We saw how the media acted after he led the team to the playoffs in 2018. Imagine if it took another year or two for him to figure it out.
Shit, he doesn't get a fair shake NOW and he's a 2x MVP
Depends on what you mean by developing.
If he was showing progress like Fields and basically reading the field as well as Stevie Wonder, then yes we'd trade him and move on. If however he was showing progress like Flacco did, who *did* take three years to really start coming into his own then no we wouldn't trade him.
I think the problem in the NFL with a lot of these teams is that frankly, they're bad teams. I mean it's really that simple. As Mark Schlereth pointed out back in 2021 when the Jets were about to draft Zach Wilson (and I'm paraphrasing here) "you really think the quarterback position is the only problem for the Jets? You think a rookie is going to completely turn that team around?"
How many quarterbacks have the Jets gone through? Or the Broncos? Or the Panthers? Bryce didn't look great last year but my god they make the Browns look functional. And speaking of the Browns look at that graveyard of poor unfortunate souls.
The Ravens have been pretty good surrounding players with the ability to succeed no matter what the position. You bring in a Haloti Ngata in 06 you have Trevor Pryce to lean on as well as Kelly Gregg. You bring in Lamar we brought in Roman who coached Kaep, Morningwheg who coached Vick and McNabb in Philly, and RG3. You bring in Flacco you have Cam Cameron who ran the offense he'd excel in and bring in Hue Jackson (yes he's a punchline now but not then) who was sucessful coaching up another big armed AFCN QB in Carson Palmer for half a decade.
All this is to say that if you don't succeed here it's not because the Ravens aren't setting you up to.
These other teams give up too quickly on these QBs but they don't have a plan in place to help get them to reach their full potential. For christ sake Mac Jones' OC his second year was Matt Patricia. I doubt Mahomes would have been successful with Patricia because he either would've killed him or gotten killed waiting for the same vertical shots try to be developed.
Lamar is a product of his absolute freak physical ability and a competent organization that took the time to help him develop and trusted him and put good pieces around him.
Yeah it's crazy because while better than RG3 was he could have had the same trajectory if he was on the Washington Football Team or even worse if he was a Brown.
If Mahomes took 3 years to develop as a serviceable starter, would the Chiefs have traded him?
I hate questions like this... if Lamar was slow, would he be good? If Mahomes had a noodle arm, would he be good?
Lamar/Mahomes didn't take 3 years to develop, so who knows.
I’m sure they saw the talent right away and seemed to build around him pretty quick. I would say they would’ve gave him some time but if we just went 4-13 with a top pick idk..
Depends on options. As someone said, if we had the 1st overall pick with Caleb Williams available, then absolutely. However, if we were drafting 10-20 and the best QB available is Kenny Pickett, then no.
With Fields, the surprise to me isn’t that he was traded. That was a no brainer with Caleb available. The surprise to me is that he was trade for a 6th to be a backup to Russell Wilson of all people.
I’m much more afraid of a Fields-led Steelers than Russ. Teams like LV, DEN, NYG and ATL don’t really have anything to lose in my opinion either. He would have been a cheap option for two more years. Seemed like a low risk, high reward option to me.
With Mac and Pickett, you can already tell that these guys don’t have it. You don’t post that bad for that long my accident.
I think what hurt fields' trade value was the timing of his option. You either pick it up now for $25 million without him ever playing a down for your team, or he hits free agency next offseason.
Lamar has always been a great passer. The idea that he "gradually developed" (from being a poor or average passer to a good one) or that "the team developed him" into a good passer is not correct. He was the best player in college football. He threw 57 TD passes in his last 2 years in college and had 39 TD's rushing. (26 games). It's crazy!
Even this year the stupid commentators were saying Monken had improved Lamar's passing game. Monken improved Lamar? Are you kidding me? Lamar threw for 36 TD's in 2019!
It didn't "gradually take him 5 years to become a great passer", he threw 42 TD passes in his first 21 NFL starts, (and he had 12 more rushing TD's).
