“Is it 20 years now?” Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden, the Ravens’ first-ever draft pick—that likeable, gentle giant and early face of the franchise—can’t believe the first great season in team history was that long ago. He’s sitting in front of a laptop computer set up for a live video call in his Las Vegas home, sporting a black T-shirt, beard, and a short afro (which he just brushed, he points out), and he leans back, sipping something from a red Solo cup. Seven of his former teammates—Jamal Lewis, Edwin Mulitalo, Jamie Sharper, Tony Siragusa, Duane Starks, Matt Stover, and Rod Woodson—as well their forever head coach, Brian Billick, appear on the screen with him, looking like a Ravens’ alumni version of Hollywood Squares.

They’re taking a trip down memory lane, watching and reminiscing about a game they were all a part of, and won, 34-7, over the New York Giants: Super Bowl XXXV. On this pandemic mid-summer night, the NFL Network is showing an edited, two-hour replay of the game to help fill the channel’s void of new sports content, and the Ravens public relations department, in a treat for fans, decided to gather as many members of the Ravens year 2000 edition as they could for this watch party streamed on Facebook Live.

Siragusa is in his New Jersey living room, trying to get a good internet connection and playfully grumbling about why “a billion-dollar organization” like the Ravens is using video conferencing software called MegaPhone instead of Zoom. Starks is in his home office in Miami, with sports memorabilia framing his shot. Stover, who mostly lives in Baltimore, appears in the den of his house in Montana, where he likes to fish in the summer.

“How about that?” Billick says teasingly in response to Ogden. “How old do you feel?” Speaking from his home-office in central Ohio, Billick, now 66, looks largely the same as we remember him, except his hair is thinner and he’s wearing a blue button-down shirt instead of a purple Ravens polo.

Ogden doesn’t respond at first, but he’s actually 46. And, like a lot of his former teammates who we once watched play football as young adults, he’s a father of teenagers now. One of them, Jayden, just got home from high school football practice and made a brief appearance on screen, dressed in a Bishop Gorman High T-shirt, before ducking out of the frame.

Lewis, the team’s rookie running back way back when, and one of the three famous Lewises on the 2000 team, jumps in the conversation from his place in Atlanta. “Forty years old,” he says, his voice trailing off. “I’m 40.”

“Forty? That’s young,” Billick says.

“Oh my goodness,” Ogden says, to no one in particular. Then he rubs his face in astonishment, and flashes that trademark wide smile you may recognize from various local commercials over the years.

“Our fans knew one darn thing: we weren’t going to get bullied,” says Rex Ryan.

Yes, it might be difficult to believe, but it has now been two decades since January 28, 2001, the date the Ravens beat those Giants to claim the franchise’s first NFL championship in just its fifth season of existence. It was a few hours of football that left a meaningful legacy for so many reasons.

For the older generation, the Ravens’ convincing victory on a cool, clear night in Tampa marked a cathartic step away from the nightmare of the beloved Colts leaving town in 1984. Owner Bob Irsay took everything: the team’s colors, its players, its history, including a Lombardi Trophy. (For some, seeing that Colts logo in Indianapolis still stings.) Baltimore was without NFL football for more than a decade until eventual Ravens owner Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, despite the objections of other NFL owners who wanted to put a new team in a bigger market or one that didn’t take a slice of revenue from franchises in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. In an acknowledgement, perhaps, of the pain the Colts departure had inflicted on Baltimore, Modell left the Browns’ history behind in Cleveland. No one there seemed particularly grateful.

The irony that it was NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue—the man who, only a few years earlier, had told Baltimore city officials they should “build a museum” instead of a football stadium—who handed Modell the Ravens’ first Super Bowl trophy, “was not lost on anybody,” says Billick, who was standing on the field next to Modell as the trophy ceremony was broad- cast to millions across the world.

The Ravens’ 2000 team is remembered for having one of the best defenses of all time, for its braggadocio while punishing opponents, and for the saga of Ray Lewis’ murder trial—and the media circus that went with it. Outsized personalities, like Lewis and the massive, 300-plus pound defensive tackle Siragusa, who famously flopped on Oakland Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon during the playoff run to the Super Bowl, helped birth the first season of the still-running HBO all-access reality series Hard Knocks the next year.

The 2000 Ravens’ offense was famous, too—for scoring just enough points once Trent Dilfer took over as quarterback mid-season. And, bigger picture, the team’s first Super Bowl championship set the stage for what Baltimore fans have come to expect from modern pro-football life: winning seasons, playoff runs—highlighted by another Super Bowl win to end the 2012 season—all done in a gritty, gutsy way that reflected the city’s personality.

“Baltimore’s a tough-ass city,” says former New York Jets and Buffalo Bills head coach Rex Ryan, who coached the Ravens defensive line in 2000, “and our fans knew one darn thing, we weren’t going to get bullied. We had our own characters, there’s no question we did, and we might not have been right for everybody, but by God we were good with each other.”

“Has anyone heard from Corey Harris?” Two decades later, Duane Starks, the former cornerback who ran back an interception for a touchdown against the Giants, has lost touch with Harris, the former Ravens’ safety with whom he shared a huddle. “He was one of the funniest guys on the team,” Starks says, adding so was reserve wide receiver Billy Davis, whom Starks recalls wearing a “tinman” suit on the team airplane one time.

Life after pro football can go different directions, and the whereabouts of some of Starks’ former teammates are better known than others. “We’re all over the place now,” says former linebacker Brad Jackson, who backed up Ray Lewis that season, “but most of us keep in touch.”

Lewis, of course, is still a popular figure on the motivational speaking circuit. We most recently saw him give a virtual, area-wide high school commencement speech on Fox 45 in the spring. (The Super Bowl XXXV MVP was unavailable for comment when we reached out about this story.) Dilfer, after working with Lewis for a few years at ESPN and running private quarterback camps for many years, is now in Tennessee coaching high school football at the private Lipscomb Academy.

Others have settled into a kind of middle-aged retirement. “I fish and golf every day,” says Siragusa, now 53. “That’s all I do.” Until a few years ago, he also co-hosted a home-renovation show, Man Caves, that ran for 14 seasons on the DIY Network.

Former linebacker Peter Boulware is co-founder of a Christian school in Tallahassee, Florida, where he lives with his wife and five children. Another former linebacker, Jamie Sharper, is an assistant coach at Georgetown University. As for Harris? He’s living in Tennessee, having recovered from being so deep in debt that he sold his Super Bowl ring just a few years after earning it.

Garrulous tight end Shannon Sharpe is still talking, one of several former 2000 Ravens to join the football media in some form. He shares the mornings on Fox Sports’ Undisputed debate show with famous curmudgeon Skip Bayless. Eventual Hall-of-Famer Rod Woodson worked for the NFL Network.

Billick works for the league-owned football channel today, and he is still coaching—the third-graders of the Upper Arlington Bears youth football team, that is. Billick’s grandson, Brecken, is a linebacker and quarterback. “I’m the defensive coordinator,” says Billick, who moved to Ohio this spring to be closer to the grandkids. “We have one defense. Sometimes they don’t know their own names, and just getting them lined up is a challenge, but it’s great fun.” (It also raises the question of whether third-graders or pros are easier to deal with. “That’s an interesting question. You know, one group is young and immature. Of course the third-graders are hard to work with too,” Billick jokes.)

On the day we spoke, Billick was bringing a replica Lombardi Trophy to practice for the kids to take pictures with. The gesture was the reward for the previous week’s win and, really, an example of the type of motivational tactics he was known for during nine seasons as head coach in Baltimore, be it showing a Sports Illustrated cover featuring the former division rival Tennessee Titans in the locker room, or the trust he put in players off the field.

It might sound trivial, but even amid the Lewis drama that stemmed from the linebacker’s night out during Super Bowl week in Atlanta the year earlier, Billick never enforced bed-checks at the team hotel the night before games, which a lot of NFL teams do given the temptations right outside their windows. It made a difference for a team of characters that took care of conflicts and disputes themselves. To wit: Siragusa occasionally had players’ cars towed from the Ravens’ practice facility to the Owings Mills Mall, or let the air out of their tires, to send a message about something questionable they did on or off the field.

“I always told the players, ‘You act like men, we’ll treat you like men. If you act like children, I’ll treat you like children,’” says Billick, who was inducted into the Ravens’ Ring of Honor last year. “I was criticized for that decision, but I think that resonated with the players. They were not going to be that guy to screw this up.”

Says Brad Jackson: “Brian was like a Jedi master.”

“I told the players, ‘You act like men, we’ll treat you like men,'” says Billick.

Unlike the days of the legendary Colts, when retired players would stay here for life and open up businesses and restaurants in town (like Johnny Unitas’ Golden Arm restaurant and Andy Nelson’s BBQ), most of the players from the Ravens’ first Super Bowl team no longer live in Baltimore. (A lot of people think Ogden does, because of some charity work he does around town and those ubiquitous commercials, but he actually lives in Vegas.) Still, there are a good number who stayed.

