callahan09

I understand your point, but there's a little more to it than your argument makes it seem, I think. First of all, we've only had 6 defensive coordinators in the entire history of the team. We're currently on our 5th offensive coordinator just since 2012. And we're probably going to end up with our 6th next year, making it 6 offensive coordinators in 6 years. There's on continuity with the offensive coaching on this team. Also, every single one of those coordinators had been with the organization in previous seasons before becoming the coordinator. There is a line of succession, promoting from within for the most part, but particularly when we had our best defenses under Rex Ryan and the one year with Chuck Pagano, those guys were largely bred to run the Baltimore Ravens defense and when they were promoted to the job they did it very well. On the offensive side, Caldwell became OC during his first year with the team (mid-season, of course), Kubiak was hired from the outside, Trestman was hired from the outside. It's just a ramshackle coaching situation on that side of the ball with no consistency, and other than Kubiak, seemingly the wrong hire all too often.

I see a lot of criticism of Flacco for his cadence and the snap count. A few years ago, he was one of the best in the league with this cadence and snap count. He drew the defense offsides A LOT. Lately, we have a lot of inexperienced players, rook linemen, and a total lack of chemistry on the offensive side of the ball due to a revolving door of talent and coaching staff. It is a built-in feature of the system that his snap count and cadence are simplified and routine right now. The complexity of adding nuance in that area requires team chemistry and a disciplined team of players with experience. We don't have that. Therefore we don't have the luxury of acting like we have it. We are already one of the worst teams in the league in pre-snap penalties and offensive holding and that's WITHOUT the complexity of a nuanced snap count/cadence and with pre-snap adjustments at the line. The fact is, the offense and Flacco are absolutely handcuffed and handicapped by the lack of investment, depth, and coaching on the offensive side of the football. We don't have experienced players on the line, we don't have disciplined players, we don't have chemistry because of all the turnover, and I'm convinced we don't have quality and consistent coaching to make up for any of these deficiencies and get these guys ready to play. The offensive side of the football is a shambles. Flacco is one of the few bright spots.

"“Coordinator Marty Mornhinweg seems to have designs on emulating Jim Bob Cooter's success with a short-passing game that functions as a surrogate for the run, but Flacco simply misses too many throws.”" I'm confused. Flacco's got the third highest completion percentage in the league (over 70%) since we had our bye week (when the team might have actually got their first chance to get familiar with Marty as OC). He hasn't been missing too many throws. Completing over 70%, and a lot of the ones there weren't bounced off the hands of the receivers.

