Joe Flacco tries to remain optimistic on the sideline
The end comes for us all. Cheery thought for the holiday season, right?
Well, let’s walk that back a bit. The end of our career comes for us all. For corporate types, it comes in your 60s, with a retirement party and a cake in the break room. For esports champions, the end arrives when you can’t keep up with the youngsters — i.e., when you hit age 23. For kiddie Instagram influencers, the end arrives with your first pimple. And for NFL quarterbacks, the end arrives in the form of a younger, faster, sharper arm.
You know Joe Flacco. Super Bowl MVP and now-former Baltimore Ravens starting quarterback. He knew his time in Baltimore was drawing to a close when the Ravens drafted his replacement, Lamar Jackson, earlier this year. But when Flacco hit the ground in Week 9, tomorrow became today.
The whole “you can’t lose your starting job to injury” good-faith ethos that — in theory — exists in sports like baseball has zero place in football. Spend too much time in the bathroom at training camp and you might come out to find you’ve lost your starting gig.
But when an injury sidelines you and your replacement looks sharp both in the air and on the ground, though, as Jackson has — and, more importantly, when he wins games — well, the writing isn’t just on the wall, it’s on your rapidly diminishing contract. Jackson has looked strong while Baltimore has gone 4-1 in Flacco’s absence, the lone loss a 27-24 defeat to the No. 1-ranked Kansas City Chiefs. That’s a run that’ll earn you more work.
It’s also a run that’s left Flacco on the sidelines, literally and figuratively. Flacco, per local media reports, didn’t get the marquee podium postgame interview accorded starting QBs; instead, he simply dressed amongst the rest of his more-anonymous teammates.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a situation like this,” Flacco told the Baltimore Sun. “I just prepared as normal, and if anything bad happened, then I had to be ready to go for my teammates and for myself. So I was ready to go at any point.”
Those are the right things to say, yep, no matter how little you want to say them. Elsewhere in the interview, Flacco gave one of those knife-twisting quotes:
“It’s different, but it’s a good team win, and it’s always exciting to be on the sideline like [Sunday],” Flacco said.
No! It’s not! The only time it’s exciting to be on the sideline is if you’ve never been in the game!
Look, we don’t need to feel bad for Flacco. First off, the cat’s made more than $210 million — no, that’s not an extra digit in there — and he’s reached his sport’s pinnacle. Plus, he just vaulted to the top of every free agent list in the NFL mediasphere. You can bet that there are at least two teams in Florida who are going to be trying to fly him and his family to the Sunshine State for some get-acquainted chats. So while his career isn’t over, his 11-year Baltimore run — an eternity in NFL terms — is coming to a close.
He’s handling the end of that run with grace, making life easier for his successor and paving the way for longer-term success for his team. In a me-first sport, that’s some admirable teamwork. So perhaps that’s the lesson here — when the end of your career comes, make sure your career was “Super Bowl-winning NFL quarterback.”
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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