ExtremeRavens Posted 5 hours ago Posted 5 hours ago Joe Flacco didn’t explicitly use the “S” word. But in a 150-second clip from an interview he gave on Super Bowl 60’s Radio Row, he accused the NFL of going soft. “The guys that are coming into the league nowadays, they’d look at me like I’m crazy,” he told ESPN’s Kevin Clark. “Like, what do you mean you want receivers to get laid out over the middle and you want guys to be able to land on you? I’m like, yeah, guys, that’s football.” At 41, Flacco is the second-oldest quarterback in the NFL, behind only Aaron Rodgers. He played 11 years in Baltimore and won a Super Bowl alongside one of the most physical linebackers in league history, Ray Lewis. For the first two months of the season, Flacco shared a quarterback room in Cleveland with two rookies, Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel, then was traded to Cincinnati to back up the ultra-competitive Joe Burrow. “I don’t think anybody coming into the league these days is quite as battle-tested as guys that came into the league 15 years ago,” Flacco said. “I think our generation does benefit from, you know, dealing with a little bit of tougher time, just like the generation 20 years before me benefited over us.” It was part of an impassioned diatribe. At one point, he referred to CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head, as a “thing these days.” Flacco raised two fingers for air quotes. “But it’s football,” he said. “We signed up to play it.” He later said, “Listen, we signed up to get concussions. We signed up to get hurt. It is what it is. You might not like that, but that’s kind of what we did.” I asked Joe Flacco if the NFL has a quarterback development problem and he launched an impassioned take on how personal calls have changed games and hurt the position and sport. "We signed up to get hurt, you might not like that but it's what we kinda did." Watch: pic.twitter.com/51fkGnMnGY — Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) February 4, 2026 The crux of Flacco’s argument is that ticky-tack penalties can change the outcome of a game. Although he’s often a beneficiary, defenders shouldn’t be flagged 15 yards for slapping or landing on quarterbacks, he said. “It honestly annoys me because it affects games in a negative way at random times and they can call it or not call it,” Flacco said. “It needs to get out of the game.” Flacco went on to assert that tighter officiating on personal foul penalties has caused defenders to not play so aggressively for fear of ramifications. There were 25 roughing the passer penalties levied this past season, according to Spotrac, amounting to $334,134 in fines. That’s roughly half the amount of penalties and subsequent money owed in 2024. Kyle Van Noy was the only Raven charged this year. After Week 2, the NFL fined Van Noy $17,389 for landing his body weight on top of — you guessed it — Flacco. Van Noy, however, was not flagged in real time. In November, Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt was flagged (but not fined) for roughing the passer after burying Flacco. The old-school quarterback had the same thought process then as he does now: “That’s football.” The play flipped a third-and-8 at Cincinnati’s own 26-yard line to a first down close to midfield. Clark asked Flacco if any specific instances came to mind in which a player was penalized and Flacco benefited but thought, “Really? They threw a flag on that?” He didn’t have a specific example to share but let out an exasperated, “Yes.” During Flacco’s self-described rant, he also said that a good high school recruit can “kinda ride your way through college” knowing NFL teams will take a chance on potential. That wasn’t so prevalent when Flacco was drafted out of Delaware in 2008, he said. “I kinda came in as it was transitioning, so I still have that mindset,” he said. Penalties on what he deems “normal hits” have “changed the game a lot.” Some NFL fans on social media seemed to agree wholeheartedly. So did future Hall of Fame defensive end J.J. Watt and Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen. Flacco knows the NFL isn’t likely to agree or make changes based on his Radio Row interview. But as a longtime fan and veteran at the position, he was feeling a bit nostalgic for the sport’s brutality this week. Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.x.com. Sam appears as a host on The Sun’s “Early Birds” podcast. View the full article Quote
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