STYLE OF HIS OWN
Towson’s Tom Flacco may be ‘cool’ like Joe, but he’s his own QB
Towson’s Tom Flacco tends to be unassuming, personifying the “Joe Cool” moniker attached to his famous brother. But call Flacco a “running quarterback” at your own risk.
In high school, he threw for 7,387 career yards, which ranked as the third-highest total in southern New Jersey history. The redshirt junior ranks ninth among all Football Championship Subdivision quarterbacks with 1,482 passing yards and is tied for fourth in touchdown throws with 14. But he can’t seem to shake the perception that he is a quarterback who relies extensively on his legs.
“That bothered me,” Flacco said after the No. 17 Tigers’ 52-28 blowout of then-No. 13 Stony Brook on Saturday. “I don’t know why I got it. Even in high school, if you look at my stats, I threw for 7,000-something yards. So I was kind of wondering why I got that. It must have been some of the coaches that I was with, but I knew I could throw the ball. I knew I was a quarterback who’s athletic, not just an athletic quarterback.”
To be fair, Flacco does lead the Tigers in rushing, gaining 326 yards on 66 carries and scoring twice. But if observers are paying attention to only what he does with his legs, they are short-changing themselves, according to older brother Joe, the Ravens’ Super Bowl-winning quarterback.
“I’ve watched him play, and he’s got a strong arm, he’s accurate, and he’s able to create a little space when he needs to and still have that strength in his arm to get it downfield and get it in an accurate spot,” said Joe, who is 10 years older than Tom, his youngest sibling. “I think he’s a good athlete. He can run the ball. I think people probably assume that that is what he is more of, but he really has the capability to take advantage of some of the things that are presented.”
Flacco’s journey to Towson (4-1, 2-0 Colonial Athletic Association) was not serendipitous. After transferring from Western Michigan to Rutgers, Flacco sat out the 2017 season as a redshirt and was buried on the Scarlet Knights depth chart behind three other quarterbacks.
came a pipeline to Maryland.
“I thought [about] his growth potential and told him he was going to be a corner, a [defensive back],” Abdul-Rahim, now in his third season as a Maryland assistant, said Tuesday. “He looked like he was going to be a big, fast, physical corner.
“He was pretty mature for the seventh grade, his movement skills were a little bit advanced for his age, for that position. If you get technique with God-given ability, you’ve got a good player on your hands.”
A little more than five years after those training sessions began, Ellis and AbdulRahim reunited at Maryland. Ellis was a four-star prospect at wide receiver who was part of DJ Durkin’s first recruiting class in 2016. Abdul-Rahim coached the secondary.
It was the second time Abdul-Rahim had to recruit Ellis.
The first time came when Ellis, whose family lived in Reisterstown, was in high school at DeMatha Catholic and he was part of a group of players to commit to Maryland, including running back Lorenzo Harrison III and wide receiver DJ Turner.
The second time came when AbdulRahim was trying to add athleticism to the Maryland secondary during the 2016 season when there was more potential playing time for cornerbacks than there was for wide receivers.
“It wasn’t going to be a permanent move as I recall,” Abdul-Rahim said. “We didn’t have a lot of depth, so we wanted freshmen to play. We played a few players both ways and he was one of the guys that was just more natural at corner.”
After Ellis played both receiver and cornerback as a freshman in the season opener against Howard, Abdul-Rahim recalled, ”I went and snatched him up and kept him over with us.”
Starting once as a freshman and in six of the team’s 12 games a year ago as a sophomore, Ellis has taken over after the early departure of JC Jackson (now with the New England Patriots) and is typically assigned to cover the opponent’s top receiver.
Ellis said the most difficult part of the conversion was learning the playbook and to “flip it” so that he could have a better understanding of what he was supposed to do as a cornerback than as a receiver.
“In year 3, I have more knowledge of the playbook,” Ellis said after practice Tuesday night. “So I know where I need to be and certain plays compared to my freshman year when I was out there trying to learn technique and trying to learn the game.”
Asked if his background as a wide receiver has helped in his development as a cornerback, Ellis said, “It definitely gives me insight. Sometime I can tell by the step or the release of the receiver what he is going to do.”
Ellis was reminded about his youthful reluctance to play cornerback. Ellis, who played a little safety at DeMatha, said he started to change his mind as he studied who was playing the position when he got to college.
“I watched other guys work, such as Will Likely III, who mentored me,” said Ellis, who leads the Terps with seven pass breakups, including five against Minnesota in a 42-13 win. “That made me want to play the position even more.”
Ellis said Likely became almost a personal coach on the sideline and in the film room when the former all-Big Ten cornerback tore his ACL midway through his senior year in 2016.
“He showed me how to watch film, look at the breaks of the receivers,” Ellis said.
Abdul-Rahim said Ellis has gone from taking “baby steps” in trying to learn a new position where “it becomes about your instincts and muscle memory just takes over. It takes time. He’s done a great job.”
Not that Abdul-Rahim, who came to Maryland after serving two years on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama, is totally satisfied with the progress the now-6-foot-1, 195pound Ellis has made at cornerback.
“There’s plenty of room for improvement, but he’s on the right path,” AbdulRahim said.
Though he has developed into a key player for a much-improved defense, this has been a tough year for Ellis personally. Three months after the death of offensive lineman Jordan McNair, Ellis suffered another profound loss.
Last Thursday night, former DeMatha High teammate Jaylen Brown plunged to his death from a 16th-floor dormitory room window at Duquesne. Pittsburgh police are investigating Brown’s death and have characterized it as a “tragic accident.”
Chanel Ellis said that her son was part of a group chat of former DeMatha players, including Brown, “every day.” According to Ellis’ mother, Brown will be buried Monday, the same day her younger son turns 21.
In January, one of the closest friends of Ellis’ older brother, Shelton, also died. Evan Pittman, who had played football at Sacred Heart, had been like a second big brother to Tino Ellis when he was growing up in Baltimore.
Ellis acknowledged that the past few months have been difficult, but have helped him mature and put football in a different light.
“It definitely made me look at life through a different perspective, appreciate the small things and appreciate people and the time people have with one another,” Ellis said.