Monday’s spotlight resonates with Ravens
We’ll have to wait and see how many fans and television viewers will be “ready for some football” on Monday night, but the Ravens seem pretty stoked about their first “Monday Night Football” matchup at M&T Bank Stadium in more than five years.
“Growing up, traditionally, Monday night was the biggest stage in the world,” veteran linebacker Terrell Suggs said.
Of course, when Suggs was a young football fan, MNF was the NFL’s only regular-season prime-time franchise. In 2006, the league debuted both Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football, which robbed the Monday broadcast of some of its novelty. Over the past 16 months, NFL television ratings have suffered across the board because of the national anthem controversy and a perceived decline in the quality of play because of injuries to many of the sport’s biggest stars, but Monday Night Football continues to draw more than 10 million viewers per week.
It certainly isn’t the ratings juggernaut that it was in decades past, but it still strikes a nostalgic chord for a lot of the players in the Ravens locker room.
“Obviously, we all grew up viewing Monday Night, just like anybody does,” quarterback Joe Flacco said, “[and] how cool it is to just sit back after work, after school, and watch your teams go at it. I think, when you think back to that, and how you were a little kid, or as the high school player looking to play in those Monday night games, for us, that’s what adds to the game a little bit, just because you know how excited your fans and the world can be to watch those games.”
Several players who grew up in the Eastern and Central time zones remembered having to cajole their parents to let them stay up late on a school night to watch a telecast that originally started at 9 p.m. on the East Coast. The NFL eventually moved the starting time up a half-hour, but the games still can push midnight.
“Yeah, my mom let me stay up a little later just to watch it growing up,” rookie defensive tackle Chris Wormley said. “It’s something that I used to watch as a little kid. Growing up watching and now to be part of it is something special. I think we’re wearing our black uniforms. It’s going to be a blackout in a stadium. Great atmosphere.” Matthew Judon scoffed at the question. Did he believe that in just his second NFL season, he’d be an every-down force against both the run and the pass?
“Do you think you could be a good reporter? Did you?” the Ravens linebacker shot back at his interviewer. “Like, come on. I mean, this is what I do. I love playing football. It doesn’t matter if it’s cold, raining, sleet, hot — I’m going to go out there and play. Everybody keeps asking me, ‘Do I think I can?’ Yes. I believe in myself. I don’t think y’all believe in me, but I believe in myself.”
If that seems a bit prickly, well, you have to stand in Judon’s shoes to understand where he’s coming from.
The current AFC Defensive Player of the Week envisioned himself as this kind of player all the way back to his childhood days dancing around the fields of West Bloomfield, Mich.