I hope UCF student Jon Keller got a nice close-up photo of Joe Flacco at the Disney parade Monday. Flacco showed off a rare smile and waved to the hundreds of Baltimore Ravens fans dressed in purple jerseys who eagerly waited for his hour-late Super Bowl MVP hero's welcome at Magic Kingdom.
If Flacco's dad were there, he might have said that's about as much personality as we're going to get out of ol' Joe. The man did call his son "dull" four times in a single quote, after all.
But for Flacco fans such as Keller, they not only like a boring and bland Flacco; they prefer it.
"You can't be too cocky when you're a quarterback. Otherwise you'll be like Tom Brady," said Keller, a Baltimore native.
That's one way of looking at it.
As far as the post-Super Bowl MVP glamour life goes, I can't picture Flacco kicking it with Tom and Gisele at the New York Met Costume Gala or busting a move on Dancing With The Stars like Hines Ward. Thankfully, Flacco's best moves are best saved for the football field.
Joe Flacco is an excellent quarterback and a terrible NFL star. Flacco fans will understand this as a compliment.
"I like him. He fits the personality of the city," said Stan Jablonski, a Baltimore native who was vacationing with family at Disney World. "Hard-working, loves his family and does his job."
There are athletes who act as if they care little for media attention, yet secretly covet limelight aspirations and reality-show fantasies.
Then there are guys such as Flacco who really don't give a flip. He just plays to win football games — spotlight be darned.
He may not be the typical media darling whom corporations and media entities like to package and sell. Even vanilla Eli Manning, last year's Super Bowl MVP, has the marketing appeal of being one half of the most famous NFL quarterback sibling combinations. Flacco doesn't have the dazzle of Ray Lewis. In fact, Flacco didn't even break the top three trending Twitter topics Sunday. Beneath Lewis' final football game, more folks were interested in discussing the vocal stylings of Beyonce and Alicia Keys. And Flacco probably will never have a signature move to popularize with fans like Kaepernicking or the now likely retired Tebowing.
That's OK. As is usually the case with Flacco, he allows his talent to do the talking for him.
Baltimore's offense — not its signature hard-hitting defense — stole the spotlight early in the game as Flacco got it done with three first-half touchdowns. In all, he completed 22 of 33 passes for 287 yards with no interceptions. Even more impressive, he mirrored a rare feat in matching San Francisco 49ers legend Joe Montana's 11-touchdown/zero-interception playoff run from 1989.
Despite the fact he's taken the Ravens to the playoffs every year in his tenure that started in 2008, he's been dogged for much of the past two seasons by the largely media-driven question about his "eliteness."
Is he on the level of Tom Brady, Drew Brees or the Manning brothers?
Maybe or maybe not, depending on your own definition of elite. One thing we know for sure is that Flacco has a Super Bowl ring and he's got plenty of years left to show people that he's among the best. And as long as he's competing in Baltimore, dull personality and all, that's all Ravens fans like Joe Slovick care about.
"I'd like to see him be our quarterback of the future," Slovick said. "He's a big family guy. He wins games. What more do you need than that?"
