Next Up: Ravens AT Patriots, Gillette Stadium, Monday December 12.

[codizzle]

1 hour ago, ravensnation5220 said:

I went on the pats message board out of curiosity and man are they mean to each other lol

They clearly haven't read the CoC

[Jacquouille]

Just crush Brady. 

[Kid87]

Tavon vs.Edelman 

Jimmy vs. Hogan

Bennett vs ???

D-LINE VS BLOUNT 

[Kid87]

I wish we had Alex Lewis back for this game 

[Gtown Purple]

Hope we are healthy for this game, gonna be a tough one. Offense needs to put up 20+ for any hope to win.

[ravensdfan]

NE is not that tough defensively so I expect the offense to keep their hot hand and be aggressive.  Tom Brady though, is no Tannehill. Defense has some things to fix or Brady will have a field day.

[HoldingCall]

A reminder that one game doesn't make an offensive trend, especially when there are eleven previous games. If the team travels into NE and the offense repeat with a quality performance then I will begin to feel more positively. Until then, the Miami game is just an offensive anomaly. The degree of improvement in one week was quite steep. 

[JoeyFlex5]

2 minutes ago, HoldingCall said:

A reminder that one game doesn't make an offensive trend, especially when there are eleven previous games. If the team travels into NE and the offense repeat with a quality performance then I will begin to feel more positively. Until then, the Miami game is just an offensive anomaly. The degree of improvement in one week was quite steep. 

True but the offense has been in a gradual incline in the past month. We've been slowly seeing the offense come along and most of us knew we were due to explode sooner or later. It's more of a culmination of efforts finally coming together rather than an anomaly it appears.

 

[Sherly_Tebow]

Pats will be without Gronk and Amendola. They still have a lot of offensive weapons, but I'll take it. We should be able to stop their run game of Blount and White. Watching this game with my Pats fan girlfriend and her family will be interesting.

[HoldingCall]

21 hours ago, JoeyFlex5 said:

True but the offense has been in a gradual incline in the past month. We've been slowly seeing the offense come along and most of us knew we were due to explode sooner or later. It's more of a culmination of efforts finally coming together rather than an anomaly it appears.

 

We still must see more games to fully evaluate the degree of improvement. December football is here so it's now or never.

 

Edited December 6, 2016 by HoldingCall

[HoldingCall]

Monday night football will have a huge audience. 

 

[OUravensfan]

12 hours ago, Militant X 1 said:

I initially penciled this game in as an "L".  However, I'm re-thinking that after their game today.  The offense was HOT!  Finally!  IF...the Ravens keep utilizing their offensive personnel in this manner along with our defense playing well; they can actually go in to Foxborough and rough up Brady and company and come out of there with a big fat "W" and shock the ENTIRE football world...like they wanted to do in Dallas.  

They just have to watch out  for all of Bellicheats "trickeration" to get a win!

GO RAVENS!!

Good point, what BS are they gonna pull out this time, or are they saving it for the playoffs?

[Grapple Raven]

15 hours ago, Tank 92 said:

Wonder what tricks Billy has up his sleeve.  You know he's saving something for us.

Tank, you know he is combing through the bowels of the playbook for something, plus the communication issues that seem to plague all visiting teams in Foxboro.  The Pats are going to have it out for the Ravens, you better believe that.  They would love nothing better than to take us down on Monday Night Football in front of a national audience.  I hope the Ravens have all their bases covered against all the "extra-curricular" stuff, headsets, clock, etc.  Like the Boy Scout motto says..."Be Prepared" because you know its coming.

Belicheat loves to go after the jugular, so I expect the "trickeration" to come in the form of something dealing with special teams. Belicheat is still miffed about Tucker, lol, and after all the stuff the Ravens have done on special teams this season I'd look for Belicheat to try to embarrass Harbs on that aspect of the game.

From Pats forum:

"BB needs to do a lot of trick plays just to piss off Harbaby ".

"This fear of teams based on what they did years ago against the Pats is understandable but hardly based in reality.

The reality is the Ravens lead an awful division, they seem to have trouble against the upper echelon teams in the league this year, they're coming into Foxboro and the Patriots have made it known they do not respect or like them all that much for reasons which I think we can all figure out.

I say Pats win and it won't be as close as people think it will be. "

[Cillmatic]

Apparently there's a chance Amendola doesn't play on Monday.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Cillmatic

[Sherly_Tebow]

1 hour ago, Cillmatic said:

Apparently there's a chance Amendola doesn't play on Monday.

