Joe Flacco has not been his usual tremendous self this season.
 
And the Baltimore Ravens quarterback would be the first to tell you that.
 
Oh, sure, Flacco has completed 64.4 percent of his passes for 2,719 yards and 14 touchdowns, with 12 interceptions, good for a quarterback rating of 83.1. For a lot of quarterbacks, that would be cause for celebration. But not for Flacco. His numbers are usually better – a lot better, in fact.
 
And his most important number – Flacco knows that the No. 1 job of a quarterback is to win games — is way, way down. Though the Ravens won on Sunday, edging the St. Louis Rams 16-13 for their second victory in the last three games, they are still only 3-7 and, for all intents and purposes, out of the AFC playoffs chase.
 
After all, this is a Ravens team that went into this season having made the postseason in six of the last seven years, including winning the Super Bowl following the 2012 season. Baltimore last finished under .500 in 2007.
 
So while the 2-8 Browns, who are headed toward their eighth consecutive losing season, are where most people thought they’d be at this point, the Ravens are not. Heck, they even lost 33-30 in overtime to Cleveland back on Oct. 11 in the teams’ first meeting. It was the Browns’ last win, in fact.
 
But as bad as the Ravens have been this year, and as relatively pedestrian as Flacco has been, things could well get worse in these final six games. He suffered a season-ending knee injury against the Rams – a game in which he threw for 299 yards, the best in the NFL over the weekend heading into last night’s contest between the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills — and thus will miss Monday night’s nationally-televised visit to Cleveland.
 
For those Browns fans who, for whatever reason, remain unconvinced that finding a franchise quarterback isn’t – by far — the team’s top priority, they need to take a look at the Ravens on Monday Night Football. The Ravens will be so challenged offensively that you won’t even recognize them.
 
And you can bet that the “Wizard of Oz,” Ravens General Manager Ozzie Newsome, can’t wait to get this nightmarish season over with so he can begin planning for 2016, when Flacco is expected to be back at some point.
 
The only thing that will make him feel better in the here and now is looking at the Browns and realizing that, in the 17th season of their re-birth, they still have no idea who their Joe Flacco is.