Ravens Reeling From Reality Check
Great headline, huh!?
The Baltimore Ravens got a huge dose of reality yesterday as the New York Giants made a statement to them as well as the entire NFL yesterday in their 30-10 beatdown. The Giants let the league know that they won't back down to anybody and will bring it whenever they want, while the Ravens see that they may have a winning record but are not nearly among the league's elite teams.
However, we are still in the playoff hunt and are only one game behind the AFC North division leading Pittsburgh Steelers, who pulled another one out of their butts with a last second victory over the pass defense-less San Diego Chargers. We got some help around the AFC as the Pats loss helps us stay in the Wild Card race. While I would be thrilled if we made the post season, I wouldn't expect much from this team going on the road for a playoff game against a decent team, based on what we've seen so far this year. It would probably be a one-and-done post season for us and while that might impress a lot of you who never expected much before this season started, I now have higher expectations. I want to see the Ravens finish strong, taking care of business at home and beating the poorer teams on the road. If that can hold true, we can resonably expect to go 5-1 down the stretch, with key victories this Sunday over Philadelphia and then home versus the Steelers. That would put us at 11-5, and probably be more than good enough for the division crown, a first round playoff bye and at least one home game in the post season. The Steelers final stretch is actually tougher than ours and to expect them to win the three tough road games is going to be a real test for them (@ New England, @ Baltimore, @ Tennessee). They also host the Cowboys, as well as the Browns and Bengals, but the Dallas game will be also be a tough one as the Cowboys will be fighting for a playoff spot themselves.
Therefore, don't dispair about yesterday's whupping by the Giants. They are by far, along with the Tennessee Titans, worlds above the rest of the league right now. In fact, they could suspend the rest of the season and I'd pay big bucks to see them play in the Super Bowl next week! However, that's why they play the games and I can't wait to see us rebound and defeat the Philadelphia Eagles at home next week. The good news is that we still have won four of our last five games and now have four of our final six at home the rest of the season.
Thanks to all of you who joined me for the Open Thread yesterday. There will still be Open Threads for the home games, but I won't be joining you, as I will be in my seats screaming like a banshee (Billick reference here) and carrying a big stick!
Like Ray Lewis says, you can't win them all and now it's time to move on and get ready for the next one. The Eagles actually tied the Bengals yesterday and if they play like they did when they come here, we can defeat them and get back on track.
More to follow the rest of the week about this game and the upcoming Eagles game next Sunday, which thankfully, is staying at its 1pm time slot and not being moved to prime time. Whew!
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13 comments
Comments
The loss helped
We all knew this was going to be a tough test for the Ravens. I think most of us expected the Giants to run the ball on us pretty well, but not 200+ yards well. That was absolutely insane how they tore apart our defense. They honestly played a better version of Ravens football than we did. They controlled the clock for the most part and wore us the fuck down with that running game (damn is Jacobs a beast). I always knew that Jacobs was a good runner, but coming into this game, I just felt he did not have the speed or agility to get by our front 7. WRONG! We realized yesterday that we do have weaknesses in our team, like every team does, that we thought were impenetrable.
We can all sit back, angry, and say that Samari got robbed of the int, Mason should have made that catch instead of it being intercepted for a td, Jacobs was already stopped in the backfield before he busted that huge run, we arm tackled, blah blah blah. But the fact of the matter is that we got our asses wooped, and it is something the Ravens do not like happening. We will bounce back and make everyone happy again, don’t worry.
Look at it this way guys, going into this 3 game road stretch, how many of us here said that we would be happy with getting 2 out of the 3? We did not know how it would come, but getting to a 6-4 record was very good for this team. We still have to be proud for what the Purple and Black have shown us the past few weeks. Winning 4 straight games, 3 on the road, and averaging 33+ a game, that is something we have never seen from this team. Sure, they were against some of the shittiest teams in the NFL, but I think it showed the team and ourselves that certain things will work with this team to beat the others out there.
This loss just brought the Ravens back down to the world we are used to them living in. It sucks, cause I really wanted to have a week where we would hear nothing but how good the Ravens are, but that was all a dream.
Ok, if we can get 4 more wins with 2 of them being to the Bengals and the Steelers and hope that the Steelers go 10-6 like us, then that should be enough to put us in the wild card. Hey, we got 4 more home games, we all know how good we CAN play at home, and a game against Cinci, this team could look at 11-5, you never know what can happen in this league.
Most of our boys have already put this game behind them and are just looking forward to finally coming back home to play in front of the greatest fans in the world. The whole Ravens Organization deserves to come back home after the crazy 3 weeks we have had. I am excited to see how we are going to fair against the eagles, as they are a very fast paced moving football team. Enjoy the week guys, keep your heads up, shit happens, and lets enjoy being back in the great city of Baltimore.
Side Note: Friday night I saw Steve Bisciotti at the Maryland Terps Basketball game, he sat about 7 rows in front of me on court side. Many times as he would walk in front of us, we screamed “MICHAEL CRABTREE!!!! GET MICHAEL CRABTREE STEVE!” He did acknowledge us finally with a nice “Peace” sign. Could that mean we will move up to the 2nd pick to get him? Trade 2 picks like our 1st and 2nd pick to get him? Who knows what that could have meant.
Stay humble and optimistic fellas, WE GOT THIS!
by Mr MaLoR on Nov 17, 2008 9:54 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
The Browns Game
Had the same effect on the Giants. Sometimes you need to be humbled.
I lived with 3 folks from Cleveland in college so I can’t say i’m Pro-Baltimore. But I’ll be rooting for you guys to beat up on the rest of the NFC East.
