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— Entering Sunday's NFL conference championship games, no player is under more scrutiny than Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.
For over a decade, the working narrative has been this: the Ravens’ ground attack and swarming defense compensate for an anemic passing game.
"I'm sure if we win [the Super Bowl], I'll have nothing to do with why we won, according to you guys," Flacco told the media last week. Since then, the Ravens — thanks to four turnovers — squeaked past a Texans team that posted more first downs, total yards, and yards per pass play than Baltimore.
Former AP defensive player of the year Ed Reed, among others, fingered Flacco as the primary culprit, taking aim at his shaky pocket presence and loss of composure in managing just three points over the final 45 minutes.
But does Flacco deserve his status as the public’s playoff punching bag?
Team leader Ray Lewis, who said from "Day 1" that Flacco’s arm was special, defends his quarterback as a “flat-out winner.” And the numbers back that up. For his career, Flacco is 5-3 in the playoffs during and 44-20 in the regular season, including a 7-0 record against playoff teams this season.
No quarterback has more regular-season victories in his first four seasons.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Flacco has shown the ability to move the ball through the air with the best of the league’s passers. He entered the season as one of just six quarterbacks in NFL history with 10,000 yards in his first three seasons. Flacco is the only quarterback since the NFL merger in 1970 to start a playoff game in each of his first four seasons. Through nine games this season, he was on pace for the sixth most passing attempts in history.
That success, though, masks a disturbing habit of following standout performances with disappointing losses against inferior teams. Flacco’s inconsistency forced the Ravens to alter their blueprint down the stretch, winning six of seven games while leaning on Ray Rice and a typically stingy defense.
Even against a Patriots defense that surrendered the most completions of 20-plus yards and the second-most passing yards in history, Baltimore’s first priority will be to jumpstart a running game that averaged just 2.8 yards per rush last week.
“Time of possession is going to be huge” at New England, coach John Harbaugh said, essentially giving away his game plan. It’s no secret the Ravens offense is best when Rice and Ricky Williams set up Flacco’s down-field strikes to Torrey Smith and Anquan Boldin.
As great as the Reed- and Lewis-led defense has been, Tom Brady’s surgically precise offense won’t implode the closer it advances toward the red zone as overwhelmed rookie T.J. Yates did a week ago.
It’s going to take more than 20 points for Flacco to finally ascend that AFC summit of Brady-Manning-Roethlisberger and reach Super Bowl XLVI.
If the Baltimore faithful have any hope of parading in the streets of the city that welcomed the Mayflower moving vans of their beloved Colts in 1984, Flacco is going to have to go against script to outgun Brady by taking advantage of that porous Pats secondary. This is his litmus test. In fact, one national report suggests Flacco’s future in Baltimore may hinge on his ability to finally knock off one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks in the postseason.
