Just posted this in another thread on here about Joe Flacco being "elite" now.
Wow, a couple good plays, a few horribly blown defensive assignments, and Torrey Smith's famous push-off and Flacco is an Elite QB!? The reality is he plays on a very talented team and he manages games well under pressure. That's it. He has looked good in some playoff games, but as others mentioned, had that safety not blown his coverage in Denver, the Ravens would have went home then. I know people say stats aren't everything, and clearly they're not, but a lot can be gained from them. In this era, there are certain standards that "Elite" QBs have. In this era, you should be at least completing 62% of your passes for 4,200-4,800 yards (in rare cases, Brees numbers), around 32-40 TDs, and 8-12 picks. Let's look at Flacco's numbers for his career.
08 - 60% 2971 14 12
09 - 63.1% 3613 21 12
10 - 62.6% 3622 25 10
11 - 57.6% 3610 20 12
12 - 59.7% 3817 22 10
I personally pay tons of attention to a QB's completion percentage, and I think it's a very underrated statistic in evaluating QB play. Obviously, minus two years, Flacco wasn't even in the "good" range and never in the "very good" or "great" range. I know Flacco now has a Super Bowl, and I also know he has had some good playoff games, but he's still not "Elite." He's not even VERY good. He is, however, a great game manager on a VERY talented team. I mean, we're talking about an "Elite" QB who's average completion percentage is 60.5%; he's never thrown for more than this year's 3817 yards; and he's never thrown more than 25 TDs. That's just not "Elite" in today's era of football.
