The Baltimore Ravens are the NFL’s most confounding team. After playing like dogs for weeks, they rise up with what has to be their best effort of the season against the most dominant team in the National Football League. Unfortunately, even their best was not good enough to beat the New England Patriots, as the Ravens went down to a hard-fought 27-24 defeat. My first question is where was this effort all season? If the Ravens had played this well all season, their record could be 8-4 or better. I guess we’ll never know, will we? For 59 minutes and 16 seconds, the Ravens took it to the best team in football, smacking the Patriots around while on defense and running them over on offense. But they gave Tom Brady and his merry men too many chances to win the game; primarily by not being able to get a key first down at any point in the fourth quarter.
The last drive of the game by the Patriots featured questionable calls by the referees, a unfortunate time out by the Ravens that wiped out a 4th down stop, some dumb Patriot luck and a complete meltdown by Bart Scott after the touchdown was scored. To be fair, the referees didn’t cost the Ravens the game, but the questionable penalties didn’t necessarily help their cause either. I have to admit that going in, I didn’t give the Ravens much of a chance to win this game, but I certainly was cheering them on to win the game (even though I picked New England to win in the football pool). The Ravens made a great effort at what would have been a monumental upset, but they fell just short. The 44 seconds in the title of this post refers to the amount of time left on the clock when New England scored the game winning points, and the 2 yards refers to the distance from the end zone that Mark Clayton was when he caught Kyle Boller’s hail mary pass at the end of the game.
Some positives: Kyle Boller played very well and only made one mistake; he looked like a competent NFL quarterback last night. The offensive and defensive lines controlled the line of scrimmage for long stretches of the game. Willis McGahee looked like the back we hoped he would be when he came over from the Buffalo Bills. Also, I think the Ravens have given the Pittsburgh Steelers the blueprint to beating the so-far unbeaten Patriots; it remains to be seen if they can finish the job that the Ravens could not. I know I’ll be watching Sunday to see if it happens. Some negatives: Bart Scott’s temper tantrum, first of all. You absolutely cannot lose your cool in a situation like that. No wonder he’s called the “Mad ‘Backer.” I suspect some fines are in Mr. Scott’s future. As far as the “Patriot conspiracy” that several Ravens brought up; I don’t know if it’s true or not, but certainly the Ravens were frustrated with how the game ended and some of those remarks were borne out of that frustration. I’ll just say that the Patriots got some breaks that they may not have been entitled to at the end of the game. That happens to all teams at some point; but I still don’t think that cost the Ravens the game.
Fans of the Ravens can only hope that effort continues into next week when the team formerly known as the Baltimore Colts come to town for a renewal of the blood feud between Baltimore’s old and new football teams. The task facing the Ravens will be just as challenging as the one they just faced.
The only thing questionable about those calls was that they didn’t come alot earlier in the game.
The Ravens got away with holding, and bumping past 5 yards all freakin’ night.
And now they have the audacity to question the refereeing?
Pulllease!