There’s defensive lineman Larry Webster, now 51, who was one of three former Browns to win the Super Bowl five years after the move here. When that happened, it was a homecoming. Webster starred at Elkton High in Cecil County, and played at the University of Maryland, and lives in Baltimore County today. After retiring in 2002, and after admittedly having wasted a lot of the money he made as a player (not an uncommon story among NFL alumni), Webster spent a few seasons as a coaching intern under Rex Ryan. He also worked jobs as a security guard and Amazon truck driver, and then coached two seasons at Poly. Eventually, he went back to school at Maryland to finish his criminal justice degree. Now he is part of the Howard County Sheriff’s department, working as a courtroom officer.

“You’re going to have your ups and downs, but the best thing is to live and to learn,” Webster says. “There are consequences or rewards for every decision you make.”

You can see former fullback and special teamer Femi Ayanbadejo, who lives in Harbor East, walking the Inner Harbor to get coffee in Federal Hill almost every morning. He launched his own health care app after graduating with an MBA from Johns Hopkins in 2016, and this season, he became a game-day analyst for 98 Rock’s flagship radio coverage of Ravens games. He is also “a part-time activist when I can be as well,” he says, speaking out on racial and gender equity and LGBTQ rights issues. (His older brother, Brendon, does the same.)

There’s O.J. Brigance, of course, still courageously fighting the debilitating effects of ALS, and who can be seen at events around the city and in his reserved spot in the press box at Ravens’ home games. And there’s Spencer Folau, a 6-foot-5, 315-pound former offensive lineman and eight-year NFL vet who is the strength and conditioning coach at McDonogh School, where his friend and former teammate Stover is on the school board.

You might see Stover, the former kicker (Justin Tucker before there was a Justin Tucker, basically) at Grace Fellowship Church in Timonium on Sundays, occasionally serving as a guest preacher, with the Ravens’ old punter Kyle Richardson and Jackson in the pews. Jackson, who’s involved in real estate, food, and other businesses, has worked with former teammates in the past, such as Adalius Thomas, who owns Grille 620 in Ellicott City.

“The 2000 team played its role in healing the city, played its role in putting Baltimore on the map, and it still continues to play its role in the community, which I think is pretty awesome,” Jackson says.

Then there’s the redemptive story of Jermaine Lewis, who lives in a remote cornfield-lined Baltimore County town you might think unfit for a Super Bowl hero: Boring, Maryland. It’s a community of maybe 40 houses, a few hundred people, and one intersection, and, yes, it’s as sleepy as it sounds. You can drive all the way through the town before you even notice you’ve left. “It’s known for the fire hall,” Lewis says, and today he lives right next to it on 11 acres he bought during his playing days.

Everyone who was watching Super Bowl XXXV seems to have a story about where they were when Lewis ran “that kick back for a touchdown”—right after the Giants’ Ron Dixon had just done the same and given New York some brief signs of life. Lewis’ run was the type of play kids imagine themselves making one day in a big game, and it was a game- clincher, “that sucked the competitive life out of the Giants,” Billick says. It was even more meaningful given the loss Lewis and his wife had endured about a month earlier when their son, Geronimo, was born stillborn. In the wake of his death, Lewis, then 26, barely slept, but kept playing. He says he dramatically yelled his son’s name when he was about to collide with defenders while returning kicks, as though a warrior in battle: “Geronimo!”

That loss is a pain no parent will ever get over, and Lewis endured more hurt over the balance of his career, and afterward. He says his 30s “were a blur.” He separated from his wife, Imara, and relied heavily on alcohol to numb the pain of post-concussion syndrome (he estimated he had around 18 in his nine-year career), claustrophobia, and undiagnosed PTSD linked to head trauma. (Similarly, one of the other Lewises, Jamal, believes he might be living with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, today.)

At one point, Jermaine Lewis says he was drinking vodka and orange juice every morning. He lost his Super Bowl ring in Miami Beach during a wild night out. Another night, back in 2011, he was arrested for DUI for the second time in six years after hitting a sign outside the Boring fire hall that told people when bingo was each week. “I felt so bad, because that’s the only thing here, is the bingo,” Lewis says now. “I had to replace the sign.”

Seeing that he was embarrassed and in the news for the wrong reasons, Lewis’ wife and a few friends convinced him to try rehab for the third time, this time at a center in Michigan designed for military veterans dealing with head trauma. “I thought I had it bad until I got there,” Lewis says. “That helped me suck it up, and I actually became the leader in the house.”

Lewis stayed for 60 days, double the time he expected, and hasn’t sipped alcohol in the five years since. He doesn’t even drink his former preferred chaser, orange juice, anymore. “Looking back, I was doomed,” he says. “If you retire, you better have something to do, because otherwise every day could become a Saturday night.”

Today, the Boring life is just what the 46-year-old wants. He spent the early days of the pandemic in the spring discovering gardening and searching the local Lowe’s home center for bulbs to plant near the bricks he laid in his backyard. He likes watching the deer on his property.

He coaches football camps around the country for hopeful college recruits, and when he is not traveling to and from them, he trades stocks during the day, which scratches his competitive itch. He’s back with his wife, and until this COVID-19 delayed season, he coached his son at national high school football powerhouse St. Frances Academy downtown.

“I’ve learned you’re going to go through things in life, and it might take longer than you think,” Lewis says. “But my outlook is so much brighter now. I feel like I’ve started over.”

There is life after football, after all, when the boys playing a kid’s game must eventually become men. When your youth coach doesn’t bring a replica Super Bowl trophy to practice anymore for motivation, and when you look back on winning the real thing 20 years later and realize what a joy it was, and how much it really meant.

“With the 28th overall selection, the Baltimore Ravens select Patrick Queen, linebacker, Louisiana State University,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, live from his basement.

Around 11:45 p.m. Thursday, with the pick finally in, Ravens coach John Harbaugh air high-fived in the direction of the computer screen on his home office desk.

It was late. “A long, long day,” said Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta, who was on the receiving end of Harbaugh’s video congratulations. And the nearly five previous hours were different from all of the other communal draft nights the Ravens’ braintrust has known. “We were together, sort of,” DeCosta said.

The Ravens and all NFL teams, popular as they are, are not immune pandemic-generated social-distancing rules, either. And so for the first-time ever, the league’s college draft—normally an in-person primetime spectacle held at some place like Radio City Music Hall and attended by thousands of passionate fans—went entirely virtual.

In essence, the traditional conference-style War Room at Ravens’ headquarters in Owings Mills was replaced by a home-office-themed internet-based Zoom Room. We saw Harbaugh sitting at his desk amid bright book-lined shelves, and DeCosta celebrating with his three children in his pink-ish wall-colored workspace.

It felt and looked like a fantasy football draft—where John Doe’s around the country analyze and choose players from their couches for fake teams and a little money—except this remote draft was real and the lifeblood of a billion-dollar pro football business.

Young twenty-somethings hearing their names called, like Charm City’s new (Patrick) Queen, have the potential to become household names and new millionaires. All the while, front-office guys such as DeCosta wore collared shirts and jackets, and ate good food (Jimmy’s Seafood, in his case) rather than gorging on cheap pizza and beer, while trusting encrypted league-mandated Microsoft Teams channels and their own custom team IT setups.

Thankfully, it all went off without a visible glitch—from the technology setup to the Ravens’ draft choice itself. DeCosta manned the Ravens’ battlestation from his cozy office, where a half dozen computer monitors displayed information, like the team’s draft board of names, arranged as if they were meetings on a Google calendar.

One by one, the blocks disappeared as the 27 other picks were made. But by the time it was the Ravens’ turn, they still nabbed one of their preferred targets. Queen, a 20-year-old, 6-foot, 230-pound quick and versatile linebacker—who’s a good tackler, blitzer, and pass coverage option—was defensive MVP of LSU’s national championship-winning team in January.

“He plays like a Raven,” DeCosta said. “When you watch the tape, you notice him. He’s a great fit for our defense and a great fit for Baltimore. He was a need, but also the very best player on the board for us. When that happens it’s a great win for the organization.”

Quarterback Lamar Jackson commented from his place on Instagram shortly after the selection and took the analysis further, saying simply, “Ray Lewis, Jr.” Harbaugh noted Queen’s potential after starting just one year at LSU: “His best football is in front of him.”

It was even later, close to 1 a.m., when Queen joined reporters live in a video chat from his family’s living room in the small town of Ventress, Louisiana, where his family was celebrating (his dad, Dwayne, is a former college football player) and a dog barked.

“It was a long, long, long, long night,” Queen said to start, one upping DeCosta’s claim by a few “longs.” And as a few people offered congratulations to the new Raven before asking a question, he responded with a sincere “Thank you,” before answering each query.

On the inevitable comparison to Ray Lewis, a linebacker who the Ravens also selected at the end of the first round back in the day, Queen smiled. “The bar is set high,” he said.

