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Joe Flacco did not like the call. No, sir. Thought it was weak. Thought it smelled like surrender. Thought it was a big ol' 'fraidy-cat call by a bunch of  'fraidy-cat coaches who preferred hiding under their beds instead of trying to, you know, win a football game.

So, here's what Joe Flacco did, as his Broncos were clinging to a one-point lead that turned into a two-point loss to the Colts:

1. Ignored his helmet mike and said "Screw those lily-livers with their run-it-up-the-middle bulls*** on third-and-5. We're gonna throw the football and get the bleepity-bleep first down right here."

2. Ran the play as ordered, then complained about it afterward.

If you chose door No. 2, congratulations. You officially understand how things work these days in the National Fainthearts League.

Now, no one's ever going to mistake Joe Flacco for Joe Namath or Kenny Stabler or any other swashbuckling quarterback of yore. Those guys would have said "Screw that play," dialed up a pass and finished the Colts for good. That's because, back in the yore, quarterbacks actually had minds of their own. They were not slaves to scheme or probability or the prevent offense -- and their coaches understood that what they were seeing out on the field trumped what some coordinator was seeing from a mile up in the pressbox.

Alas, those days are done. It's a coaches' game now, and that's a fact. And so all Joe Flacco could do was complain.

"I just look at it like, we’re now a 2-6 football team and we’re afraid to go for it in a two-minute drill, you know?” he said. “Like, who cares if you give the ball back to the guys with 1:40 left? They obviously got the field goal anyway.

“And once again: We’re a 2-6 football team. And it just feels like we’re kind of afraid to lose a game ... I just felt like, what do we have to lose? Why can’t we be aggressive in some of these situations? That’s kind of how I feel about a lot of the game today.”

He's absolutely right, of course. But saying so after the fact doesn't answer the essential question here, which is "If you hated the play that bad, why didn't you just channel Joe or Kenny and audible out of it?"

The answer: Because obviously he didn't have that option. Or at least didn't think he did.

Crazy game.