(Jarrett Carter writes for The Ebony Bird, which is FSB’s Ravens blog. Representing the rest of the AFC North are Dawg Pound Daily, Nice Pick Cowher and Stripe Hype.)
Week 8 of the 2008 NFL regular season was all about bounties in the AFC North. The Baltimore Ravens made good on a bounty against the wounded Oakland Raiders, the Cincinnati Bengals failed in their search for their first win, the Cleveland Browns morphed from being the hunted to becoming the hunter, and the Pittsburgh Steelers let a sure capture against the world champions get away from them.
Let’s try to find some [...]

You’ll probably hear about this off and on for the next week or so, but for a guy who looks like a man on stilts when he’s not running, Joe Flacco has made some athletic plays in his brief career.
You’ll recall the big run he made in Week 1, and then this:

There were plenty of surprises in the Ravens’ home win over the Oakland Raiders, but the same date that usually brings the Ravens to the party came to steal the show.
Defensively, the Ravens did exactly what they were supposed to do. More pressure on JaMarcus Russell and the running game than they could stand. They bent a little bit in the latter stages of the game, but it was too late.
Now that THAT’s out of the way, Joe Flacco catching passes? Troy Smith throwing passes? It could only go down against the Oakland Raiders, but it went down without a [...]

In less than four days, Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs has gone from a league Defensive Player of the Week candidate, to the special guest host of “Athletes Who Don’t Know What to Say.”
First, it was comments about having a bounty out on Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall and how the same would be in place for Hines Ward. Now, its revelations on an Atlanta radio sports talk show about Troy Smith being the better man to start for the Ravens.
I would assume that many NFL players are more articulate and thoughtful than the media gives them credit for, but when [...]

Chances are, Mike Preston’s Monday blog entry has some validity to it. In it, he comments on Chris McAlister’s benching, and Harbaugh’s need to never back down from veteran players,
But then you stop and realize that Preston has long been jealous/angry/enamored with Baltimore’s pro football team, and you pay out his commentary the grain of salt that it is worth. Maybe McAlister is having attitude problems, and maybe Preston has enough access to find out about them.
But the truth is that this is nothing new to the Ravens. Sure, he’s known to give up big plays, drive drunk, and has [...]

(Jarrett Carter writes for The Ebony Bird, which is FSB’s Ravens blog. Representing the rest of the AFC North are Dawg Pound Daily, Nice Pick Cowher and Stripe Hype.)
Week 7 of the 2008 NFL regular season was change for more of the same in the AFC North. The Baltimore Ravens put themselves back into contention with a big win against a lowly team, the Cincinnati Bengals lost again in unremarkable fashion, the Cleveland Browns did their best to show that playing badly is what they do best, and the Pittsburgh Steelers showed that beating the Bengals is what they do [...]

They say football is a religion, and too many people, I would guess that to be true. Unfortunately, my religion asks me to give of my time outside of worship, and I happily oblige.
So that’s the story behind the lack of live blog today. I was in church for most of the afternoon.
But I did have access to the scores and stats on my phone, which means that I was completely tuned into the Ravens’ big win over the Miami Dolphins. I’m currently reliving the action courtesy of DVR, but it was clear from the mobile that the Ravens got [...]

Taking a lesson from former Ravens head coach Brian Billick, John Harbaugh made disparaging comments about their next opponent, the Miami Dolphins, saying that former Dolphin head coach and current Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron “did a great job there with what he had.”
So what we now have this Sunday in Miami will be a heated Dolphins team with a rejuvenated offense and a solid defense, going against a Ravens team with three straight losses, a rattled rookie quarterback, and more public scrutiny than Joe the Plumber.
Maybe it was just a lapse in judgment, because the Dolphins certainly aren’t a [...]

(Jarrett Carter writes for The Ebony Bird, which is FSB’s Ravens blog. Representing the rest of the AFC North are Dawg Pound Daily, Nice Pick Cowher and Stripe Hype.)
Week 6 of the 2008 NFL regular season was all about byes for the AFC North. The Baltimore Ravens officially waved goodbye to hopes of division dominance, the Cincinnati Bengals bid farewell to any kind of relevance short of Chad changing his last name to a German-engineered sedan, and the Pittsburgh Steelers said goodbye to worries for the week.
Time to cash last week’s reality check around the AFC North.
Baltimore Ravens (2-3):
Looking Back: [...]

So where do you want to start with how the Ravens got destroyed by the Colts? Should it be the play calling? Could be, but there’s a problem when you have to account for interceptions from your rookie quarterback.
What about the running game? Or the lack thereof?
The defense….Well, the defense is that pesky thing that sustains with every other team, but seems to have lapses in effectiveness against the Colts. The last time the Ravens gave up a touchdown in the first quarter was last season against the Colts. The first time this season, the Colts went off for three [...]