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OWINGS MILLS, Md. - In the afterglow of a playoff victory over Pittsburgh last weekend, Ravens coach John Harbaugh proclaimed Joe Flacco to be the best quarterback in football.Given time to reflect on his comment, Harbaugh didnt back down.I said it. I meant it, Harbaugh said after Tuesdays practice.Flaccos numbers in the post-season support Harbaughs lofty assessment.After throwing two touchdown passes in a 30-17 win over the Steelers, Flacco improved to 5-0 in his last five playoff games. He has 13 TDs, no interceptions and a 116.6 quarterback rating during that span. He was Super Bowl MVP two years ago, is 10-4 in the post-season and has more road playoff wins (seven) than any quarterback in NFL history.Flacco has twice as many playoff wins as peers Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger.So, is this guy elite or what?At the end of the day it doesnt really matter what everybody wants to think, Flacco said. It obviously means a lot for a head coach to stand up in front of everybody in the whole world and say those kind of things. Whether it really means anything, I dont know. But it definitely means a lot to me.Harbaugh became Baltimores coach in 2008, the same year the Ravens made Flacco their top draft pick out of Delaware. The two have been to the post-season in six of seven years.Joe has a great arm, is a very good athlete, a big, strong guy in the pocket, can make any throw in any kind of weather, Harbaugh said.Especially in the playoffs.Hes a good quarterback, period, said New England coach Bill Belichick, whose top-seeded Patriots (12-4) host the Ravens (11-6) on Saturday.I have a lot of respect for him, Belichick said. He has a great arm, can throw the ball the length of the field with guys hanging all over him. Hes mobile. Hes athletic enough to extend plays, makes good decisions, uses all his weapons.Flacco and the Ravens beat the Patriots 28-13 in the AFC championship game two years ago to advance to the Super Bowl. Flacco joined Joe Montana as the only quarterbacks in NFL history to throw 11 touchdown passes without an interception in a single post-season.Big-time players show up when you need them most, and thats how hes been, Ravens fourth-year receiver Torrey Smith said. Hes as good as anyone, and maybe the best in the playoffs these past few years.Soon after Baltimore beat San Francisco 34-31 in the Super Bowl, Flacco received a contract worth $120.6 million that made him the highest-paid player in NFL history.To this point, its been a worthwhile investment. Although the Ravens went 8-8 and missed the playoffs last year, theyve never had a losing record and are 82-44 (including the post-season) with Flacco as a starter. Oh, and hes started every game since the outset of his rookie year.Flacco has thrown 166 passes in the playoffs since his last interception, in the 2011 AFC title game in New England.Im doing the best I can to put everybody in position to do good things, he said. Put the ball in their hands and let them take over.Flacco is 6-foot-6 but surprisingly agile in the pocket. Against Pittsburgh, he scrambled to his left to elude the rush and threw off his back foot to connect with Smith for an 11-yard touchdown that made it 20-9.His athletic ability is underrated, Smith said. Hes been making plays like that for a long time.In the playoffs, though, something special happens when Flacco is on the field.Hes a franchise quarterback and has had a great career, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said.Brady is among a select few top-shelf quarterbacks considered to be the best in the game by those not named John Harbaugh.The cool thing about it is, Tom was playing for who knows how many years before I got in here, Flacco said. I was in high school watching him win Super Bowls.Flacco is 2-1 in the playoffs against the Patriots, but warns that those games — and this one — arent about Brady vs. Flacco.Its not really me outdueling Tom or him outdueling me, he insisted. Were not playing against each other.___AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFL Fake China Jerseys . -- Felix Girard scored on the power play in the third period to lift the Baie-Comeau Drakkar past the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada 4-3 in Quebec Major Junior Hockey League action Friday. China Jerseys Cheap . The 23-year-old McNabb was an All-Star with the American Hockey Leagues Rochester Americans this season, posting seven goals and 22 assists in 38 games. In 12 games with the Sabres this season, McNabb has accumulated six penalty minutes and a plus-1 rating. He has scored one goal and seven assists in 37 career games with the Sabres, who originally selected him in the third round (66th overall) of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft. https://www.chinajerseyscheap.us/ .com) - The game was all punts and field goals before Kodi Whitfields catch. Cheap Jerseys From China . It was the start of one nice night for the goalie and the Minnesota Wild. Backstrom made 33 saves in his first win of the season and the Wild defeated the Chicago Blackhawks 5-3 on Saturday in a rematch of their first-round