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Sports Arena
Not Yet Elite, But Pretty Neat
The Baltimore Ravens become Joe Flacco’s football team.
It was truly lights out football. The Baltimore Ravens endured a potentially momentum-swinging power outage and delay of game to win the Super Bowl. The young and hungry San Francisco 49ers will have to wait.
Retiring linebacker Ray Lewis gets most of the attention, but as he squirrel dances off into the sunset the career most impacted by the Ravens’ victory may be quarterback Joe Flacco’s. Flacco was in a contract year and raised eyebrows with offseason talk about being among the best signal-callers in the game.
While Flacco has a solid record in the playoffs since entering the league in 2008, his overall play over the past five years has been streaky. The quarterback’s defenders have often blamed conservative play-calling for his struggles, suggesting the Ravens would be better if he was allowed to air it out more.
After two straight losses, the Ravens fired offensive coordinator Cam Cameron and replaced him with Jim Caldwell. The results speak for themselves. Flacco completed 22 of 33 passes for 287 yards and three touchdowns. This capped off a postseason performance in which Flacco threw 11 touchdowns and zero interceptions.
To get to the Super Bowl, Flacco had to out-duel future Hall of Famers Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. His poise in the pocket, strong arm, and accurate throws powered the Ravens’ offense. It doesn’t hurt that he has a full complement of quality wide receivers, particularly Torrey Smith deep and veteran Anquan Boldin in the slot.
Skip Bayless had derided Flacco as “Joe Fluke-o.” Bayless is the Dick Morris of sports pundits: opinionated and aggressively wrong. Flacco has proved he is no fluke. In 2000, the Ravens defense has to bring the Vince Lombardi trophy to Baltimore in spite of their quarterback, the mediocre Trent Dilfer. This time around, the Flacco-led offense was a crucial part of the victory.
Does Flacco’s overall body of work yet compare to Brady’s, Manning’s, Aaron Rodgers’, or Drew Brees’? No. The Super Bowl MVP, who has never thrown more than 25 touchdown passes in a regular season, needs to be more consistent. But it is clear that he is very good, and at his best at the right time of the year.
Even if Flacco is not yet elite, he has earned an elite-sized contract.
What about the younger quarterback for the other team, playing in a Super Bowl in just his tenth career start? The 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick completed 16 of 28 passes for 302 yards and a touchdown, running for 67 yards and a 15-yard rushing touchdown. His average was 8.9 yards per carry.
A very solid performance by Kaepernick, but his one interception on a deep pass to an open Randy Moss helped the Ravens eat up time. The turnover could have even led to Baltimore points, had they not attempted an unsuccessful fake field goal. But the botched attempt cost the Ravens nothing.
The physical 49ers’ team seemed overmatched by the Ravens’ offensive and defensive lines, losing the battle in the trenches. It took a 34-minute stop in play for Kaepernick to settle down and get into a rhythm. When he finally did, it looked like San Francisco was about to pull off another improbable comeback — only to fall just short.
It just goes to show you that beating Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson, as good as they are, isn’t in the same league as beating Manning and Brady.
Nevertheless, Kaepernick is the settled starting quarterback for the 49ers next season. Alex Smith will almost certainly be playing elsewhere. Having gone to back-to-back NFC Championships, the team will have another chance.
The only real controversy surrounding the Ravens’ win was the failure to rule that receiver Michael Crabtree was held in the end zone. San Francisco head coach Jim Harbaugh said there was “no question” that Crabtree was held on his team’s final offensive play of the game, though he tried to control his anger out of deference to his brother, Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh.
But a questionable non-call is always less controversial than a questionable call. Who wants to issue the penalty that decides the Super Bowl? Apparently, no referee on the field in New Orleans Sunday night.
The Ravens will fly on without Ray Lewis, and possibly safety Ed Reed. With this Super Bowl, it became Joe Flacco’s team. And it’s possible that future Super Bowls will end up being a Harbaugh family affair.
Photo: UPI
About the Author
W. James Antle, III, author of the new book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?, is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and a senior editor of The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter @jimantle.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (8) | Leave a comment
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Bob Grant| 2.5.13 @ 10:02AM
Flacco's a solid top 7 QB. He has a deceptively strong arm, makes minimal boneheaded mistakes, keeps drives going, and keeps the turnovers to a minimum.
