Take it from Thoreau, this rivalry transcends time, place and player
Conflating a calendar year into a single day for the purpose of flaunting his descriptive powers, Thoreau once observed that October is the year’s sunset sky, November the later twilight, but if that autumnal transition always seems somehow disquieting to you, it probably has something to do with Steelers-Ravens.
You heard me.
Thoreau foresaw plenty with his 19th century craftsmanship, but probably not the emergence of an NFL factoid such as this: Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh has never lost to
an AFC North Division rival at home in November.
Every single Steelers-Ravens collision in a series that has flourished and sometimes festered into a third decade, has presented compelling facts that either have nothing to do with the conflict at hand or have everything to do with it because they are part of its bedrock.
The problem, as the Steelers settle into Baltimore for this 2018 season’s pivotal act, is figuring out which empirical evidence is bedrock and which is mere nugacity.
It’s tempting, for example, to frame the challenge facing Mike Tomlin’s team Sunday as nothing less than an acid test of Pittsburgh’s celebrated offense by a Ravens defense worthy of that franchise’s storied offense-crushing history. Except that this particular murder of crows has allowed 60 points in the past two games, 24 of them unanswered in 16 minutes last week at Carolina, where the Panthers had 400 yards and 36 points.
Tomlin used to like to call the Ravens defense “a salty group,” but the modern version looks to be salt-free, or free at least from the menace once trafficked in by Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Haloti Ngata, Elvis Dumervil and Jameel McClain, all of whom have either moved on from Charm City or commenced their lives’ work.
McClain’s life’s work is apparently as the Ravens assistant director of player engagement, though most Steelers fans best remember the engaging manner in which he once concussed the beloved Heath Miller, drawing a $40,000 fine for wanton excess.
But look it up today, and Baltimore’s defense, remade in the shadow of the ageless Terrell Suggs, is again No. 1 in the league.
“Generally they play football the way they play defense,” Tomlin said this week in an attempt to describe Baltimore’s evolution and personality. “They have continuity and I think continuity allows you do that with Coach Harbaugh, but also Coach [Don] Martindale. Coach Martindale might be new to the coordinator’s job, but how many years has Martindale been in Baltimore [it’s his seventh]?
“They have great continuity, so as they go through changes, it’s not really changes. Some of the names have changed over the years but a lot of their talent is home grown and developed. It used to be Duane Starks and Chris McAlister and now it’s Jimmy Smith. It used to be Ray Lewis and now it’s C.J. Mosley. Suggs has played forever and probably will continue to play forever, so that continuity lends itself to that personality that you speak of.”
Martindale, who goes by “Wink” as a tip of the cap to the familiar quizmaster (Tic Tac Dough!), had coached the Ravens linebackers all the way back to Lewis, but has now turned some of his attention to a defensive line he’s apparently feeding potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal, at least metaphorically.
“I said we needed to put some gunpowder in his food a little bit coming back from his rookie year,” Martindale said this week about secondyear defensive tackle Chris Wormley. “He has progressed in a lot of different ways, and really in the last three weeks you’re seeing him take off. He’s playing a physical brand of football. He’s playing like a Raven, if you will.”
Yeah, I will. I know what a Raven defender plays like, and I still see it even in Suggs, now about 78 years old. Last year in Baltimore, after the most lopsided Steelers win (26-9) in that city since a 40-14 playoff pasting of the then-Baltimore Colts in 1976, I wrote that Suggs had all the mobility of the Lewis statue outside the stadium.
Then Suggs helped spark pretty much the same defense to an easy 26-14 victory at Heinz Field in September, so my apologies.
“For me, Terrell Suggs is the player that reads the play [best] and can give you the hardest type of assignment,” said Steelers left tackle Alejandro Villanueva. “He does it independently, but when the entire defense does it, that’s when it becomes difficult.
“It’s a frustrating defense to go against when they’re playing as good as they are. They don’t allow you to go for many yards, so there are three-and-outs, and the frustration grows in terms of what works and doesn’t work. You start secondguessing. It happens to every single offensive coordinator and every single offense they face.”
The problems with this Ravens defense start right at the front door, where Wormley and Brandon Williams and Brent Urban bring close to 1,000 pounds of truculence to the line of scrimmage.
It’s highly relevant, you would imagine, that in Week 4 in Pittsburgh, those guys were a primary reason the Steelers gained exactly 19 rushing yards, the fifth-lowest total in franchise history.
“They have some hard guys up front, and we do, too,” Steelers guard Ramon Foster said this week. “We have to be on top of our job. If we get away from the run early it could be a long day for us.
“We can’t get behind the chains. Can’t have three three-and-outs and get behind by 14 points [as on Sept. 30]. The whole deal is no three-and-outs. But it’s tough. Williams is like Haloti Ngata in there, and their crowd goes wild. It’s a one o’clock crowd but it’ll be just as loud as if it was night time. To me it’s pure football. You can play hard football without all the antics and personal fouls and that’s what they do.”
Talk about an evolution. Ngata, you’ll remember, once broke Ben Roethlisberger’s nose on this same lawn, and there was a long stretch in this series where they was no dearth of “antics.”
But the Ravens of any edition are generally a good bet to minimize Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown. Roethlisberger’s career passer rating against Baltimore is an unimpressive 84.7, nowhere near his overall mark of 94.0. Even more foreboding for No. 7, the Ravens somehow have only five interceptions halfway through their season. They had 22 a year ago, and who would bet they won’t get to 22 again? Not surprisingly, no one has put Roethlisberger on the ground more than Suggs (17 times), as they are the two oldest non-kickers on the respective rosters.
Brown, who blazed away with 213 yards in a 39-38 win against Baltimore last December in Pittsburgh, has only four touchdowns in 16 career games against the Ravens. His average game output in the company of opponents wearing black and purple is six catches, 77 yards.
“I do believe that tradition and a sense of obligation to that tradition is part of it,” Harbaugh said on a conference call this week, “but you’ve gotta have good players and you’ve gotta keep changing the scheme. We’re not running the same thing as last year, let alone 10 or 15 years ago. I love how hard our players play. They understand that that’s how it’s done here.”
That’s a critical part of what makes Steelers-Ravens as good a rivalry as exists in this league. Even the players who are new to it, or who’ve been around just a few years, take so much pride in it.
“The fortunate part of so much familiarity is that you know what you have to do to beat ‘em, because you’ve beaten them,” said Villanueva. “There’s a lot of players here who’ve beaten the Ravens. It’s a very tough matchup, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s good for the rivalry. It’s a really tough, physical game. There’s a lot of respect between the players and it’s quality football. In this locker room we respect what they do on defense and they do it extremely well. And I assume they’re going to respect the playmakers that the Steelers have on offense as well.”
And in so doing, the Steelers and Ravens will have followed Thoreau’s advice: “Pursue some path, no matter how narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
I’m stone clueless as to which team will win this latest installment, but we can all be certain that Thoreau wouldn’t last one series in this rivalry.