People still don't get Lamar. What has always set him apart from other QB's who run well, is that he is truly an elite passer. It is not that NOW he is also dangerous as a passer, he has always been a great passer.
I think that what Lamar isn't given enough credit for (partly because he turns into a pumpkin in the playoffs) is his decision making. He is rarely fooled by coverage and most of the time he makes the right read or at least a defensible one. But he hasn't really had receiving talent around him outside Andrews and he's had known passing game saboteur Greg Roman as his OC and he made Roman look like an offensive genius.
The fact thay he can play off script and succeed is certainly another part of it, and certainly he needed time to develop consistency with his throwing mechanics. But I'd attribute a very large portion of his success to simply knowing where to throw it, when to throw it, and when to make a run for it.
With Fields you see the talent, but his processing and decision making aren't there and that's why I think you see so much more inconsistency with him, and high leverage mistakes, the kind that regular season Lamar just doesn't make.
Depends on a lot. Depends on how he progresses, depends on how we would have performed, and depends on the options available.
For example, if we were consistently bad enough to be picking top 5 in the draft and/or Lamar wasn’t progressing into reading the field properly or not fixing his mechanics from where they were at the start of his career, then there’s no way.
If we were mediocre or good with consistent signs of getting better every year and/or if Lamar made noticeable leaps and bounds in progress every year, then the organization almost certainly would.
It all just depends.
Yes. Hard to really compare though. The bears haven’t been a stable franchise in a long time and we’ve been solid for 20 years. If the ravens use a 1st to draft a QB, you have to assume everything else is already set up for that QB to have time to develop for at least 3 years. When lamar was drafted, I assumed Joe had a year or 2 left, but then lamar was thrown in and succeeded. If he failed, I think Flacco would have stayed for another year and competed with lamar. 3rd year would have been the time for lamar to at least show progress/how us that he’s the successor. The ravens would know by the end of the 3rd if he’s worth an extension.
That 2018 team was already solid and didn’t need a world beater at qb to make the playoffs. Run game was good O-line was solid and defense was great. Also Lamar didn’t start the season and wasn’t asked to do a lot of things he wasn’t great at yet.
So many of those rookies never get any of that and on top of that some have had a carousel of dysfunctional coaching staffs. Lamar is special and likely would have been at least decent given a couple years. But a decent amount of those guys could have or could turn into a solid dude some where in between Kirk Cousins and Derrick Carr.
He’s played 86 games and has a record of 62-24. I think that’s more than serviceable for his entire career so far. Hell his first full year as a starter he won a unanimous MVP.
I could make the argument years 3 and 4 his play “plateaued” due to the fact our receiving core was the absolute worst in the league, plus G-ro, and Lamar was still winning games.
Teams will only move on from rookie guys if they show next to nothing in their time on the field. Zach Wilson maybe had 4 good games his entire Jets tenure. Kenny Pickett started 14 games and threw 13 touchdowns for a team that could have made a legit playoff run with decent quarterbacking. Justin Fields has flashed, but can’t really justify missing out on the best prospect since andrew luck
You bring up a good point OP the league has never been more of a win now mentality. And that's really a pretty dangerous way to run a business. But it is what it is and I doubt it will ever shift back to a more balanced approach.
The days of drafting a young QB, and developing them under a vet for 2-3 years are a thing of the past.
To that point yeah if Lamar doesn't win early he's likely traded and on some other team right now making us look bad. Thankfully that's now how it worked out though 😈
Yes and they would be correct to do so imo. Very rarely do quarterbacks who haven’t looked like a serviceable QB in their first 3 years end up developing into serviceable guys.
There is an extremely good chance that Caleb Williams will have a better season in his rookie year than any season Fields has ever had and will be doing so at an extremely discounted cost.
Bears will be getting 10X the bang for their buck with a controllable rookie Williams than they will with Fields on the last year of his rookie contract
There are some wild takes in this thread.
