frozen joe flacco fan

Duh????????????? I think we all know what happened wrt to Pitta's, Rice's and Ngata's contracts. So what????That's all water over the dam now. The important question to ask oneself is what did the Ravens do about them. The three top questions heading into this year's campaign were (not in order of importance): 1) Who would be our KR man to replace JJ? 2) What would we do to fix our secondary? 3) Who would replace Torrey Smith & Anquan Boldin? Today's game underscored these unanswered questions and more. With zero time left on the clock we led 20-19. It was a game we should have won , we could have won and we would have won if the above three questions had been properly addressed in the off-season. The thing about excuses is everybody has one. If your premise is correct and our woeful play is the result of three contracts, whose fault is it? Let me guess ---- Dean Pees, huh?

Unfortunately, there will probably have to be a scapegoat and it won't be Harbaugh or Ozzie. It probably will be Dean Pees because this defense is terrible when push comes to shove. Yes, the offense turned the ball over 4 times and deserves its fair share of the blame but our ability to stop 3rd and long plays is the worst in the league. Whether its a face guarding call against Jimmy Smith or a late hit against Kendrick Lewis or a hit against a defenseless receiver by Will Hill (bad call or not) or a face mask penalty against Elvis Dumerville, its just bad defense. IMO, its the head coach's responsibility to instill discipline in his team on both sides of the ball but you Dean Pees haters may finally get what you've been salivating over --- his dismissal. Dean deserves a better fate anyway. His ragamuffin team of defenders had the game won despite a lackluster effort on the part of the offense until a bonehead stupid play was made by the leader of our defense with time running out. I hate to see Dean get fired because it will be like treating the symptom rather than the disease. What we have on defense is a bunch of undisciplined players who are probably giving us their best but their best is not good enough to win consistently or even occasionally now.

If yardage allowed was as important as you think it is, Philip Rivers should be undefeated. Up until the egg he laid in the Chicago game on Monday night, his opponents had allowed him to pass on a pace that would break the single-season record for yardage. That's why that stat is misleading. Also, some excellent teams yield a lot of garbage yardage at the end of games. What is San Diego's W-L record? Already, there are BMore sports writers complaining that Joe Flacco may finally get 4,000 yards passing this year and it may be tainted by our record because it just proves allowing him a lot of yardage doesn't equate to winning. Just saying!??

Yeah & I get so tired of watching Troy Aikman do the color on national TV broadcasts for Cowboy games. That's really objective!

I think Joe has proven that it isn't as important who we bring in as his QB coach as it is who we draft. He has had four different OCs in four seasons and probably as many QB coaches. In selling real estate, the three most important things are location, location and location. In offensive football, its weapons, weapons and weapons. QUESTION: What does Andy Dalton have that Joe doesn't have? HINT: It starts with a W and if you have enough of them they equal Wins. Marvin Lewis is now the second longest tenured head coach in the NFL behind Belichick. With a record of 8-0 so far this year, his record is now 108-90 as a head coach. Its not because Andy Dalton is a better QB. Its because the Bengals have stockpiled lots of Ws, that is, weapons. BTW, most of their roster players are homegrown, i.e., drafted by the Bengals. They don't have many undrafted fee agents like we do. I could care less who we bring in as QB coach. ANSWER: What Joe needs is W E A P O N S !!!!

LOL. What we need is a laugher! Watching the finales of these close game losses is frustrating as heck. A little good luck would be nice too along with some unbiased officiating. Watching Tucker lose his footing on a piece of sod around a sprinkler head is but one example. If we didn't have any bad luck this year, we'd have no luck at all. Well, that is, beside the Pittsburgh game. As for the officiating in Ravens games, I think its fairly well obvious that the league has it in for certain teams but just because some of our fans and players may be paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get us. It has nothing to do with conspiracy theory; it has everything to do with the integrity of the NFL brand.