It was a good week of back and forth though.
by Woogie526 on Nov 17, 2008 12:30 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
Bisciotti
he’ll move as fast to get a premier wide receiver as he did in previous years…as he did in not getting us DB help, a veteran qb (yeah, i know we are lucky with Flacco’s development but who could have predicted that)..as he did renewing Billicks million dollar contract..as he did allowing the Boller mess to continue for years…if it weren’t for Mason and Cleveland we would be 2-8 now. 30-10 folks in a game everyone circled on the calendar.
by raven on Nov 17, 2008 4:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
We need to cut this
feeling sorry for ourselves shit. We have a rookie quarterback and rookie coach, basically a rookie Offensive Lin, and we faced arguably the best team in the fucking NFL at their home fucking turf. Did we get dominated? Yeah but I’d rather seem them lose to a quality team then dropping one to Oakland or the Salisbury Chicken Shits. Speaking of Chicken Shits, don’t think for a second Cleveland fans would collectively give their left nuts for our record. Judging from the Eagles performance in their loss to the Bengals (Sorry but you don’t “tie” with a 1 and 8 team and not call it a loss) I am sure as hell looking forward to the Ravens playing pissed off and hungry at home. We weren’t supposed to win this game…nor were we supposed to be about .500 for the year. Its not like the Steelers are shocking the world and running away with the Division. We need to keep perspective and appreciate just how much improvement we have gotten this year. For CHRIST SAKE"S….WE HAVE A FUCKING QUARTERBACK PEOPLE!!! Life is good…
"When they get drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, we expect them to play like that. Are we surprised? No."
by UMBC Oriole fan on Nov 17, 2008 3:49 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
It hurst because....
The Damn Steelers win by 1….they are a game up. I’m not worried about overall record just win the division..how many times in a decade can you say its a 2 team race…and the Damn Steelers win my 1. Damn damn damn. What also hurts, and i said it yesterday, is that we came out offensively scared. 3rd and 7 on first drive and we run. We have Mason and we run. I knew we brought our Indy game at that point. I guess we save the creative play calling for the loser teams when its nice and cozy safe. We should have realized real soon that we were not going to match them run for run. We needed to spread it out. To me this was a step backwards offensively.
What the hell was Harbaugh doing burning the 4th quarter clock with runs for.
This is football and you have to at least try. Throw the f’n ball pussy. Navy scored 2 td’s in a minute. Shit happens so don’t crawl into your QB prtecting shell with a whole GD quarter left! Embarassing. Also, our DB’s are not phyical at all. When they came up on short yardage plays they bounced off Jacobs, Bradshaw and Ward. They looked like junior high kids. Total F for this Indy II puss out. ALL TALK….WE CAN"T BEAT WINNING TEAMS..not this week, not next week, not when Pitt rolls in, not when the Skins roll in. Won’t happen..it’s in there heads…and I’m not talking about Flacco.
by raven on Nov 17, 2008 4:13 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Collectively
NFL coaches are pussies. Look how St Louis is down by fucking 40 against the Jets and they went for 3. If I was the owner, I would have called the side line and fired the coach right there. It blows my mind how coaches on the pro level are so frightened to do anything that could go wrong and let a game just get away.
"When they get drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, we expect them to play like that. Are we surprised? No."
by UMBC Oriole fan on Nov 17, 2008 4:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs
yeah we have a QB..go tell Harbaugh that next time he milks the clock in a LOSING contest..we should have aired it out..but i guess we like to beat our heads into a cement wall.
by raven on Nov 17, 2008 4:29 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
10:31 pm monday night…sorry for the earlier use of the P word and off the cuff team blasting..its cool now. watching Cleveland and Buffalo reminds me of how lucksy we are…i like Harbaugh but DAMN.
by raven on Nov 17, 2008 10:36 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Out coached
Plain and simple. We were out coached. The Gaints didn’t play more physical then us, they just followed their gameplan, and executed it to perfection. When i watched the game, we were getting into the backfield on almost half their runs. We just didn’t tackle well. The Gaints used alot of stretch plays and counters. The same type of plays the chefis used when Larry Johnson gashed us for a buck 20+.
B.Jacobs, the man is a beast. It took 2,3,4 guys to bring him down. A.Bradshaw, that guy is very fast. I was surprised that Fab caught him saving a TD and also our streak of not giving up a 100 yrd rusher in 28 or 29 games. The most credit has to go to their O-line.
Philly comes into our house next week. They just came off a tie game so i would like to see how they react towards that. I know Baltimore D will come in Mad aas hell next week and ready to prove that the Gaints game was a once in a decade type thing.
FEAR THE NEVERMORE DEFENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!
by Benji5203 on Nov 18, 2008 12:42 AM EST reply actions 0 recs
The Eagles game is key
to our playoff run. The Giants game was not, it was just a measuring stick. However, beat the Eagles and Steelers and then have Pittsburgh lose @ New England, @ Tennessee, and @ us. That gives us the AFC North title as long as we also win @ Cincy and beat Washington and Jax here, and can even lose at Dallas. So if we go 5-1 down the stretch, we will finish 11-5 and take the division.
Rexx
by Rexx on Nov 18, 2008 8:22 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs
its going to be cold Sunday so we better win…nothing worse than freezing your ass of and driving home in the dark.
by raven on Nov 18, 2008 7:28 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Stat needed:
Does anyone have a stat for Ravens lifetime wins over teams with season winning records? as you can tell..if it involves fact research I’m the wrong person.
by raven on Nov 18, 2008 7:34 PM EST reply actions 0 recs
Not this week
Even though the Eagles have a winning record at 5-4-1, a tie against the Bengals in a 75 minute game is pretty much a loss for them. So this week, we play a loser, who will be 5-5-1 after Sunday!
Rexx
by Rexx on Nov 18, 2008 7:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

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