Joe Flacco needed to learn new offense before working with receivers during early portion of offseason

Much was made this offseason about whether Joe Flacco and the Ravens receivers should get together off-site to work on Gary Kubiak's offense.

It never materialized — and depending on which side of the argument you veered toward, it was either a sign of lack of leadership or it simply wasn't that big of a deal.

Well, we now have an answer as to one of the main reasons these workouts never happened — no one would have known exactly what to do. Speaking to BaltimoreRavens.com's Garrett Downing in a sit-down interview at The Castle, Flacco said that due to the rules under the CBA, he and the other players were unable to meet and discuss the offense with Kubiak. The only information they got was the playbook.

"The truth about this offseason is you couldn't meet with your coaches, you couldn't do anything like that, and it's a completely new offense," Flacco said. "I knew nothing about this offense besides what I could get in my playbook when they sent it to me. But I hadn't spent any time with any coaches talking about this offense — how do you run this route until we got here in mid-April. It would have been even very tough for me to let guys know what to do or what I wanted them to do because I wouldn't have known at that point."

Could Flacco and the receivers have gotten together to run some routes? Sure. But what would that have added if they had no instruction as to what Kubiak was looking for in the offense? And in the end, the Ravens reported for Phase One of offseason workouts in mid-April to begin instruction. Given that the season doesn't start until September, that's plenty of time for the Ravens to get a hold on what Kubiak wants them to do.

And so far, so good. Flacco appears to be a fan of this offense and how the personnel will work within it.

"I like our guys fit into it," Flacco said. "I think it gives us a wide variety of things to do."

To watch the full Flacco interview CLICK HERE.