I’ve looked at Joe Flacco some. I will concede that there’s some flicker of hope that he’ll be decent, but I’m not a fan of the signing.
I will start with the positive. Three times during his career, Flacco has gotten it rolling pretty well. In a contract year, he got on a hot streak in 2012, lifting the Ravens to a Super Bowl championship. That was the season he threw 24 TDs and only 4 interceptions in his final 12 games – at that time, looked like he might develop into one of the league’s 10 best quarterbacks.
When the Ravens had Gary Kubiak as their offensive coordinator in 2014, Flacco was a good quarterback – 27 TDs versus only 12 interceptions that year. If the Broncos are going to make it work with him, they’ll want to get him in that kind of an offense, mixing in downfield passes with a strong running game (that was the year Justin Forsett was tearing it up for them).
And Flacco in the preseason and early last year looked pretty good. It seemed like the selection of Lamar Jackson lit a fire under him, and he was playing with confidence in August and September. I was wondering if he was going to pull an Alex Smith (Smith, recall, was very good in 2017, after Kansas City drafted Patrick Mahomes). Flacco looked good enough in the preseason that I saw him as a viable backup quarterback to select in the late rounds of fantasy drafts.
Let’s also give Flacco credit for going 10-5 in playoff games. He’s won some big games.
But until I see Flacco on the field lighting up defenses in the preseason, my hunch is that he’ll go down as another offseason blunder for John Elway. While he was a great quarterback himself, Elway has misfired on his last four big quarterback decisions. In 2012, he skipped over Russell Wilson to select Brock Osweiler in the second round. In 2016, he tried to sign Osweiler to a big contract extension; the Texans saved him on that one by offering Osweiler even more money. Elway used a first-round pick on Paxton Lynch that year. And last year he signed Case Keenum to big contract.
Somebody needs to take the quarterback keys away from this guy.
Since his nice season under Kubiak, Flacco has been underwhelming statistically. He’s averaged 6.3 yards per pass attempt over the last four years; that’s last among the 30 quarterbacks with at least 1,000 pass attempts. And during that span, only Osweiler has had a lower passer rating.
| PASSER RATING (2015-2018) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Pct | Yards | TD | Int | Rating |
| Drew Brees | 70.9% | 18,404 | 124 | 39 | 105.0 |
| Tom Brady | 65.8% | 17,256 | 125 | 28 | 103.1 |
| Russell Wilson | 64.8% | 15,674 | 124 | 37 | 101.5 |
| Matt Ryan | 67.6% | 18,554 | 114 | 42 | 101.2 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 63.2% | 14,366 | 112 | 23 | 98.2 |
| Kirk Cousins | 67.8% | 17,474 | 111 | 46 | 98.1 |
| Dak Prescott | 66.1% | 10,876 | 67 | 25 | 96.0 |
| Philip Rivers | 64.3% | 18,001 | 122 | 56 | 95.4 |
| Alex Smith | 65.9% | 13,210 | 71 | 25 | 95.1 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 65.9% | 17,137 | 112 | 59 | 95.0 |
| Matthew Stafford | 66.1% | 16,812 | 106 | 44 | 94.9 |
| Jared Goff | 62.1% | 9,581 | 65 | 26 | 94.7 |
| Carson Palmer | 62.1% | 10,882 | 70 | 32 | 93.3 |
| Andrew Luck | 63.5% | 10,714 | 85 | 40 | 93.1 |
| Andy Dalton | 63.1% | 13,342 | 89 | 38 | 93.0 |
| Carson Wentz | 63.7% | 10,152 | 70 | 28 | 92.5 |
| Derek Carr | 64.1% | 15,469 | 101 | 42 | 92.1 |
| Sam Bradford | 68.2% | 8,384 | 44 | 23 | 92.1 |
| Ryan Tannehill | 64.1% | 9,182 | 60 | 33 | 91.1 |
| Tyrod Taylor | 61.8% | 9,330 | 53 | 18 | 90.7 |
| Marcus Mariota | 63.2% | 12,004 | 69 | 42 | 89.4 |
| Eli Manning | 63.3% | 16,230 | 101 | 54 | 88.2 |
| Jameis Winston | 61.6% | 14,628 | 88 | 58 | 87.8 |
| Cam Newton | 59.8% | 14,043 | 100 | 53 | 87.3 |
| Case Keenum | 63.5% | 10,466 | 53 | 34 | 86.1 |
| Jay Cutler | 62.7% | 7,384 | 44 | 30 | 85.8 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 59.9% | 10,084 | 67 | 47 | 84.6 |
| Blake Bortles | 59.4% | 14,738 | 92 | 58 | 83.1 |
| Joe Flacco | 63.9% | 12,714 | 64 | 46 | 82.7 |
| Brock Osweiler | 59.9% | 7,259 | 36 | 31 | 77.9 |
In this space, we’re mostly interested in production. That is, can Flacco put up plenty of passing yards and touchdowns? On that front, I don’t think there’s much chance of Flacco being anything better than maybe a top-20 quarterback.
Flacco has been in the league for 11 years, and he’s never finished with top-16 per-game numbers. That’s standard scoring, and adjusting production for games played.
In some of those years he was operating teams built around playing defense and running the ball, but he’s had plenty of opportunities to emerge/develop, and it simply hasn’t happened.
It’s early, but if I were walking into a draft today, I don’t think Flacco would be one of the first 25 quarterbacks I would select.
| JOE FLACCO, YEAR BY YEAR | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | St | Pass | Run | TDP | Int | TDR | Pt/G | Rk |
| 2008 | 16 | 186 | 11 | .88 | .75 | .13 | 14.8 | 26th |
| 2009 | 16 | 226 | 4 | 1.31 | .75 | .00 | 16.9 | 21st |
| 2010 | 16 | 226 | 5 | 1.56 | .63 | .06 | 18.5 | 19th |
| 2011 | 16 | 226 | 6 | 1.25 | .75 | .06 | 17.2 | 20th |
| 2012 | 16 | 239 | 1 | 1.38 | .63 | .19 | 18.8 | 18th |
| 2013 | 16 | 245 | 8 | 1.19 | 1.38 | .06 | 18.4 | 24th |
| 2014 | 16 | 249 | 4 | 1.69 | .75 | .13 | 20.4 | 17th |
| 2015 | 10 | 279 | 2 | 1.40 | 1.20 | .30 | 21.8 | 18th |
| 2016 | 16 | 270 | 4 | 1.25 | .94 | .13 | 20.1 | 21st |
| 2017 | 16 | 196 | 3 | 1.13 | .81 | .06 | 15.2 | 28th |
| 2018 | 9 | 274 | 5 | 1.33 | .67 | .00 | 19.5 | 23rd |
—Ian Allan