Whacko for Flacco!!!

I think Flacco did a great job, given it was his first start. Your right the stats didn’t look good, but you have to be happy if you watched him. Flacco looked very calm and confident under pressure. Also he didn’t make any mistakes. His accuracy was a little off, but I think that will come with experience. I’m interested to see how he does against tougher defense. But I think he’ll fair pretty well, if he remains calm and confident.

Too often a quarterback is measured on age, height and arm strength. The Ravens could have improved their odds for playoff success many times in the past 10 years by adopting a crafty veteran. I often thought Flutie could have helped better than Banks. Brad Johnson was available before Mitchell. Dilfer was here. Garcia needed a job badly. Kurt Warner was available. With a veteran team ready for prime time, Billick continued to recruit school boys and extreme has beens. Outside of being dissapointed as a fan, could you imagine the gut wrenching pain in your stomach as a veteran player watching your years tick by as Billick paraded his student quarterbacks around like a My Madeline book. Young quarterbacks or has beens who did not question authority must have suited his ego nicely.

Years and playoffs slipped away as we waited for this guy to stop boring us with his words and start producing quarterbacks who don’t jump out of their skin at the sound of a whistle. We had Grbac who had to be coaxed to play. We had Stoney Case the good listener. There was Mitchell the great who Billick reminded us we knew nothing about. There was Banks who lead a great comeback against Jacksonville with a laser pass to Sharp but soon disappeared behind his fumbles and INT’s. We had the kid Johnny U. liked but Billick didn’t – Redmond. We cut Anderson because he could only muster 4th string behind Boller. Really. We lived with Boller who looked as nervous in his fifth year as he did his 1st game. The fact that he carried himself on the field with the grace of Barney Fife and had the hands of Gilligan would have persuaded me to look for another prospect…about 4.5 years ago. I still haven’t seen Boller throw a ball from his knees at the 50 yard line through the uprights during a game. That spectacle obviously impressed Billick on some college practice field somewhere. Or, was it the 50% pass completion stat in college that earned him his millions.

Were they all that bad? Probably, but it was all the quarterbacks that were passed over along the way that could have given Ogden, Ray Lewis, Jamal Lewis, McCrary, Burnette, Boulware one more shot. Instead they played their brains out and were on the field twice as long as most defenses so Billick could dilly dally around with his rediculous offense. That is how amazing our defense has been for 10 years. 10 long years of double duty. For 10 years the defense, not the coach, motivated the entire team. If he could hear above himself he would have realized it was the words Ogden didn’t say and the passionate pleas Ray Lewis couldn’t contain that built this franchise and kept the fans enamored. Not only did the defense have to dive on their own granades, they had to dive on the offenses granades as well to save the team; every brutal week. There isn’t a doubt that careers were shortened by Billicks stubborn ways, clock management and backwards play calling. All of which left many national commentators (some Hall of Famers) scratching their heads.

Oh, but how our homer media ate Billick’s words up like little chocolate cup cakes. These same gutless sports talk hosts often cut good fans short when they called the stations to call for Billicks resignation. Why these media hosts feared being black balled and not getting generic sound bite after generic sound bite from the locker room is beyond me. Cut to the truth as a writer or host and you’ll have my attention all year. I think the Raven’s would have appreciated it if the media allowed open season on Billick. It would have saved their careers years ago.

Now we have a kid from Delaware. He’s calm, cool and collected. He’s the future. He isn’t anything like the Raven’s have seen before. If quarterbacks are like combination locks we have to be close to cracking this blasted thing. It might take the keen ears of new coaches and the experience of trench footed veterans to prepare Flacco but I have a good feeling the safe is about to open with wins tumbling out. After what we’ve been through during Billick’s era, a good feeling is already more than we can ask for.

…Billick was a very good coach and an even greater motivator. I supported him up until last year’s opening game against the Bengals, when even with six turnovers, we were still in position to win at the end. He cost us that game with his playcalling and also the Buffalo game as well as the Dolphins’ loss, when he didn’t have the stones to go for it on the 6 inch line on the last play of regulation. If you read my column for today (Wednesday), you will see my thoughts on where this season has the possibility of taking us. Check it out. Great post, raven!