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Joe Flacco reclined on the couch in his parents’ living room, arms folded behind his head, corners of his mouth turned ever so slightly upward to reciprocate the amusement in his grayish blue eyes.

This is how I remember him from that morning in Audubon, New Jersey, 17 1/2 years ago — chill almost to the point of being languid, but also in on the joke.

A few days earlier, at a news conference presenting the 23-year-old Flacco as the Ravens’ latest first-round draft pick, I introduced myself to his father, Steve. I told the elder Flacco I wanted to profile Joe for The Baltimore Sun, to help a town with Johnny U in its marrow become acquainted with its new quarterback.

Sure, he said, come up to the house next week.

Such an invitation to a local newspaper writer would be inconceivable in the hyper-managed, image-obsessed NFL of today. Even then, it was unusual. But the Flaccos were unusual people, eager to see their boy get his due after a messy college reset from Pitt to Division I-AA Delaware, yet endearingly matter-of-fact about him stepping into the most glamorous, scrutinized job in American sport.

So I drove the two hours to South Jersey and sat with the family for much of the day, listening to Karen Flacco describe her son as “a big dork” while he swatted down his younger brothers’ musings about what he might buy them with his new contract. Steve was the most eager talker, and Joe — even then disinclined to puffery — would occasionally roll his eyes to indicate his dad was getting carried away. The franchise quarterback-to-be was a good sport, throwing a few spirals in front of his family’s tidy suburban home for the benefit of a Baltimore Sun photographer.

Flacco is 40 now, near the end (presumably) of a tortuous career that has somehow led to him being one of our most liked athletes. On Thanksgiving night, he’ll suit up for the Cincinnati Bengals in perhaps his final visit to M&T Bank Stadium as an active player. (Though only a fool would say for certain that he won’t continue past this season.)

It’s possible he’s more universally appreciated now than he has ever been — an everyman father of five who keeps going to work with understated humor, even when things aren’t great, and who can still throw a 50-yard spiral with the easy flick of his right wrist.

It turns out that America loves a fully realized version of the dude I met in his parents’ living room in 2008.

Steve Flacco laughed when I called him last week. “We definitely feel like he has a way more positive reception in the media,” he said. “He resonates with more people being the age he is and having kids. I think he’s more willing to share. ... Outside of Baltimore, who was going to love Joe Flacco until recently?”

By keeping on past the point anyone thought he would, Flacco has let us in.

“Honestly, I think he’ll go as long as he can, until they kick him to the curb,” said former Ravens tight end Dennis Pitta, who still speaks with Flacco at least once a week. “I think he’s said it, ‘You don’t get many opportunities to play in the NFL, and I’m going to maximize my opportunity.’ He’s got a great perspective, especially the older he gets.”

Baltimore has never witnessed an athletic career quite like Flacco’s. He won right away, earning plaudits for his unflappability even as his statistics lagged behind those of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and Drew Brees, the quarterbacks who ruled the NFL he joined. Then, for the right four games at the close of the 2012 season, he was better than any of them, miraculous really as he piloted the Ravens to their second Super Bowl victory.

He signed for well-earned riches, then began his dance with that damned word: elite.

What did it mean and could it be applied to a quarterback whose teams and passing numbers were so ordinary after his Super Bowl masterpiece? Terrell Suggs, an inveterate needler of subpar quarterbacks but an outspoken Flacco fan, once wore a T-shirt with his teammate’s visage printed above the term in all caps.

As much as we want to believe every great quarterback makes his own destiny, context tells so much of the tale.

What if Flacco had not been drafted by a franchise accustomed to winning with defense and ball control? What if he’d been gifted an All-Pro wide receiver and encouraged to fill the air with bombs? Might he have won less but accumulated gaudier statistics?

Former Ravens teammates believe so. (When asked what set Flacco apart during his immaculate 2012 postseason, seven-time All-Pro guard Marshal Yanda said, “I think it was him cutting it loose. He pushed it, and it paid off.”)

But they admire him for choosing to be the quarterback they needed rather than chasing selfish glory.

“I would say he’s the ultimate competitor,” Yanda said. “He played through so many injuries no one knew about. I can remember a time when his hip and half his leg was black and blue and, like, he didn’t even tell us about it until we’d seen it in the training room. The guy’s just a person you can count on.”

Teammates felt it was the height of absurdity when outsiders mistook Flacco’s placid exterior as evidence that he lacked passion.

“He’s very stoic on the field,” Pitta said. “To be honest, that has served him well. ... He does seem like he’s boring, because he comes and sits in the same spot on the bench every time; he doesn’t talk to too many people. He stares off into the distance, and people think, ‘He’s not interested in this game.’ But that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

We never did resolve the elite debate.

Flacco’s flat affect seemed to invite fans and analysts to project a wild range of meanings onto his career. Was he cool or apathetic? Wholesome or corny? Dependable or boring? Clutch or a four-game wonder? Comedian Stavros Halkias went so far as to create a character, Ronnie from Dundalk, who revealed his backwardness in part by favoring Flacco’s pocket-based stolidity over Lamar Jackson’s improvisatory genius.

One of the joys of Flacco’s extended denouement has been the widening realization that he does love this. Why else would he keep doing it?

Not to mention he gets to share NFL Sundays with his kids, the eldest of whom are now playing football themselves. Even if they take Dad for granted, he’s given them license to meet Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Tyreek Hill among others in the NFL firmament.

“It’s a blast,” Pitta said. “I’ve never been so invested in Bengals and Browns outcomes. Seeing him go to all these different stops and being able to still root for him, it’s so much fun. It is crazy that he’s still playing. It feels like so long ago when we were all in Baltimore together. But he doesn’t look any different; he looks like the same quarterback I played with.”

