Jets Soar; Ravens Crash to the Ground!

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about how I was thinking of changing my fan devotion from the Ravens to the Jets because, while both teams had roughly the same record, the Jets showed far more fight and passion than the Ravens. Based on the outcome of this weekend's divisional playoff games, I think my first instinct was correct.

The Ravens have suffered from inconsistency all season, and that inconsistency showed itself in the game against the Indianapolis Colts. You just never know which Ravens team is going to show up from week to week: the feisty, dominating team or the lackluster, penalty-prone team. Unfortunately, the latter was the team that played Payton Manning. The Jets, on the other hand, played with guts and gusto against the overrated San Diego Chargers and moved on to the conference championship. Now, it's quite possible that the Ravens could have beaten the Chargers as well and that the Colts will make the Jets look just as bad as they made the Ravens look last Saturday. However, I'm sure Payton Manning is not looking forward to another pounding defense two weeks in a row, and the Jets might just have enough bravado and fight left to knock the Colts out of the Super Bowl. I can only hope Rex Ryan and the Jets can do to Indianapolis what the sad Ravens could not.

J-E-T-S! Jets, Jets, Jets!!!!!!

Ravens vs. Colts - Here We Go Again

Just like three years ago, the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts will meet in the divisional round of the playoffs, fighting for a chance to play in the Super Bowl. This year, however, the roles appear to be reversed.

In 2006, the Ravens went 13-3 on the season placing them as the second seed, which gave them a bye week and home field advantage. The Colts barely made a wild card spot and had to play on the road. The Ravens came into the game rested and confident while the Colts were beat up and hungry. The Colts beat the Ravens soundly and went on the win the Super Bowl.

This year, the Colts secured the top seed in week 14 with a perfect record and benched their starters for the last two weeks, giving them a 14-2 record. They've had their bye week and will have home field advantage. The Ravens squeaked into the last wild card spot and had to play a big game on the road against the Patriots. They are going into Lucas Oil Stadium beat up and hungry. Judging by the way they put a whoopin' on the Patriots, they are very hungry. I'm hoping this role reversal plays out the same way and the Ravens are Super Bowl bound.

The trouble is Payton Manning. There's something almost super human about his ability to win ball games. Even when you have him against the ropes the way the Ravens did earlier in the season, he somehow pulls out a win almost by force of will. It's as if he puts some sort of telepathic whammy on the other team so they will give up and let him score those extra points to win. In fact, I don't even think of the Colts as a team but as Payton Manning and his support players. If the Colts had to lose Payton Manning for a season the way the Patriots did with Brady the previous season, I doubt that they would come out with a winning record. I think they would look a lot like the Cleveland Browns if they had to go through a season with Curtis Painter under center.

But the fact is, Manning is healthy and rested after having not played in almost a month. Of course, this strategy has always worked against them in the playoffs and I have to hope that this will hold true this year as well. Frankly, I don't respect a team that doesn't come out and try to win every week regardless of whether or not they have anything to play for. Sure, they were 14-0 and had already secured the top seed, but saying that you are willing to throw away a perfect record so you can focus on the playoff run is simply un-American, in my opinion. There has to be some kind of bad kharma in being a professional athletic team and simply giving up because you think you have it made. I know the Colts fans are angry, and Payton Manning looked pretty angry about it although he took the company line publicly. This has to come back to haunt them. At least, I have to hope it does.

More importantly to me, I have to believe that last Sunday was not an aberration and that the Ravens will come out again with something to prove. They damn near beat the Patriots in the regular season and they damn near beat the Colts as well. The Ravens settled the score with the Patriots, so they must do the same with the Colts. This is the way it should be if they are to make it to the Super Bowl. The Ravens have to beat the elite teams in order to prove that they belong in that same category. I think this is quite do-able if they stick to the game plan they had with New England and mitigate Payton Manning as much as possible. The trouble is, it's much harder to get pressure on Manning than Brady. Sack Brady a couple of times and he becomes rattled. Even if you manage to sack Manning at all, he seldom loses his focus. He's just too damn good.

So all I can hope for is rusty starters and bad kharma and a really hungry Ravens team. If the Ravens can take out the Colts, I think the rest would be gravy. If they have to face the Chargers, so what? The Chargers are soft and the Ravens have beaten them before. If the Ravens have to take on the Jets, how cool would that be? Rex Ryan and John Harbaugh in a fight for the championship. That's like comic book stuff! I can't wait!

If only there was no Payton.

Chasing the Elusive National Spotlight

The Baltimore Sun ran a story today about how the Baltimore Ravens are not getting the respect they deserve. Of course, the Ravens always say the lack of attention fuels their competitive fire, but for many fans, this just feels like more hatred for the team that was once the Cleveland Browns. Even I, in my more heated moments, jump on the paranoia bandwagon when I marvel at how little attention our team gets even when we are playing well. It's hard to ignore when John Harbaugh gets zero votes for coach of the year or Joe Flacco gets zero votes for rookie of the year. Most Valuable Player? Give it to Payton Manning. Everybody loves Payton.

