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mat1992

Story from The Athletic on T. Flacco

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(This was before the SB game and this is from a paysite so you're welcome.)

 


By Jeff Zrebiec Oct 5, 2018  3  
From the track that borders the playing field at Towson University’s Johnny Unitas Stadium, he bears little resemblance to the highest-profile quarterback in the city.

He wears No. 14, not No. 5. He’s 6-foot-1, not 6-6. His passes come out decisively and accurately, but it’s his legs and athleticism, not his arm strength, that are cited as his best weapons.

Not until he comes closer, takes off his helmet and starts answering questions from a visitor in a carefree and confident manner does the connection become more obvious. Tom Flacco, the quarterback of the Towson Tigers, has been asked for years now about what it’s like to grow up in the shadow of his older brother, Joe, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens.

“Are you kidding me?,” he said Tuesday. “It’s been an awesome experience.”

It’s certainly good to be a quarterback-playing Flacco in Baltimore these days. Born 10 years apart and two of six siblings in a sports crazed and athletically-gifted family, Joe and Tom Flacco are enjoying a football resurgence that is playing out just over 10 miles apart.

Joe, who has had his share of struggles since leading the Ravens to a victory in Super Bowl XLVII in February 2013, is off to the best start of his career. A suddenly efficient and explosive offense has helped the Ravens go 3-1 heading into Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Browns and has quieted the talk that the 33-year-old Flacco will soon be succeeded by rookie first-round pick Lamar Jackson.

Tom, the self-proclaimed “king of transfers,” has taken a circuitous route to Towson. He started his collegiate career at Western Michigan, transferred to Rutgers and then moved on in June to Towson, for whom he is a grad student and has two years of eligibility remaining. Frustrated by limited playing opportunities at his first two college stops, Flacco won the Tigers’ starting quarterback job over the incumbent in preseason workouts and he’s justified that decision by sparking Towson to three wins in its first four games and a No. 24 national ranking in the Football Championship Subdivision Coaches Poll.

Flacco and the Tigers’ passed their next challenge as the topped 13th-ranked Stony Brook, 52-28 on Saturday. Flacco led the way 23-for-33 for 319 yards and four touchdowns. He also ran for 37 yards on five carries.

“It’s fun to see him have a chance to go out there and finally show what he’s capable of,” Joe said. “I believe that he’s a really good player. I haven’t had a chance to get to a lot of his games. I’m 10 years older than him and ever since I went away to college, I was out doing my own thing. I got home here and there, but not enough to really see him play. It’s been fun to finally see him play. I know what he can do, because I’m his brother and I believe in him, but it’s good to actually get to see him doing those things and see how excited he is about it.”

On Monday, Tom was named the the FCS National Offensive Player of the Week after he accounted for 438 yards of total offense and four touchdowns in a victory over The Citadel. Baltimore, meanwhile, was still reveling in the Ravens’ 26-14 win on Sunday over the rival Pittsburgh Steelers in a game in which Flacco authored a strong performance.

“Don’t get me wrong, it was cool, but we don’t spend a lot of time talking about last Saturday or in Joe’s case, the Steelers’ game. It is what it is,” Towson coach Rob Ambrose said Tuesday. “… Where we are going is more important than where we’ve been. Here, [Tom] sets all these records and he was the national player of the week and he cares about one freaking stat, just like everybody else in that locker room. Who the hell won? We won, so let’s keep going. We’re moving on.”

Tom’s rise, though, is impossible to fully appreciate without taking a brief look back.

The Flacco family home in South Jersey was a short walk from Haviland Avenue Elementary School, giving the six young kids unlimited access to fields and basketball hoops. It was inevitable that athletics would become a huge part of the family’s fabric.  

Steve Flacco, the patriarch of the family, played football and baseball at the University of Pennsylvania. Karen, the matriarch, once starred in basketball and softball. Their oldest son, Joe, played basketball, football and baseball and set the tone for his five younger siblings.   

Mike Flacco was a 31st-round pick in the 2009 MLB draft by the Baltimore Orioles. He played four minor league seasons before stepping away from baseball to go to the University of New Haven to play football. He had a brief stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars practice squad and garnered several NFL tryouts.

