Elite-to-Joe-Flacco quarterback Joe Flacco spent his Wednesday afternoon feeling a little insecure, chatting with the media about how they love quarterbacks, but don’t seem to ever spread the love to Baltimore. “Baltimore has a quarterback”, he wonders aloud. The guy from the Baltimore Sun starts doodling in his notepad, then rolls his eyes when he remembers he should probably be writing this down.

“If you look at the teams that won, yeah you can look at the quarterbacks but that’s just because you guys, ESPN, everybody wants to pump them up as being the best quarterback that year. It’s really going to come down to what team is the best,” Flacco said. “I’m sure if we win, I’ll have nothing to do with why we won according to you guys.”

As MJD of Shutdown Corner points out, people don’t think Joe Flacco is an elite quarterback leading his team into war because he isn’t one, he’s Joe f**king Flacco. He’s fine, but he’s Joe Flacco.

The Ravens aren’t built like the Patriots or the Packers. They don’t succeed or fail based on whether or not they throw the ball seventy times a game, and here are their options: give the ball to Ray Rice, or give the ball to Joe Flacco. JOE FLACCO. Which would you do? Joe Flacco knows:

“You guys want everybody to be Aaron Rodgers and be Tom Brady, but you guys do realize, those guys’ [teams] don’t run the ball? If we try to do that, the criticism that we’d take around here would be ridiculous.”

I think he would behoove Joe Flacco to realize he’s the sort of guy you have to identify as “Joe Flacco” every time, because calling him “Joe” or “Flacco” doesn’t seem right. He’s doing well, and should try really hard not to be that girl in art class who draws a horse for every project and gets pissed when the kids with actual brains and hands for art get praised. Draw your horse, win your playoff games, and be okay being Joe Flacco. Because Joe Flacco is what the Ravens need.

Joe Flacco.

“My new tat means, believe in yourself, which I got no problem doing.”

That’s the explanation for New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan’s brand-new calf tattoo provided in a Facebook video. The comments on the video ask all kinds of questions, like “is this your first tattoo” and “REALLY? LOL” and some bickering about who is and isn’t a Jets fan (on a Jets video on a Jets Facebook page), but nobody has posted the most important follow-up question: HOW does this mean “believe in yourself”?

And I don’t want that to sound dismissive, because I have multiple tattoos and understand how ink can feel like an inseparable part of your body and mean something intensely personal, but I want to know what tribal doctrine Ryan was referencing when he decided to get Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart on his leg. How does this mean “believe in yourself”, Rex? Because when you walked into the tattoo parlor they had this on the wall with “believe in yourself” under it? Did you sit down in the chair blind and tell the artist you want something that means “believe in yourself”? That doesn’t f**king mean anything. I have a tattoo of Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web on my arm because it is my favorite book and helped shape me as an ethical person, and because my late Grandmother used to read it to me when I was little. I didn’t get it because it means “spread your wings and fly”. It also doesn’t mean “you deserve to be a champion”.

Honestly, I guess if anybody would take “believe in yourself” to mean something personally significant it’d be someone like Rex Ryan. Maybe he can get the outline of a butterfly with a tiger’s face inside that means “hope”. Here’s some kanji that says “love, destiny” but it also means “come on, you can do it”.