It's basically all that's required for a team with a top-rated defense.
An odd consequence of the Raven's success is their history now surpasses the Colt's history, which is very strange for someone over 40, and really strange for someone over 50.
Pecos Pete| 2.5.13 @ 10:13AM
#19 Johnny U!
astorian| 2.5.13 @ 10:37AM
It's nice to see someone acknowledge the fact that the Ravens' old image is outdated.
People still think of the Ravens as a team that wins with smothering defense and a play-it-safe offense. Millions of fans still picture the Ravens as the team of Ray Lewis and Tony Siragusa, and imagine that Joe Flacco is (as Trent Dilfer was) a mere game manager.
In reality, the Ravens' defense is no longer anything special- they yielded far too many points to the Broncos and 49ers to be viewed as elite. The Ravens won because Joe Flacco put up even more points than his over-the-hill defense allowed.
But a team's image always dies hard. Bart Starr is underappreciated because so many people THINK he was a dink passer and that the Packers lived or died with the power sweep. People THINK the Pittsburgh Steelers won 4 Super Bowls on defense alone, but that's not true- they won their FIRST two Super Bowls with defense, but their last two came via Terry Bradshaw's arm (the Steel Curtain yielded 31 points to the Cowboys, and couldn't stop the Rams' Wendell Tyler).
The Ravens who clobbered the Giants 34-7 were a defensive juggernaut. They WERE Ray Lewis' team. But Ray Lewis was irrelevant this past Sunday. These Ravens are Joe Flacco's team.
Who Knows?| 2.5.13 @ 11:46AM
“Who wants to issue the penalty that decides the Super Bowl?”
Sort of reminds me of the Obama administration---who wants to enforce the law, and build a fence to keep our border secure?
Selective enforcing of laws or penalties means we are NOT a nation of laws, but of men.
One play stands out---in the third or fourth quarter, the Ravens had 3rd and long, and threw a pass to the right side. The defender was right on the receiver, with far less contact than the one at the end of the game, and yes, pass interference was called. The Ravens went on to score a field goal.
“Real” fans have long known about studies that prove referees are biased by the home field advantage. Anybody remember the way the refs stole the Super Bowl for the Steelers, over the Seahawks, and years later, admitted it?
Who Knows?| 2.5.13 @ 11:47AM
Ah, but the Steelers are one of the “darlings” of the NFL, and the Seattle team? An upstart from way out on the west fringe---no one will care if they are ripped off?
Joe Flacco is a good quarterback, no doubt. However, many of the long passes he completed were close to toss-ups, and one or two of them should have been broken up, or intercepted. In short---he was at least a bit lucky.
The 49ers were the better team. It is incomprehensible that they didn’t take the last 2 minutes to run the ball into the end zone. There was little doubt, in my mind, they were going to be able to do this.
My thought was that they didn’t want to leave much time, because Flacco could lead the Ravens to a field goal, and win that way. But, why the 49ers didn’t just run it will always be the big question.
Yes---the Ravens were lucky. If they played seven games, like in the NBA, my guess is the niners would have won five or six of them. Sometimes the better team makes enough mistakes, while the worse team makes none and even lucks out with some rare plays---like a kickoff return fluke---to bring about the upset.
That’s football.
In any case, it’s STILL true that the reality is that 22 large men, most of them pumped up with drugs so they are way more muscular than normal, run around with a ball for a while, sort of like a mass mayhem “boxing match”, trying to “legally” kill each other.
I await the day when public hangings become normal.
Dukehoopsfan| 2.5.13 @ 3:18PM
Not sure what game you watched but the 49ers were not the best team. They lost.
"If they played seven games, like in the NBA, my guess is the niners would have won five or six of them. Sometimes the better team makes enough mistakes, while the worse team makes none and even lucks out with some rare plays---like a kickoff return fluke---to bring about the upset."
You've got to be kidding. That was the lamest straw man statement ever written. You have no way to ever prove it. PS - that "rare fluke" return by Jones was his third of the season.
Immortal 600| 2.5.13 @ 6:06PM
As a die-hard Ravens fan, I just want to say.....Baltimore Ravens World Champions!!!!!!
Dukehoopsfan| 2.6.13 @ 12:03PM
Amen brother!