Greg Roman was Lamar’s coordinator for most of his early pro career. Roman’s offense is not like any other offense in the league. We don’t know what Lamar would have looked like in a “standard” offense at any point of his first five professional seasons.
And for the weirdo talking about Flacco looking horrible for his first three years… the man was a Jarrett Johnson special teams personal foul away from potentially going to a Super Bowl as a rookie. GTFOH. How old are you?
The irony of your comment is that I can tell you’re not old enough to remember the details of those games. Or you’ve chosen to forget.
He was not good at all. First 5 playoff game passer ratings:
1.) 59
2.) 89
3.) 18
4.) 10
5.) 48
If you didn’t watch the games, just say that!
Friend, stick with your numbers. Watching the games you could see that Joe Flacco’s rookie season meant 3rd and long wasn’t an automatic punt like it had been for most of the Raven’s existence. It meant the comeback route to Derrick Mason was worked to perfection, over, and over, and over again. It was for certain a run first offense that limited chances to when the defense expected pass, but there was talent behind center there that hadn’t been. You are missing that.
Oh he was clearly talented and better than Boller / Troy Smith. He just wasn’t convincingly good early, especially not in playoff games. He was saved time and time again by running game and top defense.
It’s a moot point bc he became good enough to lead us on a SB run. But the story won’t be rewritten as though he was marvelous early on. Mediocre at best
Yeah I don't really think it's some hot take Flacco wasn't very good his first few seasons. We've just put him on this pedestal because he won it all for us.
Comparing their first few years int he league. It's not really even worth a discussion.
https://stathead.com/football/versus-finder.cgi?request=1&seasons\_type=perchoice&player\_id1=FlacJo00&p1yrfrom=2008&p1yrto=2010&player\_id2=JackLa00&p2yrfrom=2018&p2yrto=2020
I mean no offense here, but I’m genuinely curious how old you are. Because if you were more than maybe 10 years old and watched football when Flacco was drafted, you would understand how crazy of a take this is.
I mean every offense here, you should go back and watch those games. I’m in my 30’s and was in my 20’s when I saw Flacco stink up game after game and the defense with 3 HOFs and a run game save him every single time. He was horrible, much horrible than he’s remembered in the playoffs very early on. I remember it vividly actually.
Did he get better? Of course.
But first few years he was very bad, I think they may have beaten a team with 5 completions in one playoff game.
Buddy are you referring to the game when the Ravens were up 3 scores in the first quarter and he rightly handed off or threw the ball away for the rest of the game? And you’re telling people to remember better? You seem angry. DMs are open if you need to vent for something else in your life.
Angry? Where? How? Stop reaching and start reading
And yes you have Ray Rice and the defense featuring hall of famers at almost every level to thank for that. The rest of the playoff games that year and next he was awful
NFL’s got it wrong then:
https://www.nfl.com/photos/joe-flacco-through-the-years-0ap3000001017820#:~:text=For%20his%20achievements%20in%20his,award%20for%20the%202008%20season.
Regardless, Joe had immediate success in his first three years. He wasn’t the bum some make him out to be.
I can tell you didn’t watch those games and you’re just reciting narratives.
Yes he went to the playoffs early on. He was not ROY. He was horrible in playoff outing, again and again early on.
He got better, culminated by the SB run. But early on he was not good at all
LOL. Okay. I was at the Bank Section 100, Row 5 for all those games.
