Joe Flacco Is Starting Week 1 Against The Ravens And My Brain Is In A Pretzel About It

I never thought this day would come.

When January Joe got shipped off to Denver 3 years ago, I thought chances were pretty slim that we'd ever see him line up against the purple and black. The Ravens weren't on the Broncos' schedule that year, they had drafted Drew Lock to inevitably take a crack at the starting job, and the roster was certainly not one good enough to make the postseason. It wasn't a formula for long-term sustainability for Flacco in Denver and I figured the league would flush him out after a year or two, if only because that's what the league does to QB's in their late 30's. 

Sure enough, Vic Fangio wildly misused Flacco in the first half of that season and the reins were eventually handed over to Lock. Flacco moved on, finding himself jobs backing up Sam Darnold and Jalen Hurts in the following two seasons before being traded back to New York to back up and mentor Zack Wilson in the middle of 2021. Throughout all of this, the odds of Flacco ever playing the Ravens seemed like an impossibility. We had the luxury to watch and adore Joe from afar as he played in spurts last year, but were never threatened by the prospect of actually facing him.

Even when Wilson went down earlier this preseason and Flacco was lighting it up in camp, it still didn't feel like a real thing that was going to come to fruition. Despite all the facts trending towards this happening, I continued to bury my head in the sand because I had no interest in facing the emotional dilemma that potentially awaited me Week 1. 

Well it's here and it's as awful as I thought it'd be. There's not much more I want as a football fan than for Flacco to thrive in his twilight years. I'd die for Joe Flacco. Joe gave us so many great years for a franchise that had never known anything other than the QB purgatory that plagues so many teams in the NFL. I talked extensively about what Joe meant to Baltimore in this blog when he got traded.

But this is Week 1 on a revenge tour and Joe is in the way. He must be sacrificed and I'm sick about it. There's probably only one way for Joe to extend his career and that's with him lighting it up in these 3 weeks before Zach Wilson comes back. That's his only road to becoming a starter in the league again. And yet, that simply cannot happen on our watch. 

It's confusing. It's weird. It's painful. And we'll enjoy watching him play the Bengals and Browns in the coming weeks (and hopefully the Steelers in Week 4), but this week Joe Flacco must die and I'm sick about it.