On critics who might say he’s undersized for the rough world of the NFL, he said, “I’m so tired of hearing that,” and added that he’s proven people wrong everywhere from his small Louisiana high school to the big-time world of college football at LSU. “The tape shows.”

On what fans can expect from him, he said, “Ya’ll going to get the most energetic player from this draft, the most passionate, the most dominant, the most studious person that you can get. I bring a lot to the table.”

Those are more than enough reasons for an air high-five.

For instance, Queen is the first player from LSU the Ravens have ever drafted, perhaps because longtime Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome—who was also part of the Zoom Room—played at the University of Alabama, one of LSU’s rivals.

“He kept saying something, but we muted him,” DeCosta said sarcastically of Newsome before the pick was made. “He kept waving his hands then his video went out. That’s the thing with technology sometimes, it can be manipulated. Maybe it was the Russians, I don’t really know.”

To that point, the GM indicated he would have preferred that ESPN didn’t have a camera in his office recording everything he did, one of more than 100 live video feeds coordinated for the broadcast. “It’s a bit unsettling,” DeCosta said.

But, for one night, the whole mere occurrence—from Queen’s authentic answers and apparent skills, to the awkward musings of Goodell from his basement as he announced picks, to the office backgrounds of Harbaugh and DeCosta, and light-hearted jokes—was a welcome respite for pandemic life.

Yet hopefully it’s not needed in the long run. “I don’t think I’ll ever experience another draft like this,” DeCosta said, noting he had tell his kids to be quiet at times. “But I’ll never forget it.”

In the wake of the news of Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in a helicopter crash that also took the life of his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, as well as seven other passengers Sunday, shock and sadness have reverberated throughout the sports world and beyond. As the nation grieves the legendary Los Angeles Laker and his aspiring WNBA star daughter, “GiGi,” people are undoubtedly hugging their loved ones a bit tighter, and reexamining what it means to truly live life to the fullest.

Many have taken to social media to mourn the devastating loss, including several athletes, celebrities, and community leaders from Maryland. Here are some of their reactions:

I idolize Kobe. I always looked up to him. He was the reason I was a Lakers fan. And just knowing that we lost that type of legend and that type of leadership in this community, in this world, it hurts a lot.” —University of Maryland Terrapins forward Jalen Smith to 247 Sports.

This was supposed to be a coronation of sorts. You could easily see it: Lamar Jackson gliding across the pristine green turf and throwing a few touchdown passes in front of a keyed up, sold-out crowd. Those fancy LED lights atop M&T Bank Stadium would flick on and off in celebration, Justin Tucker would do some new kind of dance after a field goal, and in general we’d see what we saw all year. “The Revolution,” as the hype video put it this week.

When all was said and done a few hours later, we’d see more video clips with talk of a Super Bowl run, more Big Truss references, more smiles.

Instead, what happened on Saturday, January 11, 2020—a day that anyone wearing purple will want to remove from their memory—was more like a bad dream.

It was said in many ways and analogies afterward, but linebacker Matthew Judon put it best, speaking to a group of reporters in an otherwise empty locker room a half hour past midnight. “You don’t expect to get into a car crash,” he said, “until you get into a car crash.”

Indeed, what had been a spectacular Ravens season jolted to a hard stop, ending with a shocking, deflating 28-12 loss to the visiting Tennessee Titans—the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs. In a performance unfortunately reminiscent of his first playoff appearance last year as a rookie (we incorrectly thought that loss was dead, buried, and gone), Jackson threw two interceptions and fumbled once—though he also totaled 365 passing and 143 rushing yards.

And the Ravens—this super-exciting, super-likable, super-good edition that brought us joy, Marie Kondo-style—fell behind early, a rare occurrence. They failed to convert on a pair of usually aggressive 4th-down-and-short tries. And despite running twice as many offensive plays at their opponent, the team watched the Titans play “winning football,” as Ravens coach John Harbaugh said—when odds-makers and everyone around town expected the opposite to happen.

In the locker room, you could hear an echoey noise coming from the showers where players clean up. A few in there were yelling afterward, one in particular about the sudden offseason and next season’s training camp that’s months away.

Meanwhile, others struggled to explain the performance with equal parts befuddlement and candor. “Is this really happening?” cornerback Marlon Humphrey recalled thinking as the game clock ticked to zero, while also saying, “I think this team’s identity right now is get in the playoffs and choke. That is just the hard truth.” (Asked about the comment a day later on Sunday, he said he stands by it.)

That might be a bit harsh. One smelly dud of a game where a team has big expectations to win does not make a full identity—and this is the first such playoff game for this era of Ravens. This wasn’t exactly like their pre-Revolution loss to the Los Angeles Chargers last playoffs when Jackson couldn’t hit water throwing a football from a boat. Nonetheless, losses like these—in which “we got our ass whipped,” as running back Mark Ingram said—do leave scars.

You hope this isn’t the start of a “best team to never win a [fill in a blank]” discussion or “best player never to win a [fill in the blank]” discussion when it comes to the super-likable Jackson in particular. But dubious narratives are downright impossible to shake until you, well, win whatever is missing. And the questions already started flowing in Jackson’s direction as soon as 15 minutes after the game ended Saturday night.

At age 23, he’s now 19-2 as a starting quarterback in two pro seasons, and 0-2 in the playoffs with a 63.2 postseason quarterback rating (out of a 158.3 maximum). To his credit, dear Lamar, still wearing his game pants, along with a pair of Nike flip-flops and a gray Baltimore dri-fit t-shirt, stood at the podium in a humid interview room and answered more than a dozen questions in front of 11 television cameras and about 50 reporters. He said he made too many mistakes, promised to work harder, and come back stronger next season.

If last season indicated to the quarterback that he needed to work on his passing mechanics, the jolting end to this year may suggest: “I need to improve on everything,” he said. “Whether it’s running, throwing the ball, pocket poise, everything.”

One reporter asked the question of the day for fans, whether it will be painful to hear people talking about him not winning a playoff game over the next year. “I don’t really care about what they say,” Jackson said. “This is my second year in the league. Many people [aren’t] able to bring it to the playoffs. We’re just going to keep going, like I said, [and] get ready for next year.”

The thing is, nobody wanted to be talking about next year so soon. Big Truss meant Big Goals. Not just the final image of a few players, like backup quarterback Robert Griffin III and tight end Hayden Hurst, tossing equipment into the crowd after a stunning playoff loss at home as the conference’s top seed.

Judon, as he did late Saturday, didn’t want to be talking in the locker room about if he would stay with the team or not. Neither did defensive tackle Michael Pierce. Both, whose contracts expire in May, said they want to return. Tackle Ronnie Stanley would rather have not been exchanging goodbyes with rookie center Patrick Mekari and suggesting they meet up in California in the offseason. (Related, Mekari said, “We could have won this game. We should have won this game.”)

And for sure, a few minutes earlier in a largely silent locker room, nobody wanted to hear Harbaugh tell everyone to be at the team’s facility in Owings Mills at around 10 a.m. Sunday for a meeting and to clean out their lockers—instead of maybe an announcement of a day off from practice as a playoff push continued. And I certainly didn’t want to see “Flacco” trending on Twitter after getting back to the press box from post-game interviews in the locker room.

Jackson, typically active on social media, was notably quiet until late Sunday morning, when he shared a message of support from a fan on Instagram. It was almost the same response as last year when he told us, “It’s all good,” in a look ahead to what was a better-than-good second season for him. We wrote then that he was clearly the Ravens’ future. That’s still the case.

But this time, this loss sounded harder to stomach. “I don’t know how difficult it’s going to be or how long it’s going to be in my mind,” Jackson said. “I hate losing. I really do. We’ve just got to move on.”

In other words, if Saturday night was a car crash, now comes the damage assessment.

7:20 A.M. TOP OF THE MORNING

I wake up, brush my teeth, wash my face, and head to the Under Armour Performance Center. I don’t like eating super early, so I’ll wait a little bit.

8 A.M. BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

The first thing I do is go to meetings, and then after those first initial meetings, usually we get a break. That’s when I eat. At the facility, there’s usually croissan’wiches: bacon, egg, and cheese. So I’ll have two of those for my breakfast. Then it’s back to meetings:
offense, defense, and team meetings. We have a walk-through
as an offense, and then we get
ready for practice.

11 A.M. PREP WORK

In that time, I usually get a massage, get some stretching. If there’s anything that I feel is extra sore, I get some extra work on that before I get ready, kind of warm-up before practice. I’ll eat a little something, but I don’t like to eat much before going out to play, so maybe I’ll have oatmeal and some bacon.

1 P.M. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Then I get [my arms] taped and go out to practice for about an hour and a half, two hours.

1:30 P.M. COOLING OFF

After practice, I have my real lunch. I drink my protein shake, which will have a good amount of protein, so that’s like a meal. Then I get in the ice tub, which helps with recovery, and go to meetings from there.

