Harbaugh informed Flacco of the change early on the Monday morning after the Redskins game. “Honestly, I was shocked,” Flacco said. “One thing I didn’t like is when some people said it was expected. People were acting like we weren’t playing well. That wasn’t the case. We had lost two weird games. Batch came down and we lost to Pittsburgh in the last couple of minutes. In D.C., RG3 got hurt and Cousins went down there and made a few plays and beat us. Stuff was happening where you’re saying, ‘How the hell did that happen?’ ”
“Some of the stuff that went right for us against San Diego or Dallas didn’t go right against Pittsburgh and Washington. But we were 13 weeks into the season and we had just put up 28 points. We were playing decent offensive football. Then I talked to John more and looked back at the conversations and maybe it wasn’t quite as shocking.”
Flacco acknowledged that things weren’t perfect between him and Cameron, but much like the firing of Zorn two years earlier, he didn’t get a vote in the decision. At least with Cameron gone, there was no more dancing around communication issues. Flacco felt like he could have honest conversations with Caldwell who wanted his input.
“You can’t hurt Jim’s feelings,” Flacco said. “Questions don’t turn into confrontations. And he wants feedback on what we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Flacco grew up in a house full of male athletes in Philadelphia. He fought with his brothers and his father. And then two minutes later, everything was cool. He never had that feeling with Cameron. “It was hard to argue with Cam because the next day you’re never really sure it would be OK,” Flacco said. “You never wanted it to be awkward and sometimes you were afraid that it came across like that.”
Flacco has all of that tough Philly kid in him. He prefers a relationship where you don’t get your feelings hurt, where open communication is never judged. When he openly questioned his father in his household that wasn’t viewed as disrespectful. It was allowed, almost encouraged in that the more questions you asked the more you learned and understood. That you sought to understand was commended.
And oft times, there’s the back and forth.
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“To me, that’s a good gauge of whether you really get along with that person,” Flacco said. “My receivers need to know when I’m bitching at them, I’m not bitching. I’m working to get better, to get them where they need to be and where we need to be on the same page. That’s not bitching. That’s improving.”
In the end, Flacco was saddened to some degree by the Cameron firing because they had a lot of tread on the tire of their relationship. The Ravens’ offense grew up with them working together, for better and for worse. They had a lot of success together, going to the playoffs four straight years and laying the foundation to win Super Bowl XLVII.
“Cam means well,” Flacco said. “He’s a very good person and a great football coach. Sometimes he had trouble getting exactly what he wanted to happen. Sometimes he had trouble getting it across to everyone. I felt responsible, bad about him getting fired. The offensive coordinator and the quarterback are tied as closely as anybody in the organization. We need to be close.”
For Harbaugh, making the decision went back to his downside management style.
What’s the worst thing that could happen from firing Cameron? It was already clear that his contract was running out and that he wouldn’t be retained in 2013 once the team worked out a new deal with Flacco. Of course, that is unless the team won the Super Bowl, which might’ve been the only way Cameron could return. After all, in five years and after two AFC Championship Game losses, there was only one more mountain to climb.
The only way to justify keeping Cameron beyond 2012 was to win the Super Bowl and Harbaugh honestly didn’t believe that the Ravens could get to New Orleans with Cam still running the offense. He stopped believing. And he already had the luxury of having Caldwell on the staff, waiting to usurp the role and see how it went going into the playoffs.
“Statistically, Cam brought us into a new age of scoring,” Bisciotti said. “It is unfortunate. When people struggle in this business then they are made into – and I hate the term – a scapegoat. It was clear we needed to move on just like when it was clear with Billick. When John made the decision to do it I’m sure it was tied to the decision he wasn’t going to bring him back. He never told me during the year that he wasn’t bringing Cam back. I assumed he had come to that conclusion.”