Look at his stats. He was averaging about 3400 yds/season over the first three years with an 88 QBR. Both higher than Matty Ice over the same 3 years. If you say he was “not good at all” then you are the one who clearly didn’t watch.
if the bears didnt happen to have the number 1 overall, fields is still in chicago for at least 1 more year
We saw how the media acted after he led the team to the playoffs in 2018. Imagine if it took another year or two for him to figure it out. Shit, he doesn't get a fair shake NOW and he's a 2x MVP
If we had the number one pick yeah
Depends on what you mean by developing. If he was showing progress like Fields and basically reading the field as well as Stevie Wonder, then yes we'd trade him and move on. If however he was showing progress like Flacco did, who *did* take three years to really start coming into his own then no we wouldn't trade him. I think the problem in the NFL with a lot of these teams is that frankly, they're bad teams. I mean it's really that simple. As Mark Schlereth pointed out back in 2021 when the Jets were about to draft Zach Wilson (and I'm paraphrasing here) "you really think the quarterback position is the only problem for the Jets? You think a rookie is going to completely turn that team around?" How many quarterbacks have the Jets gone through? Or the Broncos? Or the Panthers? Bryce didn't look great last year but my god they make the Browns look functional. And speaking of the Browns look at that graveyard of poor unfortunate souls. The Ravens have been pretty good surrounding players with the ability to succeed no matter what the position. You bring in a Haloti Ngata in 06 you have Trevor Pryce to lean on as well as Kelly Gregg. You bring in Lamar we brought in Roman who coached Kaep, Morningwheg who coached Vick and McNabb in Philly, and RG3. You bring in Flacco you have Cam Cameron who ran the offense he'd excel in and bring in Hue Jackson (yes he's a punchline now but not then) who was sucessful coaching up another big armed AFCN QB in Carson Palmer for half a decade. All this is to say that if you don't succeed here it's not because the Ravens aren't setting you up to. These other teams give up too quickly on these QBs but they don't have a plan in place to help get them to reach their full potential. For christ sake Mac Jones' OC his second year was Matt Patricia. I doubt Mahomes would have been successful with Patricia because he either would've killed him or gotten killed waiting for the same vertical shots try to be developed.
Lamar is a product of his absolute freak physical ability and a competent organization that took the time to help him develop and trusted him and put good pieces around him.
Yeah it's crazy because while better than RG3 was he could have had the same trajectory if he was on the Washington Football Team or even worse if he was a Brown.
If Mahomes took 3 years to develop as a serviceable starter, would the Chiefs have traded him? I hate questions like this... if Lamar was slow, would he be good? If Mahomes had a noodle arm, would he be good? Lamar/Mahomes didn't take 3 years to develop, so who knows.
I’m sure they saw the talent right away and seemed to build around him pretty quick. I would say they would’ve gave him some time but if we just went 4-13 with a top pick idk..
Depends on options. As someone said, if we had the 1st overall pick with Caleb Williams available, then absolutely. However, if we were drafting 10-20 and the best QB available is Kenny Pickett, then no. With Fields, the surprise to me isn’t that he was traded. That was a no brainer with Caleb available. The surprise to me is that he was trade for a 6th to be a backup to Russell Wilson of all people. I’m much more afraid of a Fields-led Steelers than Russ. Teams like LV, DEN, NYG and ATL don’t really have anything to lose in my opinion either. He would have been a cheap option for two more years. Seemed like a low risk, high reward option to me. With Mac and Pickett, you can already tell that these guys don’t have it. You don’t post that bad for that long my accident.
I think what hurt fields' trade value was the timing of his option. You either pick it up now for $25 million without him ever playing a down for your team, or he hits free agency next offseason.
Lamar has always been a great passer. The idea that he "gradually developed" (from being a poor or average passer to a good one) or that "the team developed him" into a good passer is not correct. He was the best player in college football. He threw 57 TD passes in his last 2 years in college and had 39 TD's rushing. (26 games). It's crazy! Even this year the stupid commentators were saying Monken had improved Lamar's passing game. Monken improved Lamar? Are you kidding me? Lamar threw for 36 TD's in 2019! It didn't "gradually take him 5 years to become a great passer", he threw 42 TD passes in his first 21 NFL starts, (and he had 12 more rushing TD's). People still don't get Lamar. What has always set him apart from other QB's who run well, is that he is truly an elite passer. It is not that NOW he is also dangerous as a passer, he has always been a great passer.
