Whooooooooops. Ok, so first things first… It’s a football, not a mini-helmet! Our mistake. The mini-helmet is signed by Kyle Boller, which we assume is slightly less valuable to current Ravens fans. Maybe we’ll just toss it…

So once again, here are the details. The commenter to submit the 500th comment to this blog will win this Todd Heap signed football (purchased through NFL Auctions, so you know it’s legit). Spam and fluff comments will be deleted and not counted. It’s that simple. You post comment 500, you win the football.

Additionally, the winner of the football will have the chance to be entered in another contest later in the season!

We’re still not even at 100 comments, but that can change quickly with a few clicks/comments per post. We’re expecting this football will be given away before season’s end – if not before the end of October. So get posting!

We want to know what you’re thinking!

Are you more impressed with the Ravens offense or more worried about the Ravens defense through their first two games?

The numbers…

Ravens Offense: 2nd in total points, 3rd in total yards, 13th in pass yards, 4th in rush yards, 1st in first downs, 3rd in time of possession

Ravens Defense: 23rd in total points, 17th in total yards, 2th in pass yards, 1st in rush yards, 4th in first downs

Also worth noting… All of the Ravens points this season have been scored by the offense – no defensive TDs to pad that stat so far!

In Week 1, when Brodie Croyle threw two touchdowns and manufactured back-to-back scoring drives in the air, most Ravens fans and players called it a fluke, a sign of the unit’s complacency. Now in Week 2, following Philip Rivers monster 440 yard game, some of that reassuring “it won’t happen again” mentality is fading – and many fans are wondering not if it will happen, but when it will start to affect the Ravens record.

The Ravens secondary play this season should be a big concern for the Ravens and their fans. With the exception of two interceptions against Rivers on Sunday, there has been little to get excited about. The unit has been bounced in every possible way – confused by play action, outrun on deep balls, and out of position on screens and crosses.

Here are four reasons the Ravens secondary has looked so bad – things we all should have seen coming – and how to fix it. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Flacco is not Trent Dilfer.

That not certainly does not come as a surprise to any fan of the Ravens. But around the league, to other fans and commentators, Flacco was nothing more than a glorified Trent Dilfer throughout his rookie season.

Take a glance at the numbers though, especially the Ravens heavy reliance on the run (nearly 40 attempts per game),  and it is easy to see why anyone not intimately familiar with the Ravens would confuse the two. Flacco’s mediocre 80.3 passer rating certainly didn’t help his cause, either.

But on Sunday against the Chiefs, Flacco stood up and put the Ravens offensive attack on his shoulders in a way that Trent Dilfer never did. And, with all respect to Dilfer, Flacco did so in a way Dilfer would never be able to.  Read the rest of this entry »

One game in and the debate is already raging. The Ravens won their first fight of the new season, amassed more than 500 yards of total offense, and exploded with four second half touchdowns. And yet a debate rages on.

Did the Ravens throw too much against the Chiefs?

The answer is probably yes. But the question is stupid. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a season ago that the Baltimore Ravens dumped nearly their entire coaching staff, ousting Brian Billick and bringing in young gun John Harbaugh.

Harbaugh might have been green when it came to leading an NFL team, but he proved his worth last season in taking the Ravens to an AFC Championship Game appearance.

This season, the Ravens have said goodbye to the final holdover from the Billick era; Rex Ryan is now in charge of his own team in New York.

But take a look at the 2009 Ravens coaching staff, study them a bit, and there is something oddly familiar. We’ve seen these guys before.

That’s because Ozzie Newsome, the Ravens general manager, has a pretty good mold for what he wants his coaching staff to look like.

He finds coaches that fit his mold, just like players, and just drops them in. If that sounds a little too similar to an old-fashioned sci-fi movie, I apologize. But the system works.

