Joe Flacco had to sleep in a room with Tom Brady posters during the NFL offseason

It’s not abnormal for kids to decorate their rooms with posters of their favorite athletes. It’s a little abnormal when your brother is an NFL quarterback and you decorate your room with posters of his rival. It’s downright offensive when that rival is Tom Brady.

And it’s got to be a bit of a gut punch when your brother, Super Bowl champion Joe Flacco of the Baltimore Ravens, is forced to sleep in that room, in his own house, for a few months during the offseason.

Yet for the first two years of his career, that’s exactly the type of torture Flacco put up with when he went to stay with his parents in New Jersey. To his credit, Flacco didn’t make a big deal out of it.

It’s really nothing to be ashamed of, it just feels a bit weird. Like that scene in Like Mike when Dirk Nowitzki asks Bow Wow (née Lil’ Bow Wow) for his autograph. There are no written rules against it, it’s just generally not done or talked about.

But maybe there’s something more going on here. Maybe, just maybe, Flacco was trying to improve his game by osmosis.

Think about it. He slept in a room with Tom Brady posters during the summers of 2009 and 2010. After the first year of the “experiment,” Flacco went 1-1 against Brady’s Patriots, throwing for 264 yards and two touchdowns in a regular season loss while Brady passed for 258 yards and one touchdown. A few months later in the postseason, the Ravens came away with a 33-14 victory in New England with Brady recording just 154 yards on two touchdowns. Flacco threw for just 34 yards and no touchdowns, but maybe that was just to throw us off the trail. Maybe he had Space Jammed the power right out of Touchdown Tom and knew he had to hide it.

So, of course, he would do the same thing the following offseason. Except it didn’t work out as planned. Flacco threw for 285 yards and two touchdowns against the Patriots, while Brady had 292 yards and one touchdown, but it wasn’t enough. The Ravens lost, 23-20.

If this was the case, we really don’t blame Flacco for trying. When you’re in the same conference as Brady you better be doing all you can to get an edge.

If not, props to Joe’s sibling. That’s some good younger brother-ing right there.

The Ravens visit the Patriots on Monday Night Football this week. Someone should probably check the walls in Flacco’s hotel room to see if he’s trying to gain an extra advantage.