to play for Womens John Elway Jersey , Broncos fans are starting to eye the looming off-season en masse. And while the search for a new head coach will, hopefully, headline the early weeks of said offseason, the quarterback question will undoubtedly rear its ugly head yet again after a sub-par season from Case Keenum. So let’s examine some low-hanging fruit and see it for the rotten apple it is.A name that you’ll hear a lot this offseason is that of Joe Flacco, who will likely be in need of a new home since the future has clearly arrived in Baltimore in the form of Lamar Jackson. Broncos Country, don’t fall for the fool’s gold. Bringing in Flacco would solve no problems for this team.Why not, you ask? Let’s take a look.General PerformanceQB rating is a good place to start. It’s definitely no be-all, end-all argument for or against any QB, but it’s an okay measure of overall QB performance that’s good enough for a high-level view. So the good news first: Joe Flacco posted his highest QB rating since 2014 this season.The bad news? It was a pretty sad mark of just 84.2, good for just 29th among QBs who’ve thrown 100+ passes this season. Though he did beat 30th ranked Case Keenum’s 82.1 (though that can still change).In a season when “Top 10 QB” might as well be synonymous with a 100+ QB rating, that’s unacceptable. And that’s pretty much been the story with Flacco for quite a while now, honestly. Even his 2014 QB rating of 91.0, the 2nd highest of his career, ranked a tepid 17th in the NFL that year. If he’d put that number up in 2018, it would fall to 24th. And did I mention that Flacco’s career QB rating is 84.1?Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty ImagesLet’s examine some other basic performance & production numbers for Flacco over the last 5 years:His completion rate rose from 62.1% in 2014 to 64.4% in 2015, and has held steady in the 64.1%-64.9% range ever since.He threw 27 TDs vs 12 Ints in 2014, but has thrown 64 TDs vs 46 Ints since then.He hasn’t led a 4th quarter comeback or a game-winning drive since Week 3 of 2016 vs the Jacksonville Jaguars. So not in his last 38 games, which includes 14 one-score losses.DYARHow about a little more of an advanced metric from the folks over at Football Outsiders? Their DVOA stat is more commonly cited, but DYAR is more QB-specific. DYAR, or Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement, “gives the value of the quarterback ‘s performance compared to replacement level, adjusted for situation and opponent and then translated into yardage.” So higher is better & negative means your QB is actively hurting your team. Take a look at Flacco’s DYAR over the last 5 years, compared to several other Broncos QBs past and present and contrasted against an actual elite QB in Drew Brees for good measure.It’s not a very pretty picture regarding Broncos QBs, is it? But we’ll spend plenty of time this offseason discussing our team’s, and our GM’s, struggles in that regard. Today’s discussion is in hopes that we won’t open another new chapter in our book of QB purgatory. Bringing in Joe Flacco, who’s ranked 27th, 30th, & 32nd in DYAR from 2015 through 2017 among QBs with 200+ pass attempts, would be that next bad chapter.That Price TagIf they can somehow swing it, I’m sure the Baltimore Ravens would love to move on from Joe Flacco via a trade. Any team would prefer to get something back instead of nothing, after all, and Flacco will cost Baltimore at least $16M in dead money regardless. The problem with that is that Flacco’s 3 year, $22M/year extension, signed in 2016, is a severely back-loaded deal. In addition to the remaining $16M of signing bonus the Ravens will eat, Flacco’s $6M 2017 salary doubled to $12M this year, and will continue ballooning in the final 3 years of the deal: to $18.5M in 2019, $20.25M in 2020, & $24.25M in 2021.That $18.5M salary in 2019 isn’t so bad for a veteran starting QB these days, but the Broncos will already be eating at least a $3M cap hit from Case Keenum- and that’s only if they manage to trade him away in turn. So that’s $21.5M of the cap dedicated to bad QBs, at minimum, if we want to trade Keenum out for Flacco. And if we traded for Flacco & had to cut Keenum, that hit balloons to $28.5M for the two combined. No, thank you!Alternatively, the Ravens could end up cutting Flacco. Though personally I think they’d wait and roll with him as their backup for 2019 before