Quarterback meetings with Caldwell, Flacco said, are all about open discussion. Flacco and his teammates have the freedom to float ideas past him. Anything is fair game. Caldwell listens nearly as much as he talks. “You can have honest conversations and grow your relationship,” Flacco said.

Heading into Sunday, Caldwell had made a handful of changes that bolstered the Ravens’ offense. One was directing Flacco to roll out of the pocket with greater frequency, which helped stymie pass rushers. Linebackers and defensive ends are always trying to anticipate a quarterback’s “launch point,” Caldwell said. By keeping them guessing — would Flacco roll out? and if he did, would he move to his left or right? — Flacco bought additional time. The mere threat of being mobile made him more difficult to defend.

Even more important, Caldwell had called for Flacco to throw the ball deep far more often than he had under Cameron. Brock Huard, a former N.F.L. quarterback who spent two seasons with Caldwell in Indianapolis, said the move made a lot of sense. Known as a coach who typically plays to his quarterbacks’ strengths, Caldwell wanted Flacco to showcase his spring-loaded arm.

“He’s a big-time talent down the field,” Huard said last week in a telephone interview. “Let him unload.”

When Huard joined the Colts as a backup in 2002, he felt confident walking into his first quarterbacks meeting with Manning and Caldwell. After spending the previous three seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, Huard had become proficient in the nuances of the West Coast offense — no easy feat. How difficult could it be to learn some new terminology? “I was thinking, I’ve got this whole thing licked,” Huard said.

He was mistaken, and he came to that realization within seconds of entering the room. Caldwell had covered every inch of several large whiteboards with opponents’ tendencies, plays for various downs and distances, routes, cuts, schemes, checks and reads. Caldwell’s penmanship was meticulous, Huard said, each formula and diagram etched with the steady hand of a surgeon. Huard found roughly 95 percent of it to be incomprehensible. After studying algebra, he had landed in a graduate-school seminar on thermodynamics.

“I remember calling my wife at minicamp and saying, ‘I can’t do this, this is crazy,’ ” Huard said. “There were actually times during the season when I was like, ‘Oh man, I hope Peyton doesn’t get hurt.’ Because what he and Jim were doing was so off-the-charts.”