Joe Flacco Is Great, His Footwork Is Not

Joe Flacco’s biggest problem has a lot to do with his footwork.

Joe Flacco is a great quarterback. He has the accomplishments to support that statement. Flacco gives the Ravens a chance to win any game. When he is feeling it, Baltimore is a hard team to stop. We’ve seen Flacco do some incredible things. What if I told you the key to getting even more out of the franchise quarterback is fixing his footwork?

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The legs are just as important to a quarterback as his right arm is. Accuracy and power is largely due to good footwork. More problems are caused by improper footwork than any other reason. The problem that Flacco is having is that he isn’t stepping into his throws.

There was a time when Joe Flacco would never under throw a deep pass. Now an under thrown pass down the field happens more than Ravens fans should be comfortable with. This is something you can see when you watch the games. It’s pretty obvious.

What Flacco needs to do, is to step through the throw. He needs to get an extra thrust of force on the football. Remember when Joe Haden picked Flacco off on a deep pass to Breshad Perriman? Haden played exceptional coverage but an interception would have been out of the realm of possibilities with a good throw. There really are many examples of this kind of problem hurting the Ravens passing game.

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Flacco has played inconsistently this season. The Jacksonville Jaguars saw him complete 21 passes which came close to breaking an NFL record. Flacco has heated up when the Ravens absolutely needed him to and the team is 3-0. However the Jaguars also saw Flacco throw two interceptions and miss a couple of wide open receivers.

The reason for the up and down game is simple. Flacco has unreal talent and he is one of the most underrated leaders in professional sports. However Flacco too often mixes his incredible gifts with bad mechanics.

Flacco’s problems with this really started to pick up in 2013. That was the year that Gino Gradkowski and A.Q. Shipley were slated to protect him. That was a season in which Flacco took a beating. The less comfortable Flacco is in the pocket, the less likely Flacco is to step into his throws. Now, I am afraid that this is a learned behavior that kicks in during the games. Flacco knows what he has to do but in the moment, it’s easy to fall back on bad habits.

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Flacco may be the best thing that ever happened to the Ravens. His stellar play is a huge reason the Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII. The Ravens franchise quarterback has has won more road playoff games than any quarterback in NFL history. I am not hating on Flacco. In fact I have been one of his loudest supporters from the beginning. I am only trying to point out an obvious problem in his game, one that if he corrects, it could make him even greater.