Joe Flacco to wear knee brace this season

We are getting closer and closer to seeing Joe Flacco on the field again. He has spent countless hours this offseason trying to recover, and Flacco announced today that he will try to help keep his knee stable with a knee brace. Flacco will wear the brace for the entire 2016 season.

“If it helps a little bit, that’s huge,” Flacco said. “I’m not going to leave it up to risk and then have something happen and say, ‘What if?’ I’m going to wear it. There’s no reason not to.”

Ryan Mink, staff writer for the Baltimore Ravens listed Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger as other quarterbacks to wear a knee brace following a major knee injury.

The knee brace should hopefully help Flacco feel more protected when sitting in the pocket, and it doesn’t seem that the brace has affected his mechanics.

“Within a couple minutes, I really forgot about it,” Flacco said. “It’s not like that’s going to be like that the whole time, but I felt like that’s a good sign for how it’s going to be moving forward.”

It’s a great sign if the change Flacco is making is something he hardly notices. If the knee brace allows Flacco to feel more protected in the pocket, he will hopefully have an easier time being able to deal with opposing pass rushers coming for him.

But despite showing up to camp early to get extra practice with the brace, Flacco does not plan to play much in the preseason.

“The goal is to make sure I’m as healthy as possible, regular season, Game one,” Flacco said. “I haven’t directly talked to John [Harbaugh] about it.”

This seems like the right move. Despite Flacco still needing to overcome opposing pass rushers in his face, it seems beyond unnecessary to risk him hurting himself in games that don’t count. The Ravens will probably want Flacco to play at least a possession or two later in the preseason, so he doesn’t start the regular season completely cold. He will need to try out the knee brace in an in-game scenario, plus he will feel pressure that won’t be supplied during camp. But don’t tune into the preseason games to see how Flacco looks, as chances are you won’t see him much, if at all.