Around The Blogosphere: 9/23

A Browns-hating post will go up tomorrow, but for now, enjoy the smorgasbord of Ravens-related links I will provide here.

• Finally some respect from the national media for the Ravens.  ESPN ranks the Purple Birds #1 in their latest NFL Power Rankings, after being #10 last week. Keyshawn Johnson still thinks that the receivers are bums.
• The Sporting News has an article about Erik Mangini sticking to Brady Quinn as his starter for this weeks game vs the Ravens. (YES!)
• The Ravens made a couple of moves yesterday, trading Prescott Burgess to the Patriots for a conditional 7th-round pick, meaning that if he performs well enough, he triggers bonuses to increase the pick to a 6th or 5th round pick.  In his place, they strengthened their tight end depth, by signing former KC Chief Tony Curtis, who is 28.
• Ravens Gab has a great post about Ray Lewis’ game-saving tackle, which has quickly emerged in Ravens circles as “The Stop Heard Round The NFL”
• A very cool thing about the Ravens offense has occurred this year.  They have players with good fantasy value.  So, FantasyPros911 brought to my attention that the top 3 added players in leagues are all Ravens, with fantasy owners jumping on the bandwagons of Ray Rice, Willis McGahee and Todd Heap.

From each of these links, I take these things out:

1) Finally ESPN gives the Ravens some respect.  As long as I’ve been a fan, they have never given them their due.

2) Brady Quinn is not getting the job done, but this isn’t a bad decision.  They need to stick with Quinn, as he was a first round pick who they gave a lot up for, and flashed (a few) signs of brilliance last year.

3) Burgess played very well in the preseason, and is one of the main guys making special teams tackles.  Yes, the team does have a lot of depth at linebacker, and not much at tight end, but Burgess was a good Ravens-type player. One thing you could imply from this move is that L.J. Smith’s hamsting isn’t getting any better.

4) It was a great stop by Ray Lewis, he even called it one of the best plays of his career.  If they got the first down, I have very little doubt that the Chargers would have scored and won the game.  Huge play by Papa Ray.

5) What is this new “offense” thing? What? People are picking up Ravens offensive skill position players for their fantasy teams? Why do they do this?  Oh, I see, it’s because the offense is finally legitimate with Joe Flacco at the helm and they’re 3rd in total offense and 2nd in points per game so far and their offensive line is playing better than any other line in the league.  That makes some sense.