Joe Flacco has thrown for 40,067 yards with a completion percentage of 61.9. Since 2014 Flacco has not completed less than 60% of his passes. 2019 was one of his most accurate years, completing 65.3% of his passes.
Flacco has thrown for 218 touchdowns to 141 Interceptions. Flacco is also 10-5 in the playoffs. Joe played with some good defenses but the team had to reup after Ray Lewis Left and has never returned to the dominating defense it once had.
Flacco ended up in Denver last season, a team that has been a dumpster fire since Manning retired. Flacco had a serious neck injury and was forced to find his way to the Injured reserve around the first week of November of 2019.
Flacco signed a one year deal with the Jets. If Darnold loses the job to the veteran, the Jets have the team to run the offense; to allow Flacco to have success. The Jets are built to be a run heavy-play action pass team. The Jets don't need Drew Brees or Mahomes, they need a game manager.
Clutch Points' Jordan Foote helps cement my point. "Flacco’s soon-to-be 13-year career has been unspectacular from a production standpoint. His career 84.1 passer rating is merely solid and 218-141 touchdown-to-interception ratio doesn’t do much to sway opinions on him as a player."
As I said, if the Jets use Flacco as a game manager and rely on the run game and defense, they will get the best of him. His top 16 days appear to be behind him but a middle of the pack guy can get it done.
On the other hand, the Patriots have Jarrett Stidham. Stidham is an interesting prospect. After the 2017 Colgate season, Stidham was expected to be a first round quarterback.
Prior to the start of the 2018 college football season, Peter Santo wrote "That could change in 2019 however, as CBS sports is projecting quarterback Jarrett Stidham to go sixth overall to the Miami Dolphins in their early mock draft. The draft order was determined by sportsline's win projections for the 2018 season."
As we know a lot of things went wrong at Auburn in 2018. Stidham's go to guy, Will Hastings missed the entire 2018 season. Stidham was missing several players who were drafted, injured or graduated. Add to that, Auburn switched things up to prepare for a Kyler Murray - Lamar Jackson type quarterback.
SI.com wrote the following about Stidham in their draft Profile. " Victimized last season by horrific offensive line play and an overall dysfunctional passing game, Stidham will have to be rebuilt. The tools are there-".
Report after report, pretty much all says the same thing about Stidham. He has the tools. That his abilities were not the reason he fell.
That leaves two other reasons, off field issues; which he's clean. The second is the team, which we know to be the case. In which case the Patriots got a first round quarterback in round 4 of the 2019 NFL draft.
The Patriots wanted a second year to sit Stidham for development, which maybe why they brought in Brian Hoyer. We all know that Stidham got to practice with the first string offense last year due to how much Brady was getting hit. We also saw his connection with Meyers, and the Patriots brought in Will Hastings, whom he has the same chemistry with.
Stidham got to learn from Brady but what ever he didn't learn from him, he can learn from Hoyer. Stidham has better abilities than Hoyer but if he can learn to study film like Hoyer, he will be in good shape.
Foote noted that we haven't seen much of Stidham. "The only time we’ve seen Stidham face NFL defenses for an extended period of time was last preseason. The results were outstanding, as he completed 61-of-90 passes for 731 yards, four touchdowns and just one interception. It’s highly unlikely that he replicates that in the regular season, but he’s also grown as a quarterback since then."
The question is whom would I rather have and while it may sound like I'm copping out, I'm going to be as honest as I can be. If I am the Jets, I want Flacco, They have Darnold who can still learn from Flacco and who knows; they could get two or three years from Joe.
If I am the Patriots, I want Stidham, even if he sits behind Hoyer for most or all of the 2020 seasons; as Ninkovich suggested. He showed promise and with everything known, it be foolish of the Patriots not to give him the opportunity. Both quarterbacks are in the best place for them at this moment in their career.
I think the only down side for either is Flacco has Adam Gase as his head coach. Honestly, the Jets haven't had a real head coach since Bill Parcels blew a superbowl victory for the Patriots to focus on a future Jets' job, that really went nowhere.
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