Flaccos contract isnt the only reason we have a cheap offense but its the main reason, the other is missing on draft picks... not that we can afford to keep quality players anyway after KO and Jensen walked.
I just dont get mitigating crippling contracts because other teams have overpaid QBs, thats a justification between teams that dont make the playoffs. When you take on the lions share of the cap then you need to take on the lions share of the responsibility to produce, period. Flacco needs to produce.
Flaccos contract isn't even in the top 5 reasons the Ravens have no offensive playmakers but its a cute line that the national media uses because they don't look at how the contract was structured.
Flaccos contract for the first 3 years had cap hits of 6M, 14M, and 14M so basically mediocre cap hits, but the Ravens still have no playmakers but the money did go somewhere...
Ray Rice
Dennis Pitta
Eugene Monroe
Webb
and at this point I'm tempted to include Jimmy
The cap hits from those contracts hurt the Ravens even now. Now imagine if instead of all those misses (and I feel like I'm missing another big one) you had that cap space to sign your other players. Imagine for a moment a starting OLine of Stanley-KO-Jensen-Yanda-Wagner and now look above and know why thats not the case (yes I know the draft may have gone diff but you get the point). The Ravens extended players and it bit them hard.