Help with last keeper

[Steeltowne Commish_The Slovene]

Flacco above McNabb. Only read this if you are bored.

1. Gut instinct. It's subjective, but I'm willing to bank my rep on it. Not too hard when you're a waterboy.

2. Seriously, injury-proneness. McNabb was lucky last year. Check it. First time in 5 years he played 16 games, and only the 4th time in his career. It was one of his best seasons ever. For some perspective, look at Favre or Manning. I say last year was an injury fluke. He'll go down again this year.

3. Inconsistency. The years he has been greatly anticipated to do well, he disappointed.

Flacco is young, threw 14 TD's in his rookie season and is poised to improve. Granted, he has some challenges at who's going to catch it.

Bottomline is will McNabb survive? Odds are he won't and because of that Flacco will prove to have been better by seasons end.

Call me crazy, but last year everyone thought I was a nut for being pro-Pennington versus Clemens. Chad beat out both Jets QBs and was right on the heels of McNabb.

I've heard that lightning can strike the same place twice.

[bmor8811]

I hear what your saying, but in both of their positions with the teams around them, I'd rather have McNabb for 12 games and get a backup slightly earlier than typical than have Flacco for all 16 games. I haven't seen Flacco ranked in the top 15 all season while DMcNabb is a consensus top 10 guy, even though we all know of his injury-ridden past. Here's some numbers for ya, granted Flacco will develop some in his second year but they havent really put much else around him to help him either:

Flacco (2008) - 12.8 points per game (good enough for 20th last season)
McNabb (average of last 5 years, so that it takes into account injury and his "inconsistency") - 20.6 points per game and he missed 16 games total in those 5 years, which is about 3 games per season, averaged.

20.6 ppg for 13 games = 268.6 points a season
12.8 ppg for 16 games = 204.8 points a season

If it's your gut then go with it man... but looking at the numbers it's hard to argue that even though you can pencil him in to miss 3-4 games a season, he's still scoring about 5 points more a game than Flacco which is playing in every game. Until the offensive scheme changes around the Ravens you won't see me snagging Flacco for anything more than a back-up.