing yards). Flacco's got a 95.4 QB Rating over those 7 games, which is almost identical to Tom Brady (96.0). So despite all the criticism, statistically we have Flacco playing well, the offense playing well, and we're winning games, against one of the toughest schedules in the league. That's why I am not concerned that Flacco made a mistake similar to the one Tom Brady made against us on Monday night. Because while I recognize that this was not Joe's best game, and that this particular play was likely his worst of the season, it's not emblematic of his ability or what he does bring to this team, and that mistakes are not the defining feature of Joe Flacco. Everybody makes mistakes. That we are statistically humming along since we had our bye week in terms of Flacco's passing stats and the offense as whole against some really good teams & defenses, that speaks a lot to me in terms of his ability to make plays and limit mistakes, when you consider that so many of this team's problems are objectively not his fault. We have had a lot of instability on the offensive line, we have a maddeningly inconsistent receiving corps (particularly Mike Wallace and Breshard Perriman, our big play guys who both drop a ton of passes and lead to interceptions that a better, more consistent receiver would not allow to happen), we have an interim offensive coordinator and an obvious lack of balance in play-calling and questionable play designs. We have a weak running game. And yet we can point to a lot of areas in the statistics where this offense is vastly improved over the one that existed prior to the bye week.

When he has had unimpressive stats in the past, but we were winning, stats are held against him. So do stats matter or not? Because now it feels like he's being criticized with the eye test only, in spite of the stats. Or are you all not aware of the stats? Because I'll take this any time: Since the bye week: 185/271, 1951 Yards, 14 TD, 7 INT = 68% completion percentage, 7.2 Y/A, 2-to-1 TD/INT ratio, 95.4 QB Rating ... and a 5-2 W/L record, with the two losses being against the two best teams in the NFL on the road. Or does none of that matter now because you didn't like the way he "looked" while we were winning? I also think people don't pay enough attention to the things that aren't going his way. The pass protection was really bad on a number of plays today, leading to some untimely sacks. The receivers dropped a handful of passes, and in the first half a couple of passes sailed incomplete after the receiver slipped on the sod. Last week, Flacco's interception was actually a fine pass to Wallace that should have been caught, and literally slipped right through his arms. Today Flacco threw a pass without seeing the linebacker there and it got intercepted, let's say it's 100% Flacco's fault. OK? It's not the end of the world for a quarterback to make a mistake like that. Brady did a similar one last week, in a similar situation being up by a couple scores, throwing in the red zone, and got picked off, also 100% his fault. Does that make Brady a "peaked" QB who is below average? Of course not. Even the greatest QB in this game, who by the way was having a fantastic game, can make an inexplicably bad play. I think some of the critics need to see it for what it really is, it's an inconsistent offense with a home-run or bust running game that gets stuffed no a loss or no gain on a regular basis, but has a better-looking average because they are good for 1 or 2 big runs per game that catch the defense off-guard. But for the most part, running the ball on this team just gets us into 3rd and long situations. It's a team that has receivers running the wrong routes, slipping on the turf, dropping passes, making bad plays on the ball in the air, or just plain not getting open. And thus we dump off a lot. It's a function of everything that's going on on the field. And Flacco gets hung out to dry by pass protection that suddenly breaks down, when he thinks he's got a pocket to step up into, it's suddenly not there and the guard is getting beaten for a sack. It's been a injury-recovery season with an extremely inconsistent O-line and a lot of good coverage against our receiving corps, and that's why we are seeing a lot of checkdowns or a lack of trust in the line from Flacco leading to some poor mechanics. These things all go hand in hand. You can't just observe Flacco and say that all the problems on this offense are because of him. It's equally as true (I'd argue much more so) that most of the problems with Flacco are because of the offense he's operating in. Did we also forget that fired an offensive coordinator in the middle of the season? Or that most of our biggest players on offense weren't around for significant chunks of the off-season because of injuries? And yet back to my original point, since we had our bye week, Flacco is not a statistically below average quarterback. He's among the highest in yards per game and completion percentage, he's got among the highest quantity of touchdowns, and he's up there in QB rating as well. And we're winning. By whatever means, it seems, except for (again) 2 games against the top 2 teams in the league, on the road. Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with the way the offense has looked these past two games... but I just think the criticism of Flacco is really over the top given all the facts and circumstances. I agree with criticizing Flacco for missing plays here and there and for throwing a bad interception not seeing the whole field in perspective properly today, but him not being 100% unequivocally perfect on every single play does not mean that he deserves the vitriol that our fanbase has started to develop towards him, calling him stupid, dumb, terrible, below average, or whatever. People try to use statistics to make that argument, but then when the statistics are improving, they say the statistics don't matter and revert to other arguments instead. The statistics for the first half of the season were awful, and he was near the bottom of the league in most category. Now, since the offensive line has gotten a little more consistent, Flacco has some games under his belt instead of it being the beginning of a season not even a year removed from a season-ending injury with one of the worst O-lines in the league, the performance out of him IS statistically improved, and he's now near the top of the league in many categories over the span of the 2nd half of the season.

Ya know, I see this 4th & 29 argument used against Flacco a lot lately. Last I checked, the play was successful, right? Let's see, what should he have done instead? If you look at the coach's film on that play, nobody else is open anywhere near the line to gain and it would have been no chance of anyone catching a first down on that play EXCEPT Rice, who had miles of open space in front of him, so Flacco trusted him to make a play and utilize all that nice, clean, open space in front of him and get that first down, and guess what, it worked! So can we please stop using this play as some kind of pinnacle example of how Joe is stupid? Was it risky and unconventional to get a first down that way in such a situation? Um, yeah, you could say that, but given the position of all the players on the field, it's not like there was any option any more likely to succeed, and IT WORKED!

Yeah, I've watched it about 10 more times since reading your comment just to see what I see in light of your conclusion, and that looks like it might be the definitive answer. It's kind of hard to see whether he's looking at SSr or at Waller, but I'm starting to think you're right. In which case, him not seeing Hicks sitting in that spot and reading his eyes, and throwing it anyway, is a huge mistake.

It's not an excuse, it's a search for an explanation on a ball that had no chance of being anything other than an interception. And if you were to think honestly and look back at history, you'd have to acknowledge that this not a typical Joe Flacco type of interception. He'll throw interceptions where a route got jumped, or he'll have an over/under/behind/in-front of off-target throw, right? But this throw was none of those things. It was just completely targeted to a spot where no receiver was running a route to. These are typically what we call "miscommunications" so that's the most obvious explanation, right? If you re-watch the play, you can see how if Waller ran a horizontal cut on that route instead of diagonal, then the throw actually starts to make sense. So, that's *a possibility* for what happened on that play. Rather than just calling it an "underachieving QB" why don't you watch the play and come back at me and explain how there is no possibility that this was anyone's fault but Flacco's, for X/Y/Z reason(s)? I'd love an actual discussion, rather than dismissal with no actual argument. I think that's fair.