Flacco played very well after the snap. He was making his throws, his only interception was a very accurate throw that went right through Wallace's hands and should have been a deep completion rather than a turnover. He had another one of those that bounced right off Wallace's hands for a drop. Another that Perriman didn't turn around for. He still completed over 70% of his passes on a day when the pocket was collapsing from a literal 3-man pass rush and absolutely nobody was open. That's the reason for so many checkdowns. He also had to overcome a ton of holding penalties and false start penalties. The checkdowns and screen aren't successful at getting us first downs because our receivers don't seem to have a nose for the first down marker. Multiple times yesterday, on third down, Flacco throws the ball to a receiver who is *JUST SHORT* of the first down marker, and we end up settling for a field goal or punting on 4th and less than 1. Why can't these receivers figure out how to get on the other side of the sticks, instead they settle for catching the ball just before the sticks and failing to make any yards after the catch. These guys look indecisive and slow, and when they do try to make a cut, they do it at the wrong time or in the wrong direction and just get taken down immediately. Where is the burst of speed after that catch that makes a guy miss the tackle? We don't see it often. Juice had a great catch with some serious yards after in the 1st quarter, but for the most part, there was nowhere to go with the ball except the flats, and these guys don't do much with the ball in their hands. We need our playmakers to do more. That all said, the area of debate is, maybe Flacco didn't play so well *before the snap*? The Pats were dropping 8 into coverage all game and that's why nobody was ever open and we struggled to move the ball downfield and had to settle for short chunks. Is there something Flacco could have done before the snap to take advantage of the look the Patriots gave them? I really don't know... What's the solution, check into a run, would be the conventional wisdom right? Well, why weren't they? Fact is, we don't really know enough about how this offense works to know if Flacco *actually* has that option. Even if Flacco can see that this would be the answer, if the coaches didn't install the option into the play, then how is Flacco supposed to do it? I think a lot of is this. I have seen Flacco check into the run because of the coverage literally hundreds of times over the past 9 seasons. Many of our best single play runs in the history of this team came on checks that Flacco made. It's not that the coaches don't trust Flacco. We've got evidence that they don't trust the *TEAM*. That's right, the ENTIRE OFFENSE needs to be aware of, coached up, and ready for these plays. The plays need to be sent into the huddle, as well. They haven't given a mechanism to Flacco to "design a play from scratch" (so to speak) at the line of scrimmage. If the option isn't provided in the huddle, then Flacco can't call it on the field. Now why don't they trust the offense to plug in some more play-changing ability? Well, for the same reason the snap count is so rigid. An indicator of the reason is all the pre-snap penalties we *already see with this offense*. The offensive line is filled with rookies, inexperienced players, and a lineup that is ever-rotating and has no chemistry with each other. The playmakers routinely aren't on the same page, don't run their routes correctly, fail to handle their block correctly, etc. This is an epidemic with this team. There's no offensive chemistry, we don't have the pieces coached up and experienced enough and TRUSTWORTHY enough to have provided them the extra wrinkle of complexity of giving Flacco a mechanism for changing the play at the line to anything other than what's provided in the huddle. It's a dumbed down, simplified offense because of all the moving pieces, inexperienced linemen, and off-page playmakers who have demonstrated no ability to run even this simplified offense without penalties or broken plays. The fact is, we've got too much inexperience, too many players not on the same page as everyone, too much turnover at the offensive coaching side of things, that there just isn't the chemistry and trust in this offense for a more complex system right now. We need to INVEST IN THE OFFENSE and have better offensive coaching so that we can actually take advantage of mismatches and have a system of complexity that allows for changing to a play that can take advantage of a look on the field. It's like when we think about going for it on 4th down but end up taking a timeout. Flacco knows whether or not the look he wants/needs to have a successful execution of the playcall is there, and he doesn't run the play if it's not. Thus the timeout. If he can diagnose that, surely he can run the play that WILL work. Except he can't, because the system doesn't provide him with the mechanism for informing the rest of the offense what to do at the line of scrimmage. And thus there is no other option but to kill the play. The problem is the coaches and the investment in the key pieces of the offensive that needs to be ramped up so that we have a well-oiled machine that can handle complex tasks. Read that sentence again. Now, do you think we have a well-oiled machine that can handle complex tasks? Haha, that honestly makes me laugh. Of course we don't. So the writing is on the wall. It's not like Flacco has much of an option pre-snap to actually get us in a position to take advantage of the defensive look he sees, and so he just has to take what's given to him post-snap, and it's all too often not enough, but I think he's been doing as good a job as you can reasonably ask since about the bye week.

Yes, it's an absolute joke of a website. It's slickly designed and fun to look at, but the actual content is ridiculously biased. They give 0.0 cheat points to the Patriots over Deflategate? But they did give out a positive number of cheat points to various other teams for similar (and less egregious) instances of "deflategating" (as you pointed out). They also give teams like the Jets the same cheat points for Spygate as they gave the Patroits. They seriously undermine their integrity by downplaying to this extent something as obviously severe as Spygate. The worst in my opinion is giving the Colts a +9.0 cheat score and "Serious Infraction!" medal for "Suck For Luck"-gate? Seriously? Losing on purpose isn't even cheating. It is, quite literally, not against the rules. If that was even what happened, of which there is literally no proof that they lost on purpose. It's an assumption (perhaps even a fair one), but it's not proven, and it's not cheating even if they did do it. And yet it's considered a far more serious instance of cheating than anything the Patriots have ever done. That site is a joke.

Good question, so I looked it up on pfref.com He did beat his own record. The previous franchise record was 35 completions (on 62 attempts) against the Bengals in 2014.

