COLLEGE PARK, Maryland — Coming off a win over Green Bay Sunday, the Baltimore Ravens sit at 5-5, currently holding a playoff spot in the AFC despite wildly inconsistent quarterback play from Joe Flacco.
Flacco is having the worst season of his career, ranking as one of the league’s worst passers in 2017, a Capital News Service analysis found. This can be attributed, in part, to his reluctance to throw passes deep down field, an early-career trademark that helped him win a Super Bowl in 2012.
The ten-year NFL veteran is averaging just 173 yards per game, tied for second lowest in the league with Cleveland Browns rookie DeShone Kizer. He’s ahead of only Green Bay Packers rookie Brett Hundley.
Flacco is just one of five quarterbacks to throw more interceptions than touchdowns this year, joining Kizer, Hundley, San Francisco 49ers rookie C.J. Beathard, and the recently-demoted-to-backup Trevor Siemian of the Denver Broncos.
He has thrown a touchdown on just 2.8 percent of his pass attempts, the lowest mark of his career. Meanwhile, he has thrown an interception on 3.4 percent of his attempts, which is just a tick below the career-worst 3.6 percent he set in 2013.
Flacco’s worst season was 2013, when he set career lows in total quarterback rating (51.2), TD-interception ratio (0.86), and yards per pass attempt (6.4). Through ten games this season, he is on track for lower marks in each of those categories.
“I think I’ve been a little bit quick to get the ball out of my hands at times,” Flacco said in a Baltimore Sun article in October. “I think if I just hang in there and trust the process, trust the pocket, and I might have to step up and make some plays here and there.”
Despite Flacco’s many struggles this season, he still ranks in the top third of the NFL in completion percentage. In fact, his 65.5 percent to date is the best single-season mark he has posted, better than the career high 64.9 mark he set a year ago. But while he is completing passes, he has failed to make big plays.
For much of his career, Flacco’s signature talent has been his ability to launch the deep ball down field, like the 70-yard pass to Jacoby Jones in the 2012 Divisional Round against Denver. This year, he has shied away from taking deep shots.
According to NFL.com, Flacco’s pass attempts go 6.8 yards down the field, last of all qualified quarterbacks. (That stat doesn’t take into account a receiver running with the ball after the catch). His pass attempts, on average, land 2.1 yards short of a first down, the worst in the NFL. (Capital News Service only looked at the 33 quarterbacks with at least 150 passing attempts this season.)
With completed passes, Flacco is averaging just 5.44 yards per pass attempt this season, the worst mark of his career and the worst for any passer since Blaine Gabbert’s 5.36 yards per attempt in 2011.
Flacco has hesitated to throw deep in recent years. His percentage of pass attempts that are for more than 20 yards has decreased every year since hitting a high in 2012, and sits at a career low 6.9 percent this season.
When he does throw the deep ball, he isn’t successful; on these attempts in 2017, he is 5-for-22 (22.7 percent), with two touchdowns and three interceptions, per ESPN.
Perhaps in the past, Flacco’s success was driven by the weapons around him. When he won the Super Bowl in 2012, the Ravens’ offense featured Ray Rice, Torrey Smith and Anquan Boldin. But while their offense today is not as stacked, it still features Jeremy Maclin and Mike Wallace, Pro Bowl receivers who each have multiple 1,000 yard seasons to their name, and Alex Collins, who has been a pleasant surprise out of the backfield.
Flacco won a Super Bowl and subsequently earned a big payday on the strength of his deep throws down field. Now, he struggles to make those throws, and has morphed into one of the least effective quarterbacks in the NFL.
FiveThirtyEight gives the Ravens a 65 percent chance of making the playoffs, a number that dramatically increased after Sunday’s victory. But with a crowded AFC playoff hunt, they will need better quarterback play from Flacco to be a legitimate contender.