We are off to an inauspicious start. 
Ben got NAILED. I’ll tell you, he’ll be lucky if he is able to play a few more years with the damage that has been done to him over the last 6 months. Let’s see what Charlie can do.
Oh, yeah, it’ll take a miracle to come back from this the way the two teams are playing.
It ain’t lookin good folks. I’m gonna keep on rooting, but I have to say that it doesn’t seem like we have much of a chance.
Oh well, at least we’ll get good picks for next year!
I’m afraid that fumble pretty much sealed it.
Oh well, as I said, I guess we now have good picks for next year.
Like I said before, they won the Super Bowl last year, and while I would have loved to have seen a repeat that was obviously too much to ask. What the hell.
YEA! FUCK YEA!!!
How’s it feel to be Baltimore’s bitch?
Fire Cowher tomorrow.
Stop being enamored with a 70 yard run every 25 carries. Waiting for those home run runs means a lot of three and outs in the meantime. You may as well throw long bombs every down. They pay off as often. We gave Staley the bums rush and picked up Davenport. Fucking use him, or pick up a running back who doesn’t regularly fall down at the line of scrimmage.
We have two quarterbacks. One won the one game he started and has thrown five TDs and 0 picks. The other has 12 TDs and 18 picks (and 2 fumbles), for three wins and seven losses. Okay, Roethlisberger has been the better quarterback, but he clearly isn’t right now. Only a fool would fail to see that.
What else has changed since last year? Our personnel is almost identical, but we have no running game, a mediocre passing game, a horrible secondary and A MEDIOCRE RUN DEFENSE! We can’t generate any pressure on the quarterback with a bunch of 210 pound linebackers and dbacks who basically need a free shot to even get close to the qaurterback. What the fuck?
So, what do you think now?
Just lucky? Worst 9-2 team ever? Still predicting 9-7, 10-6?
Probably.
Obviously not. 12-4 seems most likely.
I wonder how the seeds/playoff structure will play out. If they get Schottenheimer, they can win a round. Otherwise I see Indy, NE, possibly Denver beating them. They’ll probably get the #2 seed, though, which means possibly facing a wild card in their first game, and that race is up for grabs, so I dunno yet. I don’t like their chances of beating any good non-Schottenheimer team.
Er, to clarify, the “probably” was in response to the worst 9-2 team ever. I’m not saying they’re just lucky, clearly they’ve earned some of it. Not unlike Baltimore’s population and gonorrhea.
Damn. That sucked.
What the hell HAPPENED? Jesus.
Hey Dave-how many rings do the Ravens have? Oh, and HOW many HOFers?
You’re kidding, right?
I mean, i think that typical sports smack-talk (a la Senor Beef’s most recent post) is juvenile and lame at the best of times.
But the most pathetic, cringe-worthy smack-talk is the desperate appeal to history (and i say that as a historian).
Did you really sit there, after today’s game, and console yourself with the fact that the Steelers have more Superbowl victories and more Hall-of-Famers than the Ravens? Do the Pittsburgh glory days really serve as a panacea when your quarterback is being mugged every time he gets the ball, or when your vaunted running offense barely gets enough yards to cross over a Baltimore alleyway?
I enjoyed today’s victory, no doubt. But i know there will be losses to Pittsburgh in the future, and when they come, the knowledge of Baltimore’s victory today won’t be much of a consolation.
Well, you could still answer the question.
The Baltimore Ravens have one Super Bowl championship in 10 full seasons of play. If you want to count the Colts, you can add three more championships (one Super Bowl, two pre-merger league titles) in an additional 31 years. 4 rings in 41 years for Baltimore. Pittsburgh has 5 Super Bowl Championships (and no pre-merger league titles) in 71 years. Rate calculations are left as an exercise for the reader.
As for Hall of Famers… the Steelers will probably always lead the Ravens in this category. It’s a function of having an extra 60 years of NFL history. But the fact that your team has done something that any reasonable person would expect them to is a less than solid basis for smack talk.