So I present to you your 2009 Ravens coaching staff, led by The Mastermind himself, Ozzie Newsome… Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it in the last 24 hours, a back-up linebacker for the Ravens, Tony Fein, was arrested last night for assaulting a police officer in downtown Baltimore. Fein was arrested after allegedly shoving a police officer to the ground during an investigation of his party at a bar near the Inner Harbor (read more here).

While Fein and his agent are disputing the claims and calling the arrest a case of racial profiling, the Ravens are finding themselves in a precarious situation.

It’s been five years since the last major incident involving a Ravens player and the police. When Jamal Lewis was arrested and jailed in 2004 in connection with a drug deal in 2000, the Ravens were already earning a reputation as one of the league’s most troubled teams. But since then, the Ravens have maintained a relatively low-profile and the front office has done a good job of keeping the Ravens out of the headlines.

Fein was not likely to make the final roster this season anyway, and this arrest (whether it sticks or not) is not clearly not going to help his cause. Regardless, his arrest serves as a strong reminder that GM Ozzie Newsome needs to stay on top of his game to keep his team’s image in good light.

For all the talk of experience and veteran leadership, the Ravens, like most NFL teams, are made up of 20-somethings with more fame and fortune than they know how to handle. Team rules and expectations need to be explicit and should extend beyond the team’s clubhouse and hotels and into the lives of players everyday. Like in any other career, in the NFL, your actions away from the team affect your status with the team.

League commissioner Roger Goodell has made it his mission to clean up the league and, whether you agree with his authoritarian style or not, has largely succeeded. And the Ravens hardly need any more attention from the commissioner’s office than they tend to get on a regular basis.

Hopefully, Fein’s arrest and eventual release (which will be publicized as completely separate from this incident) will be used to remind Ravens players just how easy it is to get caught in a bad situation, and an example of how not to deal with it. They call themselves men on the field; they should act like men off the field.

Change is supposed to be a good thing, but it may be hard to convince fans in Baltimore that a minor overhaul of a storied and respected defense will end up helping their football team.

Despite a familiar chorus of criticism directed at the offense, most of the Ravens’ moves this offseason have involved the defense. Unfortunately, not all of the changes were entirely voluntary.

Defensive coordinator Rex Ryan has found a new home, this time in New York as a head coach. Under Ryan, the Ravens defense never finished worse than sixth in the league in yards allowed, and they also consistently ranked near the top of the league in rushing yards allowed as well as turnovers.

And it is not just Ryan who’s gone. He took with him star linebacker Bart Scott and safety Jim Leonhard, who filled in for the injured Dawan Landry for nearly the entire 2008 season.

Top it all off with the fact that three-time Pro Bowl selection Chris McAlister, the team’s lockdown cornerback for the last nine seasons, is gone as well.

For the Ravens, the combination of coordinator and player changes will lead to some pretty glaring differences on the field. Given the team’s depth and breadth of defensive talent, however, you can be sure that Baltimore will again be ranked among the league’s best defenses. Read the rest of this entry »

Lost in Baltimore’s early off-season chatter about coaches and coordinators is perhaps an even larger issue… the guys who actually play the game. Rough estimates at this time, from a variety of sources, say that the Ravens will be somewhere between 5 and 7 million dollars below the salary cap heading into the off-season – and that’s with just 42 players signed.

So who stays and who goes in the days before (and after) draft day? Read the rest of this entry »

With John Harbaugh now in place as the Ravens’ new head coach, attention has quickly shifted to the issues Harbaugh will face in taking over the team. The biggest decision the new coach and his front office have to make is who will be at his side as offensive and defensive coordinators.

The Ravens’ defensive coordinator for the last three seasons, Rex Ryan, is a fan favorite and it’s fair to say that most fans would love to have Ryan back in charge of the team’s strongest unit. The Ravens have also expressed interest in retaining Ryan, who is also a front-runner for the open head coaching position in Atlanta.

But from a broader perspective, one has to wonder if Ryan is really the best option as this team’s defensive coordinator in the year(s) to come. Read the rest of this entry »