Falcons, Ravens pave a dangerous path in copycat league

The Baltimore Ravens and Atlanta Falcons are exceeding expectations, but are they also setting a dangerous precedent?

I find it difficult to throw away the preconceived notions I have about a team or a player coming into the season. Nowhere is this more evident than when I look at what is taking place in Baltimore and Atlanta. Week after week I think these teams can't possibly be this good with a rookie head coach and rookie quarterback. On an almost weekly basis, they prove me wrong.

I thought, like most people, the Falcons would win about four games this season. After seeing the Ravens offense during training camp, I was pretty sure there was no way, no matter how well the defense played, Baltimore would win more than eight games. Yet, here we are, nine games into the season, and both teams are in contention for division titles with matching 6-3 records.

Their success has owners in places like Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis and elsewhere looking very closely at the rookie head coach and first-round quarterback experiment.

It's a copycat league, right? So all you need do is get a new head coach and draft a quarterback and immediate success can be yours, right? Not hardly. Even the principals involved realize theirs is not a fool-proof plan.

"What we are doing is the exception," said long-time Falcons linebacker Keith Brooking, who has seen his fair share of organization restructuring over the years. "This is too good to be true, but this is what this league has become. The talent is so close that a couple of key moves can be the difference."

"I wouldn't say it is necessarily a great formula for winning," said Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco, "but if you get the right guys you can get the job done."

But therein lies the problem.

What Flacco and Matt Ryan are doing with coaches John Harbaugh and Mike Smith, respectively, is turning upside down everything most NFL people thought. Franchise-building is supposed to take time, especially when quarterbacks who just got out of the dorms are paired with previously non-descript coaches.

For reminders, they need only look back at the Mike Nolan-Alex Smith combination in San Francisco or Lane Kiffin and JaMarcus Russell in Oakland.

The secret to Atlanta's and Baltimore's success is obviously not simply having hired a new coach and drafting a quarterback in the first round. Rather, it was in hiring the right coach and the right quarterback.

Ravens center Jason Brown said he knew Flacco was the right guy early on because, "You could see spurts of brilliance from him. He is going to keep his foot planted and step into the throw and deliver the ball even when he knows he is going to get hit. It is the test of a man, really, and he is a man. He's not scared."

If anything, it's the rest of the league that needs to be scared of how good the Falcons and Ravens might become.