4:30 P.M. A BITE TO EAT

After the meetings, I go home if I don’t have to get any extra treatments. Immediately when I get home, I let my dogs out.
I have two pit bulls, Lola and Rico (they have someone who takes them out during the day), and I spend some time with them outside. I get some food ready back at home. This is the first year I’ve hired someone to cook for me, which helps a lot to get my meals in, because I need 5,000-6,000 calories. She makes two meals and a snack for me every day when I come home. So, that’s my early and late dinner, and then a snack later.

6 P.M. REST UP

Then I hang out at home, watch game film, and play some video games. FIFA, Call of Duty, APEX are my three, and I’ll watch some shows on Netflix like Dark, The OA, and Black Mirror, which is one of my favorites. I’ll just be relaxing with my dogs. I’m pretty laid back with my little routine, but I stick with it.

EAT

Jan. 10-18: Baltimore Restaurant Week

Locations & times vary. $15-45.

To understand just how much locals love the city’s Restaurant Week, please direct your attention to the clock on the event’s website that counts down how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds are left until the deals begin. Through next Saturday, more than 90 local eateries will serve up fixed menus at a sweet price: two-course brunch or lunch for $15 to $20 and three-course dinner for $25 to $45. Map out a game plan, make your reservations, and prepare to indulge in a week of special selections from newcomers like Orto and True Chesapeake Oyster Co. and city staples like Tio Pepe Restaurant and The Prime Rib.

DRINK

Jan. 11: Baltimore Ravens vs. Tennessee Titans

Locations, times, & prices vary.

There’s no doubt about it: Baltimore is ready to paint the town purple and watch Lamar Jackson lead the Ravens into the playoffs. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of options for where and how to cheer on the 14-2 giants, no worries, we rounded up the best pre-games, parties, and Ravens Flock festivities for you. Check out our picks for the best spots to throw on a jersey, crack a beer, and celebrate the Ravens’ stellar season, including stand-out favorites like the Purple Patio at Mother’s Grille and Charles Village Pub in Towson.

SEE

Jan. 11: Harbor Point Ice Festival

Harbor Point, 1310 Point St. 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Free.

It’s that time of year when Baltimoreans typically stay inside to avoid the blustering wind and bitter cold, but the Harbor Point Ice Festival gives locals and visitors alike the chance to wrap up and come together in this magical winter wonderland. Visit Harbor Point during this one-day affair to marvel at handmade ice sculptures, enjoy live music, explore eats from area food vendors, and participate in tons of family-friendly activities.

HEAR

Jan. 10: Music Under the Dome: Ziggy Stardust

Maryland Science Center, 601 Light St. 9-10 p.m. $15.

Even if you’re the biggest David Bowie fan out there, you’ve (probably) never experienced his cult-favorite album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, quite like this. Head to the Maryland Science Center on Friday night to experience the museum’s popular Music Under the Dome series, where the 360-degree sights and sounds of this out-of-this-world album will fill the planetarium dome. Since the first showing is already sold out, snag tickets to the 9 p.m. seating and then prepare to fly through galaxies and constellations during this alien-rock show.

DO

Jan. 11: Girls Rule! Dance Party

Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St. 11 p.m-2 a.m. Free.

The first full work week of the new year has been long, to say the least. If you’re in need of a serious pick-me-up, end your Saturday night on the Ottobar’s dance floor, belting out the lyrics to “Truth Hurts” and “Call Your Girlfriend.” DJ Pancakes will be spinning the latest and greatest hits from all female artists until closing time, so dance off the week’s stress with three hours of tunes by the likes of Madonna, Missy Elliott, and more.

The Baltimore Ravens are giving purple pride an entirely new meaning this season. The Lamar Jackson-led flock—which has been undefeated since October and subsequently inspired a heightened sense of hometown pride—is heading into its first playoff game against the Tennessee Titans on Saturday, January 11. Of course, there will be plenty of “Big Truss”-themed watch parties and food-and-drink deals on game night. But if you’re looking to get into the spirit well ahead of time, the team is hosting a number of community rallies leading up the first AFC divisional round. So throw on a jersey, crack open a beer, and celebrate the Ravens’ stellar season at these community events and purple parties this week.

FLOCK FESTIVITIES

1/8: Car Stenciling in Canton
Pull up to the Safeway on Boston Street from 6-7 p.m. to have your car decorated with an official Ravens decal. Former players Adalius Thomas and Cary Williams will also be on hand to sign autographs and hype up the crowd.

1/9: Flock Party at White Marsh Mall
Beginning at 4 p.m., the section of White Marsh Mall near the Macy’s Home Court will transform into a full-blown Ravens headquarters—complete with spirited cheerleaders, former players, marching band performances, and a visit from Poe himself. Snap selfies with all of the attendees while entering into contests and giveaways.

1/9: Ravens “Pup” Rally at Checkerspot Brewing Company
In what we’re sure will be one of the most adorable Ravens events ever, Checkerspot Brewing—located just a stone’s throw away from M&T Bank Stadium—is hosting this “pup” rally for dogs to come decked out in their purple bandanas, bowties, and jerseys. From 5-8 p.m., pups will enjoy dog treats from Sweet Paws Dog Bakery while running around on their own mini football field. Plus, humans can take advantage of $5 pints of Checkerspot beer and shop signature Dogs of Charm City merch. A portion of all proceeds will be donated to The Humane Way Animal Rescue and its work for dogs in need.

1/9: Bud Light Rallies in Federal Hill
Former Raven Jarret Johnson will be bouncing around bars on South Charles Street in Federal Hill on Thursday night from 6-8 p.m. Head to spots including Ropewalk Tavern, Wayward Smokehouse, The Charles, Mother’s Grille, Bandito’s Bar + Kitchen, and Don’t Know Tavern on Light Street to catch the legendary linebacker and enter to win tickets to Saturday’s playoff game. There will also be bar bingo, autographed merchandise, and, of course, discounted Bud Lights.

1/10: Purple Friday Fuel Up
Start your Purple Friday off right with this morning tailgate in Lot D at M&T Bank Stadium. From 6-10 a.m., enjoy car stenciling, food, and a live broadcast with 98 Rock’s morning show. Former players Edwin Mulitalo and Chris McAlister will be on site to give away a pair of tickets to the divisional round.

PLAYOFF PARTIES

Alexander’s Tavern: Starting at 7:15 p.m., one hour before kickoff, this Fells Point staple will be backing the birds with tons of drink specials. Watch the game on one of the many big screens while taking advantage of $3 Bud Light drafts, $15 hard seltzer and microbrew beer buckets, $5 wings, and half-priced orders of Alexanders’ famous tots.

Purple Postgame at The Admiral’s Cup: Depending on the final score, prepare to celebrate a victory or dance away your sorrows at this post-game party in Fells Point. Local cover band In Too Deep will take the stage following the game at 11:15 p.m. to perform its roster of early-aughts hits by the likes of Weezer and Blink 182.

Cardinal Tavern: What’s a Ravens watch party without flowing pints of Natty Boh? Gather with fellow fans at this Canton corner bar to enjoy $4 Boh drafts, as well as $4 rail drinks, $6 appetizers, and $6 craft drafts during all-night happy hour. There will also $3 Narragansett and Bud Light beers and $10 Bud Light buckets if you’re drinking with a crew.

Charles Village Pub Towson: Grab a spot at this popular Towson haunt to share discounted beer buckets while digging in to an array of tailgate-themed food specials. Among them are $5 buckets of fries or tots, $8 boneless Buffalo bites, and $10 crab pretzels, chicken tender baskets, and all-American burgers.

The Charmery: It should come as no surprise that this fan-favorite ice cream shop has dreamed up a whimsical flavor to celebrate the team. Stop by one of the locations in Hampden or Towson to sample the “Lamarshmallow Twirl,” a tribute to our MVP featuring Nutella, graham crackers, and cereal marshmallows.

Playoff Purple Patio at Mother’s Grille: Mother’s in Federal Hill is starting game day with brunch service at 9 a.m. before opening its famed Purple Patio at 12 p.m. Show up early to grab a grape-flavored “Ravens Crush” and claim your spot in front of the massive outdoor projector. The bar’s popular all-you-can-drink package starts at 4 p.m.

Nacho Mama’s: Both the Canton and Towson locations of this Elvis-themed cantina will be offering cleverly named specials in honor of the playoff run. Chow down on nachos and quesadillas while sipping $5 “Lamar-garitas,” “Gus ‘The Bus’ Crushes,” and “Judon Juices.” To make the evening even more fun, bartenders will also be pouring free shots for every Ravens touchdown.

Ottobar: If you’re planning to cheer on the birds from Remington, head upstairs at the Ottobar to sip discounted drinks while watching the game on a giant HD screen. In true tailgate style, there will also be a potluck—so come equipped with your favorite game-day dish.

