ESPN's KC Joyner: Why Flacco Is As Good As Rivers

[Ravensfan23]

[quote name='flynismo' timestamp='1308643065' post='699131']
so you're going to pin that second half all on Flacco? not very smart to do.

I wonder, in contrast to your scenario, if/when Flacco puts up a big season, what new excuses will his detractors come up with to not give him his due?
[/quote]

They'll tell you that numbers don't mean anything. They'll tell you that the players around Flacco had more to do with his success then him being Elite. They'll call you foolish for comparing Flacco's numbers to other great QBs.

They'll say, well Tom Brady is married to a supermodel and Manning does a lot of commercial, and until Flacco makes himself more marketable he'll never ever be among the Elite QBs.

As much as they hate Cam Cameron right now, they'll tell you how Cam and his system deserves all the credit. Just look at Drew Brees and Philip Rivers. They'll say oh, Dick Lebeau retired. They'll say oh, Peyton, Brady and Drew got old. They'll tell you that teams just stop playing cover 2 against Flacco. They'll tell you how his numbers don't count because Ray Rice breaks a lot of long runs on screen passes and Flacco has nothing to do with it. They'll tell you how the offensive line just doesn't allow Flacco to get hit. They'll find some kind of way to say Troy Smith was his motivation.

They'll tell you that winning a Super Bowl means nothing, just look at Dan Marino.

They'll say how Ozzie continued to supply Flacco with great talent and the mark of a elite QB is one who can make marginal talent around him play great.

But my favorite one of all..........they won't say anything. They'll either leave, or it's on to the next player to bash.

[flynismo]

[quote name='Ravensfan23' timestamp='1308644573' post='699136']<br />They'll tell you that numbers don't mean anything. They'll tell you that the players around Flacco had more to do with his success then him being Elite. They'll call you foolish for comparing Flacco's numbers to other great QBs. <br /><br />They'll say, well Tom Brady is married to a supermodel and Manning does a lot of commercial, and until Flacco makes himself more marketable he'll never ever be among the Elite QBs. <br /><br />As much as they hate Cam Cameron right now, they'll tell you how Cam and his system deserves all the credit. Just look at Drew Brees and Philip Rivers. They'll say oh, Dick Lebeau retired. They'll say oh, Peyton, Brady and Drew got old. They'll tell you that teams just stop playing cover 2 against Flacco. They'll tell you how his numbers don't count because Ray Rice breaks a lot of long runs on screen passes and Flacco has nothing to do with it. They'll tell you how the offensive line just doesn't allow Flacco to get hit. They'll find some kind of way to say Troy Smith was his motivation. <br /><br />They'll tell you that winning a Super Bowl means nothing, just look at Dan Marino. <br /><br />They'll say how Ozzie continued to supply Flacco with great talent and the mark of a elite QB is one who can make marginal talent around him play great. <br /><br />But my favorite one of all..........they won't say anything. They'll either leave, or it's on to the next player to bash.<br />[/quote]


that's what really gets my goat..all these Flacco haters dont have jack to say when Flacco is out there playing like a champ, but god forbid he has a bad game, then we all look like idiots when they start these threads about how we should bench him for Bulger.

My FF league uses KFFL.com, and when all that 'bench Flacco' stupidity was going on, KFFL reported on it and asked Flacco how he felt about the remarks. Not surprisingly, he (my words, not his) basically thinks those people are ingrates.

[1/28/01]

[quote name='Ravensfan23' timestamp='1308643899' post='699133']
Divisional Playoff vs Steelers- Jan. 15, 2011
Joe Flacco: 2nd half 3-11 38yds 1Int 1 lost fumble. 2 curial dropped passes.

Wildcard week vs the Baltimore Ravens- Jan. 10, 2010
Tom Brady 1st Half 7/15 38yds 1TD 2INTs 1lost fumble.

AFCCG vs NE Patriots- Jan. 18, 2004
Peyton Manning 1st Half 9-12 91yds 2INTs

Brady was in his 10th season when he had that bad performance. Manning was in his 6 season when he had his poor performance. Flacco was in his 3rd season.

Both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady were viewed as Elite QBs when they produced those performances. Nobody here is even calling Flacco elite right now, just pointing out his potential.
[/quote]
Well played! Love when people use blanketed statements like "no", "never", "always" etc and are then proven wrong. Just shows their ignorance!

