Now that the Ravens season is over, it’s time to look back and take stock in what the team did well, and what the team did poorly. To this end, we’ll be reviewing each of the positional units. So far, I have reviewed the Ravens front seven, the secondary, and the offensive line. The next unit we’ll be reviewing is the quarterback.
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
The Ravens offensive DVOA was the best it’s been since 2009, and a lot of that was because of the play of Joe Flacco. Flacco posted career highs in total yards, touchdowns, and Quarterback rating. He also posted a career low in interceptions. How was Flacco able to be so successful? There are a lot of reasons:
The deep ball:
Flacco tends to succeed or fail in any given year based on his success with the deep ball, and my colleague Shawn Brubaker artfully breaks down how Flacco has had increased success here. Flacco was the fifth most accurate deep ball passer in the league according to Pro Football Focus, and even that likely downplays how effective the Ravens quarterback was at passing deep. The Ravens led the league in drawing defensive pass interference against opposing cornerbacks. And while much of that is on the Ravens wide receivers learning (particularly Torrey Smith) excelling at drawing pass interference penalties, Flacco is great at recognizing when his receiver has the coverage beat and just throws it up.
Flacco’s cannon of an arm is still his best asset as a quarterback, but that talent is uniquely effective in conjunction with his recognition of when his receiver has an advantage. Flacco is an accurate deep passer, but when his receivers have their man beat, he can just chuck it down field and know something good will happen.
Poise in the pocket:
A huge misconception about Flacco’s improved play this season was it resulted primarily from an improved offensive line and running back. The thinking behind this argument is that Flacco is only as good as his supporting cast: when given ample time in the pocket and a legitimate running threat to help sell the play action, he’s an #elite quarterback. But when those things aren’t in place, he struggles.
To a certain extent, this countervailing narrative makes sense. It’s simple, logical, and helps explain why Flacco’s highs are so high and his lows are so low. But it’s also wrong. Flacco isn’t just some milquetoast tabula rasa quarterback that absorbs the characteristics of the players around him. This narrative is the bizarro twin of those arguing whether or not Flacco is “elite or not elite”: both break down complex players and systems into an easily digestible narrative. And while both these digestible narratives are easy to spout off while drinking a beer with some buddies, advanced statistics show these narratives are a woefully insufficient characterization of Flacco.
Flacco’s performance under pressure is a great example about how these skin deep narratives belie a more complex underlying process. For example, it might be easy to say the Ravens revamped offensive line and run game this year helped give Flacco more time in the pocket than he had in 2013, allowing him to have more success. But according to Pro Football Focus, Flacco was pressured on 31.6% of drop backs in 2014, which was only slightly less than the 35.6% of drop backs in 2013. So even with the improved offensive line play, Flacco still faced similar amounts of pressure from years past. And the Ravens play action offense wasn’t significantly improved from 2013. In 2014, the Flacco’s QB ranking on play action plays was 95.7, up only five points from 2013, indicating that the increased potency of the run game wasn’t the main reason for Flacco’s resurgent year.
Instead, I believe the biggest reason Flacco played better this year was, get this, Flacco himself. Despite facing a similar amount of pressure as he did in 2013, the Ravens quarterback was only sacked 10% of the time he faced pressure, the lowest in the entire league. That’s because Flacco was a much better decision-maker in the pocket when he was given time. Last year, Flacco took an NFL leading 43 sacks when he had 2.6 or more seconds in the pocket. But his year, Flacco got rid of the ball faster and got rid of the ball when plays didn’t develop. This year, Flacco had only 16 sacks when he had 2.6 or more seconds in the pocket. It wasn’t any fancy schematic gimmick or additional players that made Flacco better in the pocket this year. It was just Flacco, learning from mistakes he made a year ago and making better decisions.
Closing thoughts:
It’s impossible to discuss Flacco’s play in 2014 without discussing the way Flacco is talked about in the media at large. Since the Ravens drafted Flacco in 2008, he’s been by far the team’s most polarizing player. And that polarization is only going to continue as the Ravens start pushing up against cap constraints caused by Flacco’s large contract. And not only is that fine, it should be encouraged. Quarterback is an important position, and the Ravens are spending a lot of money on Flacco. But the discussion needs to be more complex. As of now we have some perverse football derivative of nature versus nurture, where people by and large believe Flacco is born with some innate eliteness, whatever that means, or inescapably the product of him supporting cast.
Instead, Flacco is a high variance quarterback, one whose strengths and weaknesses, like other quarterbacks, fluctuate from week to week and season to season. And maybe even that statement is too simple a distillation of Flacco’s abilities as a quarterback. But even if he’s not always worth the annoying media buzz or his contract, he played pretty damn well this year. And he is probably the best quarterback I can remember suiting up for the Ravens. So unless something really goes wrong, I’m glad he’s my quarterback going forward.
Will is a Ravens fan born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He has previously written for Baltimore Beatdown at SB Nation. He is currently a senior at St. Mary’s of Maryland.