Baltimore Ravens: Should team play Joe Flacco against Bengals?
By Ben Palmer
The Baltimore Ravens are out of the playoff race, so this Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals is just for pride. The team is planning on starting quarterback Joe Flacco, but are they taking an unnecessary risk?
For the first time in his career, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco will be playing a regular season game that is entirely meaningless.
The Baltimore Ravens are completely out of playoff contention with their loss last week to the Pittsburgh Steelers. They have one final game left in the regular season: this Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals, and the game holds no consequence.
But here’s the problem: Joe Flacco is starting that game. Everyone in Baltimore remembers Flacco’s season-ending knee injury towards the end of last season, and the last thing the team needs is something like that to happen again.
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Flacco is going to be playing behind an offensive line of backups, so likely his protection isn’t going to be stellar. So are the Ravens taking an unnecessary risk by starting their franchise quarterback in an entirely meaningless game?
I would say that they are. Especially considering we just saw two young starting quarterbacks, Marcus Mariota and Derek Carr, break their legs last week.
What if something similar happened to Flacco in his final game of the season? What’s the point in having him out there? Is it likely to happen? Perhaps not, but why take the risk? What is there to gain aside from pride?
The Ravens could start backup quarterback Ryan Mallett and let him put on a showcase before he becomes a free agent while simultaneously protecting their star quarterback, but it seems the team has no interest in doing so.
For whatever it’s worth, Flacco supports the move: “I love football, and my job is to play. That’s what I want to do,” he said. “There is no way in the world that I wouldn’t want to play in this game. It shows a lot about who you are as a team and who you are as a person if you go out there and play well.”
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Hopefully the offensive line is able to keep Flacco protected during their final game in Cincinnati, as the last thing the Ravens anemic offense needs is to lose its best player.