The Denver Broncos traded for Joe Flacco this offseason, and despite the fans’ lack of confidence in the move, Flacco has progressed well.
The Denver Broncos made a bold move trading a fourth-round pick for former Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco this offseason, and the move was understandably met with skepticism and rage.
Flacco has been a model of average QB play in the NFL over the last four years, except despite his average play, the Ravens haven’t been winning many games in that particular timeframe.
Being an average QB is okay in today’s NFL if your team can win games, but if you’re average and the team is average — or worse — well, you get traded for a fourth-round pick with three years left on your deal.
Sometimes all a guy needs is a change of scenery or just a fresh start in general. The Broncos provided that for Flacco.
There’s no guarantee of a fresh start resulting in Flacco becoming this elite quarterback or anything, but the Broncos have high hopes he can be more than just an average player in the offense being installed by new coordinator Rich Scangarello.
Are they expecting perfection? No. That’s never realistic in the NFL. Are they expecting excellence? Absolutely.
The Broncos need Flacco to play high-quality football, though they don’t necessarily need him to be Patrick Mahomes to win football games. They need him to operate the offense with efficiency and take advantage of what defenses will give him.
Through the first couple weeks of Broncos camp have certainly had mixed results for the offense, but over the past few days, Flacco has really started to heat up.
"“I honestly think over the last three days, we’re starting to see some of the progress and some of the hard work that we’ve been putting in. Vic’s (Head Coach Vic Fangio) defense does a really good job. They’ve seen a lot of the routes we’ve run all spring and all summer. I really think that the last few days we’ve starting to put it together. It’s been a struggle at times, but we’re starting to get some things to pop and guys being pretty consistent.”Joe Flacco (quotes via Broncos PR)"
Flacco, according to reports coming out of Broncos camp, has been hitting his receivers on a more consistent basis. He’s been connecting players at every position, putting the ball on the money and doing it to all levels of the field.
Flacco has talked about tough practices allowing him or quarterbacks in general to learn to make better decisions with the football. Flacco is a smart quarterback who is probably, at some point, going to make us all irate by taking check downs, but he sees the field well and is taking calculated risks early in camp.
Training camp is the time where you can test your ‘limits’. The Broncos have taken shots deep downfield. They’ve tried to put the ball in the deep middle of the field, push it to the boundary, and get a variety of players involved in the process.
It seems clear the Broncos are going to go into the 2019 season with a lot of confidence in their full arsenal of skill players, and it’s imperative that Flacco has confidence in those guys as well. If you watch the last three or four days of camp highlights, you can see at full speed against the top defense that Flacco is seeing the field well, putting the ball on the money, and making all the throws.
That’s great news for the Broncos and their fans, especially ones like me who were very skeptical of the Flacco trade in the first place.