Papi’s Hampden: Belly up to the bar at this Falls Road hangout to enjoy a combo of three crunchy-shell tacos and a draft beer for $8 during the game. Other specials will include $1.50 Naturdays cans, $3.50 Loose Cannon IPAs, and $5 Ravens bombs that mix Deep Eddy’s lemon vodka with blueberry Red Bull.

The Sporty Dog Pop-Up Party at Safari: Hot dogs are essential at any tailgate, and local pop-up The Sporty Dog will be slinging its signature franks with outside-of-the-box toppings at this game-day takeover in Canton. Stop by to dance to live DJ music and get in the spirit with the “Ravens Dog,” which is topped with sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions, and red cabbage curry slaw to give it a festive purple color. Other party highlights will include raffles, open bar access, and “Lamar-velous” swag by This Sporting Life.

Just over a week ago, as the Baltimore Ravens were set to kick off against the New York Jets—and just before a photorealistic raven was set to fly and caw its way across M&T Bank Stadium—Greg Harvey was feeling anxious.

The morsel of an idea that he manifested with his team at The Famous Group and the Ravens this past July was about to be realized. And with its successful execution—and subsequent virality—came a new frontier in mixed-reality technology.

While those actually in the stadium saw it on the RavensVision Jumbotron screen, it felt even more lifelike for those watching on their phone or tablet, unaware that it was a stadium activation.

But the process from inception to execution didn’t come without plenty of tests and rehearsals up to a few hours before the game. And the streaking Ravens doing their part to raise the stakes in a primetime Thursday night game only heightened the proceedings.

“I was so nervous,” says Harvey, the CEO and executive creative director of The Famous Group, based in Culver City, California that describes itself as a fan experience company. “I was about to black out when the bird went live.”

Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch. It went so well, in fact, that the team used different variations of the virtual bird nine times throughout the night in which the team clinched the AFC North and Lamar Jackson broke the single-season rushing record for a quarterback. Comparisons to Game of Thrones, a show that brands itself around the same dark and brooding motifs as the Ravens, were abound, as the Internet tried to decipher what it was seeing.

“The Ravens are not afraid to try something new,” says Andrew Isaacson, The Famous Group’s executive vice president. “The game’s circumstances were just a nice happenstance—it had nothing to do with the performance on the field.”

The video took off on social media—it got picked up across ESPN’s platforms and programs as well as Bleacher Report.

“We weren’t sure how impactful it would be in the stadium,” says Jay O’Brien, the Ravens’ vice president of broadcasting and gameday entertainment. “Fans didn’t really know what they saw—but they wanted to see it again.”

The Famous Group and the Ravens have a longstanding partnership, having worked together to design more essential gameday screen graphics such as third down prompts and first down celebrations. But in order to attempt something of this magnitude, O’Brien, along with his partner on the project, Brad Downs—the Ravens’ vice president of marketing—had to be open to failure. Both have been with the Ravens for more than a decade, dedicating themselves to the team’s game day experience.

“We are committed to trying new things and working with new technology,” O’Brien says.

Mixed reality is centered around a virtual object interacting with a physical space. Building the animation that became the raven—it doesn’t have a name, though all those involved took to calling its first appearance “The Summoning”—was a nimble one. The Famous Group commissioned a company to do a laser scan of M&T Bank Stadium to determine which parts of the field would work best for the bird to land. From there, it got technical, with different software engineers and sound designers working from scratch to form what became the finished product.

Once the model was complete, the collective team got to work to ensure that things would go smoothly. A camera operator needed to be coached on where to point to follow along on the field with what, to a naked eye, would look like nothing. Isaacson and the Ravens were in the stadium control room at midnight the night before the game making final tweaks, even blacking out the RavensVision video board to shield from any potential cell phone cameras.

After a last few pregame rehearsals hours before the game, there was nothing left to do but wait and see. Once it was over, the burden of months of pent-up nervous energy and long nights was immediately lifted. And if you’re wondering if the bird will return for a Ravens playoff run, O’Brien and Downs are mum on the subject—content for now to bask in a successful flight.

“We’ve experienced a lot of exciting moments with the Ravens,” O’Brien says. “But the control room excitement after the raven flew right before kickoff was up there with C.J. Mosley’s interception to win the AFC North in 2018. So many people in that room had spent so much time to make that moment impactful for the fans. There was cheering like we had won something on the field. It was a special night.”

If you’re a Ravens fanatic and a last-minute holiday shopper, boy do we have some good news for you. The Official Ravens Shop has opened a pop-up location for just ten days in The Shops at Canton Crossing. From December 19-28, you’ll be able to stock up on the season’s latest fan gear (yes–highly-coveted, exclusive Lamar Jackson jerseys included), just in time for the NFL playoffs. But, you better act fast. Though the shop has the largest selection of merchandise fans can buy in-person, opening day lines were wrapped around the store.

“In addition to items fans will expect to see, we’ll have exclusive items that we usually only make available on gameday,” senior director of retail Chris Inouye told the official Ravens News Blog. “We’ll have everything they need to show their Ravens pride or find great gifts during the holiday season.”

If you’re already overwhelmed, don’t worry, we’ve scoured the shop for the hottest items we think you’ll love. Take a sneak peak at five of our favorite products.

Youth Lamar Jackson jersey ($50).

Full size official football ($25).

Men’s coat ($99).

Poe mascot statue ($26).

Women’s light-up v-neck sweater($80).

Getting a straight answer out of constantly comical Ravens running back Mark Ingram can be a tough task. Just ask his teammates, or listen to him banter to anyone at practice or before a game, or talk in the locker room afterward. But there is so often truth in his now well-known brand of irreverent humor.

“I feel like people say that when you’re 30, I guess you’re like dead or something,” Ingram told reporters this week, alluding to his upcoming milestone birthday on Saturday‚ and the reputation for running backs of his age to break down physically due to the violent nature of pro football and his position. “But I think my best football is still ahead of me.”

The way this season is going, the Ravens don’t need a lot more. Maybe just a few more games of Ingram being himself. At 5-foot-9, 215-pounds, he is a proverbial battering-ram inside runner on the field. And he’s also perpetually positive—an internet meme-inspiring “heart of the team,” between the lines and everywhere else, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson says.

“When you guys see on TV is what you get throughout the days, behind the scenes,” Jackson says. “That’s Mark, and we love it.”

You could see the camaraderie building in snippets earlier this season, for instance when Jackson shared a video on his Instagram story of Ingram dancing wildly in the locker room at its practice facility in Owings Mills, with a caption suggesting that Jackson had no idea what was going on.

He and Ingram have a brotherly relationship, as in maybe older brother is the crazy-yet-wise one. It started in the preseason when they shared a flight up from Florida to Baltimore. Jackson, the 22-year-old coming back for his second season here and first as full-fledged starting QB, and Ingram arriving for his first in any capacity after signing a three-year, $15 million free-agent contract following nine seasons with the New Orleans Saints.

Like Jackson, Ingram is a former Heisman Trophy winner. He won college football’s top individual honor as sophomore in 2009 at the University of Alabama. (Here’s our obligatory mention that RGIII once won the award, too).

But unlike Jackson, who has emerged a bonafide nationwide sports star in his second pro season and can’t keep his own branded apparel stocked quick enough, Ingram has almost a full decade of relatively under-appreciated NFL experience in him. In his world that means a lot of tread on his running back tires, 1,515 carries for 6,970 yards and 60 touchdowns, and 252 receptions to be precise—as well as a lot of jokes, chatter, passion, and good vibes in the locker room.

Ingram’s former quarterback and future Hall-of-Famer, Drew Brees, in 2017 said he was the “heart and soul” of the Saints, too.

“I just try to be myself,” Ingram said Wednesday, in an unusually business-like interview session. “Love all my teammates, love all my coaches, be the best person I can be. Treat them with respect, treat them with love, and just work my butt off. That means the most to me, when my quarterback and my other teammates say that about me. That’s what I do it for.”

Most notably, Ingram is, of course, the main character in the origin story of “Big Truss,” the Ravens’ unofficial and totally appropriate child-like mantra for this breakout and now Super Bowl-dreaming season.

It goes like this: Jackson, since last year, has been saying “Truss,” as in trust (your teammates, coaches, whoever; like “I got you.”) It’s a purposely misspelled and misspoken variation of the powerful noun, cited with originating in Pompano Beach, Florida, where Jackson is from.

This season, Ingram added the “big” emphasis on the idea, seemingly off the top of his head. “Because everything Mark does is big,” says wide receiver Willie Snead, who also played with Ingram for three seasons in New Orleans. The saying most famously went public in Ingram’s Jackson-for-MVP “hype man” rant after the Ravens convincing win over the Houston Texans a month ago, and it’s now internet meme-worthy and essentially Bawlmerese.

So it goes with this eminently likable team, now with an 12-2 record, the title of “Kings of the AFC North” already locked up ahead of Sunday’s game against the divisional foe Cleveland Browns—the last team to beat the Ravens way back in Week 4. That seems like eons ago.