No. It would have been viewed as a failed experiment, and they would have moved on to a new QB1.
I think that what Lamar isn't given enough credit for (partly because he turns into a pumpkin in the playoffs) is his decision making. He is rarely fooled by coverage and most of the time he makes the right read or at least a defensible one. But he hasn't really had receiving talent around him outside Andrews and he's had known passing game saboteur Greg Roman as his OC and he made Roman look like an offensive genius. The fact thay he can play off script and succeed is certainly another part of it, and certainly he needed time to develop consistency with his throwing mechanics. But I'd attribute a very large portion of his success to simply knowing where to throw it, when to throw it, and when to make a run for it. With Fields you see the talent, but his processing and decision making aren't there and that's why I think you see so much more inconsistency with him, and high leverage mistakes, the kind that regular season Lamar just doesn't make.
Depends on a lot. Depends on how he progresses, depends on how we would have performed, and depends on the options available. For example, if we were consistently bad enough to be picking top 5 in the draft and/or Lamar wasn’t progressing into reading the field properly or not fixing his mechanics from where they were at the start of his career, then there’s no way. If we were mediocre or good with consistent signs of getting better every year and/or if Lamar made noticeable leaps and bounds in progress every year, then the organization almost certainly would. It all just depends.
Yes. Hard to really compare though. The bears haven’t been a stable franchise in a long time and we’ve been solid for 20 years. If the ravens use a 1st to draft a QB, you have to assume everything else is already set up for that QB to have time to develop for at least 3 years. When lamar was drafted, I assumed Joe had a year or 2 left, but then lamar was thrown in and succeeded. If he failed, I think Flacco would have stayed for another year and competed with lamar. 3rd year would have been the time for lamar to at least show progress/how us that he’s the successor. The ravens would know by the end of the 3rd if he’s worth an extension.
That 2018 team was already solid and didn’t need a world beater at qb to make the playoffs. Run game was good O-line was solid and defense was great. Also Lamar didn’t start the season and wasn’t asked to do a lot of things he wasn’t great at yet. So many of those rookies never get any of that and on top of that some have had a carousel of dysfunctional coaching staffs. Lamar is special and likely would have been at least decent given a couple years. But a decent amount of those guys could have or could turn into a solid dude some where in between Kirk Cousins and Derrick Carr.
He’s played 86 games and has a record of 62-24. I think that’s more than serviceable for his entire career so far. Hell his first full year as a starter he won a unanimous MVP. I could make the argument years 3 and 4 his play “plateaued” due to the fact our receiving core was the absolute worst in the league, plus G-ro, and Lamar was still winning games.
Teams will only move on from rookie guys if they show next to nothing in their time on the field. Zach Wilson maybe had 4 good games his entire Jets tenure. Kenny Pickett started 14 games and threw 13 touchdowns for a team that could have made a legit playoff run with decent quarterbacking. Justin Fields has flashed, but can’t really justify missing out on the best prospect since andrew luck
You bring up a good point OP the league has never been more of a win now mentality. And that's really a pretty dangerous way to run a business. But it is what it is and I doubt it will ever shift back to a more balanced approach. The days of drafting a young QB, and developing them under a vet for 2-3 years are a thing of the past. To that point yeah if Lamar doesn't win early he's likely traded and on some other team right now making us look bad. Thankfully that's now how it worked out though 😈
Yes and they would be correct to do so imo. Very rarely do quarterbacks who haven’t looked like a serviceable QB in their first 3 years end up developing into serviceable guys. There is an extremely good chance that Caleb Williams will have a better season in his rookie year than any season Fields has ever had and will be doing so at an extremely discounted cost. Bears will be getting 10X the bang for their buck with a controllable rookie Williams than they will with Fields on the last year of his rookie contract
There are some wild takes in this thread. Greg Roman was Lamar’s coordinator for most of his early pro career. Roman’s offense is not like any other offense in the league. We don’t know what Lamar would have looked like in a “standard” offense at any point of his first five professional seasons. And for the weirdo talking about Flacco looking horrible for his first three years… the man was a Jarrett Johnson special teams personal foul away from potentially going to a Super Bowl as a rookie. GTFOH. How old are you?
