While the Baltimore Ravens have had a truly awful October—and late September—having dropped four straight games, things could be worse. Their franchise quarterback, Joe Flacco, who missed the last several games of last season after tearing his ACL, suffered a shoulder injury in the Ravens’ Week Six loss to the Giants, and there was some early pessimism about his ability to play on Sunday.
Of course, that proved not to make a difference, since Baltimore lost to the Jets anyway—his two interceptions in the third quarter actually led to 10 points for New York, which was more than the margin of victory—but things would be a lot worse for Baltimore right now if they were looking at a long-term shoulder situation with Flacco right now.
The former Super Bowl MVP told reporters yesterday that he was worried early in the week leading up to Sunday’s game based on, in his words, “what I could and couldn’t do with my arm and not really knowing if I did something to it or not”.
He said that he believes the shoulder injury occurred late in the game on a deep throw to his wide receiver, after which he landed awkwardly with his arm outstretched, a conclusion that he reached after actually reviewing the game tape.
Based on that, and on how the feeling in the shoulder has progressed over the course of the past week, he seems to be optimistic that there is nothing really wrong, and that it will just be a matter of time in order for him to “get over it”, mentioning the fortune over the fact that the Ravens are now heading into their bye week, which will give him more time to recover.
Another aspect of this injury is the fact that the Ravens have been playing with a patchwork offensive line in recent weeks that has resulted in Flacco taking a number of hits, including in the game against the Jets. While he was only sacked once during the game, he took several hits.
He did say that he is going to take the issue with his shoulder “day-by-day”, saying that he is going to spend a lot of his time during the bye week in the training room, saying he’s going to “go in there and rehab and strengthen it and do all those things”.
Flacco did recall one other time that he felt that he may have suffered a similar injury, but it came all the way back in his college days, and he said that he never got it looked at at the time, though he did say that the injury feels somewhat similar.
While Flacco certainly has been far from at his best all season, even while healthy, I don’t think there is any denying that the offense would be a lot worse off without him, even if his backup, Ryan Mallett, did manage to beat the Steelers last year.
