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In a lot of ways, this is a very smart move.
Even though he won’t be ready for opening day.
Talking about Joe Flacco who the Jets added on Friday.
“I can’t speak to exactly when I’m going to be ready, but it will not be day one,” Flacco said today on SiriusXM NFL Radio.
He’s coming off April surgery for a herniated disc in his neck. Guys come back from this. He should be fine by mid-September. He feels fine now, but the Jets and Flacco will error on the side of caution.
But signing him now is a very smart move.
While he’s a veteran quarterback, Flacco has never played in Adam Gase’s system. So by signing him now, this gets Flacco into the virtual quarterback meetings going on right now with Gase, and give him plenty of time to mentally get down the system. By signing on May 22, he will be able to participate in the virtual program for several weeks, and then will have a playbook in hand for a month to study it on his own before training camp, and then continue to learn it in August during camp. So by the time he’s ready to roll in mid-September, he will have had 3.5 months to learn Gase’s playbook.
Also, by getting him in the fray now, he will have plenty of time to work with Sam Darnold. There isn’t much Flacco hasn’t seen, and he could help Darnold a lot.
Flacco is a perfect backup. He has started 171 career games, so if he has to play it won’t be his first rodeo, kind of like when the Jets brought in Vinny Testerverde in his mid-30’s.
If something happens to Darnold, Flacco can get the Jets through games.
No doubt he has been somewhat average in Baltimore since they won the Super Bowl with him under center in early 2013. Some of that has been due to injuries, like blowing out his knee and hurting his back. But some of that also was he’s a very good, not great QB.
When he got paid $22 million-a-year after the Ravens won that Super Bowl that was probably a little rich. He had a nice streak during that Super Bowl season, but his overall body of work wasn’t probably worthy of a contract like that. I know $22 million-a-year doesn’t sound like a lot now, but when Flacco got in 2013, that was the going rate at QB then, like $35-40 million is now.
I once told Flacco’s agent Joe Linta that he negotiated one of the best contracts in NFL history. I really believe that.
That was a compliment to Linta.
The Ravens paid Flacco based on a nice streak leading to the Super Bowl. In retrospect, that wasn’t the best move, and hurt their cap in the following years.
But good for Flacco and good for Linta. They are both good guys.
And good for the Jet adding Flacco as a backup, even though he might not be available in Week 1 or maybe 2.
As they say, an NFL season is “a marathon, not a sprint.”
May 26, 2020
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