Poor Joe Flacco. He's the only quarterback in NFL history to qualify for the playoffs in each of his first four seasons, and yet he remains eternally disrespected, football's version of Rodney Dangerfield.
The critique of Flacco extends to his own driveway, where a maiden voyage on a skateboard during the Ravens' bye week was immediately reported back to his superiors.
"I'd never been on a skateboard in my life, so I was literally riding it about 10 feet down my driveway just to see if I could stand on it and stay upright," Flacco said Wednesday on "NFL Total Access." "One of my neighbors must have called in looking for (Ravens general manager) Ozzie Newsome and left a voicemail on his secretary's phone saying, 'Hey, man, you got to let Joe Flacco know we're trying to win the Super Bowl around here! He's at home riding a skateboard. Somebody's got to let him know what the deal is.' "
Flacco laughed it off, the same way he brushed aside comments made Monday by Ravens safety Ed Reed, who suggested Flacco was "rattled" in a divisional-round win over the Texans.
"I said, 'Yo, bro, what are you doing to me? I already take enough, and now you're going to come out and say this!' " Flacco said with a smirk. "You never know what context it was said in live, and you never know what he was really thinking in his mind about what he meant by it, but the bottom line was it didn't sound too good, but I didn't take it too bad."
How did Reed react?
"He just did his Ed Reed thing," Flacco said, leaving what this actually meant open to interpretation. "(He said) 'Hey, man, I'm sorry,' and kind of laughed about it and wanted to give me a hug and all that."
Clearly, Flacco should break out the skateboard if the Ravens parade through downtown Baltimore next month. One of life's greatest treasures really is sticking it to your awful neighbor.
