Quarterback Battle 1: Flacco vs. Ryan (2008)

But for the record, Flacco was playing in the AFC Championship game while Ryan was one and done. So saying this….

Season: Tied

Not at all.

Yes, Matt has always had better options, but Flacco is right next to him. He just recently got his WR core set up and did not capitalize to the full potential. You guys have Smith, Boldin, Rice who can catch outside of the backfield, and I know Lee Evans wasn’t great but he’s improving. We have Julio Jones, gone half the season, an old Roddy White with a case of the dropsies, and a horrible OC that underutilized guys more than I do with HBO. We also had a horrible OL that people ate up. Not to mention we have Cam Newton, and Drew Brees in our division, that’s not fun. We are forced to get into shoot outs alot and still pull winning seasons. I don’t believe at all that Flacco is a top 5 QB. Brady?Rodgers?Eli?Brees?Newton? I don’t even think Ryan fits in there. Ryan is top 10 and I don’t know where Flacco ranks. Not to make my bold statement, if Ryan had Bmore’s D then he would have been to the SuperBowl already. Sorry for the rant, but, as TO said…

and gratsi!

Flacco is a pitt killer and top 5 QB

You are absolutely insane. I honestly feel bad for you.

IDK. I see biasim (Is that a word?) is in play here, therefore I am not using as hard of an arguements as I planned…

Well my guess is that it will have 100+ comments in about 48 hours once one of the dumbass Flacco bashers here and from other blogs come on here trying to say that Flacco is in the same class as Sanchez or that he is not even in the conversation of top 15 QB’s.

The Freeman comparisons always crack me up and piss me off at the sane time. ESPN was convinced that Freeman was a top 10 QB with Joe nowhere near that discussion heading into this season.

Through first 3 seasons.

Dome vs Outdoors factor

I am sure everyone will agree that it can be a pretty significant advantage playing in perfect indoor conditions, instead of outdoors in the elements. The reason this is a major issue in this discussion is because of the massive amount of games Matt Ryan has played indoors vs Joe Flacco. Ryan has played 28 games indoors out of 48, or 58%. Joe Flacco on the other hand has only played 6 times out of 55 games in a dome, or just 10.9% of the time. That is a BIG difference, and that has to be taken into consideration.

How much of an advantage is up for debate, but I have some numbers from the last 11 seasons that can shed some light on how much of a factor it is. With some very basic preliminary numbers I found that the difference in passer rating is about 8 points, and the difference in accuracy is around 3%. That was from a comparison of the top 10 QB’s and their splits for outdoors and indoors from Yahoo sports. That is about 10% on the rating, and around 5% on the completion percentage.


The Hard Numbers

One thing I knew going in was that I was almost positive Flacco faced the stronger defenses over the first 3 years, but I just did not know how big the difference would be. It turned out that there was a substantial difference in the top level defenses both went up against, more than I ever could have imagined. I used all games both players played in including the playoffs, because well they did play those games and they did count. I broke it down to 5 main levels of defense.

Top 3 – The best of the best
4th -8th – Very good defenses
9th – 12th – Pretty good defense
13th -24th – average defenses
25th – 28th – Bad defenses
29th -32nd – The worst of the worst.

Now the number that really jumps out at you is that Flacco has faced defenses in the top 3 an amazing 9 times in his short career, compared to Ryan who has faced that level only twice. What is more alarming if you take it one step further, Flacco has gone against a top 8 defense an amazing 22 times. Ryan on the other hand has only faced that level of competition 9 times. The rate is more than double, with Flacco checking in at 40% and Ryan only 18.8% of games vs the very good or great defenses.

If you extend those numbers to the top 12 ranked defenses, Flacco played 49.1% against those teams, with Ryan only playing 31.3% going up against at least above average defenses.

Having not played professional football myself, I can’t speak from personal experience, but I imagine it’s embarrassing for the offense (and even more so for the quarterback) to finish a game with two points scored. Maybe there were some Cundiff-like shanks in the game (I don’t know; I didn’t watch the game), but seriously? The offense was shut out in the biggest game of their season? Peyton Manning is likely to be available, you know. He’s experienced his fair share of playoff choking (said choking might be partially responsible for his neck AIDS), but he’s also occasionally not sucked in the playoffs, too. And if I’m an Atlanta fan (perish the thought!), that’s what I’m specifically looking for in my next quarterback.

And post, and welcome to the BB!

You did a nice job presenting your case and maybe through the regular season of 2008, Ryan may have appeared to jump out to an early lead. But once the post season started and subsequent seasons, Flacco has continued to evolve and even with a “statistically down” season in 2011, Flacco has put some daylight between him and Ryan.

If you want a real in-depth overall comparison to Flacco, check out this write-up I did a little while ago.

Keep up the good work! 12, eh? Stay in school, don’t do drugs and get a haircut!