Of course, you prolly wouldn’t want to mention the USFL title in 1985 and the Grey Cup the Stallions won. Those are not NFL titles. However, that does make 6 professional football championships trophies that live in Baltimore, not 5…
I do find this attitude somewhat perplexing. Do you realize we all pay and get involved and watch hours of TV involving grown men in uniforms slapping each other’s asses and playing a recreational game? Being a sports fan isn’t exactly the most serious thing in the world. The whole thing is kind of goofy in a way when you step back and think of it. You get all emotional if some billionaire’s team associated with your city goes and beats some other billionaire’s team - yet some relatively friendly, mostly joking smack talk about it is juvenile and immature? God forbid someone has fun with something that’s pretty silly in the first place.
I mean, if you fostered actual hatred over this sort of stuff, I could see that as pretty unhealthy, but it’s mostly just playing around.
Well, perhaps i’m inconsistent or oversensitive.
I fully appreciate the illogic of rooting for a bunch of millionaires, owned by a billionaire, whose have no real enduring connection to Baltimore, and who probably don’t even live in the city they play for.
Despite that, however, i also believe that sports have beneficial social and cultural role to play in our society. This, in my opinion, is best realized when the positive aspects of the contest are emphasized, and when the competition between fans of different teams is truly in the spirit of enjoyment, rather than hostility and insult.
You say this sort of thing is “mostly just playing around,” but i’ve seen too many people get serious about exactly the types of insults we’re talking about to believe this. It may be true in your particular case, but too often it’s not. The irrational and sometimes violent forms of tribalism that some sports fans engage in make the whole thing less enjoyable, for me at least.
It doesn’t feel all that great, thanks. But remember, the tide ebbs and flows. A few good shots on McNair and the Ravens might be in the same place. But they’re not, so couldawouldashoulda. Baltimore is clearly the better team this year.
It would be more appropriate to count the Browns, because the original Ravens were the old Cleveland Browns, but that’s your call.
Sure it is, but it’s what makes professional sports what it is. Should we not have a vested interest in “our” teams, even though they are privately owned by people that could care less about the average fan (with few exceptions)? It’s the possessive nature of “our” teams that makes watching sports exciting.
Not really. History and tradition is what makes football what it is. Otherwise the Pittsburgh-Baltimore rivalry is nothing more than two games played every year.
Indeed I did. It’s a salve on the gaping wound Steeler fans got yesterday, and it amounts to “The Ravnes are better this year, but I remember when the Steelers were the best, and they will be again one day”. By looking back it makes it easier to look forward.
I agree. The worm will turn. Which is why smack talking is fun, because when the worm does turn old comments are remembered and resurrected, which intensifies the rivalry. Again, that’s what makes it fun to watch football, or any other sport for that matter.
You know, Browns fans worked very hard to make sure that wasn’t the case. We did something that was unprecedented in the world of sports to keep that very thing from happening.
Weirddave is still smarting from the beating the Crabby Hermits gave him last week. (was it last week?) Beating him with Willie Parker, Hines Ward, the Pitt defense *and * Jamal Lewis must have been frustrating. Glad to see he’s got something to hold onto.
Reading between the lines, I dont think Cowher’s heart is in it any more. No more “chin”, it’s just a pained grimace, like he’s just waiting out the year. Maybe he should have quit while he was ahead, instead of going out on a sour note like this.
One game is one game, and anything can happen. It looked like the Ravens put something in the water supply to the visiting team; the Steelers were in a fog all day. (Just kidding, mhendo, don’t write a paper disproving the theory.) Kudos to the Ravens for building up to this point, McNair was what they needed all along.
So is this thread over, or are we waiting for the formal declaration of death? I’d love to be wrong, but it’s too late for them now.
Oh yeah, one other thing. Even Neil O’Donnell didn’t suck this bad. Ben should have taken the time to heal, he’s got that Dan Quayle/deer in the headlights look in his eyes.
You may have kept the records, but you cannot deny that the players wearing the Cleveland Browns uniform one year were wearing Ravens purple the next year. For better or worse, that’s their lineage. Just like the Minnesota Twins maintain the lineage of the original Washington Senators in baseball, even though they were immediately replaced by the second Washington Senators franchise.
What kind of a douchebag shits all over a thread that I started by invoking He Who Shall Not Be Named In My House Or In My Presence, Forever And Ever Amen? It’s only that you’re a fellow Steelers fan that I don’t smite you where you stand. Never say that name again upon pain of… well, I’ll be really pissed off.