It had been 17 years of scouting, research, mistakes, and adjustments for Newsome and his staff. In the end, the Ravens finally got their franchise quarterback and a Super Bowl trophy during that 2008 draft when they found Flacco less than an hour from their complex in Delaware. And even then, the consensus was that more NFL teams didn’t like Flacco than did. Five years later, there still hasn’t been one team or executive who has said publicly that he was upset that Flacco didn’t fall down the draft board to his franchise or that they were considering moving up to get him.
“I think the scouting is consistent throughout the league,” Newsome said. “I just think now there are more players that are playing at different levels of football. You have to be able to go and scout those levels. The other thing is that there are a lot of transfers. Joe [Flacco] went to Pittsburgh and then transferred out. I think three of the guys we drafted last year were transfers that went to major colleges, things didn’t work out there, and they ended up going to smaller schools. You just have to do your homework. Football is football, regardless of what level you play at.
“We had made enough mistakes on quarterbacks that we kind of had an idea of what we wanted to look for. The thing we saw about Joe – he had the physical skills, but he had a lot of poise and he was very accurate. The other physical abilities would take care of themselves.”
And what would’ve happened had Newsome picked Chad Henne or Brian Brohm back in April 2008?
“It goes with the quarterback,” Newsome said. “If Joe Flacco wasn’t a very good quarterback right now, I’d probably be playing golf down in Alabama somewhere.” His dear pal Brian Billick knows exactly what he means. He spends Sundays in the broadcast booth instead of the sideline.
Still, through it all, with all of the success that Newsome and his entire team have had at drafting first-ballot Hall of Famers, sixth-rounders, and undrafted free agents who have gone on to become multi-millionaires and two Super Bowl titles, the Ravens have only drafted one Pro Bowl quarterback.
His name?
Derek Anderson.
Joe Flacco has been to the playoffs five years in a row, taken the Ravens to the AFC Championship Game three times, has won the Super Bowl, been named the MVP, and gone to Disney World.
But, he still hasn’t made the Pro Bowl. Maybe that tells you something about the Pro Bowl?
And maybe it tells you about the Ravens.
They were looking for a quarterback to lead them to a Super Bowl, not a Pro Bowl.
