Joe Flacco misses birth of son to play for Ravens

Joe Flacco misses birth of son to play for Ravens

Joe Flacco misses birth of son to play for Ravens, Joe Flacco was in a jam Sunday. Should he join his wife, Dana, in New Jersey for the birth of their second son or play for the Baltimore Ravens in their home opener against the Cleveland Browns?

Flacco, who knew Sunday morning that the baby was coming a week early, made up his mind to play. He wasn’t going to miss the first 2013 game in Baltimore, the first home game since he signed that big, new contract and became one of the leaders of the team with the departure of Ray Lewis. He especially wasn’t going to miss it with the Super Bowl champions facing the possibility of a 0-2 start.

“Anytime you have a child, it’s one of your best days,” Flacco said after the Ravens’ 14-6 victory. “The game didn’t go exactly how we wanted it to, but that’s how we’ve won football games around here. We’re able to win like this, and sometimes you have to do it in an ugly way.”

Flacco and his teammates considered punking their coach by telling him that he was heading to his wife’s side, then thought better of it. “I’m so glad he didn’t do it,” Coach John Harbaugh said (via the Baltimore Sun). “He would have had me hook, line and sinker and in the boat. To play with that on your mind, I think obviously says a lot, and we appreciated that.”

Flacco learned just before noon that the baby had arrived and that both mother and son, named Daniel, were fine. And Dana passed up the opportunity to get back at her husband, choosing not to give the world “Anquan Flacco.”