"Joe Flacco says that he doesn't hear much of the criticism. He abstains from reading about the Ravens in the local papers. He mostly ignores watching all the NFL pundits on television and he certainly doesn't listen to talk radio, where his merits as a quarterback are tediously debated on an hourly basis.

But when word got back to Flacco that he was taking the brunt of the blame for last January's playoff loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the normally stoic Raven seethed.

"There's a lot of disappointment when you lose a playoff game. We lost the game," said Flacco, who went 16-for-30 for 125 yards, threw one touchdown and committed two turnovers in the 31-24 defeat at Heinz FIeld. "I played well all year, I played well in the playoffs and I played well in that game, I thought. For people to react like that, I don't know. You don't always get it. When you are a player, you don't really understand the criticism when you feel like you played pretty well."

No quarterback in NFL history has more regular-season wins through his first four seasons than Flacco. No starting quarterback in NFL history has gone to the playoffs in the first four years of his career until Flacco accomplished that feat this season. And no quarterback in Baltimore football history has thrown for 3,000 yards in three consecutive seasons until Flacco arrived on the scene in 2008 and was handed the reins to the Ravens' offense."