Ravens clearly victims of some conspiracy
How else can you explain the troubles affecting the defending Super Bowl champs?
Maybe the Baltimore Ravens need to watch their backs, man. They need to doublecheck the brakes, check the closets, have someone taste their food. They need to make sure the pilot isn’t an impostor, that the bellhop isn’t an assassin, that the train isn’t wired to blow. Clearly, someone is out to get them.
Last Sunday, it was the wind. The Ravens were leading the Chicago Bears 10-0 when the tornado warnings kicked in; the seating areas were evacuated and in the press box reporters were asked to back away from the glass. The game was delayed for nearly two hours. When it came back, the Bears pulled out a 23-20 win, in overtime.
On its own, that incident isn’t much, but wait: The season opener in Denver, when the defending Super Bowl champion had to travel to make its season debut, was delayed 33 minutes by lightning, or at least that’s what they wanted you to believe, and the Ravens were destroyed 49-27. They only had to play on the road because of a refusal by the Baltimore Orioles to move a scheduled game, since the teams share parking lots. So, the Baltimore Orioles are in on this too, see?
And of course, there was the Super Bowl in New Orleans, when the lights were personally turned off by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell after he crept along a catwalk and incapacitated two security guards with the martial arts he learned during his secret time in Nepal. Or something like that. Anyway, Baltimore nearly blew a giant lead in that game, if you remember.
“I’m not gonna accuse nobody of nothing — because I don’t know facts,” Ray Lewis said earlier this year, after retiring from the Ravens. “But you’re a zillion-dollar company and your lights go out? No. No way. You cannot tell me somebody wasn’t sitting there and when they say, ‘The Ravens (are) about to blow them out. Man, we better do something.’ … That’s a huge shift in any game, in all seriousness. And you see how huge it was because it let them right back in the game.” Conspiracy! Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome spent a night in the hospital for an undisclosed illness after the Chicago game; what more proof do you need?
The defending Super Bowl champs are 4-6. Joe Flacco has gone from a perfect playoff quarterback to a guy with a 75.3 quarterback rating and $52 million US in guaranteed money. And Ed Reed, the spiritual centre of the old terrifying Ravens defence, has become a football hobo, cut by Houston, picked up by the Jets.
It can’t be that the Superdome in New Orleans was an old building with a breaker that blew, or that there is a growing scientific consensus that storms are becoming more powerful as the planet warms, or that tornadoes are monsters that stalk the land and are much more terrifying and important than a football game until the two, god forbid, intersect.
Nor can it be that repeating as champion in the NFL is hard at the best of times. It will have been accomplished only once in the last 15 years (New England in 2004 and 2005) if the Ravens don’t do it this season, which they won’t. Yeah, that’s probably it.
Last week this space went 5-8-2. Maybe an abbreviated NFL picks column will help. Does it help that this space correctly picked the winners of all four CFL games so far?
As always, all lines could change.