It would be easy to believe that the rest of the country hates us, and while I definitely believe that the NFL will never forgive us for taking Cleveland's team (like Indianapolis took ours, but that was okay for some reason), I don't think there are all that many Ravens haters out there. The real issue is that we have such a narrow market. With the Redskins to our south and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to our north, the Ravens market is basically the upper half of Maryland. Don't get me wrong, we have a rabid fan base. I kinda felt sorry for the Dolphins when I saw all those empty seats at their playoff game. It's a playoff game, for God's sake, and Miamians can't be bothered to come off the beach for that ?!! Even when the Ravens are playing lousy, M&T Bank Stadium is packed with 70,000 plus screaming fans. It's an intensely loyal following, but it will never extend very far since there are so many teams clustered in such a small area.

The only way for the Ravens to cultivate a following outside the Maryland area is to develop an image that transcends local pride. When Brian Billick was coach, he cultivated a star-driven, bad-ass image not unlike the hated Oakland Raiders. Football fans found it easy to dislike us with all our trash talking and penalties and tantrums on the field. The new coach, John Harbaugh, has cleaned up the team, instilled discipline, and has placed the focus on team rather than individual stars. This could go a long way to changing our image.

We also need a star that people will like. Ray Lewis is the heart and soul of the Ravens, but the general public will always remember that awkward murder case from almost 10 years ago. Despite all the good he's done, that incident has tainted him forever. Also, despite all his natural charisma, he comes across as stiff and stilted when he does TV commercials. He's just not natural in front of a camera.

In Joe Flacco, we have our franchise quarterback, but I doubt that he has the charisma to become a national media darling. He's a decent, hardworking, blue-collar kinda kid, but they don't call him "Joe Cool" for nothing. He is pretty flat and unemotional most of the time. The only commercial he's done so far is for a local restaurant, and it's laughably bad. He makes Elvis Presley look like Robert DeNiro.

Actually, it seems the very thing I like about the Ravens is probably the thing that will keep them from grabbing the national spotlight, and that is that they are a team of hardworking professionals who do their job well rather than a handful of individual stars with a team around them. The reason why the Dallas Cowboys became "America's Team" in the late 70s, in my opinion, was that they had no-nonsense guys like Roger Staubach and a straight-arrow coach like Tom Landry. Since then, they have more than spent that goodwill with an egomaniac owner and a handful of whiny, spoiled divas.

The media may want to hang on to that "America's Team" image because it's easy for them to promote, and the almost daily soap opera that is the Dallas Cowboys makes for tantalizing coverage, but the rest of the country has already tuned out. When it comes to football, America likes selfless, hardworking players, not selfish stars. The irony is that we want to single out those who don't want to be singled out. Perhaps that's why only a handful of them can actually play the balancing act. The Manning boys do it pretty well, but most get tripped up after awhile. Tony Romo is a nice guy, but the minute he put the moves on Jessica Simpson, he was tainted by the tabloid bug.

So it's likely that the Ravens will never really grab the national media nod that they deserve, even if they go all the way to the Super Bowl. However, fans have to keep in mind that few teams or players grab national attention, and many who do get it for all the wrong reasons. As long as they remain a great team that wins football games, who cares what the rest of the country thinks?

Where's the Love for the Ravens?

I'm becoming increasingly irritated with the national media's coverage of the NFL. They tend to treat it like a TV series where you have a handful of main characters (in this case, The Colts, The Patriots, The Cowboys, Last Year's Super Bowl Champs, and whatever team Farve is currently playing on), the semi-regular guest stars (usually The Steelers, The Eagles, The Seahawks, and maybe The Jaguars), and the bit players and extras (the remaining 23 teams). The Ravens are akin to a slab-bound crystal meth addict on an episode of CSI.

Case in point: The Ravens beat The Cincinnati Bengals 17 to 10 in their season opener Sunday in front of nearly 71,000 fans in M&T Bank Stadium. We're starting the season with a new head coach, mostly new coaching staff, a re-vamped offensive line, and a rookie quarterback who was meant to be a third-stringer until two weeks ago. And we won! So I'm watching Football Night in America, and instead of focusing on this Cinderella story, the ex-jocks in the glass cage can only rant about how poorly the Bengals played, as if they had money riding on the game or something. They literally did not mention the Ravens at all except to say "Flacco Who?" The Number 18 First Round Draft Choice, you big boobs!!!!

I realize that The Bengals are a crappy team and there's a lot more football down the road, but you can a least throw a bone to a team that struggling to rebound from a 5-11 season. Besides, no matter how well we do, the national media seems to take some sadistic glee in ignoring us or downplaying our success. Back in 2006, when we had won our first four games in a row, I was still hearing more about Tony Romo and he hadn't even taken his first snap as a starter yet. They had already elevated him to the calibre of Manning and Brady before he had done anything. Such is the nature of star-making from the likes of NBC and ESPN. The hot-and-heavy bromance that John Madden has for Tony Romo is truly distasteful!

