Quote Originally Posted by callahan09 View Post
His five-year regular season stats align favorably with Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Drew Brees, and Peyton Manning.

Brady: 1243/2018, 13925 Yards, 97 TD, 52 INT --> 87.5 QB Rating
Favre: 1342/2149, 14825 Yards, 108 TD, 66 INT --> 86.8 QB Rating
Flacco: 1507/2489, 17633 Yards, 102 TD, 56 INT --> 86.3 QB Rating
Peyton: 1749/2817, 20618 Yards, 138 TD, 100 INT --> 85.9 QB Rating
Brees: 1125/1809, 12348 Yards, 80 TD, 53 INT --> 84.9 QB Rating

Flacco has more passing yards in his first five seasons than anybody except Peyton Manning, Dan Marino, Matt Ryan, and Drew Bledsoe. He's got the 11th most touchdown passes. Nobody with more touchdown passes had thrown fewer INTs. Only one other quarterback who threw 100+ TDs had fewer than 60 INTs.

I'd say that his regular season stats actually compare very well historically. He may not have matched Peyton and Brady's and Brees' contemporary numbers, but that's because those guys aren't young QBs. Compare the first five years of Flacco's career to anybody else's and it is a very favorable comparison for Flacco, and demonstrates a very good start to a career.

That's the problem I have when people say Flacco doesn't have the regular season stats to show he is a worthy QB... they don't even consider looking at how the guys he is being compared to were playing in THEIR earlier seasons. The fact is, not many QBs have ever performed at a Flacco-like level at this point in their careers.
There is a difference between first 5 years and first 5 years as a starter when making comparisons - in Joe's case, those facts align. Favre, Brees and Brady didn't start right away, and Brady was a ball control manager, to a certain extent, out of the box. My point was Joe is young enough that he has 10 more years to make his case.