In 2018, Flacco gave way (graciously, though without conceding his obsolescence) to his wondrous successor, Jackson. In 2019, the Ravens traded Flacco to Denver, where he took worrisome punishment for the hopelessly mediocre Broncos. The next year, he was in New York as a backup to Sam Darnold for the 2-14 Jets. He had said before departing Baltimore that he never saw himself as a long-term reserve, so the end felt near.

Only, that’s not what happened. He kept signing on for another go-round, first in New York, then in Cleveland, where he brought improbable good vibes to a tortured fan base wrestling with its dislike for Deshaun Watson, then in Indianapolis, then back in Cleveland before the trade that sent him to the Bengals a month into this season.

“It has definitely surprised me,” Pitta said of his friend’s persistence. “When you know Joe like I know Joe, he’s got a lot of pride. I think he believes, to his credit, that he’s an incredibly capable quarterback, and he wants to continue to prove that. That’s what great athletes have to have, and that has allowed him to kind of swallow his pride and be like, ‘I’ll be a backup somewhere, because I know at some point, I’ll get an opportunity and play better than this dude.’”

Flacco called Yanda, retired since 2019, on a recent Friday afternoon.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, how are you still playing?’” Yanda said. “But if I wasn’t beat up, I’d still be playing too. [Joe] chuckled, and he said, ‘Man, I’m getting older, but that drive is still there.’”

Cincinnati is suffering through a miserable fall, with franchise quarterback Joe Burrow shelved by a toe injury (he might return Thursday) and a defense challenging to be the worst in recent memory. But Flacco, as he does, has introduced a few beams of light. He beat the Steelers in prime time after Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin groused about Cleveland’s intradivision trade to aid the Bengals. He nearly authored a 15-point comeback against the Chicago Bears until that aforementioned Cincinnati defense handed it back.

He’s playing with a sprained right shoulder but generally proving that if you give him two Pro Bowl wide receivers, like Chase and Higgins, he can still light up a scoreboard. He recently became just the 17th NFL quarterback to start at least 200 games, and aside from the ample salt in his once-dark chin stubble, he doesn’t look too different from that guy who came to Baltimore in 2008.

It’s the appreciation for Flacco that has changed, and it has only so much to do with his work on the field.

Even fans who’d been slow to warm to him could not resist this nugget from last month: “I used to see guys sitting at a bar by themselves or just sitting by themselves eating and grabbing a little meal and I’m like, ‘Man, I feel so bad for that guy.’ You almost wanted to join him. Now, I realize that dude was in heaven.”

Amen.

After that one went viral, a few friends asked me, “Was he always this funny?”

And the answer is yes, if you developed a feel for his rhythm. Ravens beat writers have spent years joking about how Flacco started so many answers with the dad-coded phrase, “Hey listen ...” What followed wasn’t always scintillating, but he had a way of puncturing the heightened solemnity that too often accompanies NFL discourse.

Who could forget the time he praised Ray Lewis as one of the sport’s sincerest leaders and in the next breath added, “I didn’t know what he was talking about 90% of the time.” Flacco said it with a grin but hinted at a deeper truth: You could both appreciate Lewis’ greatness and hold on to a little healthy skepticism regarding his grandiosity.

The same deadpan wit has infused his more recent commentary on aging and fatherhood.

“I think he’s just getting more comfortable, not worrying as much about what he says and being more of himself,” Yanda observed. “You’re seeing more of what we’ve seen in the locker room.”

In thinking through Flacco’s arc, I felt compelled to call my old friend, Kevin Van Valkenburg. We both chronicled early Flacco for The Baltimore Sun, and Van Valkenburg wrote a definitive profile (the source of that quote on Lewis) of him for ESPN in 2013, when he was at his apex as the Ravens’ centerpiece and as a Rorschach test for NFL fans everywhere.

“The biggest thing about the way Joe’s perceived now,” Van Valkenburg said, “is that he seems so comfortable in his legacy and his place that he’s almost become like this distributor of wisdom on aging. He’s got a little twinkle in his eye and he’s like, ‘Hey, of course I’m old, but I love to play football! We’re all just kind of cheating time out here.’”

We agreed that Flacco showed glimpses of this character when he was a much younger man, especially if you spoke to him informally, as Van Valkenburg did over a round of golf when he was writing that ESPN profile.

“Everybody was like, ‘Oh, Joe’s going to be a tough interview. He’s boring as crap,’” Van Valkenburg recalled. “But he gave so much stuff that I couldn’t use 70% of it. And afterward, we went into the bar and just sat there for another 90 minutes drinking beers and talking about just football at large. That was when he gave that quote about Ray.”

Like me, Van Valkenburg has taken delight from Flacco’s recent comfort in revealing more of himself.

“There’s certain men who grow into their personalities and their essence as they grow older,” he said. “I sometimes think of Joe as like, ‘Man, we grew up together.’”

Was Flacco ever truly “elite” outside those four postseason games in January and February 2013? Does it matter anymore?

He’s spinning beautiful balls long past the point when most observers thought he’d stop and spinning words that resonate with anyone confronting life’s uncertain middle.

“Listen, there’s something to it that has been easier to enjoy,” Steve Flacco said of his son’s late career. “We’re not as critical as we typically would’ve been. He’s playing with house money a little bit. We can enjoy the positives and get by the negatives a lot quicker.”

Flacco is more relatable, more interesting than rival quarterbacks who vied to be the GOAT. You could imagine plopping down next to him at a Saturday morning rec soccer game and grumbling amiably about the kids. But unlike you, he could throw for 470 yards against the Bears the next afternoon.

He’s one of the five most important players in Ravens history. More than that, though, he juxtaposes the ordinary and the extraordinary as well as any athlete going today.