Win or lose today, the Baltimore Ravens have an elite quarterback. If they don’t want to pay Joe Flacco like he is one, at least 20 other teams should be lining up to throw dollars at him.
Flacco is closing out his fifth season in the NFL and he doesn’t have a Super Bowl appearance on his resume. He has a chance to change that today when he starts his third AFC Championship Game.
Technically Flacco, who has won playoff games all five years of his career, has already led the Ravens to the Super Bowl. He tossed a game winning touchdown pass in this spot last year only to have Lee Evans drop it and then watched his kicker choke away a chance to tie the game with seconds left.
Outside of the Super Bowl appearance, what hasn’t Flacco done? Maybe he’ll never throw for 5,000 yards in a season or run one of these new flashy run-option offenses, but he does do the one thing you really want from your QB – he wins.
Business is business and at the end of the day it’s hard to imagine that the Ravens will let Flacco walk away. At a minimum, if contract talks don’t go smoothly, the QB will likely be hit with the franchise tag, a move that usually ends up in a holdout by the player for offseason organized team activities and the start of training camp.
Every team in the league, including the 28 that are home watching today, wants a quarterback who can lead them to victories in big spots. Yes, the Super Bowl appearance is important for the legacy, but Flacco is doing something today that only three others are doing and he’s doing it for the third time in five NFL seasons – starting in a conference championship.
That sounds elite to me. Follow me on twitter @aksports.
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