The Ravens have since captivated a sports-watching nation with 10 straight wins and a great blend of veterans like Ingram, kicker Justin Tucker (also 30, and not dead) and offensive lineman Marshal Yanda, 35, who’s happy he was cajoled out of retiring. Plus more than a half dozen first-or second-year starters who have rallied around their fast, friendly and now beloved quarterback Jackson.

This week, a league-high 12 Ravens, including Ingram, were named to the Pro Bowl, a best-in-class showcase for NFL players held the week before the Super Bowl.

For his part, Ingram arrived in Baltimore in March as a relatively unheralded free-agent after the Saints decided to hand the starting running back role to talented rookie Alvin Kamara. (That “turn 30 and they think you’re dead” comment does have truth to it.) But plenty of others still knew about Ingram’s effective ability on the field. Less about his character off it.

For all the bluster and funny-man schtick, there’s a serious, grounded side to Ingram. Back when he was a freshman in college in 2008, his father Mark Sr., who played 10 seasons in the NFL as a wide receiver and won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants, was sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty on money laundering and fraud charges. He decided not to turn himself in to officials on time because he wanted to watch his son play for Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl, so he got two years added on to his jail sentence, and didn’t get out until 2015.

In a nod to that part of his story, this week Ingram and Snead led 25 elementary school kids with an incarcerated parent on a $125 holiday shopping spree at Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Glen Burnie, an event paid for through Ingram’s charitable foundation.

This sort of thing played into the glowing recommendation Snead, who arrived here two years ago, gave the Ravens’ front office this offseason—telling them that Ingram was the type of player with a strong makeup that could help make the team a legitimate championship contender.

“He’s everything we hoped for,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “I didn’t know his personality as much. I didn’t really know how boisterous he was and how outgoing he was… It’s really been fun to be around. He really gets it. He knows how to treat people, knows how to practice. He plays with great passion and great energy, [and he’s] very physical. You’ve seen him. You know what I’m talking about there.”

Because while the pro football locker room is unique in some ways, it’s very familiar in others. Like any workplace, there’s a variety of personalities. The quiet, the outgoing, the serious, the person you know nothing about, the person who you know too much about. Ingram is a proverbial “glue guy”—someone who is good at their job and has a fun time doing it. That’s some people seem to get more than others.

In other words, get yourself or your organization a hype man, agent, general life supporter, and a positive influence like Jackson and the Ravens have in Ingram, and your chances of success go up. There’s an example of why every week.

Perhaps you missed it late last Thursday night, after the end of the Ravens’ blowout win against the New York Jets (we know people had to work the next morning), when Ingram literally stole the post-game show from NFL on Fox sideline reporter and Dancing With the Stars co-host, Erin Andrews.

Ingram was standing next to Jackson on the field. They were both just interviewed, and Ingram had just reminded Jackson about when exactly he broke Michael Vick’s single-season rushing record for an NFL quarterback. “Someone suggested I should give you the mic, and ask a question. Do you want to go ahead?” Andrews told Ingram.

Ingram again showed what he’s all about—about what being the heart of a team really means—with a Saturday Night Live-ish skit on national television. He asked Jackson a mock interview questions about winning the division, while using a variety of nicknames. “Freaky L, aka Action Jackson, aka Era8Apparel… How it feel, tell me how it feel L Freaky?” he said. Jackson, of course, played the straight-man and went along with it, saying there’s more to accomplish. “So you’re saying the story is unwritten? Book unfinished?” Ingram said.

“That was awesome,” Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Buck said.

“Give me the mic and let me interview some people,” Ingram said from behind the podium this week, talking to reporters. “I like it. It’s pretty cool. Y’all be careful. I’m coming.”

There’s some truth in that too.

“Lamar Jackson Be Like…” is a thing now.

Yeah, everything in that funny video is accurate.

Simply by being himself—fast, elusive, earnest, humble, just the right amount self-critical, and, oh yes, he can throw, too—the Ravens’ second-year quarterback has organically spread his influence, boyish charm, and one-of-a-kind brand of football to the masses. “I play Lamar Jackson ball,” he said a few weeks ago. And nothing more needed to be said.

Jackson’s 22-year-old personality is infectious. His quick, authentic, and direct one-or-two-line responses in press conferences are tailor made for social media. His play is awe-inspiring.

And he’s much more than fast. He and his head coach’s burgeoning bromance is everything we want. Here’s John Harbaugh wearing a Jackson-branded sweatshirt at practice this week. And his teammates’ support for him is rare. See running back Mark Ingram as Lamar-for-MVP hype man.

Every time we look for something new to say about the Ravens quarterback, we see that so many others have discovered what we already know. There’s so many reasons to love Lamar Jackson. Right now, he’s in full star turn mode, across America and beyond—way beyond.

Just this week, Pope Francis—yes that Pope Francis—hopped aboard the Jackson bandwagon. During a visit to Rome on Tuesday, representatives from the Archdiocese of Baltimore gave the worldwide leader of the Catholic Church a purple No. 8 jersey—autographed by Jackson and his head coach. And the Pope appeared pleased.

A day earlier, on Cyber Monday, the biggest shopping day of the year, Jackson’s merchandise outsold that of every other athlete, in any sport, on the industry-leading website Fanatics—an official vendor of licensed sports apparel from the major pro leagues and college ranks.

And Jackson has broken several rushing records for a QB already. He has completed 66.5 percent of his passes (just a few tenths more than, coincidentally, his old friend Joe Flacco, now with the Denver Broncos). He has thrown 25 touchdowns and only five interceptions—currently leading all NFL players in votes for the Pro Bowl. That’s the annual “Best Of” event the league holds every year in Hawaii.

If all goes as planned, Jackson won’t be there. The Pro Bowl is held the week before the Super Bowl, and the Las Vegas oddsmakers—following the Ravens’ eighth straight win on Sunday that improved their record to 10-2—have made our hometown team the betting favorite to win it all. (In other words, prepare for a potential trip to Miami in February.)

To top off Jackson’s skyrocketing popularity, he is the favorite to win the league’s Most Valuable Player award, something no Raven—not even Ray Lewis or Ed Reed—has ever done.

In some ways, this breakout season shouldn’t be surprising. Anyone who paid close attention last year knew who Jackson was already. “He’s very comfortable with who he is,” Harbaugh said. “You like being around people like that.”

And Jackson didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, though every other NFL team passed on him in the draft before Ozzie Newsome made Jackson the 32nd overall pick with the final draft-day phone call of his tenure as general manager.

It’s easy to forget that Jackson won the Heisman Trophy—awarded to college football’s best player—while at the University of Louisville. It’s easy to forget that he’s always been this fast. Watch his high school highlights from his days growing up in Florida, and know that he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.34 seconds at the end of his final year of college.

And my, how quickly have a lot of people discarded the memory of former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Flacco, whom Jackson unseated as the starter with the first opportunity he got about midway through last season. Jackson is 16-3 as a starting quarterback since.

This is special stuff. These ascension stories come around about as infrequently as a meteor shower. (Come to think of it, who’s faster: Jackson or a shooting star?) And we should all soak up the charm of it for a few reasons: Winning is always fun, but the Ravens are making it look easy (it’s not) with a unique brand of Jackson-led offense. What”s more, there’s a deeper meaning in play.

As we noted almost a year ago, Baltimore’s population is 64-percent black, at last U.S. census count. Football is America’s most-watched sport. To have a promising, young black player at quarterback, the team’s most prominent position, is a big deal here—and in the NFL.

For so long, black quarterbacks were unfairly typecast as unable to manage the complexities of a deep playbook or a passing offense. The needle is moving ever so slightly on that, but we still have a long way to go. Here’s a drinking game: Take a shot every time you hear a national broadcaster call Jackson a “running quarterback.” They should drop the qualifier. And he’s not a running back who can throw, either.

There’s a big reason Jackson jabbed critics and said, “Not bad for a running back,” after he threw for more than 300 yards and five touchdowns in the Ravens first game of the year. Put it to bed: Jackson is a quarterback—period. Maybe one that the league is not used to seeing, but one that the Ravens coaching staff put its faith in and built a unique run-option, efficient passing offense around.

Harbaugh pointed that out—on the sideline of a recent game, no less. This authentic sideline moment that you’ve probably seen by now was caught by the Ravens’ video staff, and it should go into the NFL’s social media Hall-of-Fame.

Thankfully, someone who works for the Ravens posted this clip without clearance from Harbaugh or the team’s public relations head, “because they know we would’ve both said no,” Harbaugh told ESPN, not wanting to attract attention to what are typically private conversations. But the scene, now seen by millions, brings to life the power of a likeable leader, or two.

The truth is that the same reason that you or I—or kids in this city or neighborhoods around the country we’ve never heard of—love Lamar is the same his reason his teammates and coaches do. It’s why an actual running back, Ingram, can step to a podium before reporters after a game, with Jackson standing off to the side, and shower the quarterback with compliments that go viral: “The MVP front-runner. If anyone got something to say about that, then come see me…Lamar Jackson, in the flesh.”

