When your favorite team loses in a miserable fashion to a team that they were obviously expected to not only win, but win convincingly, it's tough to summon up the courage to hand out a "Game Ball of the Week." That's what happened when the Baltimore Ravens pulled off their "trifecta" in their third loss of the 2011 season to a losing team after winning a big game the prior week.
The Ravens 22-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks gave fans and media a lot of fingers to point all around the team and coaching staff for why this happened again. The one player no one could have pointed at as a reason for losing was second year tight end Ed Dickson, who played like a man possessed and sucked up almost every ball thrown in his direction on Sunday. Dickson was targeted a whopping fourteen times, catching ten of them for 79 yards and two touchdowns.
One of those targets, receptions and TD's were off of the left arm of RB Ray Rice on a halfback option play, but the rest were all part of QB Joe Flacco's career high 52 pass attempts. Without looking at the full tape one more time, the other four targets that didn't result in ore catches for Dickson were probably nowhere near the outstretched arms of his 6'4" frame. Dickson dove for ball, extended his arms up for leaping grabs and seemed like a "Hoover" vacuum cleaning whenever the ball was thrown in his direction.
Dickson now has 40 receptions on the season, third on the team behind WR Anquan Boldin's 46 and Ray Rice's 43. His three TD catches is second behind rookie WR Torrey Smith's four, and he is projected to be on his way to around 70 receptions and over 600 yards. Combining his projections along with fellow second year tight end Dennis Pitta, the Ravens are getting more production out of the tight end position than they have had in years.
For Dickson's solid effort against the Seahawks, he unquestionable deserves and is awarded the Samsung 'Game Ball of the Week."