I hear the plan is to save him for the playoffs

[rmcjacket23]

Like the Cowboys game, this is a barometer game. Not necessarily a must-win, but its a must-"compete" game. 

[January J]

16 hours ago, OLD SCHOOL SMASH BALL said:

I dont like this. You need the win, but you almost dont want to show all your cards, because you will prolly see them again in playoffs.

While I agree to an extent I don't think you can hold anything back based on the premise we "might" see them in the playoffs. We've gotta make it first- and winning this game will go a long way to get us there.

12 hours ago, BOLDnPurPnBlacK said:

Plus we finally have a corner who can take away the quick underneath stuff to Edelman and Amendola. 

Young will be huge in this game. I trust our front 7 to stop Blount and our LBs and Safeties to stop White/Lewis. 

Smith will shut down Hogan. Mosley/Orr/Weddle can check Bennett. 

Suggs, Jernigan, Doom and Judon gonna beat Brady down. Hit em over and over and over again and make them put Jimmy G in for fear of losing Brady for the year. 

Yep, no Amendola..and obviously no gronk. Plus the loss of Collins hurt them. Very winnable game. And we are as healthy as we've been all season. Execution is key and limit the mistakes. Cannot give a team like the pats extra possessions BC they WILL capitalize.

[Rav'n Maniac]

I wish that Reed wasn't coaching in Buffalo. It would cool to see the Ravens sign him for one week just to screw with Belichick and Brady.  

[reed20]

17 hours ago, OLD SCHOOL SMASH BALL said:

I dont like this. You need the win, but you almost dont want to show all your cards, because you will prolly see them again in playoffs.

Then we shuffle the deck. We need this win no matter what we need to play our best football.

[reed20]

33 minutes ago, rmcjacket23 said:

Like the Cowboys game, this is a barometer game. Not necessarily a must-win, but its a must-"compete" game. 

If our team had this type of mentality we'd never win a superbowl.

[rmcjacket23]

4 minutes ago, reed20 said:

If our team had this type of mentality we'd never win a superbowl.

Not really. These players aren't dumb... they know when they have a contending team and when they don't.

Players on the Browns might say for the cameras that they think they have a SB-caliber team, but if they actually had to honestly answer that question, they would never think that way. Frankly, I'd test them for some sort of brain injury if they actually thought it was realistic.

They also recognize that they aren't going to win every game and that some are more critical than others.

 

[JEEPercreepermd]

To beat the Patriots, you have to be clean relatively with the penalties, you can't have mental errors..like dropping gift interceptions or tipped balls.

 Defensively, we should match up pretty well. The name of the game against Brady is PRESSURE. Force him to get the ball out quick, which he will..but for short gains. He doesn't like getting hit, he also doesn't like it when our guys get in his face..seriously. We have to play tough and nasty on defense, do anything you can to force him out of the pocket or get the ball out but they have to be smart.Can't give him any second chances, because he'll make you pay every time. 

Also, COMMUNICATION. This is where having someone like Weddle back there will help tremendously if they try to pull out anything crazy. 

 Offensively, deal with the crowd noise. Flacco has to have a clean game. Also their linebackers are mostly big run stoppers , have to take advantage of them in coverage which is what we've done with some success in the past. 

 Not going to make a prediction on this game, because we have just as much of a chance to win as they do. 

 A win puts us that much closer to the division title. A loss makes the Philly game a must win to set the table for Week 16 and 17. 

 

[cobrajet]

10 hours ago, ravensnation5220 said:

I went on the pats message board out of curiosity and man are they mean to each other lol

I just went on the Pats forums and they hate us. I really believe we are their biggest rival after reading how much they hate us. Every member calls us the Ravens and the disrespect Harbaugh (call him Harbawl) and Suggs is off the chart. They laugh at us saying that BB will trick us once again with something under his sleeve. They are super cocky, but I have a theory that deep down they may be a little worried about us. They know that we are getting healthy and playing well at the worst possible time for them. They know that there is nobody Suggs wants to hit more than Tom Brady. I really want to punch those cocky jerks in the mouth!!!!!!!!!!

They are a little worried because they probably lost Amendola for a while. He left in a walking boot and word up there is that it is a bad high ankle sprain. They are concerned because he is so reliable on returns and evidently their replacement returner is shaky.

[AnthonyGames]

I feel pretty good about this game! I'd argue we play the Pats better than any other team on a consistent basis. Bill B.'s gameplan is always to exploit the other team's weakness. Being that our run D is so good this year, and Blount won't scare us outside of short yardage situations, I think Brady will try to attack us through the air. 

