Baltimore Sports Post

The week 10 Sunday games are in progress now, so it’s a good time to think about the Ravens second half chances.  The Ravens second half officially starts Monday night at Cleveland.  They have had major issues on defense and in the secondary in particular, but are still in the thick of the wildcard hunt in the AFC.  Their four losses are all to teams which are in first place of their division and two of their wins come against teams also in playoff contention in the AFC (Denver and San Diego) which could be helpful if tiebreakers come into play.  The Ravens schedule in the secold half is tough with the Steelers twice and Indy at home, but it also means that the Ravens have a chance to win their way into the playoffs.

My Second Half Prediction:

Here are my defensive 25:

DT -6- Pryce, Ngata, Gregg, Bannan, Edwards, McKinney

DE/OLB -3- Suggs, Kruger, Barnes

LB -6- R Lewis, J Johnson, Gooden, J McClain, Ayanbadejo, Phillips

S -4- Reed, Landry, Nakamura, Zbikowski

CB -6- Washington, Foxworth, Rolle, Walker, Webb, Carr

And my ST 3:

K -1- Hauschka

P -1- Koch

LS -1- Katula

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Here are the current 25 that I think will make the roster on offense:

QB – 3 – Flacco, T. Smith, Beck

RB – 3 – R Rice, McGahee, Parmele

FB – 1 – L McClain

TE – 4 – Heap, LJ Smith, Drew, E Jones

OT – 4 – Gaither, Oher, Cousins, [pickup]

OG/C – 5 – Birk, Grubbs, Yanda, Chester, Hale

WR – 5 – Mason, Clayton, D Williams, Washington, Harper

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Here are my defensive 25:

DT -6- Pryce, Ngata, Gregg, Bannan, Edwards, McKinney

DE/OLB -3- Suggs, Kruger, Barnes

LB -6- R Lewis, J Johnson, Gooden, J McClain, Ayanbadejo, Phillips

S -4- Reed, Landry, Nakamura, Zbikowski

CB -6- Washington, Foxworth, Rolle, Walker, Webb, Carr

And my ST 3:

K -1- Gano

P -1- Koch

LS -1- Katula

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With a week of camp just about in the books, it’s time to start thinking about how the roster will shake out when final are cuts are made in a month.  I think the Ravens will keep 25 players on offense, 25 on defense and 3 on special teams.  That number might fluctuate, but that is my guess right now.

Here is my offensive prediction:

QB – 3 – Flacco, T. Smith, Beck

RB – 3 – R Rice, McGahee, Peerman

FB – 2 – L McClain, Cook

TE – 4 – Heap, LJ Smith, Drew, E Jones

OT – 4 – Gaither, Oher, Cousins, Someone else

OG/C – 4 – Birk, Grubbs, Yanda, Chester

WR – 5 – Mason, Clayton, D Williams, Washington, Someone else

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Derrick Mason will return to the Ravens to prepare for the 2009 season.  He had previously announced his retirement before camp opened, but will return to practice on Sunday after having missed only two days of practice.

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… Well for Rookies and injured Vets anyway.  I’ll take anything football related at this point.  Thank goodness for the return of football and the fun of keeping up on morning and afternoon camp updates. 

 The posting will pickup on the site again thanks to the return of football.

I was 3-1 in the wildcard round and 2-2 in the divisional round, so the worst I can do is finish .500 with the superbowl remaining.  This week features an AFC North grudge match in the AFC and an old NFC East matchup of wildcard round contestents in the NFC.  Here are my picks:

• 24-14 Eagles Beat the Cardinals
• 24-20 Ravens beat the Steelers

I normally wouldn’t go with the higher score in a Ravens Steelers game, but I think the sloppy weather might be a disadvantage to the defenses at times except that we might see more turnovers than usual.  I think both teams will be setup for some short field scoring drives which will artificially drive up the score.  As for the NFC game, I think the Cardinals are playing well right now but the Eagles have the defense that can stop the Cardinals and they have enough offense to win.  Again, both games are rematches and I think one team will get revenge (Ravens) and the other will continue their dominance over the other (Eagles).  A Ravens Eagles superbowl would be a great matchup.  We’ll see what happens…

I’m shocked that the Ravens won this game against the Titans.  They had a part in making a really good team look really bad, but the Titans seemed to be in total control.  The way Ravens players were getting injured it seemed like they were hanging on by a thread and that any minute now a big play by the Titans would finally break their back.  They didn’t get discouraged when the Titans moved the ball on them and they didn’t piss their pants when they had the ball with a chance to win.  The Ravens weathered the storm, its like they took three hard punches directly to the face and then just smiled at them.  It had to be frustrating to the Titans to see the game slowly slip away from them.. and i loved every minute of it. 

While the Ravens were on their drive to win the game (before the missed delay of game) I had a moment where I realized that I was watching a great/classic game that I will remember for a long time.  I wish the refs hadn’t missed that delay of game call, because I’m afraid that it will taint that drive to win the game somewhat and cloud the memories of the rest of that game. 

What I’ll remember about this game is that the Ravens were resilient and never gave up despite the adversity they were facing.  They made their own luck by playing hard, hitting hard, and not being discouraged with their backs against the wall (offense and defense).  The win against the Titans in 2001 was viewed as a fluky win by the media and I’m sure this win will get a similar slant, but I thought it was a great game between two great teams.

What a game.. just wow.

The Ravens beat the Titans 13-10 in a slobber knocker of a game.  The Titans dominated the game on the stat sheet, but 3 costly turnovers and stingy red zone defense kept the Ravens in the game and eventually gave them a chance to win the game late in the 4th quarter.  The Titans seemed to be dominating the game, but as the game went on and stayed close until the Ravens slowly wrested control of the game from the Titans and eventually won it. 

Note:  A wonderful, classic, smash mouth of a game was again marred by a snafu by the refs where they did not call a delay of game penalty against the Ravens when the Ravens were driving for the go ahead field goal.  It seems like all of the slobber knocker games the Ravens are in the refs have to screw up for one side or the other.