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Sans gloves Baltimore takes postseason trek personally
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The tone was set early, and maybe no one paying attention last week should have been all that surprised. Even before the game began, talk was all the talk. The introduction on the Adelphia Coliseum JumboTron sarcastically called it a "Special message from Brian Billick and the Baltimore Ravens." But in reality, it was all fairly boilerplate stuff, straight out of a head coach's motivational manual: "Us against them. We get no respect. Blah-blah-blah." But when the Titans decided to air the video montage of Billick exhorting his players against Tennessee in various recent locker room scenes just before kickoff -- and as of late Sunday, no Titans official had claimed responsibility for the incinderary little clip -- the Ravens had their cause of the day. A slight to revenge, a score to settle, whether it be real or perceived. But as the weeks go by, we're realizing that's what the upstart Ravens crave. "At first I was laughing," Billick said, tucked off in a side room adjacent to the Ravens' raucous locker room. "I'm going, 'This is great.' I kept telling my guys, 'Boy, you've got to back my ass up now. Because it's stuck out there.'" But in truth, Billick wasn't all smiles in the wake of his team's 24-10 conquest of Tennessee in this AFC divisional-round playoff. Talk is cheap, but he viewed the clip as a video cheap shot intended to embarrass him and his team, and after the game he publicly seethed.
"That was as classless an act as I've ever seen nationally," Billick said. "I know [Titans president] Jeff Diamond, [general manager] Floyd Reese and [head coach] Jeff Fisher are class individuals. I will never believe, no matter what anybody tells me, that they knew about that because they are too classy, too professional to let that tasteless, classless act happen. "They pulled clips from our last win here, and after the Denver game. We were excited to win those. Give us that. But anybody who listened to me all week long has heard me say nothing tasteless, nothing classless, and nothing disrespectful of the Titans. I didn't do it." It's lucky for Billick, of course, that Baltimore seems to play its best football with some part of its anatomy stuck out too far: Be it chest, nose, or hind quarters. After a week filled with trash talking by some Ravens, Baltimore didn't forget to make it stick game day. As a wise man once said -- and no, it wasn't Joe Namath -- it ain't bragging if you back it up. "We back it up," Ravens tight end Shannon Sharpe said. "We talked all week and we then we came out here and backed it up. We knew if our offense didn't turn the ball over, they couldn't beat us. "I'm so sick of people talking about their defense. I am so sick of it. Their defense played well. But we came here six weeks ago and beat them, and we knew we could beat them again." Baltimore's win defied all logic statistically, but it did make a powerful statement. And if there's anything that we've learned about these Birds, it's that they love to talk. "We're not afraid to say what we think we're going to do," Ravens quarterback Trent Dilfer said. "I'm not a big believer in talking before the game, but this team has the ability to back up pretty much anything it says." Somehow. Some way. Baltimore had six first downs Sunday, and won. The Ravens were 18 percent on third down (2-of-11), were outgained 317 yards to 134, ran for just 49 yards, completed just five of 17 passes, and were on the wrong end of a 2-to-1 time of possession ratio. And they still walked away with a comfortable victory. "We don't score 30 points a game," Sharpe said. "We don't have a receiver who can go and get you 180 yards. We don't have a quarterback who's going to throw for 350. But I'll tell you what we do have: A team that's going to the AFC Championship Game. All them big-time offenses, you know where they're at? Home watching us." Watching the best defense in the game today do its thing. Watching the Ravens become the only road team to win so far in these NFL playoffs. Watching Baltimore ride a two-game streak of turnover-less games into the next week's AFC title game at Oakland.
"A lot of teams come in here and they're intimidated by the crowd noise and Eddie George in the backfield," said Ravens nose tackle Tony Siragusa, of Baltimore standing as the only visitor to win at Adelphia. "But we've got a lot of bald-headed guys on defense who know how to play this game." In a week in which several Ravens stoked the trash-talking fires, none did it with more explosive language than second-year cornerback Chris McAlister, who was quoted saying Titans Pro Bowl running back George tended to "fold up like a baby" when hit hard early. George ran tough all day against the Ravens' record-setting rushing defense, gaining 91 yards on 27 carries, and catching eight passes for 52 yards. But it was George's key bobble of a poorly thrown fourth-quarter pass from Steve McNair that produced middle linebacker Ray Lewis' game-clinching 50-yard interception return for a touchdown, the play that turned the lights out on the top-seeded Titans' season. "I don't know if they folded like a baby, but some of the fight was taken out of them [when they were down 14 points]," McAlister said of the Titans. "I know they used me as their bulletin board fodder this week. I was actually surprised they didn't come out and try to attack me even more." But when the Ravens perceived their fearless leader, Billick, was under attack, the fight was on for real. "Putting Billick up on the scoreboard, I don't think it psyched us out in any way," McAlister said. "It just kind of gave us a reason to go out and back up the statements." And even better, make a few more of their own. "We have TV's, too," Lewis said. "We're watching what people say about us. "They say we're not going to beat the Jets. We're not going to beat the Broncos. We're not going to be beat Tennessee. All they do is piss us off every week. That stuff is personal. For us to do what we've done this year, breaking records and still not getting any respect is ridiculous." Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com.
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