My opinion? Simple, really:

Half Time Adjustments!

Caldwell has been extremely impressive with his half-time adjustments. I contend that Cam Cameron did not know how to analyze what was happening on the field and adjust to it at the half the way the best coordinators are able to do, and that was his fatal flaw. Meanwhile, Jim Caldwell has already proven that he has this ability in just 5 games as offensive coordinator (not really going to bother counting the Cincinnati game), he has already shown more ability to analyze events and adjust than Cam Cameron ever did even at his best moments.

Jim Caldwell is calling the games in such a way that it puts Joe Flacco in a position to succeed. Cam Cameron did not.

I believe that a major factor in what got Cam fired was that Joe Flacco posted a 146.5 QB Rating in the first half @WAS, but just a 59.8 QB Rating in the second half. This 86.7 point differential in QB Rating was the biggest second-half drop-off of the season for Flacco. Going from nearly perfect to well below average was what really killed him. Anybody with a brain should be able to understand that it wasn't a matter of Flacco suddenly becoming a bad quarterback, it had to be that the offensive coordinator did not come back from half-time with an effective gameplan. This is where the illusion of Flacco's "inconsistency" stemmed from.

Under Caldwell, Flacco has seen a huge improvement in stats after half-time in 3 out of 5 games. The common theme with these three games was that we NEEDED to come back after half-time and put up points if we were ever going to win the game. The only two exceptions where Flacco's numbers didn't see huge improvements in the second half were the @DEN playoff game, where his second half numbers were basically identical to his already impressive first half numbers (133.2 vs 124.6) and the NYG game where he went conservative in the second half due to already have a huge lead and just needing to run clock down for the win.

So as far as I'm concerned, Caldwell has a 100% track record of coming back from the half-time break with the best appropriate gameplan.

Now, for some numbers:

Under Cam
1st Half: 150/235, 1648 Yards, 11 TD, 6 INT --> 89.5 QB Rating
2nd Half: 111/200, 1489 Yards, 7 TD, 3 INT --> 84.8 QB Rating


Under Caldwell
1st Half: 47/84, 678 Yards, 4 TD, 1 INT --> 93.3 QB Rating
2nd Half: 50/86, 730 Yards, 8 TD, 0 INT --> 116.9 QB Rating


Half-Time Adjustments
Cam: -4.7 QB Rating
Caldwell: +23.6 QB Rating