As always, we’re happy to see him.

Whether you’re a new recruit or a diehard fan, there’s no escaping the Ravens hype that washes Charm City in a wave of purple as the NFL season gets underway. Less than a week away from the home opener, the Ravens Flock is hungry for some big wins—and we’re hungry for big specials at some Baltimore’s best restaurants, bars, and tailgates. (With all eyes on Lamar Jackson, try not to get distracted by delicious wings and discounted kegs.) Grab your Ravens gear, gather your squad, and check out these game day deals you won’t want to miss.

Drinks for Days

Fish Head Cantina: Serving up drink specials including $2.50 Natty Bohs, $4 craft drafts, and $5 Crushes, Fish Head Cantina has a lot to offer Ravens fans. Swing by the stylish tiki bar for drink deals, live music—oh, and did we mention the entire game day menu is 25 percent off? Whether you’re loading up on nachos or sushi, this is a can’t miss for foodie fans. 4802 Benson Ave, 410-247-2474.

Grotto Pizza: For fans who love the Ravens and also pizza, Grotto Pizza has the best of both worlds. Grotto’s game day menu features $6 personal pizzas and chili dogs, as well as $7 loaded nachos. And don’t worry—they’ve got drinks covered, too, with $4 Coors Light big beers all day. Plus, if you’re feeling lucky, you can play the Pig Skin Pick ‘Em for a chance to win a $500 Amex gift card. 7075 Minstrel Way, Columbia, 443-583-8200.

Italian Disco: As if delicious pizza and burgers weren’t enough to entice you, Italian Disco celebrates Ravens games with $10 domestic beer pitchers and $8 pizzas or orders of wings. Do some game-day bird watching on any of this chic Harbor East hangout’s flat screens, enjoy the throwback disco vibes, and dig in. 1006 Fleet St., 410-605-0444.

Lee’s Pint & Shell: Lee’s Pint & Shell opened up to its Canton neighborhood about three years ago after a major rebranding, and it’s been packed practically every day since. Game days are no different, except you might notice a higher-than-usual number of patrons decked out in purple. For the Ravens flock, Lee’s serves up $2 Miller Lites and $4 Jack Daniels shots and cocktails, as well as $4 Ravens Bombs (you’ll have to stop for yourself to find out what’s in a Ravens Bomb—we don’t want to spoil the surprise). 2844 Hudson St., 410-327-2883.

Mt. Washington Tavern: If you’re looking for a lunch spot that rewards Ravens pride before game day, look no further than Mt. Washington Tavern’s Purple Fridays. Come for lunch specials, including the Blackjack Burger or the Black and Purple Salad, and stay for the drink deals like $2 Narragansett lager cans, $4 Old Hilltop drafts, and $6 Tito’s vodka drinks. While you’re at it, try your hand at a final scorecard prediction for a chance to win a $25 tavern gift certificate. 5700 Newbury St., 410-367-6903.

Pratt Street Ale House: Just a short walk from the stadium, Pratt Street Ale House offers Ravens fans a taste of local brews, with $5 pints from Oliver Brewing Co. The game-day fixture also highlights $5 glasses of wine and a selection of $3 beers to enjoy before, during, and after the game. Plus, satisfy your hankering for wings with 10 for $12, 20 for $23, and 30 for $34. 206 West Pratt St., 410-244-8900.

Sports Bar Scene

Donna’s Tavern: Between the $1 Naturday cans, $2 Bud Lite drafts, and $3 Pinnacle grape bombs, and free shooters after every Ravens touchdown, Donna’s Tavern in Dundalk can keep you busy on a game day budget. And don’t worry, they won’t let you go hungry—take advantage of delicious deals like an $8 crab pretzel. 6607 Pine Ave, Dundalk, 410-633-6677.

Game: Located just a stone’s throw away from M&T Bank Stadium, Game makes birdwatching easy with 25 flatscreens and six 100-inch projection screens. Traditionalists can stick to delicious wings, but go for the crab cakes if you fancy some local flavor. With $10 32-oz. drafts and Orange Crush buckets, and $20 domestic buckets, Game has plenty to offer dedicated sports fans. To show their appreciation, they’ll cover your first round after the game. 1400 Warner St., 410-385-0100.

The Greene Turtle: If you like apps, the Greene Turtle in Fells Point is the place for you, with a range of $5 and $7 appetizers on game day, as well as burger specials starting at $6. And if that’s not enough to float your boat, throw in a bucket of five Bud Lights for $13 or a pitcher for $9. Grab your Ravens gear, get your squad together, and stop by this beloved hangout to turn the Greene Turtle purple. If you’re not around Fells Point, all Greene Turtle locations will offer their own NFL game day deals. 277 South Broadway, 410-342-4222.

Looney’s Pub: With an extensive game day menu, you’ll want to head back to Looney’s Pub again and again to try the different combo specials, like the $17 dozen wings and domestic pitcher deal. If you’re just looking for food, don’t worry—get two footlong hot dogs for $10, or try the buffalo shrimp for $14. If drinks are more your speed, Looney’s has you covered with everything from $4 stadium cup drafts and $12 Orange Crush buckets to the $20 White Claw and Bud Light bucket. 2900 O’Donnell St., 410-675-9235.

Tailgate Checklist

Mother’s Grille: At some point this season, be sure to stop by the legendary Purple Patio tailgate that Mother’s Grille hosts before every Ravens home game. Just a few blocks from M&T Bank Stadium, Mother’s paints the outdoor parking lot to look like a football field—although you might not be able to see the details under a crush of purple-clad partygoers sipping $35 all-you-can-drink beers and Bloody Marys, watching the pregame on one of 65 TVs, or getting amped beneath the DJ booth. 1113 S. Charles St., 410-244-8686.

Jimmy’s Famous Seafood: If you’re a tailgate buff, you’ve got to try out Jimmy’s Famous Seafood’s self-proclaimed TailGOAT (that’s Greatest Of All Time) and decide for yourself whether it lives up to the name. At a new location just steps from the stadium, TailGOAT boasts an open bar with eight beer selections, a hand-crafted buffet, and live music to prove that the only season worth celebrating is football season. 333 West Ostend St., 410-633-4040.

Bmore Around Town: BMore Around Town stands as the pioneer of the #PurpleTailgate, organizing blowouts for home games and road trips for the most dedicated fans. This year, #PurpleTailgate patrons will enjoy an open bar with unlimited beer cans and Deep Eddy crushes, catering from All Y’all BBQ and Mother Shuckers oysters, and raffles to benefit the Kamryn Lambert Foundation. 152 West Ostend St., 443-865-5935.

Football season is here, and—potential injuries aside—we’re excited for everyone involved. The home opener against the Cardinals this Sunday marks the official start of a new era, of sorts, for the team.

Most notably, there’s a fresh face of the franchise. You’ve likely seen him on the purple-and-black Ravens-branded “Never Less” billboards, wearing jersey number 8. We’ll start this “What to Watch For” season preview with him.

Lamar Jackson and the Debut of the Ravens’ Revamped Offense

We don’t know exactly what it will look like, but we know it will be different. For the first time in a decade, someone other than Joe Flacco begins the season as the Ravens starting quarterback. The team has put its full faith in the 22-year-old Jackson, who went 7-2 as a starter on the fly as a rookie. The Ravens have reimagined their offense around the talents of the 2018 first-round draft pick and former Heisman Trophy winner, employing a healthy mix of running and passing from the freakishly fast QB. But will the plan work?

We saw glimpses last season and this preseason of what the new era could possibly look like—a few can-you-believe-that plays per game, both good and bad—but those games don’t really count. We’ll start to see the full potential, more of the playbook, and if the offseason work Jackson put in to improve his throwing makes a difference, starting Sunday.

“I just can’t wait to put on a show,” Jackson, the affable 22-year-old, said this week. He tends to do that.

This highlight reminds us of the big point you need to know about Jackson’s approach to playing quarterback: “If I am not passing, if I do decide to run, I am trying to score a touchdown or get a first down,” he said this preseason. “I am not trying to get two yards and get tackled. That’s not how I play. That’s not why I’m here.”

Enjoy the Fancy New Things at M&T Bank Stadium

There are now escalators–16 of them!–to the upper deck, as well as a field-level party suite and a self-serve and self-checkout beer market. And more high-definition video boards and fresh LED stadium lighting that the gameday staff can turn on and off as if they were parents waking up their sleepy kid for school. And new food options featuring a healthy amount of crab dip, like a Chesapeake Hot Dog. (Mmmm, repeat: All hot dogs should be Chesapeake Hot Dogs).

The amenities represent the completion of a three-year, $120 million renovation to M&T Bank Stadium aimed at attracting fans to watch games at the Ravens’ home venue in lieu of sitting on their couches or casually paying attention on their smartphones. To which we say, right on. Humans are meant to enjoy the outdoors and be around other people. Go have some fun.