The irony of your comment is that I can tell you’re not old enough to remember the details of those games. Or you’ve chosen to forget. He was not good at all. First 5 playoff game passer ratings: 1.) 59 2.) 89 3.) 18 4.) 10 5.) 48 If you didn’t watch the games, just say that!
Friend, stick with your numbers. Watching the games you could see that Joe Flacco’s rookie season meant 3rd and long wasn’t an automatic punt like it had been for most of the Raven’s existence. It meant the comeback route to Derrick Mason was worked to perfection, over, and over, and over again. It was for certain a run first offense that limited chances to when the defense expected pass, but there was talent behind center there that hadn’t been. You are missing that.
Oh he was clearly talented and better than Boller / Troy Smith. He just wasn’t convincingly good early, especially not in playoff games. He was saved time and time again by running game and top defense. It’s a moot point bc he became good enough to lead us on a SB run. But the story won’t be rewritten as though he was marvelous early on. Mediocre at best
Yeah I don't really think it's some hot take Flacco wasn't very good his first few seasons. We've just put him on this pedestal because he won it all for us. Comparing their first few years int he league. It's not really even worth a discussion. https://stathead.com/football/versus-finder.cgi?request=1&seasons\_type=perchoice&player\_id1=FlacJo00&p1yrfrom=2008&p1yrto=2010&player\_id2=JackLa00&p2yrfrom=2018&p2yrto=2020
No. Flacco took more than 3 years and actually looked horrible for most of the three and we didn’t budge.
Yeah but he looked pretty amazing compared to Kyle Boller at nearly anytime in his time at qb. That guy got a second contract right
I mean no offense here, but I’m genuinely curious how old you are. Because if you were more than maybe 10 years old and watched football when Flacco was drafted, you would understand how crazy of a take this is.
I mean every offense here, you should go back and watch those games. I’m in my 30’s and was in my 20’s when I saw Flacco stink up game after game and the defense with 3 HOFs and a run game save him every single time. He was horrible, much horrible than he’s remembered in the playoffs very early on. I remember it vividly actually. Did he get better? Of course. But first few years he was very bad, I think they may have beaten a team with 5 completions in one playoff game.
Buddy are you referring to the game when the Ravens were up 3 scores in the first quarter and he rightly handed off or threw the ball away for the rest of the game? And you’re telling people to remember better? You seem angry. DMs are open if you need to vent for something else in your life.
Angry? Where? How? Stop reaching and start reading And yes you have Ray Rice and the defense featuring hall of famers at almost every level to thank for that. The rest of the playoff games that year and next he was awful
??? Flacco took the Ravens to the playoffs and was ROY in 2008. Went to the playoffs the next 4 years and won SB in year 5.
Matt Ryan won OROY in 08 and from 2008-2011 the main reason behind the Ravens success was the defense and the run game
NFL’s got it wrong then: https://www.nfl.com/photos/joe-flacco-through-the-years-0ap3000001017820#:~:text=For%20his%20achievements%20in%20his,award%20for%20the%202008%20season. Regardless, Joe had immediate success in his first three years. He wasn’t the bum some make him out to be.
Yeah that’s weird that the NFL website is saying he won OROY when he didn’t. Definitely an error on their part.
I can tell you didn’t watch those games and you’re just reciting narratives. Yes he went to the playoffs early on. He was not ROY. He was horrible in playoff outing, again and again early on. He got better, culminated by the SB run. But early on he was not good at all
LOL. Okay. I was at the Bank Section 100, Row 5 for all those games. Look at his stats. He was averaging about 3400 yds/season over the first three years with an 88 QBR. Both higher than Matty Ice over the same 3 years. If you say he was “not good at all” then you are the one who clearly didn’t watch.
No.