Brian Flacco played football, baseball and was a standout wrestler, ultimately winning a junior college gold glove award in 2013 as the second baseman for CCBC-Catonsville, located in a Baltimore suburb. John Flacco was a walk-on on the Stanford football team. Lone daughter, Stephanie, was a multi-sport standout at Audobon High.

As the youngest child, Tom had plenty to live up to, but he never seemed burdened by the expectations and pressure that came with the family name. He was a three-sport star in high school and a good-looking enough baseball prospect for the Philadelphia Phillies to draft him in the 32nd round of the 2014 draft. Tom, however, wanted to play football.    

After spending his freshman year at Camden Catholic High School, he transferred to Eastern High, a move that foreshadowed his nomadic college career. Dan Spittal, the football coach at Eastern, remembers being asked whether his team needed a quarterback because Tom was interested in transferring to the school.

“I said, ‘Is he any good?’” Spittal recalled.

Spittal now laughs about his reaction. Tom was his starting quarterback for three years and finished his high school career with the third most passing yards in South Jersey history. Spittal, who has coached three NFL first-round draft picks and now works as a recruiting assistant at Rutgers, calls Tom one of the top five players that he’s ever coached.      

“He’s one of those kids that comes along every dozen to 15 years,” Spittal said. “He has that ‘it’ factor that you can’t coach and you can’t describe. I don’t know if he was born with it or it’s just being from such a competitive family. But he has that ‘it’ factor where he makes everybody around him play better. If I had one game to win on a Friday night, he would be my quarterback.”

College recruiters, though, weren’t beating down Tom’s door, even at a time where his older brother, Joe, was the newly-minted Super Bowl MVP and temporary owner of the biggest contract in the NFL. Spittal attributes the modest interest from college programs to the fact that Tom played three sports and never fully embraced the year-round football schedule and its prospect camps and showcases. Tom was also only 5-11 as a high school senior and his height and his speed – he ran a 4.5 40-yard dash at a pre-college football camp – also added to the perception that he was strictly a running quarterback and wouldn’t fit certain offenses.   

“He was under-the-radar and under recruited, but he shouldn’t have been,” Spittal said.

Delaware and a few other schools expressed interest. Ultimately, Tom headed to Western Michigan, whose coaching staff included Kirk Ciarrocca, who coached Joe at Delaware. He served as the backup quarterback for two seasons at Western Michigan, but he sought a bigger role.

That resulted in a departure for Rutgers, where he had to sit out the 2017 season per NCAA transfer rules. Flacco ran the Scarlet Knights scout team and earned a degree from the school earlier this year in labor and employment relations. However, he was fourth on the Rutgers’ depth chart heading into the 2018 season and realized that an opportunity to start probably wasn’t in the cards.

“There was obviously built-up frustration, but it wasn’t because my family’s successes. It was just because I felt like I could have been playing,” said Tom, careful not to criticize his former coaches and teammates. “It was a little bit of frustration and a little bit of just wanting to get out there and play.”

Tom eyed Towson, a well-respected program that was less than five years removed from playing in the FCS National Championship game. Ambrose and his brother, Jared, the offensive coordinator of the Tigers, ran the type of offense that he felt would highlight his skillset.  

“He was in a pool of guys that we were interested in,” Rob Ambrose said. “We had said that based on what did not happen in the spring here, there was no question that we were going to find another guy. He was one of the guys that we interviewed. It could be a little like dating. You go on a date with a pretty girl and you get along a little bit and you think about, ‘Man, maybe we’ll go on a date again.’ My brother and I went on a date with him and we kind of looked at each other and went, ‘Yep, he’s the one.’”

Three years before he’d become a first-round draft pick by the Ravens, Joe transferred from Pittsburgh to Delaware because his path to the starting quarterback role was blocked by Tyler Palko. Tom said he didn’t lean on Joe in making his transfer decisions, but cited his brother’s path as proof of what could happen when given an opportunity.

He maintains that Joe’s roots in Baltimore were not the reason he chose Towson.

