One Winning Drive: Flacco: Last Horse on the Carousel

[ExtremeRavens]

After watching the dominating Ravens win Sunday, in addition to the earlier games this season, it really seems that Joe Flacco is continuing to improve. He looks better now than he did his rookie season, and that was a pretty impressive rookie campaign. After the game I couldn’t help but think how if things were different Flacco may not be advancing the way he is. In some ways I can see it being possible that he would not even be playing yet at this point.

Going into last season the Ravens had Kyle Boller, Troy Smith, and Joe Flacco as their QBs. While Coach John Harbaugh was quiet about his plans to name a starter most thought it was going to be Boller by default, and Boller did start the first preseason game. Some thought it was going to be Troy Smith. Most people I talked to or listened to did not think it was going to be or should be Flacco.

I think a lot of fans would not have been happy if at the start of training camp Flacco would have been named starter. A lot of fans, and some former players and coaches, worry about starting a rookie QB too soon. They say it is possible to ‘ruin’ them due to too much pressure and them not being ready to handle it. I don’t buy that myself, it’s a really tough position both mentally and physically so my thought is that if a QB starts his rookie year and doesn’t turn into a good QB than I don’t think he would have after sitting a year or so either.

Harbaugh’s choice as a starter was taken out of his hands when both Boller and Smith went down in the preseason and Flacco had to take most of the snaps. In Boller’s case he hurt his shoulder against the Vikings and was out for the year. Troy Smith had a rare and dangerous form of tonsillitis that hospitalized him and had him unable to practice for a while after that.

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