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| Joe Flacco has become the real deal. |
All the attention was paid to Ray Lewis. Jacoby Jones stole the highlights. The blackout made the news. Ed Reed did what Ed Reed does. Harbaugh this, Harbaugh that. And yet the most important outcome of Super Bowl 47 came from the guy who could be considered both the game's most likely and unlikely star.
ESPN created the Total Quarterback Rating two years ago in order to better rate a quarterbacks play more than the original QB rating did. QBR as it called measures a quarterback's play in a more complete way and doesn't award quarterbacks for scoring TDs when the game is out of hand whether it's in their favor or not; it basically measures the QB's play within game situations. Anyways, Joe Flacco's QBR for this season was an abysmal 46.8. Three times this year he finished with a QBR of less than 10 for the game and twice he finished below a 1.0 QBR rating. Simply put, this season people began to give up on Flacco. Even though Baltimore's QB1 had never missed the playoffs in his young NFL career, even though he had a 5-4 playoff record up until this point, even though he's never missed a start in five years, people were done with Joe Flacco. And rightly so, this season was Flacco's worst QBR since his rookie season. But, as it's gone with Flacco all of his career, there's always the playoffs for him to make up for his middling regular seasons.
Yet, no one cared about Flacco when the playoffs started. No one would have cared about Flacco if they went all the way to the Super Bowl and won. Not with Ray Lewis' announcing his retirement a week before Wild Card Weekend. There was no way that Flacco would do anything to usurp Ray Lewis' "last ride" as the most important part of a Ravens run. But then again there was no way for people to imagine the way Flacco was going to play for the entirety of the playoffs.
Wild Card Weekend came and went and the Ravens won as many people thought they should, Ray Ray got his moment dancing on the field in his last game at M&T Bank field and again no one really thought about Flacco. He played alright going 12-for-23 with two TDs and zero picks. It was a classic, solid game out of the five-year vet, but nothing to scoff at. To many people, the Ravens were heading to Invesco Field to play the best team in the league, to play against a rejuvenated Peyton Manning who was primed to lead this Broncos squad to the promise land.
But then something happened in the beginning of the game. A switched was flipped in Joe Flacco's head, a crack in the Broncos' armor had exposed itself and the former Delaware QB took advantage almost immediately. He exploded for a 18-34, three-TD, zero-pick game, but the stats don't tell the entire story. Manning and the Broncos looked cold, uninterested and somewhat overwhelmed. Flacco made the requisite plays needed to not only beat the Broncos, but to stun them. He looked right in the zone. His 70-yard bomb to Jacoby Jones, right over the head of two Denver defenders, proved to us something about Flacco. He throws the best deep ball in the NFL. Yes, Joe Flacco throws the best deep ball in all of the NFL. That was the second long touchdown of the game for him and the first one was equally pretty as he hit Torrey Smith for a beautiful 59-yard TD that set the tone for the rest of the game.
The rest is really history concerning Flacco as took care of business against the Patriots before torching the Niners for 287 yards and three TDs on a completion percentage of 67%. If it wasn't for the blackout, which clearly changed the momentum of the game, the Ravens would have ended up destroying the Niners and Flacco would have had even more eye-popping stats. But it was clear early on in the Super Bowl that Joe Flacco had become the real deal. That he had achieved his man card, that it was time for people to recognize that his first five years weren't a fluke and that it wasn't all just because he played behind a disgustingly good defense.
Now the time has come for Flacco to build on his already impressive five-year resume. He'll surely get a fat contract from the Ravens which may prohibit them from re-signing some of their playmakers, which will make things tough for him. Yet it's become clear that his deep-ball playmaking abilities alone makes him one of the best QBs in the league. Is he elite? Ehhhh, we'll have to see some more out of him, but you can't deny that when he launches that ball up in the air 50-yards down field it's probably going to end up in Jacoby Jones or Torrey Smith's hands. Combine that with their running game and the assumption that they'll re-tool on defense and they'll be right back in the mix next year. That is, however, if Flacco wants to continue on this impressive upward trend.
Despite Ray Lewis' "last ride" being the most memorable element of Super Bowl 47, Joe Flacco's emergence will forever remain the most important.
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