Joe Flacco Outshines Tom Brady, but Still Comes Up Short FOXBOROUGH , Mass. - He outplayed Tom Brady. Even the most ardent Brady supporter would have to acknowledge that on Sunday Joe Flacco outshone the New England Patriots" star quarterback. The numbers back it up. The oft-questioned Flacco did everything he could to get the Baltimore Ravens past the Patriots in the A.F.C. Championship game, only to watch his team's season come to an end, 23-20, on a missed 32-yard field-goal attempt that would have forced overtime. Flacco threw for more yards than Brady, 306 to 239. He threw two touchdown passes to Brady's none. He was intercepted once, Brady twice. And, he prevailed in passing rating, 95.4 percent to 57.5 percent. The Ravens had been 31-3 when Flacco had a rating of at least 95. But a dropped pass and a missed field goal in their final drive doomed him and the Ravens. There will be plenty of opportunities in Baltimore to find fault in this loss, but it is difficult to put the blame on Flacco. In his second A.F.C. title game appearance, he started slowly, but played close to flawlessly in the middle. He shook off a fourth-quarter interception to lead a relentless drive to put the Ravens in position to win or, at least, tie the game. Instead of a Super Bowl berth, Flacco was left with a franchise playoff passing record of 306 yards. "People can say what they want about Joe Flacco," said tight end Dennis Pitta, whose 6-yard second-quarter reception tied the score, 10-10. He was tremendous. Joe has been great all year. I think from the outside, people have a different perception of him. But inside this locker room, we have the utmost confidence in him. Flacco entered the game having led the Ravens to the playoffs in each of his first four seasons. No other quarterback had done that since the 1970 merger. He has won five postseason games in those four years. With 1 minute 44 seconds left to play, it appeared he might add a sixth victory when, in Brady-like fashion, he took the Ravens from their own 21 to the New England 14. Two plays then determined the outcome. The first was a Flacco pass to wide receiver Lee Evans, who had beaten defensive back Sterling Moore in the end zone. Evans got his hands on the ball and appeared to have caught it. But Moore managed to get a hand in and knock away the ball. "I don't know what happened," Evans said. It's tough. The most disappointing part of it is that I let everyone in this locker room and everyone in Baltimore down. After another incompletion, Billy Cundiff came on to attempt a 32-yard field goal that would have tied the game. It was a kick that Cundiff said, "I've probably made two thousand times since training camp." He had missed only twice from inside 40 yards all season and had not missed in the fourth quarter. But he missed this one, pulling it to the left. "I felt up to that point that I had given the guys a lot of reasons to believe in me," he said. I let my teammates down. Afterward, no one questioned whether Flacco was rattled by the Patriots" defense, as Ravens" safety Ed Reed suggested he would be after Baltimore's victory over Houston the week before. There were missed opportunities: a potential first-quarter touchdown pass from Flacco to a wide-open Torrey Smith, who was underthrown. The Raven settled for a field goal. The Ravens also failed to capitalize after Danny Woodhead fumbled a kickoff return, settling instead for another field goal. But Flacco gave the Ravens a chance to make up for those in the final minutes. They just fell short. Defensive end Cory Redding said he could not stress enough how hard Flacco played. "They need to get off him," Redding said of Flacco's critics. The guy is a playmaker. I hope everyone respected what they saw out of that guy. Flacco, of course, would rather have played poorly and still won the game. He was realistic afterward, complimenting the Patriots and reminding everyone that this was football and one team had to lose. "We laid it on the line and left it all out there on the field," he said. Meanwhile, on the field, the crowd roared as the Patriots received the A.F.C. Championship trophy. Brady told the fans that he did not play well. Flacco momentarily turned wistful, hearing the noise, and saying, "That could have been us out there."