I think you might be too young to remember but the year after the Ravans won their Superbowl in 2000 I think, they got rid of their QB(Trent Dilfer) in search of a better one and wound up not having a real franchise QB till 2009 in Flacco(If you wanna call him that). Think this might happen to the 49ers, which is a shame.

Flacco is not a franchise QB, other than his win against the giants today, he is not very good

Flacco's numbers in his first 4 years and Brady's numbers in his first four years are very similar. Plus, he's lead a lot of clutch drives, its just that his receivers have not always caught the ball, or his kickers have not always made the field goals.

Flacco is not a good quarterback, with a defense as good as the ravens has been in previous years and recievers such as anquan boldin, you cant blame it all on the kicker. he has no excuse for not making it to the superbowl besides him not playing well

Flacco is 10x worse than Kaepernick the difference is he doesn't have a top 10 QB on the bench backing him up. Jim Harbaugh is a joke.

@Billy: For the most part I agree with you. Smith (Alex, not Justin) deserves the starting job more than Kaepernick. He's proved himself to be a reliable quarterback. However, Smith tied theRams, so losing to them shows that the team as a whole has a problem against St. Louis. Also, I don't see how 'spanking' the Patriots is a bad thing. He won against a good team.

@Iblocka: Flacco is nowhere near the level of other franchise quarterbacks like Brady. The ravens have relied on their stellar (but fading) defense. Flacco's main job has been to hand the ball to Ray Rice. If anything, his receivers have carried him (Torrey Smith, Anquan Boldin, etc.)

A franchise QB is one you can win a Superbowl with, not in-spite of.

Flacco out-dueled Brady last year in the AFC championship game, then again week 3 on SNF against Brady. He also played well against the Texans D in the playoffs, but not so much in the regular season, ha. He was a Lee Evans drop and a missed Cundiff feild goal from going to the Superbowl.
Plus not to mention the clutch drive against the number 1 pass defense in the Steelers, which showcased mistakes by his receivers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idBxE4Y5Rdg

Flacco would be a big reason why the Ravans win the Superbowl, if they do it.

Also, I'm a Pats fan!

And who's better? Flacco, Dalton, or Roethlisburger?
I'm leaning Dalton.

On KNBR some guy just said "Karpernick is gonna be the first bi-racial brotha to win a Super Bowl"

I'm not sure I agree.

If footbal is your forte the riddle me this i an an avid panthers fan i watch all thier games like a second religion and i think that cam newton is a good quarterback and would do better without ron rivera we should take on the jets head coach next year sound like a good idea or no i personally think we cant take a roomie head coach on again we beed someone tried and true we also need to clea house in our entire coaching staff and redo i do t know if you know alot about the oanthers butthis seems like a great idea to me

Im not calling the jets head coach a rookie just a eun in sentece

Kaepernick is a rookie and has not gloated from his victories and has look to grow in his defeats. For this, he has my vote.

I don't think Flacco "out-dueled" Brady. Instead, his success has resulted from having such a well balanced team. Because of the constant running threat, his receivers are wide open, unlike Brady, who has much tighter coverage.

Also, the Ravens (not Flacco) have had many impressive victories, but at the same time, they're prone to losing to some of the worst teams like the Jaguars and Titans for some strange reason.

I wouldn't call the Steelers pass defense #1. It was the best a few years ago when they had the likes of Polamalu, but it has deteriorated lately.

Flacco's main job on the Ravens isn't to carry his team. It's to hand the ball to Ray Rice and not screw the game up by throwing picks. He's a lot like their old QB, Trent Dilfer, who was mocked for not contributing to their superbowl win.

I don't understand half of what you're saying Hellbender, but Rex Ryan (the Jet's coach) is one of the consistently worse coaches in the NFL, both in gameplay and team leadership. I have no idea why anybody would want him as a coach.

Also, I'm sorry to hear you guys are Patriots, I thought better of you :) (Dolphins FTW!)

We said that about john fix but there he is in colorado winning games left and right

I completely disagree about your views on Flacco. Of course he has had some horrible games against bad teams like the Jags and the Titans, but these are the same Titans that took the Saints to the brink last year and also beat the Stealers in TNF, and the same Jags that took the Pats to the brink too.
Its difficult to win in the NFL, and he has done exactly that.
Flacco is no where near as horrable as Dilfer, he brought the Ravans back from the Cardinals last year when they were going on a tear in the NFL, DIlfer was HORRIBLE.

Also the Steelers had the number 1 pass D last year. They virtually shut down the Pats after a bye week, when the Patriots were undefeated after a bye.

Flacco lead a TD drive where his recievers dropped alot of passes(if u look back at the video).

Also sorry to hear your a Dolphins fan. Must be rough having to relive that draft where they passed off on Matt Ryan...

With William, VD and Manningham all going down, Kaep gets to experience the same thing Smith did for 6 years - slow receivers that can't get open and linemen designed for run blocking. Hopefully Jenkins will end up solidifying Baalke and Harbaugh's status as men among boys in the drafting department (Taylor Mays not withstanding . . .)

I'm probably sounding harsher on Flacco than I actually feel. You're completely right about him playing well in certain situations, like that game against the Steelers and being way better than Dilfer. . What I meant was that Flacco isn't in the same league as the real pros like Rodgers, Brady, Brees, Manning(s) etc. He lacks the reliability of those QBs and their leadership. Occasionally he's great, but in others, he struggles to get any passes off. All in all, Flacco is a decent QB, and will continue to be one until he can consistently lead the passing attack (and stop relying on Ray Rice so much) and be more of a commanding presence on the field.

Going back to Kaepernick, he's not bad (I'd say he's doing great for someone so new) but the media's image of him is overinflated. They're probably just getting tired of covering the NY love triangle between Sanchez, Tebow, and Ryan.

Oh yeah, and I'm excited about the Dolphins, especially Tannehill. I've seen them stumble through about 12 quarterbacks in 9 years, and I'm just relieved to have someone to build a team around, even if the record won't rise for a few years. Having a new coach also helped.

lol, what do you mean Manning(s). As i recall, one of them, not gonna point fingers, could only score 7 points total in the past 2 weeks and couldn't take the returning superbowl champs to the playoffs.

Z-Dog, I think you're mistaking a franchise QB with a Hall of Fame QB. All 5 of those QBs you listed will become hall of famers, a franchise QB is one you can build a solid Superbowl contending team around, that on a good day can hang with those elite 5 QBs. Of course they have their disappointing games, but are still talented and have shown enough flashes of brilliance to believe they can take a team to the Superbowl.

These are my tiers for "franchise" QBS:

Tier one -->Brady, Brees, Mannings, Rodgers

Tier two-->Schaub, Ryan, Rivers, Romo, RG3, Lucky Ducky

Tier three-->Flacco, Dalton, Smith, Kaep, Roethlisburger, Cutler, Stafford, Wilson, Newton,

Those are the only real franchise QBs I can think of off the top of my head, in their differing tiers.

Isn't tannehill like 29 or something though? I know he's a rookie but I think he's that guy who went to college when he was like 27 so I don't know how excited you should be about building your team around a guy who will be out of the NFL w/in like 4-6 years probably and isn't that good anyway.