As you probably heard by now, the Ravens are trading Joe Flacco to the Broncos for a 4th round pick. Flacco had a very long tenure in Baltimore despite being a below-average passer, at least as measured by Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. That’s what I wrote last summer, and obviously not much has changed since then: in 2018, Flacco went 4-5 in 9 starts before losing his job first due to injury and then permanently, and ranked 24th out of 33 quarterbacks in ANY/A. Flacco lasted so long for two reasons: he had one of the best postseason runs ever in 2012, culminating in a Super Bowl victory and a monster contract, and he won a lot of regular season games.

It’s the second part that I want to focus on today. I looked at all teams for the 10-year period from 2008 to 2017. This encapsulates the Joe Flacco experience in Baltimore, minus the 9 games he started this season. Flacco was the Ravens quarterback for all but 6 games during this 160-game stretch, so using team numbers is a very good proxy for Flacco’s performance.

In the graph below, the X-Axis shows each team’s offensive ANY/A average during this 10-year stretch. The Y-Axis shows the number of wins by each team, with ties counted as half-wins. Each of the 32 teams are plotted, along with a trendline. In addition, I’ve highlighted 5 teams below. The Jets (in green and white) and Ravens (in purple and yellow) stand out above the trend line as teams who won a lot relative to their passing games. The Jets passing offense was 1.44 standard deviations below average, while the team’s wins total was only 0.30 below the average of 80 wins. Meanwhile, Flacco’s Ravens were even more extreme: Baltimore’s passing offense was 0.48 standard deviations below average, but the team won at a rate that was 0.84 standard deviations above average!

Meanwhile, the Redskins, Chargers, and Saints (you can figure out the colors) are the reverse.  Washington’s passing offense was 0.17 standard deviations above average, but had a terrible record; the Redskins finished 0.93 standard deviations below average in wins. The Saints were 2.07 standard deviations above average at passing, of course, but only 0.90 standard deviations above average in wins. The Chargers were New Orleans lite: finishing 1.64 standard deviations above average in passing, but went 81-79 during this stretch.

Thought of another way: Drew Brees and Joe Flacco both won 60% of their games from ’08 to ’17, while Brees was a top-5 passer and Flacco was below average.

Obviously, the big difference is the defense and special teams. The Ravens have always had good special teams, and occasionally great special teams with Justin Tucker. And Baltimore’s pass defense has usually been very good, although not necessarily good enough to fully explain the team’s sparkling record (Baltimore has the 2nd best ANY/A allowed during this 10-year period, 22nd in passing offense, and 6th in wins). More on that in a minute.

First, let’s get to the fun graph. Some graphs are easy to read; this one is not. I intentionally didn’t put a legend or label the axes, though, so you would read the background text! Here’s how to read:

X-Axis: Offensive ANY/A from ’08 to ’17

Y-Axis: Defense ANY/A from ’08 to ’17, in reverse order (this makes the best teams up and to the right)

Size of bubbles: Wins

I have color-coded a few teams to help understand the graph.  The Patriots are in red and blue because well, people always want to see where the Patriots are.  I’ve also put the Packers (green/yellow) and Steelers (yellow/black) on here, as they form a Pareto front at the top right with New England.  The Saints are on the bottom right, as poor Drew Brees has been stuck with the 4th-worst pass defense.  And then at the top (i.e., very good pass defense) and in the middle-left of the chart are the Ravens (in purple/yellow) and their division rival Bengals.

There are a few things that stand out on this chart.  Because I chose to make both axes go from 4.5 to 7.5, you can see how the variation is a lot wider on offense than on defense: the chart spans the X-Axis, but is in a narrower range on the Y-Axis.  And the Bengals have been very similar to the Ravens in terms of passing offense and passing defense, but without the wins.

What’s the explanation? Baltimore ranked 10th in scoring during the ’08 to ’17 window, while Cincinnati ranked 20th; meanwhile, the Ravens were 2nd in points allowed and the Bengals were 5th.  Baltimore had a much better rushing defense and a moderately better rushing offense than the Bengals during this time, and I suspect better special teams, too.  That was enough to tip the scales and give Baltimore 11 more wins during this period than Cincinnati.

As the book closes on the Joe Flacco era in Baltimore, it’s worthwhile to remember one of the more unusual careers in NFL history. Flacco was a quality quarterback, but probably not an above-average starting quarterback. And yet, due to a lot of good fortune, he was able to parlay that into an 11-year run as the team’s starting quarterback.