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          NFL Nation

          'Is Joe Flacco elite' sign crashes Republican debate

          • Jamison Hensley, ESPN Staff WriterAug 6, 2015, 11:02 PM ET
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              Jamison Hensley is a reporter covering the Baltimore Ravens for ESPN. Jamison joined ESPN in 2011, covering the AFC North before focusing exclusively on the Ravens beginning in 2013. Jamison won the National Sports Media Association Maryland Sportswriter of the Year award in 2018, and he authored a book titled: Flying High: Stories of the Baltimore Ravens. He was the Ravens beat writer for the Baltimore Sun from 2000-2011.
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          The first question asked at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, where the first Republican debate was held, was an unexpected one.

          A sign reading "Is Joe Flacco a Elite Quaterback? (sic)" wound up on MSNBC's coverage Thursday night, and it quickly spread throughout social media. The humorous stunt was the work of PFTCommenter, an irreverent blogger who has an obsession with the Baltimore Ravens quarterback's status among NFL passers.

          Whenever someone asks Flacco about the "elite" label, he typically greets it with a smile.

          "There’s always some kind of question out there that tends to be the trendy one that everybody is asking this year or that year," Flacco said last season. "That’s just the word they used: ‘Elite, elite, elite.’ Who knows where it came from, but that’s just what it was. So, I think a lot of that has kind of quieted down a little bit, and we’ve gone out and won, and we’ve won consistently."

          Unfortunately, no one asked Donald Trump about his stance on this issue.