Also, our game was really killed on two relatively flukey deflected interceptions. The first one was a deep pass to Jacoby Jones that a linebacker jump up and got a hand on, batting it up high and it was on a path where Jacoby could have caught it anyway, but the corner came and pushed him over and intercepted it instead (not DPI for the push because the ball had been touched by the linebacker already, but Jacoby had bad balance on this play so he didn't make the play). The other one was a short pass to Pitta that bounced off his extended hands right into the hands of a defender. Then we had a 37 yard field goal missed by Tucker at home. It was just an "everything that can go wrong will go wrong" kind of game. After too many blunders led us to being down 3 scores with only a couple minutes to go, we pulled Flacco (who entered the game with a sprained MCL and was really off all day long due to the injury affecting his ability to step into a throw) for his own safety and put in Tyrod, who wasn't able to catch an off-target snap from Gino Gradkowski on the first play he had, which was recovered in the end zone for a TD by the Patriots. Then on the ensuing drive, Tyrod threw a really bad pick 6, and in the span of a few plays suddenly we went from being down 27-7 and it looking like a poor day to being down 41-7 and it being a downright embarrassing day.

What does this mean? What does Hochuli add meaning to the game? I'm not aware of whatever the implication is here and I can't even find the article you're quoting from.

Yep you're right on all that, I updated my post with a lot more info of scenarios I looked at. I think Miami will lose their final two against Buffalo and the Patriots, so I don't see them getting to 9-7. That means that Buffalo is poised to go 10-6 if they beat the Steelers this week. That's the biggest threat, in my opinion. I think they will lose to the Steelers, and therefore I think Buffalo is out of the conversation as well, but if they do beat the Steelers, I think there's a very good chance they win out and go 10-6, which is definitely a worry for us. The only other game I could see them losing is to Miami, but we would need them to win that game or else Miami is going to go 10-6. So it's a bit of a precarious situation there. So if Buffalo beats the Steelers this week, it helps our chances of winning the division greatly, but it hurts our chances at winning a wild card and sets the Bills up nicely for one. If Buffalo beats the Steelers but loses to Miami later in Week 16, then they are out of the playoffs, but it means that (unless Miami loses to Arizona or the Jets, both teams that look very beatable right now) Miami probably is going 10-6 instead. I do see Denver losing 3 or all of their games, so I don't see them as being that much of a problem, but if they surprise me and win 2 games, then that's just yet another team that means 9-7 won't do it for us. So that's what we're all looking out for in terms of help for getting in if we can't make it to 10-6 ourselves.

