Quarterback Joe Flacco made no bones about it after Sunday's game or since.
He and the offense "got whupped."
Yes, the unblocked (or not well blocked) pressure the Houston Texans brought caused Flacco to throw off his back foot too often. Defensive end J.J. Watt was in his grill for much of the day. Flacco didn't have a run game to rely on either and was in too many third-and-long situations to have lasting success.
But Flacco also simply missed throws and made mistakes that played their part in the Ravens' offensive stinker and the 25-13 loss.
Now, in his usual calm and confident way, Flacco is moving on. He needs to have a dramatically better game against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday for the Ravens to have a chance of reaching the playoffs.
And history shows that Flacco has a penchant for bouncing back. He doesn't let one performance bleed into another.
"There's not really too much you can do about it at this point," Flacco said. "You just have to have confidence in yourself, confidence in yourself as a group, and go out and win the next one."
According to ESPN, in Flacco's five-worst career games, he's completed 42 percent of his passes, thrown 12 interceptions to two touchdowns and posted a collective quarterback rating of 30.0.
In the five games following those, Flacco has completed 66 percent of his passes, thrown two interceptions to seven touchdowns and posted a quarterback rating of 100.8.
| Flacco | Comp | Att | Comp% | Yards | Yds/Att | TD | INT | PsRt | ||||||||||
| Worst 5 | 70 | 168 | 41.7% | 764 | 4.5 | 2 | 12 | 30.0 | ||||||||||
| Next 5 | 102 | 154 | 66.2% | 1,249 | 8.1 | 7 | 2 | 100.8 | ||||||||||
Flacco has had some rebounds already this season.
After posting a 65.1 quarterback rating in Week 5 in Indianapolis, Flacco responded with five touchdown passes in the next 16 minutes, three seconds in Tampa Bay.
After struggling in Cincinnati, he came back with 303 passing yards and a 91.3 quarterback rating in Pittsburgh.
"That's what this business is. You've got to pick yourself up and get back out there," Flacco said.
"We're all adults out here. We've all been through tough situations and tougher situations and we'll continue to go through situations like we had on Sunday and like we're dealing with now. We've just got to pick ourselves up and move on."