“It wasn’t going to deter me from going here but it wasn’t going to make it more attractive by Joe being here,” Tom said. “It’s whatever it is. Joe is my brother, so it’s nothing really.”

Ambrose said he wasn’t concerned that his quarterback would be more scrutinized in Baltimore than in any other city because of both Tom’s makeup and background.

“He’s grown up with brothers and everybody is talented. Talent is normal and they all go and make their own way,” Ambrose said. “He loves his brother, but he doesn’t try to be Joe. He tries to be Tom and he does a great job at that.”

The thought never crossed Joe’s mind that his status and popularity might create more expectations and pressure for his brother.

“He’s an arrogant little son of a bitch,” Flacco said while cracking a smile. “I doubt he even thought about that.”

Tom beat out redshirt sophomore Ryan Stover, who played in 11 games the previous year, during preseason workouts and he hasn’t looked back. In the Tigers’ opener against Morgan State, he threw for 245 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 48 yards with Joe looking on. The Tigers were beaten handily by Wake Forest the next game, but Flacco threw for 345 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 52 yards against an Atlantic Coast Conference team.

Tom accounted for 413 all-purpose yards and three touchdowns the following game against a ranked Villanova team and then he did The Citadel in last weekend, setting a school record for quarterbacks by rushing for 185 yards in the game and adding to his highlight reel by leaping over a Bulldogs’ player en route to the end zone.

“It’s kind of like we pushed the car down the hill and it started to get going and he jumped in the driver’s seat and started driving it,” Ambrose said. “He drives it very well.”

In the process, Tom has shattered the perception that he’s strictly a running quarterback, passing for 1,163 yards and 10 touchdowns in four games. Onlookers will notice that he doesn’t have Joe’s arm strength, but even in the NFL, few quarterbacks do.

When pressed to name an NFL quarterback that has a similar playing style than him, Tom initially says that his brother is the only pro quarterback that he watches. He ultimately relents and says, “Someone who is small,” before blurting out “Russell Wilson,” the Seattle Seahawks’ 5-foot-11 quarterback.

People who know both brothers insist that if you watch Tom closely or are around him for long enough, you’ll see the similarities to Joe in intangibles, such as competitiveness,confidence and toughness. Ambrose ticked off two more similarities: work ethic and intelligence.

Joe has watched Towson’s games this year either live or on his computer and feels that they are a lot more similar than people think.

“He’s a little bit of a smaller guy and he has the capability of doing a lot of things with his legs, but when you watch him play, I really think we are pretty similar,” Joe said. “He moves around within the pocket and maybe just outside the pocket and creates a hair of extra time and he’s still able to put the ball downfield accurately and do those things within the pocket that make a really good quarterback. For me, it was probably a little bit surprising to how good of a job he was able to do in those types of situations. I think that’s more what makes him stand out.”

In year’s past, the Flacco’s would attend Ravens’ Sunday home games and then have dinner together later that night. Now, the perfect weekend consists of Towson playing at home on a Saturday and the Ravens having a home game the following day.

“My whole family has been waiting for me to play, forever long as it has been,” Tom said following Towson’s practice Tuesday. “The way this team has brought me in, the way the coaches have trusted me, this definitely feels like my spot. I’m happy to be here.”

Any conversation between Joe and Tom about football and specific games – both past and future – is always general in nature. There are no film study breakdowns or throwing critiques. Joe is certainly not interested in playing the part of overbearing older brother and both have quite rigorous schedules.

But asked about Tom’s hot start at Towson in a recent interview, the normally stoic quarterback seemed almost giddy as he lavished praise on his brother in one of the his longest press conference answers all season.

“I’ll go all day,” Joe said after rattling off his impressions of his brother’s play against Morgan State. “I had a lot of fun watching him.”

 

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As I said in a chat a couple games back, what's it say about the coaching staff and style of play that he couldn't see the field at RUTGERS??  Their stupidity is our gain, that's for sure.

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1 hour ago, Chris Datres said:

As I said in a chat a couple games back, what's it say about the coaching staff and style of play that he couldn't see the field at RUTGERS??  Their stupidity is our gain, that's for sure.

I mean...

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Edited by TuTigers2012

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