I just took a look at the playoff machine on ESPN, and found numerous ways we get in as a wild card at 9-7. Basically, it relies on Denver faltering down the stretch and ending at 9-7 (or worse) themselves, and then we'd have a tiebreaker over them, and the only other threats to us at 9-7 would be teams in the AFC South, but it's very unlikely for one of them to surpass us for a spot at 9-7... So really, I think the key to us getting in if we don't take care of business against Pittsburgh is to win two of our other games and hope Denver only wins one more game. If Denver only wins one more game this season, then they will have just 5 or 6 wins in the conference, while we already have 7 conference wins, so we would either have 8 or 9 conference wins (depending on which two games we win, but assuming we win at home against Philly, then it means we'd have 8 conference wins), so we have the tiebreaker over them. In fact, 8 conference wins for us would be the tie-break winner against EVERY team that might go 9-7 this year. So unless I'm missing something, if we go 9-7 and only one other non-division winner goes 10-6 or better (meaning all other wild card candidates at 9-7 or worse), then I think we have the tie-breaker and get in over all others. OK... so... Because of their schedules, it would be possible for an AFC South team to get to 10-6 and not win the division only if both Tennessee and Indianapolis win out (they do not play each other). Not very likely that they BOTH win out, so unless they both win out, then it's impossible for one of the non-division winners to finish above 9-7, and we would have the tie-breaker over all 3 of them (Houston/Tennessee/Indianapolis). Kansas City would have to lose out in order to fail to go 10-6 or better. Not likely (they are playing good lately and have 3 home games in a row coming up), so let's pencil them in for the #5 seed. Denver would have to win no more than 1 game, which is possible, and our best hope. They play @TEN, @KC, and at home vs NE and OAK. That's a very tough schedule. (I keep hearing that the Ravens have the most difficult remaining schedule, but that must have been including last week's games, because Denver played JAX and we played MIA... for the remaining 4 weeks, Denver's schedule is obviously even more difficult than ours! The worst team they play is still 6-6, tied at the top of their division, and is a road game for them). Then they play the 3 best teams in the conference back to back to back after that one. So I think (hope) they could go 1-3 or even lose out. That leaves just the Bills and Dolphins that could theoretically finish at 10-6 and not win their division, thus bumping us out. So what are the odds of that happening? Well, Buffalo would have to go 4-0 against Pittsburgh, Cleveland (let's pencil this in as a win), Miami, and the Jets in order to get to 10-6. Well, if they handle the Steelers, then maybe the Steelers don't win out after that any way as it would demonstrate a weakness, then we are perhaps still talking about us winning the division instead of trying to get a 9-7 wild card spot. If they don't handle the Steelers, then they would need to win those last 3 games out, which is of course POSSIBLE, so along with Denver needing to lose 3 more games, we need to root for the Bills to any of those games they have after that Steelers game as well (I'm still of course going to root for them to handle the Steelers because preferably, I want us to win the division!). Miami has Arizona, the Jets, Buffalo, and New England. Let's pencil in NE for a loss, so they would still need to lose one more of those others in order to go 9-7 or worse. After last week's abysmal performance from them, who knows what you're going to get. I feel like they're going to lose that Buffalo game as well, which means that they're at best 9-7 based on that alone. So if you see two losses in there for Miami, then they can't best 9-7. If you see a loss in their for the Bills, then they can't either, and that means we're really rooting for Denver to lose all their games in the hopes they finish 9-7 or 8-8. It's possible, they have the a brutal schedule and a rookie QB. The Bills winning that Steelers game and the Miami game, and I feel like you can probably put them in for a win against the Browns and Jets as well, means that they won out and finish 10-6, which could mean that we're out of the picture unfortunately. So I think along with Denver, they are our biggest thread IF they win that Steelers game. It's crazy because we want the Steelers to lose so we can win the division, but if the Bills win, it sets them up nicely to go on a run and win our their season and that could hurt our chances at a wild card if we go 9-7. But the bottom line after looking at all these options is, well, there are some pathways to getting that wildcard if we go 9-7. We need the following (roughly in order of how likely it is for these things to happen): 2 of Indianapolis / Houston / Tennessee must lose at 1 game each. Buffalo must lose 1 game. Miami must lose 2 games. Denver must lose 3 games OR Kansas City must lost all remaining games. So if we win just 2 games and all of that happens (or the Steelers also lose 2 games), then we are probably going to get in at 9-7.

Just a correction on the article, the Bengals are 4-7-1 not 5-6-1.

Well, since the bye week we're 4-1, with the only loss being against the best team in the NFL (and being a worthless second half performance by the D to let the game get out of reach). Flacco's completing 70% of his passes and has a 98 QB Rating over these 5 games. I'll take it. Let's hope he keeps getting hotter and more confident and makes plays all over the field during this final 4 game stretch, getting to the playoffs and doing damage!

They are 10th in Yards Per Game, 12th in Pass Y/G, 10th in Rush Y/G, 12th in QB Rating allowed. That's OK. Better than average but yeah, not too tough, as you put it. To make them seem even worse, they also allow a lot of plays per drive (ranked 24th), a lot of time of possession per drive (23rd), and a lot of yards per drive (19th), and don't get a lot of takeaways (27th in percentage of drives ending in a takeaway!!). But unfortunately, somehow, despite all of that, they rank 8th in percentage of drives ending in a score. Teams are only scoring on 31.1% of their possessions against them. That adds up to a tie (with us!) for the 2nd best defense in the league in points allowed. We'll see what happens. All those numbers look promising at least in terms of us being able to hopefully move the ball and sustain some drives, and if we can do that, then hopefully our defense takes advantage of Gronk's absence and we might have a chance. I don't expect us to win, but there's a chance. It's not going to look like the Miami game, that's for sure! I'm kind of expecting it to go like the Oakland game did. Hopefully we're on the winning end of it this time. We really just need to win the last 3 games of the season. We can afford to drop the New England game, probably, as long as we win out. And we match up great against Pittsburgh, the Bengals are weak this year, and the Eagles (and especially Wentz) have really fallen off the map lately, so I think we have a really good chance to win the final 3 games, and we are guaranteed to win the division if we win the final 3 games! (It would mean we finish 10-6 with the head-to-head over Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh also wouldn't be able to finish better than 10-6).

