Quote Originally Posted by SteveInBaltimore View Post
I think the temperature clearly is heating up. This message board is an indication of this.

It's funny, but we are going through something similar in Baltimore football, with the quarterback as opposed to the coach. Flacco is the first QB in NFL history to make the playoffs in his first four years, and one of the few QBs EVER to WIN at least one playoff game each of his first four years.

But we have missed the Super Bowl all four, coming incredibly close a couple times. We would have made it htis year except for a dropped pass in the end zone, on a perfectly good pass by Flacco. And last year we dropped a potential TD pass that probably would have put is in the Super Bowl too (TJ Houshmandzadeh vs Pittsburgh).

And Flacco does have some flaws as a QB. So some fans leap on the fact that he has failed to get us to the Super Bowl as some kind of indication that he never will. And when we point out the dropped passes, we are "making excuses".

I feel the same way about Greenberg that I do about Flacco. There are some flaws in him, like there are in 99% of coaches and players. I agree with critics of Flacco's completion percentage, or Greenberg's offense. But I still believe that even though they have failed to make their goals the past few years, despite coming very close, they are both GOOD ENOUGH to do it in the future. I believe they have shown enough to give them continued chances. Especially when the alternative is bringing in some unknown quantity who may or may not be better.

I may be wrong in both cases. Maybe Greenberg has really "peaked" and can't lead us to the tournament again. Maybe Flacco will never get the Ravens in the Super Bowl. Both have come close to the goal and FAILED. In both cases it wasn't entirely their fault, but, yes they could have done things better so it didn't come down to luck, and we could have made it. But I refuse to judge them entirely on the failure... at least I don't give them an F and a 0.0 in their GPA for it. That's where I obviously differ from some people on there. We come extremely close and miss, and I see the fact that we got so close is that we can get close again and next time hopefully we can seal the deal. Others see nothing but the fact that we missed and assume that means we are incapable of improving on that without a change. I guess it's jsut a different way of looking at things.

But I believe a change at a leadership position is something that should be undertaken only when absolutely necessary and I'm simply not ready to declare Greenberg a failure. Yet.
Dude. Seriously. Peyton Manning. I just had this thought and immediately crowned myself a genius for doing so.

Peyton Manning has a billion dollars, it's not about money. He's not going to Miami or the Redskins or any of those other nonsense propositions. He needs to go something like league minimum to a team that's only a QB away from the whole shebang. Who fits that description? The Ravens. Boom. Done.

Serious question, in a hypothetical situation where Peyton Manning doesn't care about money, would you be on board with replacing Joe Flacco with him? I think if you're trying to get there, it might be worth the risk

That said, regarding Greenie I think we're on the same page. He's got 2 years and no excuses. That's the bottom line, IMHO. If you were going to fire him for not making the tournament, you would have done it last year, not this year. In that same vein though, you only get so many, you know...decades...before you actually have to accomplish the goal.

FWIW I think Sendek is a better comparison for Flacco than Greenberg. While at a very very high level it's similar in "making or not making the goal," the scale of what "the goal" is is pretty significant and also matters. I think that making the playoffs 4 times in a row, making the Conference Championships, etc. buys you a whole lot more goodwill than not making the (real) postseason at all.