Dink-and-dunk passes all game, with the occasional deep balls. I actually like our CBs against that kind of offense. Tavon Young and Powers - the small nimble CBs should match up well (we also have Jimmy on the other side). Playing some zone with Orr and Mosley cutting off quick slant routes over the middle will be big. Weddle and Webb providing help on deep balls. We must pressure Brady whenever we can! Against Miami we didn't register a lot of sacks but the pressure off the edge still disrupted Tanehill. 

As far as offense goes, the O-line play is everything for us! Man, if they can play almost as well as they did against Miami, I think we'll have a good shot! I'd like to see Dixon start to get more carries than West, and see Perriman get the ball a little more. I feel like the Miami game was the first game all year that we saw all the weapons on offense do damage. 

Last thoughts: No Gronk is nice. And, get ready for Belichick tomfoolery! WR throws, ambiguous eligible receivers, etc. 

[Rav'n Maniac]

If you think that Burfict flop was ridiculous a few weeks ago, wait till you see the master at flopping this week with Brady. I've seen the guy grab his own facemask a jerk his own head as he was going down. Then jump up pulling on his facemask at the ref, hoping for a flag. lol  Do you guys remember that game where Suggs barely brushed his leg and the animation that followed? There was even a cartoon that came out about it, wish I could find it. 

[callahan09]

5 hours ago, ravensdfan said:

NE is not that tough defensively so I expect the offense to keep their hot hand and be aggressive.  Tom Brady though, is no Tannehill. Defense has some things to fix or Brady will have a field day.

They are 10th in Yards Per Game, 12th in Pass Y/G, 10th in Rush Y/G, 12th in QB Rating allowed.  That's OK.  Better than average but yeah, not too tough, as you put it.

To make them seem even worse, they also allow a lot of plays per drive (ranked 24th), a lot of time of possession per drive (23rd), and a lot of yards per drive (19th), and don't get a lot of takeaways (27th in percentage of drives ending in a takeaway!!).

But unfortunately, somehow, despite all of that, they rank 8th in percentage of drives ending in a score.  Teams are only scoring on 31.1% of their possessions against them.  That adds up to a tie (with us!) for the 2nd best defense in the league in points allowed.

We'll see what happens.  All those numbers look promising at least in terms of us being able to hopefully move the ball and sustain some drives, and if we can do that, then hopefully our defense takes advantage of Gronk's absence and we might have a chance.

I don't expect us to win, but there's a chance.  It's not going to look like the Miami game, that's for sure!  I'm kind of expecting it to go like the Oakland game did.  Hopefully we're on the winning end of it this time.

We really just need to win the last 3 games of the season.  We can afford to drop the New England game, probably, as long as we win out.  And we match up great against Pittsburgh, the Bengals are weak this year, and the Eagles (and especially Wentz) have really fallen off the map lately, so I think we have a really good chance to win the final 3 games, and we are guaranteed to win the division if we win the final 3 games!  (It would mean we finish 10-6 with the head-to-head over Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh also wouldn't be able to finish better than 10-6).

[reed20]

2 hours ago, rmcjacket23 said:

Not really. These players aren't dumb... they know when they have a contending team and when they don't.

Players on the Browns might say for the cameras that they think they have a SB-caliber team, but if they actually had to honestly answer that question, they would never think that way. Frankly, I'd test them for some sort of brain injury if they actually thought it was realistic.

They also recognize that they aren't going to win every game and that some are more critical than others.

 

We aren't the Browns. Our players do believe that we have a SB caliber team that's why they're trying to win it this year. 

[rmcjacket23]

16 minutes ago, reed20 said:

We aren't the Browns. Our players do believe that we have a SB caliber team that's why they're trying to win it this year. 

Everybody is "trying" to win it every year. Whether they believe that now or not is certainly up for debate. After a game like the Redskins game or the Jets game, SB certainly should have been the absolute furthest thought from their mind.

[mg90]

I still remember our last meeting with them in the regular season where we lost like 40-7.  Not a good look.  Then after that it was their "study the rulebook" drive to put us away in the playoffs the following year.

 

Two wins in a row is enough for them.  And since it's not playoffs yet hopefully we can assume the rulebook exploits don't show up yet.  I know you have them highlighted Bill!

[Deflated Football]

15 hours ago, flynismo said:

Of course they are, if there's anything worse than a Pats fan, its another Pats fan

Yea, seriously. I'll always remember how they disrespected Torrey's brother the year we won it all. Will never, ever respect them.