I like to rewatch the losses before I give my analysis on what happened. This game was not on Joe Flacco. You could say it's on the offense to some degree, but a lot of why it's on the offense is because of the O Line (and Pitta) failing miserably to do their jobs. Between the missed blocks (Pitta with a couple doozies in this game) and the drive-killing penalties, there's not much more you can ask of Flacco. He wasn't perfect, far from it, but he took what was given to him, it's just that this offense as a whole isn't good enough for that to result in scoring consistently. But the real story is actually how the defense completely failed to give us a chance to stay in this game. On our last drive of the first half, we drove 47 yards in 10 plays and used up 4:18 of clock to score a field goal to up 10-7. But then the defense gave up 63 yards in 8 plays in the final 1:37 of the half, allowing a field goal to tie the game going into halftime. To start the 2nd half, Flacco throws 22 yards on first down. Then on on the following first down play, West gets a carry for no gain. On 2nd down, Pitta stays in and is assigned to block Demarcus Lawrence. He fails miserably (Pitta had an absolutely terrible day as a blocker), just gets turnstiled, and Flacco gets leveled as he unloads deep for Mike Wallce. The ball sails way high as he's hit while he throws and it's already 3rd down and 10 to go. Lucky it wasn't intercepted, actually, but this is Pitta's fault on a catastophically failed block. On 3rd down, he throws a comebacker to Wallace well beyond the first down marker. A good defense play is made to knock the ball away as Wallace waits for it to reach him. There was plenty of room (he was like 10 yards past the first down marker) that he could have kept coming back towards the line of scrimmage and gotten to that ball before the defender did and still been well past the first down marker, but he didn't - instead he turned around, took one step towards the line of scrimmage, and then planted himself and waited for the ball to get to him, giving the defender time and space to catch up and knock the ball away in front of him. So, we punt and pin them back at their 8 yard line. I's tied up at 10-10, we've pinned them deep in their own territory, and the defense has not seen the field in 20 minutes of real time. Despite being rested and having half-time to make a defensive adjustment (they had already begun to give up way too much to them on their final drives of the first half) they give up a 7 minute, 11 play, 92 yard touchdown drive to put us in the hole 17-10. On our ensuing drive, Flacco throws a 5 yard pass on 1st down, setting up 2nd and 5. On 2nd down, he runs it for 6 yards and a first down. 1st down again, we get a 9 yard carry from Dixon, but Zuttah is penalized for a late hit and sets us up at 2nd down and 16 to go instead of 2nd down and 1 to go. Flacco picks up 11 yards with a screen pass to Mike Wallace on 2nd and 16, setting up 3rd and 5. So on 3rd and 5, there's another screen pass to Wallace. This time he gets drilled shortly after catching the pass, and the first down isn't achieved. Nobody was open past the sticks. The only other viable option might have been Juszczyk, but he was in the same area and would have also needed yards after the catch that he probably wouldn't have gotten (and Flacco would have had to wait longer to unload the ball anyway because Juszczyk hadn't yet turned for the ball by the time Wallace was already catching it, and the defenders that weren't near Juszczyk only weren't so because the ball was already on its way to Wallace and they were zeroing in on him, because that's where the ball was going). OK, so the 3rd down play wasn't a good call, but there was nobody open past the sticks for Flacco to look for on this one anyway. The screen had worked great on the previous play. Good questoin is, why was the same play called twice in a row, I think (Anybody else ever think, maybe the biggest problem outside of the offensive line and penalties is that our ever-changing offensive coordinators just aren't calling good plays!) Anyway, we punt with more than 20 minutes of game clock left in the game, down by 1 score. It's not a big deal at this point, and the defense should be counted on to do their job after we punt and pin them on the 12 yard line this time. After all, they've only been on the field for 1 drive in this half so far. Our drive took up about 3 minutes off the clock, by the way. We do not 3-and-out at all in the 2nd half. But nevertheless, on the Cowboys' second drive of the half, we allow them to go 88 yards on 13 plays, eating up 8 minutes off the clock, and putting us in the holed 24-10 with only about 10 minutes to go in the game. We did score a TD on our next drive, but then once again the defense lets them score, this time it's a field goal after a 13-play, 6 and a half minute drive in which we had to use all of our time outs. So our defense not only gave up the points making it a 2-possession game again, but we didn't get the ball back until inside of 2 minutes remaining and with none of our timeouts left. At this point, the game is lost (barring a miracle, which you're crazy if you think this offense is going to produce, on the road against the best team in the NFL). The important thing to me is that starting with the Cowboys' first possession of the 2nd half, our defense went from having us in a tied game, to allowing 2 touchdowns and 15 minutes of possession on back-to-back drives. That's a catastrophic failure. That's as bad as you can do it. It didn't happen because they were "tired" as I've seen suggested -- it was not the offense's fault that the defense failed. Then when our offense adjusted and scored a TD on their 3rd drive of the 2nd half and got back to within 1 score, the defense once again failed, giving up nearly the entirety of the rest of the game clock, all of our timeouts, and another score that made it a two-possession game again.