But for a season-ending injury to T-Sizzle early in our first game, our record might have been 6-2 instead of 2-6. He is one of those big playmakers who wreck the game plans of opposing OCs & QBs. Just imagine how much better it would have been with T-Sizzle. Hopefully, he'll rehab this injury and will resume his career next year.

While I agree that re-signing JJ after we traded him to SD would have made little sense, it will be weird watching him play in BMore for the Squeelers. It is also a tad ironic that finding a suitable replacement for him was one of the three biggest questions left unanswered heading into the regular season. It once again demonstrates a failure by the FO to groom someone in the organization to be a kick off & punt returner. It would not surprise me at all to see JJ get behind one of our defensive backs and haul in a long TD pass from Pig Pen to win the game when the Squeelers come to town. He did help us stretch the field in 2012 when given the opportunity to do so in the playoffs and the Super Bowl. Wishing Jacoby well except when he plays us!!!

As someone who is a lot smarter than me once said, "statistics are for losers." Was it Leo "The Lip" ? Anyway, we gave up very few passing yards to Peyton Manning and we lost. We gave up more than 300 yards to Philip Rivers and we won. Yardage allowed isn't nearly as important as points surrendered. What happens between the twenty yard lines doesn't matter as much as what happens in the Red Zone on both sides of the ball. Red Zone Efficiency makes the difference between scoring TDs or FGs. Point differentials and turnover/takeaway ratios are far more important stats to track than yards allowed. Of course, Ws are the most important stats of all. There have been far too many times this year when our D allowed TDs instead of FGs and our O had to settle for FGs instead of TDs. Oversimplification or not, its a fact that we don't have enough playmakers on both sides of the ball. To your point about yards allowed being so important, there was a point in this season when our defense had not allowed an opposing player to gain more than 100 yards in a game. That streak has finally ended but it really didn't define how well our defense played, did it?

Of course there's a correlation but your argument is a gross oversimplification. Yardage allowed is not always a good indicator of success. The two best stats to track are point differential and turnover differential, not yardage gained or yardage allowed. The "bend but don't break" philosophy works when the defense is good. Simply put, ours has not been good. Performance in the red zone is what counts. As a case in point, the final score of our game against SD would not have been close if we had had 5 TDs and 2 FGs instead of the reverse. We won despite surrendering more than 300 yards in passing to Philip Rivers & company. One defensive turnover in each of our losses could have made the difference between being 2-6 and 6-2. As it is, we can set a record for the most consecutive games played without causing a turnover against the Jags. Yeah, I'd trade 1 turnover for 99 yards of offense if our defense recovered a fumble or intercepted a pass on the goal line but we haven't. Dean Pees is not responsible for that. Its called desire or in this case a lack of it.

Good: The victory albeit pyrrhic. Ray's Pre-Game Inspirational Chalk Talk and his sideline exhortation of the team and the twelfth man. Bad: The atrocious officiating as usual. Here's a rhetorical question - Do ya think the NFL has something against the Ravens? Ugly: Undefeated Cincinnati's win over the Steelers was uglier than Pittsburgh's jailhouse jerseys Sad: Steve's season-ending and probably career-ending injury. I hope he will seriously reconsider and hang in there for one more ride with the Ravens. If not, he truly exemplified what it means to "Play Like A Raven". I hate to admit it but, without him, we may not win more than three games after the bye week. Steve Smith is to the offense what T-Sizzle is to the defense. We've lost the heart and soul of the team with all due respect to the other warriors out there on Sunday after Steve went down. Elite: You know! Kudos, Joe, for outplaying another top-notch QB

I agree wholeheartedly. John's job is safe, given all the injuries. We should keep Trestman and Pees. They both deserve commendations with the personnel they have had to work with, especially Pees' keystone cops secondary. The Owner should take a serious look at the FO right now. Oz should have gone out on top after the Super Bowl run. If I were the owner, I wouldn't hire the son of the GM as my Director of Player Personnel either. That makes no sense as in nada! BTW, another game ball should have been handed out to Ray Lewis for his inspirational Pre-game speech and sideline exhortation of the team and fans.

