Flacco bulking up for 2013

According to ESPN’s Sal Palantonio, who attended the Ravens facility Tuesday, Joe Flacco is bulking up. Flacco has been hitting the weight room hard this offseason and tips the scales reportedly at 252 lbs. That is up from “236 pounds”, although his listed weight on the teams roster currently reads 245 lbs. Weight numbers are often skewed, but either way the 6’6″ quarterback got bigger in a good way.

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Palantonio said “he looks really good.” as he has added “sheer muscle mass.” When he talked to Flacco that day and asked about his regiment, Flacco said, “I want to earn my contract.”

Good to see that the money isn’t going to his head. So many times we see players get large contracts, or even hold out for bigger contracts and then under perform the following season. Joe Flacco doesn’t seem to have the mentality that because he got paid and won a Super Bowl that he is good enough, or he can get by easy. Whether or not he lives up to the $120.6M contract is still yet to be determined. But Flacco is starting off on the right foot. As he has done since day one in Baltimore, he keeps doing all of the right things.

Entering his sixth season, Joe Flacco will likely want to do his part to improve his accuracy from 2012. He ranked 24th in the NFL with an accuracy% of 68%, ahead of just Andrew Luck, Josh Freeman, and Mark Sanchez. In perspective, Aaron Rodgers led the NFL with an 80.2%.

Was Cam Cameron’s play calling to blame for some of those accuracy issues? In the 2012 regular season, Flacco led the league with 17.3% of all passes going over 20 yards, with an accuracy% of just 40.2% on said balls. Almost one of every five passes going deep, or maybe once or twice a drive they were throwing low percentage passes. Way too often considering Aaron Rodgers threw deep at a clip of just 11.2%, with an accuracy% of 53.2%.

However, once the postseason with Jim Caldwell firmly in place calling the plays got underway, in those four games Flacco would throw deep on 24.6% of his attempts. You don’t need me to tell you that he improved his accuracy in those games. 51.6% to be exact. Obviously play calling success has a lot to do with timing and exploiting defensive mismatches. If the teams in the playoffs are giving you the deep ball (Rahim Moore) take it!

Joe Flacco’s receivers dropped only 4.3% of passes last season, second best behind Phillip Rivers group of 4.2%. A lot of that is thanks in large part to the departed, Anquan Boldin. Joe Flacco will want to boost his accuracy numbers without having a real veteran presence in the receiving corps in 2013. He’s got to make the game easy for Torrey Smith to emerge, Jacoby Jones to build on his amazing post season, and for the next level of guys trying to make the most of limited opportunities, fighting for the third WR spot on the depth chart. That is what top flight QBs do to earn their contracts.

How can you pack on 10-15 lbs of muscle mass? I hear curling and hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, over, and over, and over again helps.