The interesting matchup is ... the best run D vs the best run O. Something's gotta give. If we can stop Zeke, we'll have a good shot at winning this one.

Personally, I see us going anywhere from 7-9 to 9-7. I think the only way we can win a playoff spot is if we do it as division winners. I'd take it. But we need that 9-7. I see the Steelers waking up and winning most of the games the rest of the season, I think they will either finish 8-8 or 9-7. If they end up 9-7, we really need to win that second game against them and ensure we have the tie-breaker.

The difference is, Flacco had to do an awful lot to get his. Those other guys were more along for the ride as a great team & defense took care of business to pave the way. Flacco had to overcome a defense that gave up 22 points per game in the playoffs, those other 3 guys' teams gave up just 5.8, 12.3, and 12.3 points per game respectivley. During the Super Bowl, Flacco had to overcome a defense that allowed 31 points. No Super Bowl winning team has EVER given up more points that that in the Super Bowl. Flacco had a +11 TD/INT differential, those other guys were +2, +2, and +5 respectively. Flacco threw for 285 yards per game. Those 3 other guys combined for an average of less than 193 yards per game. It's completely irrelevant to mention them when talking about Flacco. Because the implication is that those are guys who it's irrelevant that they are Super Bowl Winning QBs, presumably because they had little to do with their own victories, being on great teams with great defenses and being asked to do very little. Flacco on the other hand was absolutely required to be *PERFECT* in those playoffs. If he hadn't been perfect, thrown for 285 yards per game, had ZERO interceptions and 11 TDs, then there's a very high chance they don't win the Super Bowl. He was on a team that gave up the most points in a post-season Super Bowl winning run, including in the Super Bowl game itself, ever. He had to do a LOT of it with his own arm and had to overcome a lot to do it, and he had to do it to the tune of perfection or we would not have won. It's the kind of performance that's really awe-inspiring, it just doesn't happen in the NFL except once every couple of generations. The only other example I can think of is Joe Montana in 1989, but even that performance wasn't under as much pressure to perform as Flacco was, because his defense only gave up 26 points over the course of the entire post-season.

After watching the games and analyzing what's really happening on the field, my controversial statement that I want to make is that Joe Flacco is playing some of the best football of his career. It isn't showing up in the stats for multiple reasons. Horrible play calling, receivers not getting any separation, receivers dropping key passes, and awful pass protection. He's doing everything you could really ask of him. He was making pinpoint accurate throws with plus pocket awareness and a quick release yesterday. He did so on the vast majority of his passing attempts. 8 out of 16 incompletions were in and out of the hands of his recivers. Most of the rest were under pressure and with tight downfield coverage. He's doing his job in the most clutch situations where he needs to put the ball where it needs to be, and his receivers are letting him down. The stats don't tell you a damn thing about Joe Flacco. You have to watch each and every play and analyze what transpired on the merits of how was his protection, how was the coverage, did his receiver run the route correctly, did his receiver catch the ball when it was in his radius? And the answer to all of our problems is that more often than not, one or more of those things is not helping Joe out. If some of those dropped passes yesterday were caught, we're having a completely different conversation today. How is that Joe's fault? He's quietly showing great improvement in his pocket presence, quickness of release, decision-making, and accuracy, and none of it is showing up in the stat sheet, except for a couple of key areas: He's having the best year of his career in interception percentage, and if you account for dropped passes, then accuracy percentage as well (raw completion percentage is up there as well, only behind last year so far).