When I was a kid, I loved to watch the Olympics on ABC because they always did those up-close-and-personal segments showing how some poor family in Podunk, Iowa hauled their kid to the skating rink at four o'clock every morning and ate Mac N' Cheese for eight years so they could afford to buy her proper skates and outfits. I loved that stuff because it showed the true sacrifice of the underdog with a dream. The overcoming of adversity to rise to the top. We don't seem to care about that anymore. We just want to see people who are automatically winners through birth or connections or dumb luck. Those struggling for greatness are viewed indifferently by the media. They'd rather play sicophants to those who are already on the top than seek out the true human drama in the up-and-comers.

The Ravens are going through a come-from-behind transition right now. I understand that former coach Brian Billick and some of the hot-headed veterans on the team created a reputation for The Ravens being the east coast version of The Raiders. But John Harbaugh is working hard to change that image, and he has a lot of rookie players who are buying into his mission. The low number of penalties in yesterday's game point to such a change. Why can't the media jump on this story as it's unfolding rather than take the wait-and-see attitude as they are prone to do? I suspect, even if we miraculously pull out enough wins to get a wild card slot in the playoffs, Bob Costas and the boys will still be wringing their hands and wasting air time over Brady's knee rather than saying anything nice about Baltimore.

Football is Back!

Football season officially starts for Baltimore tonight as the Ravens play their first preseason game against the New England Patriots tonight at 7:30, and I can't be more excited! Not that preseason games are all that interesting, and we all know that the Patriots will beat the pants off us, but I still love watching football and rooting for the Ravens no matter how bad they play. I tried to settle my burning football itch this summer by watching the Orioles, and when they were winning early on, I have to admit I felt like perhaps I might become a baseball fan. But as the weeks dragged on and the Orioles slipped further and further below .500, the early goodwill faded away and now I can't bring myself to watch a complete game anymore. Plus, I started to remember why I never liked baseball all that much: there's too many games! How can any one game or any one play matter when you have to play 165 freakin' games per season? In football, everything matters because there are only 16 games to prove yourself, and each playoff game has to be a win or you're out.

I know most people discount preseason games. They say they don't mean much and they don't count for anything. I don't subscribe to that mentality. I suppose if your favorite team is the Patriots or the Cowboys or the Colts, the preseason is meaningless because you already know you have a team full of seasoned pros who will sail into the playoffs no matter what. When you're a Ravens fan, these "meaningless" games give us a chance to see if there are any new gems in the mix who might take us to the promised land, because the Ravens always seem a few steps away from being great. That goes double for the offense.

Of course, we long-suffering Ravens fans can never count on the coach or GM to make the correct assessments from these rookie tryouts. I remember the summer of 2005, when we had already suffered through two seasons of the struggling Kyle Boller as starting quarterback, and we had just acquired Derek Anderson. While Boller and Anthony Wright showed that they were both still the bumbling twins, Anderson looked like a real quarterback. I was so excited that we might finally have a true starter in our midsts. Of course, our "offensive guru" Brian Billick saw things differently, cutting Anderson from the team and sticking with his boy Kyle. Last season, while we were still struggling and Anderson was becoming a shining star with the Browns, Billick gave one of his long-winded explanations about why he had to drop Anderson, rambling on incoherently about other priorities and such nonsense. The man could never admit a mistake, regardless of how many he made. We may not have Anderson this season, but thank God we don't have Billick this year either.

We've put our faith in an untested coach with John Harbaugh. I like Harbaugh as intensely as I hated Billick because he is the anti-Billick. He's honest, straight-forward, and not at all flashy or egotistical. His focus is on team-building and tough training camps. He's not going to pamper his veterans and put up with the thuggish attitude issues that have plagued the team in the past. If it costs us some of those high-priced prima donnas in the process, I say so be it. We're building a team for the future, and I don't mind if we lose a bunch of games this season so long as we weed out the dead wood and put together a cohesive team.

Along those lines, I'm encouraged to read about how well some of our draft picks are doing. I would love for running back Ray Rice to play great and give us the chance to dump that flake Willis McGahee. I don't know why Billick and GM Ozzie Newsome were so willing to take on players who were problem cases for other teams. They're just distractions. I hope Harbaugh will kick him to the curb. I also hope that Troy Smith and Joe Flacco give us a reason to have faith in them as our quarterbacks of the future. I like Kyle Boller as a person, but I just don't think he has what it takes to be a starting quarterback. Another Billick mistake we need to correct.

I know I don't have any profound insights on the subject of football, but I've watched enough ESPN to know that those guys don't know any better than I do what's going to happen. They base their opinions on how teams played the previous season, and in the NFL, most teams never look like they did the previous season. Between the draft, free agency, and the salary cap, few teams can maintain any continuity. As much as I hate the Patriots and Bill Belichick, I have to give them credit for having a consistently strong team year after year. I think it all starts with a team mentality, and that no one player is bigger than the team. That's an attitude I think Harbaugh will bring to the Ravens. Billick was all about star making, including for himself. I've had a bellyful of that and look forward to the Ravens becoming a team that Baltimore can be proud of, not just because of wins, but because they play cleanly and professionally. Time will tell, and I'm so glad that time starts tonight.