Joe Flacco Turned Down His Pro Bowl Invite Because Regular Season Accolades Are For Bums Like Andy Dalton
Andy Dalton, as it turns out, was the SEVENTH ALTERNATE for the Pro Bowl.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) January 20, 2015
(Source) – Joe Flacco isn’t worried about having a Pro Bowl appearance next to his name. The seventh-year quarterback declined an invitation to this week’s all-star game to be with his wife, who is due this month to give birth to the couple’s third child. This would have been Flacco’s first Pro Bowl appearance. Instead, Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton will head to Arizona for the game. Flacco has plenty of other accolades to his name – he’s a Super Bowl MVP and is the only quarterback in NFL history to win a playoff game in each of his first five seasons – but the Pro Bowl has been an elusive honor.
First and foremost I’ll say this. Nobody gives a shit about the Pro Bowl. You don’t, I don’t, and if it didn’t serve as support of that ridiculous contract he got, Andy Dalton wouldn’t either. But that’s exactly my point. It’s all Dalton has to fall back on at this point. Every year Dalton leans on his All-Pro receiver and racks up the stats against garbage defenses and then pisses down his leg when everyone’s watching. It’s tradition at this point. We look at his stats after Week 17 and think “aw shucks, I guess he’s alright” and then he goes out and wastes 3 hours of America’s time on Wild Card weekend.
But let’s be fair and rational here. The Pro Bowl is a regular season accolade. Let’s forget for a second that Dalton shit the bed in the playoffs yet again. That’s neither here nor there, and really isn’t important at all if winning championships aren’t your thing. We’re talking about the 2014 regular season here. Maybe he was REALLY REALLY good this particular year. Let’s check it out:
Passing Yards: 3,398
Rank: 16th
Players With More Yards: Ryan Tannehill, Jay Cutler, Joe Flacco
Passing Touchdowns: 19
Rank: T-17th (With Colin Kaepernick)
Players With More Touchdowns: Derek Carr, Eli Manning, Joe Flacco
Interceptions: 17
Rank: T-3rd (With Drew Brees and Blake Bortles)
Players With 425+ Pass Attempts With Fewer INT’s (Dalton Had 481 Attempts): Teddy Bridgewater, Brian Hoyer, Joe Flacco
QB Rating: 83.5
Let’s just have a looksie….
Would ya look at that!!! The Rams had TWO QB’s with a higher passer rating than Dalton. TWO! THE RAMS! Not to mention all those other names in front of those guys.
So clearly, Dalton doesn’t even have the smoke and mirrors to hide behind anymore. He’s got nothing to fall back on. Just a bullshit Pro Bowl feather that he was dying to stick in his cap. I’d call him the anti-Flacco, but that would suggest that he’s still capable of even being a competent regular season QB. We would’ve smelled his stench years ago if it wasn’t for AJ Green. Seriously. I said as much in August. The dude has 3 TD’s and 6 INT’s in the 4 games Green has missed in his career. He’d be a backup or even out of the league if it weren’t for Green. Instead he sits on a fat wad of cash waiting by the phone hoping 6 other QB’s turn down their Pro Bowl call because they simply have better shit to do. That’s not the Flacco life. He just cares about winning, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.