I have never been a huge fan of Joe Flacco. To me he was never a more than a marginal quarterback riding the coattails of a strong defense and a great running game on offense. Up until the 2013 NFL Playoffs, my opinion of Flacco probably wouldn't have been questioned by mainstream fans. 

Then something happened. Something that this one writer still doesn't understand more than 40 hours after Flacco led his Baltimore Ravens to the World Championship in Super Bowl XLVII against the San Francisco 49ers. 

This scribe really cannot pinpoint exactly what happened. Coming off of ridiculous performances against Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady en-route to New Orleans, I guess we should have seen this coming. 

Flacco may never live up to the legend that is his namesake, Joe Montana, but for one postseason (four games) he sure the hell played like Joe Cool. When all was said and done and the confetti bled purple at The Superdome, Flacco put to rest any questions about his elite status (a term I still dislike to this day) by putting up the best performance by a quarterback in the HISTORY of the NFL Playoffs. 

Move over, Montana. Go away, Brady. Look the other way, Kurt Warner. You don't matter anymore, Mr. Joe Namath. 

Oh yes, for ONE postseason Flacco outshined them all. 

He did so without a strong defense on the other side of the ball. San Francisco became the first team in NFL history to have a 300-yard pass, 100-yard rusher and (2) 100-yard receivers in the same Super Bowl. It put up the fourth-most yards in Super Bowl history and tied the Dallas Cowboys for the most points for a losing team in the history of this grand spectacle. 

Colin Kaepernick netted neary 370 total yards and at one point the 49ers put up 17 points in less than five minutes, more than 27 teams have scored in a single game in Super Bowl history. 

It didn't matter. 

Joe Flacco didn't care. He continued avoiding the pass rush, found open seams down the middle of the field and on the outside. He threw darts to the likes of Anquan Boldin, Jacoby Jones and Torrey Smith. He made what was the fourth-best pass defense in the NFL during the regular season look like East Dillon High going up against J.D. McCoy, only this wasn't a script written for Hollywood and this game wasn't played in Texas on a Friday night. 

Rather, Flacco proved to this one writer (and to the rest of the football world) that he is indeed one of the top five quarterbacks in the NFL today. 

I couldn't be more shocked. 

And as John Harbaugh once said, "pay the man."