John Elway, SUPERGENIUS
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Since his team took a quadruple-bank-shot run all the way to a Super Bowl championship, John Elway has been pissing away an outstanding defense, or at least a potentially outstanding defense (one should mention that he let the DC who just finished throttling Tom Brady in the Super Bowl go so he could hire a guy who presided over one mediocre defense for Adam Gase as his head coach), playing tall strong-armed white guys who are bad at football at QB, and then buying high on a shorter one coming off a fluke year. Finally having learned his lesson, he’s now re-thinking his views about what makes a successful quarter…haha no:
Now there is a destination attached to that inevitability: Flacco is headed to Denver. The Ravens have reached a tentative trade agreement with the Broncos that will make the former Super Bowl MVP the latest attempt by front office executive John Elway to solve Denver’s quarterback quandary.
The trade was not announced and cannot become official, under NFL rules, for another month. But it was confirmed by a person familiar with the deliberations after being first reported by ESPN.
According to that person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because there was no immediate confirmation of the deal by either team, the Ravens are to receive from the Broncos a mid-round pick in the NFL draft. It is believed the pick will be one of the two fourth-round choices currently possessed by the Broncos.
Reports that he then traded a fifth round pick for a kick in the groin are probably accurate. Barnwell, scoring the trade a gentleman’s D+:
All of that brings us to the next lessons. In the NFL, shorter quarterbacks like Keenum have to constantly prove they can play. Tall quarterbacks get chance after chance to prove they can’t play. And more important, when NFL coaches and executives are on the ropes, they’re going to turn to what they know or what has worked in the past.
Come on down, Joe Flacco! The Broncos traded a midround pick to the Ravens for their deposed 6-foot-6 starter, who lost his job to Lamar Jackson and immediately saw the Ravens make a run to the postseason. ESPN’s Adam Schefter noted that Flacco got enthusiastic recommendations from new Broncos coach Vic Fangio and former team executive Kubiak, each of whom was in Baltimore with Flacco earlier in his career.
Flacco has posted exactly one above-average season by passer rating or net yards per attempt since his incredible run to the Super Bowl in 2012. His Total QBR over that six-year stretch is 53.8; among the 20 passers with 2,000 or more pass attempts over that time frame, the only quarterbacks Flacco beats out are Eli Manning, Ryan Tannehill, Derek Carr and Blake Bortles. (Keenum’s QBR over that time on 1,844 attempts is 51.5.)
Flacco has 5,670 career pass attempts with an ANY/A+ of 94. He has been a slightly below-average quarterback over the course of his 11-year run. Having turned 34 in January, it’s hard to believe he is suddenly going to get better over a multiyear run, especially given the lack of talent the Broncos have on offense.
It will now become more difficult for the Broncos to improve that talent. In addition to sending a midround pick to the Ravens for Flacco — and Denver does have two fourth-round picks in this draft — the Broncos are inheriting the three years and $63 million remaining on Flacco’s onerous contract with the Ravens. That contract is unguaranteed, so the Broncos could get out of Flacco’s contract after one season if things go wrong.
In 2019, though, the Broncos will add $18.5 million to their cap, which leaves them with $18.3 million in space per Spotrac. Denver can create $10.3 million in room by releasing the injured Sanders, but it probably needs to add at least one veteran wideout, if not a tight end to go with him. The Broncos need to find a way to bring back Paradis, their star center, given that they’re already weak up front.
They’re also stuck with a minimum of $10 million on their cap for Keenum, who has $7 million of his $18 million base salary guaranteed in addition to $3 million of his prorated signing bonus. Keenum will have no trade value at that $18 million figure and will likely be released by the Broncos unless he takes a huge pay cut, which wouldn’t make sense.
The last time Flacco was an above-replacement-level QB was 2014. Actually giving up draft capital to take on his onerous contract is the football equivalent of the Angels actually giving up talent to be the idiots signing Vernon Wells’s paychecks, only worse in that a bad QB makes it nearly impossible for your team to win in the way a bad OF doesn’t.
But don’t worry, when the Broncos flame out next year, the platonic ideal of a John Elway QB is getting reps in the AAF:
The Alliance of American Football may have enjoyed a solid debut over the weekend, but it didn’t go so well for Christian Hackenberg. The former Penn State star [sic] and second-round pick of the New York Jets, who never played a regular season down in two-plus NFL seasons, struggled as his Memphis Express was shut out Sunday in its opener.
Hackenberg completed just 10 of 23 passes for 87 yards and an interception, plus he was sacked twice and flagged for intentional grounding, in Memphis’s 26-0 loss to the Birmingham Iron. With about four minutes left, he was lifted from the game in favor of backup quarterback Brandon Silvers, but not before Hackenberg left as big an impression with his potty mouth as he did with his spotty arm (warning: profanity)
OK, but what the stats don’t tell you is that he’s a tall white guy, so he’s starting next week. The punchline is that the guy who blew a high second-round pick on Hackenberg still has his job even though his team has gone 24-40. True story. Ah, this meritocratic thing of ours.