The announcers specifically mentioned multiple times throughout the game that Flacco had "no room for error" on his throws because the receivers were constantly being held stride-for-stride down the field by the defenders covering them. Flacco made a *lot* of extremely accurate, pin-point, tight window throws yesterday. Out of 46 passes, only 16 of them were incomplete. Of those, fully half of them (that's 8 for those counting, and I did, rewatching the entire game twice and keeping notes about every single incompletion) were catchable and should have been caught. There were 3 passes that were inaccurate with no real excuse, none of them in key situations or the reason for a stalled drive. The rest were essentially throwaways, more a symptom of pressure and tight coverage and throwing the ball to both avoid a sack and ensure it's not an interception, or he got hit while throwing which disrupted the throw. Joe had a really quick release all day, he also exhibited a lot of really good pocket awareness. He escaped some times, he threw on the run sometimes, and he threw the ball away to avoid the sack, many times in 2.5 seconds or less from the snap. Multiple of the dropped passes were in utterly key situations that would have been game-changing, and were actually great plays by Joe, but only hurt his stat sheet and the outcome of the game because his receiver didn't uphold their end of the bargain and come down with the football.

So this is the 5th straight year with a new offensive coordinator calling the plays for the majority of the season.

Five games in, and Flacco has two 4th quarter game winning drives already. He actually had them at THREE weeks in. And in week 4, he had one more but it was negated by the defense giving it right back up, and then he almost had ANOTHER, but the receiver(s) dropped the ball. This week, he almost had yet another, but AGAIN, the receiver(s) dropped the ball (or didn't get their feet in bounds). In addition, his completion percentage is the highest of his career, and his INT percentage is the lowest of his career. All while the play calling of Marc Trestman is hand-cuffing us by taking the running game out of the equation. Either we're getting a failing run game, or we're playing with an empty backfield for most of the game and so the defense is able to tee off on us in the throwing game, while receivers drop key passes and the offensive line is doing a really bad job (in fairness, the line was starting a lot of rookies to begin the season, and is now suffering a lot of shuffling around due to injuries). And yet, one of the things I'm seeing the most of on this board and others and across the internet from Ravens fans, is that Flacco is a problem on this team, and that he isn't good enough? Give us all a break. That is some grossly inaccurate assessment of how Flacco has been performing this year given what those around him are doing, from the pass protection, to the receiver play, to (lack of) playmaking after the catch, to the play designs & play calling. I think Flacco has been pretty accurate and making good decisions given the situation he's playing in, but it's not doing a load of good when the whole system is collapsing around him with everybody making catastrophic errors at key times all game long.

Keep fighting the good fight. I strongly agree with you. I don't understand all the Flacco hate, but it frustrates the heck out of me. I watched today's game and then looked at the message boards and was legitimately SHOCKED at how much of the discussion is criticizing Joe and saying he's not the guy for this team. Joe is by far the least of our worries. He delivered a hell of a deep ball to Perriman today that was... DROPPED. Could have been a huge TD. End of the game, he does it again, but Perriman can't tap his toe in bounds, then Wallace DROPS the 4th down pass. There has been an absurd amount of vital, key dropped passes this season that would have been utterly game-changing. But let's blame Flacco. Sure. Right. He has no pass protection, no pocket, and the receivers are getting draped downfield so he has only the tightest of windows to try to throw the ball into or just settle for a check down that for some reason our "playmakers" can never make a yard after the catch on. It's a pretty pathetic offense, of course, but Flacco, again, is not the problem in it.