[JohnJohnson]

[quote name='flynismo' timestamp='1308646449' post='699142']
My FF league uses KFFL.com, and when all that 'bench Flacco' stupidity was going on, KFFL reported on it and asked Flacco how he felt about the remarks. Not surprisingly, he (my words, not his) basically thinks those people are ingrates.
[/quote]

They are ingrates. They have no idea how hard it is to win in the NFL, they're just selfish/childish fans who want it NOW. They want to demean Flacco and act like he doesn't have the mental makeup to win, despite all of his winning. They saw Tom Brady and Big Ben win Super Bowls in their second seasons, and now that Flacco has had THREE WHOLE SEASONS and hasn't won it all, it's clear that he doesn't have what it takes. Some people can be pretty embarrassing to the human race.

[Ravensfan23]

[quote name='izvoodoo' timestamp='1308668826' post='699208']
For background here, i've studied a lot throughout high school of pro style offensive schemes and I wanted to be a coach, but I couldn't play at the college level and decided it wasn't for me. So now I'm just an educated fan. My word isn't law, but you're pretty misinformed. Not coming after you, just letting you know. I still study football schemes passionately, but I'm not trying to make it my career.

We simply don't have the personnel to beat a Cover-2/Tampa-2 (more Cover-2). The cover-2 defense was originally designed to counter a West coast offense, a system that thrives on short to mid range passes. It takes away short passes by playing bump coverage at the line and dropping into zone, this provides an incredible amount of mid range/underneath coverage. Basically you have 4 down lineman, 5 in underneath coverage (3 lbs and 2 corners) and 2 safeties playing zone deep. In the tampa 2 the MLB basically has a larger zone (think old school ray lewis).

Now we don't have a West coast offense, but we have short-mid range receivers, so the cover 2 provides the same effect.

Now there's only 2 ways to beat a cover 2, with the run or the deep pass. You simply cannot beat it with route running, route running is about beating primarily man coverage it doesn't help against the zone heavy cover 2. Route running is about getting Dbs to turn their hips or shuffle their feet so you can get separation and get those 3-4 feet necessary. Beating Cover 2 is all about speed. The weakness is the zone safeties playing 15-20 yards deep. Ideally you'd want a big bodied jump ball receiver who can catch the ball outside the numbers. Think Vincent Jackson or Antonio Gates (ironically both of the chargers), or old school randy moss or pick up the safety then beat him on a deep ROUTE (think jerry rice/Terrell owens, may not have track speed, but they run deep routes well and has a big body and good catch radius).

Your 2nd best option is to run a screen and eat up the cushion. That's basically a run play. Throw the ball to mike wallace, he eats the cushion and runs for 7 yards. Which then forces the opposing defense to plan man, and now we're back to route running. If you have a corner like Lardarius webb, who plays the deep ball very well as a corner, he only has to give 5 yards, so he can beat those screens. Webb helps this team a lot.

Your third best option...

Wait for it...
Wait for it...

Is an end-around. This acts like the play action and brings some of the zone coverage into the box. But it's a gimmick. ideally you'd want an end around play action, but that takes away the additional pass protection of having a HB move up to the line.

If you can absolutely crush it with the run (think us vs. patriots in 2009 playoffs), then run. How many yards did joe throw for? Like 40? Well yeah, don't throw the ball, get your yards on the ground. so if the ravens ever beat a team running a cover 2 Joe SHOULD have a bad day. The ball shouldn't be thrown, there's no opening for the passing game. But lets trade joe for phil rivers and have the chargers come into cincinnati. Lets say they run the same defense, joe would throw for like 350 yards to those deep threats. Even the bad receivers on the chargers could probably outrun that scheme. If the charges tried to beat that defense the QB (rivers, flacco whatever) would HAVE to throw for at least 350 yards. There's no other way. I'm not saying he'd become as good as rivers, but he'd have the same responsibilities and scheme.

We don't have a deep pass, so you can pretty much bring a Safety down to play underneath coverage and bring the MLB up close to the line to play the run, leaving one safety deep in zone to basically play the ball in the air without sacrificing run support. Since I'd say 90% of safeties in the league can run down boldin/mason, this is not a bad idea. After ray rice gets passed the line of scrimmage the MLB can drop back and play zone.

People think our receivers were better in 2010 than they were in 2009, and in one way they were but it was worse as a unit. Guys like Clayton, kelly washington, demetrius williams could probably beat this type of coverage. Not that well but they could at least schematically represent a deep threat. Want to know why mason and boldin were running deep routes? because the defenses were literally HANDING us deep routes. They were FORCING us to run deep routes.

they might as well had a press conference and said "Baltimore, we're just letting you know that we're not going to defend the deep ball, instead we're only going to cover mid to short range routes." Now most people would still run mid to short range routes on this board... but they'd get smothered. They'd be playing right into the hands of the opposing defense.

You can't do this to green bay, all their receivers can run every route. Schematically this opens up a lot of flexibility.