I'm with you on two out of four. Great owner & great QB! I can take or leave the other two.

If I were John Harbaugh, I would bring Dean Pees down on the sidelines for two fairly obvious reasons. That being said, I'm at a loss to say who could coach "The Lost Boys" any better than Dean. These guys play tentatively & soft much of the time. They are slow to the POA and miss a lot of tackles with the exception of Jimmy who had nine against Cleveland.

Well said! I'm not saying T-Sizzle's Achilles tendon tear was due to his off-season conditioning program or lack thereof but one has to wonder. He did report to training camp overweight I think.

Excuse me but the secondary has not been fixed. AND, if it ain't broken, make it better. Ozzie has been reactive versus proactive and it dates back several years. He waited too long to draft an understudy for Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and Torrey Smith among others. Those players could have helped groom their replacements. It is nice to see Dennis Pitta coaching up our three young TEs. It is expensive but it will pay dividends in the long run, hopefully.

I didn't raise the question 'bout Ozzie. Somebody else did. However, I was taught a long time ago that the only stupid question there is was the one that wasn't asked. You can bet Steve will have to confront this question sooner or later if our problems persist.

There's more to it than just the injuries, which I agree are sometimes unpredictable and unpreventable. There is a direct correlation between stamina and endurance and proper conditioning. I said this two years ago when we had the same problem and several bloggers just got a big yuck out of my suggestion. I disagree with blaming the coaches for everything that goes wrong on this team. When I tore a rotator cuff lifting weights in a gym, it was my fault. I doubt the Patriots are blaming any of their coaches for LT Nate Solders' torn bicep. Where did individual responsibility go?

I'm very familiar with Ozzie's impressive resume. All good things must come to an end and his time is past. That doesn't diminish what he's accomplished in an illustrious career. Like everyone else in the organization, he must be held accountable and not rest on his laurels. We are now 19-18 in the regular season since the 2012 Super Bowl. I submit there is shared responsibility for our mediocrity and he is partly to blame. If you can't handle the truth, its not my problem. Living in the past doesn't help us solve the problem. The only constant in life is that everything will change. Embrace it! In the final analysis, fans need to decide whether our #1 problem is the coaching or the personnel we have. I'm suggesting its the latter.

Yeah, we're pretty much playing for pride from here on out. In the immortal words of Jim Mora, "Playoffs? Playoffs? Who said anything about playoffs? I can't even get that excited about how well we played against Denver in a losing cause. Their HOF QB has thrown 6 TDs and 7 INTs. He's just a shell of the man he used to be.

Sometimes, we never really miss someone til they're gone! I just hope he comes back next year. Age is not on his side though.

Well, let's see! Ozzie Newsome played football, and .....?

I don't have anyone in mind but it would be someone who has a good football IQ like Charlie Casserly. There are probably some former Ravens players who could also do the job, e.g., Jonathan Ogden.

Yep, losing Suggs was bigger than anyone, myself included, could have imagined. He is one of the few gifted players we had left. I do believe his presence would have made a big difference in the outcome of one or more of our close losses. If nothing else, he was more disciplined than any of our other defenders. I agree that Forsett has been a great asset to our team but we would be even a better team if we had Ray Rice.

Injuries and stupid penalties have really hurt us on the defensive side of the ball but giving up 505 yards to the Brownies is bad when their offense was rated 20th. Throw in another 98 yards in penalties and its a recipe for losing. What bothered me most was the 139 yard/ 8 reception day fro an unknown TE. He had twice as many catches as our #1 WR and almost double the yardage. IMO, we need to clean house in the secondary with the exception of Jimmy and Webb. Moseley had a difficult day in coverage against the TE but he'll bounce back from it. I agree with your opinion about needing another high end WR to complement SSS but I'm not sure who is available or whether we can afford the type of receiver we need. I'm not as confident that Ozzie will land someone before the trading deadline due to cap issues.