Except Joe did rise to the occassion in the 4th quarter. He threw the pass that could have, should have, and needed to be caught. And it wasn't. He threw it multiple times this fourth quarter, in fact. And he did it LAST WEEK, too. Now that's not an excuse for why the offense sleepwalks through the rest of the game, but on the do-or-die 4th quarter win-or-lose drive, Flacco is the guy delivering, while his teammates drop the ball (literally). Unbelievable to me how much of the discussion is on blaming Flacco for everything, when the play designs & calls are not working, he has no choice but to throw it short of the sticks because nobody is open beyond the sticks and he has no time for a play to develop. He completes two thirds to 70% of his passes, with a handful of drops every game (KEY drops on HUGE plays at that!) while being constantly under duress, hurried, under pressure, getting hit all the time, and the complaints are all about his accuracy? Curious. He looks pretty accurate to me with a couple of throws per game being out of reach of our receivers. We are now in the business of demanding perfection on every snap from Joe? Good luck with that from ANY QB in the game. Everybody misses a throw here and there, Flacco's misses are just being unfairly magnified by fans who are unhappy with the offense as a whole. Most of his misses are a result of pressure or tight coverage anyway. Today, I saw a lot of people complain about a pass that was low and away and bounced off the ground. But if he threw it where the receiver could catch it, there was a defender in the area who probably would have INTERCEPTED it instead. That one in particular might as well just be a throwaway to avoid a sack, because that was never getting completed anyway. I do remember two passes today that went over the heads of the receiver. On 50 dropbacks, 2 passes were obviously overthrown that I can recall. And that's supposed to convince me that Flacco needs to be benched, when he completes two thirds of his pass attempts and had 3 or 4 really major drops on key plays that would have given us big points had the receiver done their part today? Because when you're throwing over a pass rush in your face you aren't supposed to ever loft one that might end up out of reach of the receiver? It's actually really common. What's uncommon is how often Joe is pressured, how little of a pocket he's getting to step into, and how tight the windows are on his receivers. I watched a little bit of the Patriots game today and Tom Brady had all freakin' day back in the pocket today and was throwing to receivers who didn't have a single defender within 5 yards of them in any direction at the time the ball got into them, then they would make tons of yards after the catch, often breaking tackles. I don't know how he gets all that help, but he does. Joe needs pass protection, he needs the guy catching the ball underneath the coverage to make a play after he catches the ball, he needs the guys down the field to catch the ball when he puts it where they can reach it, and he's way too often not getting one, two, or all three of those things (sometimes on the same play). I'm just saying, Joe Flacco is being put in a position to lose on a bad offense with bad play-calling, but he's doing about as much as you can ask a QB to do if you ask me. He's putting the ball where it can be caught at least 80% of the time when you consider drops. If that's inaccurate, I don't know what to tell you. He's being judged completely unfairly and without regard for context and what's really happening if you ask me.

If you flip a coin 5 times, the odds of the coin coming up heads all 5 times is about 3%. If you flip it 4 times and get heads all 4 times, you might be tempted to think about the last 4 flips and the odds of 5 flips in a row coming up heads and say that you're 97% likely to get a tails on the next flip. But in reality, you still have the same 50% chance to get heads/tails on the next flip as you did on any other individual flips. There is no "due" for a win/loss based on streakiness. We are at home, they are traveling to the east coast, and it's their second game in a row on the road, which is a situation most teams actually do traditionally lose believe it or not. Since 2015, including playoffs, teams are .487 on the road if it's not coming on the week immediately following a road game. So if it's the first game of the season, or following a bye week or a home game, then the home/road advantage/disadvantage is not terribly significant. However, in the same span, teams playing on the road in the week immediately following a previous road game, are only winning at a .378 percentage. That's a huge drop-off! So hopefully we can take advantage of our advantage!

The playcalling has been a little vanilla-seeming. My problem with the criticism of Trestman right now is mostly just that the O-line has been absolutely terrible, and we seem a little handcuffed in how we're going to execute when we can't run the ball and the defense sits downfield taking away the passing game (and even then Flacco is still getting pressured a lot because of the poor O-line play). I tend to think the problem there is more a talent deficiency on the line than a coaching deficiency. Without the line being effective, it's going to be difficult to call plays that look smart.