The team that really beat us this way was pittsburg in the divisional round. They got everything right, with our personnel we couldn't beat that scheme. Stallworth can beat it, but it limits schematics since he can't use the whole field. Plus Ike Taylor and Ryan clark deal with deep threats very well. A good example of a team that got things wrong was the chiefs. They came out and helped on the deep routes and outside the number routes allowing us to use the middle of the field. The other way to beat it is the air coryell where you check down to the RB on an out route and he eats the cushion that was created. miami made the mistake of picking up the deep routes and letting the RB's create plays with the ball in their hand.

The rest of your points? Spot on, but room for growth doesn't mean limits.

Hey here's another point; you know what Rivers, Brady, Brees and Manning all have in common? Great front offices. Great coaches. Easy defenses on their schedules. Above average to strong offensive lines. You know what those other quarterbacks you mentioned lacked? All of the above. Except McNabb. the eagles just seem to have ad luck. Don't know how to explain it.

But right now "play at quarterback" is not our biggest offensive issue. Our number 1 problem is lack of speed. Our 2nd is redzone options. Our third is balance on the offensive line (run and pass game). Our 4th is pass protection from skill positions/backfield (where we ranked 29th as opposed to pressure from o line where we a strong 6th). our 5th is offensive line consistency (because they're were times when the line played well extremely well, but offensive line play has to be great 95% of the time for our system to work). Our distant distant 6th is quarterback play. I would say quarterback play hasn't been a strength but not a weakness. Joe's been adequate, but adequate in your third year is still pretty good in the NFL.

I watched phil rivers in his third year, his play wasn't much better than flacco's. It was better, but not to the point where I'd say they were in a different classes. And yes, his personnel was better and yes his schedule was easier. but he also played better. Also Aaron rodgers used to hold the ball too long as well.

This isn't the NBA where one player can make up for the deficiencies of other players. Struggling with rebounding? Well lets say Lebron James just grabs 7 more boards. Deep shooting an issue? Kobe's got you.

Can't run a deep route? Well mason plays quarterback and joe will run the deep route... Can't move people off the line of scrimmage on the right side? Joe will put his hand in the dirt.

Now I haven't gone to 2nd phase as the play develops. I also haven't discussed lack of speed and the risk of bringing corner pressure. I also haven't said how the scheme differs in more than 2 wide receiver sets. That's another story. But we don't have 4 wide receivers to put in rotation.
[/quote]

That's a really good post. Long, but well put.

I think a lot of people just looked at other offenses, or compared our real offense to the way they use our offense on Madden football, but failed to account for the deficiencies and limitations of our personnel last season.

From a name stand point we had a great WR corp, however they weren't a complete corp, nor did they compliment each other well. Or even compliment Flacco well for that matter.

With our WR group last season, running the ball success was the most important thing because that's what would have created that space in a defense and mask our lack of speed problem. However we couldn't run the ball and everything was grounded, literally.

Great job man.

[izvoodoo]

[quote name='Ravensfan23' timestamp='1308680384' post='699350']
That's a really good post. Long, but well put.

I think a lot of people just looked at other offenses, or compared our real offense to the way they use our offense on Madden football, but failed to account for the deficiencies and limitations of our personnel last season.

From a name stand point we had a great WR corp, however they weren't a complete corp, nor did they compliment each other well. Or even compliment Flacco well for that matter.

With our WR group last season, running the ball success was the most important thing because that's what would have created that space in a defense and mask our lack of speed problem. However we couldn't run the ball and everything was grounded, literally.

Great job man.
[/quote]

I actually made the post into a whole thread. But I know, as an educated fan, flacco is not the problem. He's a big part of the solution.

[da#1ravensfan]

Stop bashing Flacco because he has had more success than any third year qb in nfl history. Also has more playoff road wins than any qb in playoff history. He has more playoff wins than Rivers, Ryan, Romo, Freeman, Vick, Schaub, Cassel,Cutler, etc. Same amount of playoff wins as super bowl winning qb Drew Brees, Eli Manning and Aaron Rodgers with 4. Only elite qbs ahead of him is Brady, Manning and Big Ben. Give Flacco some respect because not many qbs can say they did what Flacco has done in his career so far(3 years).

[da#1ravensfan]

Stop bashing Flacco because he has had more success than any third year qb in nfl history. Also has more playoff road wins than any qb in playoff history. He has more playoff wins than Rivers, Ryan, Romo, Freeman, Vick, Schaub, Cassel,Cutler, etc. Same amount of playoff wins as super bowl winning qb Drew Brees, Eli Manning and Aaron Rodgers with 4. Only elite qbs ahead of him is Brady, Manning and Big Ben. Give Flacco some respect because not many qbs can say they did what Flacco has done in his career so far(3 years).