Soccer Dad

The flacco phenomenon

When the Ravens drafted Joe Flacco, a quarterback out of Delaware in the first round this year, the pick was met with mixed reactions. O by the way, a blog at the Baltimore Sun rounded up a few of the grades given to the Ravens by some experts. A different Baltimore Sun blog, moving the chains has a much more comprehensive roundup.

In short, while the experts were high on Flacco's skills they were concerned about his readiness to play at the professional level. The main source of doubts about Flacco stemmed form the fact that he played for a small program. (He had started out at University of PIttsburgh, but transferred to Delaware when it was clear that he would be a backup at Pitt.

The Ravens had two quarterbacks on the roster and Flacco would apparently be third on the depth chart. First there was Kyle Boller who for a few years had been the Ravens quarterback of the future. It's that for Boller it seemed that the future never quite arrived. Second on the depth charts was Heisman winner Troy Smith, who showed some poise at the end of last year.

But then Boller got injured, Smith got hurt and the first round quarterback from the minor college program was suddenly at the top of the depth charts. Before that point Bill Ordine of the Baltimore Sun wrote:

Well, for a quarterback, that's especially so. A rookie quarterback gets used to a certain tempo in minicamps and training camps. Then he gets a jolt of semi-reality with the first exhibition game. Flacco -- and this is not a knock -- is a process guy more than an instinct guy, I think. I have had one conversation with the guy but it was an enlightening one. He talked about process, about wanting to be careful with the ball, about wanting to see what he was throwing at before the ball left his hand. That's OK. The guy is smart and studious and that will help him be an outstanding QB in time. And the instinctive, auto-pilot part will take over when he internalizes all the things he needs to internalize. Who knows when that happens, maybe midway through the season. Maybe even next year. That's up to Joe Flacco and his coaches. But until then, he's going to be a little deliberate when he's running the team.

So I say this -- playing behind a suspect offensive line with Marvin Lewis game planning against him: Do Ravens fans really want that for Flacco?

Maybe Flacco would be able to weather that storm and succeed. But my point is this: Why take the chance on setting him back. There was definite progress from the beginning of the Rams game into the second half. That was great. It showed the kid can mature quickly, even within the course of a game. But in the Bengals game, the scrubs won't be coming in and everyone is playing for keeps.

The Ravens though, had no choice, and they went with Flacco from the beginning of the season. And while his performance was uneven early on, he improved as the year progressed and now he's led the Raveens into the playoffs.

James Walker gives the background on Flacco:

A year ago at this time, Flacco, who played at Delaware, was a little-known quarterback doing his best to impress NFL scouts.

Although Flacco's name didn't register with most football fans, the Ravens, based nearby, were one of the first NFL teams to do due diligence on Flacco.

Baltimore regional scout Joe Douglas kept close tabs on him and was the first inside the organization to give him a very high grade. From there, Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome and others really started to research and take notice of Flacco and eventually drafted the small-school quarterback with the No. 18 overall pick.

"For those guys to come down to Delaware and find out about me just meant so much to me," Flacco said. "It's a lot of the reason why I'm here. The Ravens give a lot of responsibility to those [scouts] to do what they do. Obviously, I'm pretty grateful for what they did."

And Walker considers Flacco's emergence as one of the top 5 stories this year in the AFC North.

Anyway there's a reason that Flacco's so popular in Baltimore. It's not just that he wasn't a highly touted pick. (Troy Smith, by contrast, won the Heisman!) It's that he's finally provided the Ravens with an offensive attack, something that we really haven't seen on this team. (Even in 2000, it was mostly defense and special teams that won the Super Bowl.) No doubt that new head coach John Harbaugh (whose brother, Jim, was one of the first to play quarterback for the Ravens) and Offensive coordinator Cam Cameron deserve a lot of the credit for success of the offense. But unheralded Joe Flacco's the guy on the field who has successfully implemented the offensive schemes of the new coaching staff. This year's been quite enjoyable for Ravens fans.

(Wouldn't a Baltimore/Atlanta Superbowl be interesting. Both teams have turned around a lot this year with both a new head coach and rookie quarterback?)