moving him the next offseason rather than cut him this offseason. But if they did, it’d be up to the market... and, frankly, given the level of stupidity involved in NFL QB contracts in recent years and Flacco’s 163 games of starting experience? His price would only go up, as ridiculous as that is.Reality CheckOn the scale of free agent QB signings Bradley Chubb Broncos Jersey , from incredible (Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, etc) to incredibly stupid (Brock Osweiler, <insert pre-Mayfield Browns QB of your choice>), you tell me where Flacco would rate.But before you do, consider all of the above and then consider this: He just lost his job to a rookie QB who’s completing just 58.9% of his passes & who has thrown just 5 TDs vs 3 Interceptions in 5 games as the starter. And who has rushed the football 86 times in those 5 games for 427 yards vs 731 yards gained by passing. That’s 146 passing yards per game.This in a league where increasingly QB-friendly, passing-friendly rules have 34 different QBs with 100+ pass attempts completing 60%+ of their passes, and 37 different QBs in the same group are throwing for over 150 yards per game (and 19 are throwing for 250+ yards per game). And even in that environment Lamar Jackson, whose best weapons at the moment are his legs, is a better start at QB than Joe Flacco.If there’s a solution to the Broncos’ quarterback woes this offseason, it’s not Joe Flacco. He’ll cost too much, he’s barely an upgrade on Keenum (if at all), and frankly he’s just not a good starting NFL quarterback and hasn’t been for a long time. By all means, keep looking for solutions & debating their relative merits. Just, please, for my sanity and your own: say “No!” to Flacco. Demaryius Thomas waited until his return to Denver was over and the Texans had secured the win. Then, he unloaded on his former team.Thomas held nothing back in an interview with Orange & Blue radio (760 AM) on Monday. The receiver criticized General Manager John Elway, head coach Vance Joseph and receivers coach Zach Azzanni.He accused Joseph of lying to him by telling Thomas the Broncos weren’t going to trade him.“When he said that to me, I said, ‘How is it not true? My agent [Todd France] called me today and said Elway wanted a fifth-round pick for me,'” Thomas told the radio station, via multiple reports. “So, we’re telling stories to each other now? I thought we were going to be men about this.“. . . Listening to that from him and then another couple of coaches coming up to me saying, ‘It’s all fake; it’s all fake,’ and then it really happens, it’s like, ‘Man.’ It is what it is, though.”Thomas said he heard through the grapevine Elway and Joseph made the Pro Bowler the scapegoat of the team’s offense, which ranks 18th in passing.鈥淵ou know what bothers me — I don’t want to stir any pot — but it bothers me [that] I had people from Denver saying like, ‘They really said they got rid of you because you were the problem on offense and they said they wanted to better the offense,鈥欌€欌€?Thomas said. 鈥淚’m like, ‘Really, bro?’ People just kept stirring it on.鈥淚 heard they were saying that Vance was saying something, and Elway was saying something. I did so much for this organization and never had nothing bad to say about anybody. None of the players I played with. I just did my job and kept it as professional as I could. For you all to say that I was one of the reasons that the offense wasn’t going, and say this and that, man, that hurt.”Thomas made it clear he was bothered not being named a team captain. He also was upset when Azzanni told Thomas he was losing playing time to rookie DaeSean Hamilton.鈥淢y receiver coach came to me and said — he could’ve said this to either Courtland [Sutton] or Emmanuel [Sanders], but he came to me and said it — he said, ‘I want to get DaeSean in the game more than one rep. I want to get him going four to six plays of reps,'” Thomas said. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I’ve been here nine years, and you ask me besides anybody else?’ I’m like, ‘That’s so disrespectful to me, because I’ve put so much into this game, but you want me to come out for a rookie.’鈥淚 don’t have anything against it, because he’s a great player; I love DaeSean Hamilton to death. When I knew it was that, I was like, ‘I’m out here just to be out here.’ It was tough.”It clearly was time for Thomas to move on and get a fresh start elsewhere.