playoff series. China Jerseys Wholesale . The Brazilian-born strikers brace drew him level with Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo as the leagues leading scorers with 17 goals apiece through 16 rounds. "The important thing is to help the team win, not the goals," Diego Costa said. After a first half dominated by defence, Atletico pressed Valencia into its area and Diego Costa did the rest.GLENDALE, Ariz. - The entire world will be watching Glendale on Sunday as it hosts the Super Bowl and the legions of fans who are shelling out big bucks to see the big game.What may be not visible amid all the hoopla is a sobering reality about the Super Bowl host city: Glendale is suffering deep financial issues over its troubled effort to become a sports destination.Glendale bet big on professional sports in the last 15 years, spending millions of dollars on a hockey arena for the Arizona Coyotes and investing heavily in a spring training ballpark for the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers. Then the economy tanked, and the hockey team went through bankruptcy, with several different owners in recent years.The city has found stronger financial footing since then and its bond rating has improved markedly, but not without having to raise taxes, trim 25 per cent of the municipal workforce, cut back on paving projects, and reduce hours at municipal swimming pools and libraries. The 9.2 per cent sales tax that shoppers and diners pay in Glendale is among the highest in the state.To fiscal conservatives, Glendale serves as a cautionary tale for suburban cities across the United States that want to throw public money at professional sports projects.Overall, its a bad move for cities, said Kurt Altman, general counsel for the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, which fought Glendale over its enticements to the hockey team. As much as they say its going to make the city a destination, it just doesnt.Glendale is a city of about 250,000 people in the northwest part of the Phoenix metro area. The location where the Arizona Cardinals stadium and the Arizona Coyotes arena were built had been a dusty farm area. The agricultural influence is visible to people driving to games when they pass tractors and farm equipment in nearby fields.As the Coyotes and Cardinals sought new facilities in the early 2000s and efforts failed to build them in other parts of the Phoenix area, Glendale stepped in. The city helped pay for the Coyotes arena with $167 million in bonds in 2003, and as the hockey teams finances began to fade during the recession, Glendale went all-in to keep the team in Arizona. The city dished out $50 million earlier this decade to keep the team and continues to make annual payments toward the arena, but the money it is gettting in return has not met expectations.dddddddddddd.The football stadium was built in 2006, but Glendale was not on the hook for the costs of the $450 million retractable-roof facility. It was funded primarily with new taxes on car rentals and hotels in the Phoenix area, but that financing hit a snag last year when a judge ruled that the car rental tax was unconstitutional, leaving a major funding source for the Super Bowl venue in jeopardy. The issue is still being argued in the courts.Glendale is far from alone. Cities and states nationwide have long struggled with how much public money to spend on stadium projects. The effort to build a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings became embroiled in controversy over a financial commitment by the state that opponents said was excessive. The St. Louis Rams are at the centre of a debate over whether to spend public money on a new stadium. Topeka, Kansas, is immersed in a fight over a motorsports track that has drawn comparisons to hockey in Glendale.As he navigates the financial situation, Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers returns to a maxim he has repeated many times in his life: Im not living in the past. Im just paying for it.In the case of the Super Bowl, he believes the city is paying dearly. He said Glendale will actually lose a couple million dollars by hosting the event. Its spending huge amounts of money on overtime and police and public safety costs for the Super Bowl but not getting much back.Super Bowl visitors are mostly staying in Phoenix and Scottsdale and only showing up in Glendale on game day, meaning the city wont see much of a boost in tax revenue. And the city was hoping the state would reimburse Glendale for its police overtime costs, but lawmakers have scoffed at the idea.Weiers said it pains him that the city had to cut services and lay off workers, but the moves were necessary to ensure financial solvency. He said the outlook has improved in the last year, a far cry from a couple years ago when Glendale was in jeopardy of joining the likes of Detroit in the category of municipal bankruptcies.I have to believe that if 1 is perfect as things could be and 10 was bankruptcy, Id say we were a strong 8, Weiers said. We never had to go there, and I strongly believe we wont have to go there.___Follow Josh Hoffner at http://twitter.com/JoshHoffner. ' ' '