Six Players To Talk About With the Big Football Fan at Your Tailgate

A lot of unfamiliar names fill the Ravens’ 53-man roster, the most notable being running back Mark Ingram and safety Earl Thomas (who signed a $55 million contract to come play here). When it comes to new additions, that’s the bare minimum you should know. Here are few more players to talk about if you find yourself in a football conversation with a well-versed fan:

Marquise Brown, wide receiver

Anyone who embraces the nickname “Hollywood” and wears a diamond chain of his own likeness will receive attention. The rookie from Oklahoma, a first-round pick, grew up in Hollywood, Florida, and he’s also got, forgive the pun, leading man skills. A 5-foot-9, 170-pounder who can run with the ball or go a long way to catch it in a small amount of time. “He’s electric,” sums up Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta.

Marlon Humphrey, cornerback

The trendy thing for media members to say right now is that, “Marlon Humphrey could be one of the top five cornerbacks in the league this year.” If true, that would be a big bonus for an also rebuilt Ravens defense. But even Humphrey, the third-year pro out of the University of Alabama who has arms for days to swat away opposing QB’s passes, doesn’t know if he’s worthy of great expectations. “It’s just hype,” he said. “There’s not really substance behind it.” Okay then.

Cyrus Jones, cornerback and punt returner

Gilman, represent! Jones, who attended and played at the Baltimore private school from 2008-2011, is now the Ravens’ top punt returner, special teams coach Chris Horton confirmed this week. He might return kickoffs, too. It’s comforting to have a homegrown guy on the team. Off the field, he enjoys rapping in his spare time.

Trace McSorley, backup quarterback

The rookie put together a series of quality performances this preseason (16-for-24 for 203 yards and two touchdowns against the Eagles, 15-for-27 for 171 yards against the Redskins). I watched McSorley play in many games at my alma mater Penn State, and he was critical to the team’s success the last four years. “The kid is a winner,” has been said many times by many commentators, and it’s true.

McSorley led Briar Woods (Va.) High to three state championships and a 55-5 record in four years. And he won a program-best 31 games as QB at Penn State. It didn’t surprise me that he proved his wares this preseason when given the chance after Robert Griffin III was injured. If McSorley is called on to fill in for say, Jackson after he refuses to slide to protect himself and gets injured, the Ravens will lose some speed at the position, but they’ll be in good hands. McSorley is also a run-pass option.

Patrick Ricard, fullback and defensive tackle

The big guy (300 pounds) plays both offense and defense. It’s one thing to do that in high school, or even college, but it’s almost unheard of in professional football. That’s why people call him “Project Pat,” which doubles as a title for one of his off-the-field passions: Reviewing local restaurants.

Justice Hill, running back (and a fantasy football sleeper!)

For those looking to have a Raven or two on their fantasy football roster, we suggest rookie running back Justice Hill. Aside from having a perfect name for a television drama (for its title or a character, really), the 5-foot-10, 200-pound jitterbug, who played in college at Oklahoma State, impressed coaches and teammates immediately this preseason with his speed and power. Expect him play a good amount off the bench. “I think he’s the complete package,” says Ingram, the guy who will start at running back, “and I think he’s going to have a great career.”

Save the Date for These Must-Watch Games

About one big game every few weeks. That’s convenient.

Week 3: Ravens at Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Sept. 22, 1 p.m.
A date a Super Bowl favorite and the only team to beat the Jackson-led Ravens in the regular season last year.

Week 5: Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers, Sunday, Oct. 6, 1 p.m.
The Rivalry: Part 51. The Steelers have won four of the last six meetings. Boo.

Week 9: New England Patriots at Ravens, Sunday, Nov. 3, 8:20 p.m.
Tom Brady. Bill Belichick. Fun. This is the scheduled Sunday night nationally-televised game of the week.

Week 12: Ravens at Los Angeles Rams, Monday, Nov. 25, 8:15 p.m.
A trip to play the defending NFC champions on Monday Night Football.

Week 17: Steelers at Ravens, Sunday, Dec. 29, 1 p.m.
A regular season-ending home game against the Steelers. What else could you ask for? Maybe temperatures at least above freezing, and a shot at the playoffs.

Harbs Says…

There are few head coaches in the NFL with more longevity than our dear John Harbaugh, now entering his 12th season on the job. Only the Patriots’ Belichick, the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin, and the New Orleans Saints’ Sean Payton have longer tenures with their teams.

We’re fortunate to have Harbaugh under contract in Baltimore through 2022, and to be treated to congenial and worthwhile NFL-required media availabilities all season long. The guy appreciates storytelling perhaps as much as he does a proper tackle.

Harbaugh, who often draws inspiration from the military, quoted a former Secretary of Defense in response to one question this week. “[It’s like the] Donald Rumsfeld quote from a few years back: You have to know what the unknowables are, and you can’t worry about them too much,” Harbaugh said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen on Sunday. We don’t know how certain things are going to look or how guys are going to respond. We might have confidence. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it. But that’s the beauty of it. That’s what’s exciting. That’s the drama.”

The Realistic Expectations for This Season

Let’s end with the nitty-gritty. How will the 2019 season turn out? Here’s one fan’s opinion: The defense will be above average, and the offense will be good, but probably experience growing pains and might even look overmatched against stronger opponents like the Patriots or Rams. But it should be clear by midseason what potential a Lamar Jackson-led offense has long term. Meanwhile, of course Justin Tucker will be great.

With a difficult schedule and so many new players on both sides of the ball (linebacker Matt Judon will now be the face of the defense), a 9-win, 7-loss season with a chance at a playoff appearance feels reasonable. But no one should start calling for owner Steve Bisciotti to fire Harbaugh or DeCosta even if the team finishes 8-8 or a little worse. It’ll still happen, though.

Ed Reed said he didn’t want to take up too much time, but given his emotions and the occasion being what it was, he spent 36 minutes talking Saturday night during his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech.

The beloved former Ravens safety—who is known for 11 years in Baltimore, 61 interceptions in purple and black, a Super Bowl win, and so many other fun memories like record-setting touchdowns of 107 and 106 yards—admittedly wrote parts of his speech on-the-fly (actually, on-the-scene) while he sat on stage in Canton, Ohio, and listened to the other 2019 inductees deliver their own thoughts. Reed went sixth, and when it was his turn, he took his phone from the jacket pocket of the trademark gold blazer that football Hall-of-Famers are gifted, and started reading.

“This little light of mine,” Reed said. “I had to let it shine.”

Here are 10 more wise and entertaining anecdotes from Reed’s coronation as one of football’s all-time greats:

• One point that Reed clearly wanted to articulate was that the people you surround yourself with, and the decisions you make, matter. Reed, now 40, talked about how he grew up in a crime-infested (yeah, he said that word) part of New Orleans where he had the choice to get involved in the drug scene. “You quickly become the things you hang around. Your environment is key,” he said. “I made the choice not to hang around people who were selling drugs, or guys who weren’t going to school.”

• He told a story about a police officer in Shrewsbury, Louisiana—who encouraged Reed to follow the “right” path: “I had to mature real fast because of my environment—crime, drugs, police, all kinds of things going on,” Reed said. “We were always taught to run from the police, and dodge the police officers. [But] it wasn’t always bad police, like people think. I remember one time, I’m yelling back to my cousins because most of them were selling drugs or something. I was yelling that the police were coming and the officer heard me. He called me to his car and he said, ‘Come here young man, get in the back.’ I lost it. … He said, ‘I’m taking you home.’ I said, ‘Oh my god, don’t do that. Take me to jail.’ … Because my momma’s home. I can remember him saying, ‘I see you around here, playing sports. You don’t need to be hanging with those other kids and other guys, because you have something.'”

• Reed spoke much more about his parents, Ed Reed Sr. and Karen—as well as his siblings and other mentors—who allowed him to live during his junior and senior years at Destrehan High School at the home of the principal’s secretary. “I needed a different environment,” Reed said. Jeanne Hall took Reed “under her wing,” and helped him get the ACT standardized-test scores he needed to get into college. This is part of the reason why Reed has been so involved in charity work at Booker T. Washington Middle School in West Baltimore for the last two decades. Somewhat related, on parenting in general, Reed said: “Your job is to provide and nurture an environment for your child to grow up. Raise them to leave the house, not to stay. You don’t want kids at 30 and 40 years old putting their name on the milk.”

• There were other light-hearted moments, too, like when Reed acknowledged that the 2001 national championship team that he played on at the University of Miami wouldn’t beat any NFL teams like some observers said they could. In the same breath, he couldn’t help but take a backhanded swipe at two of the Ravens’ division opponents. “I would not disrespect this league, not even those Cincinnati Bengals, hold on, or the Cleveland Browns,” Reed said to laughter and a few boos in the crowd (he was in Ohio, after all), before pausing and saying, “I have the utmost respect for both of those organizations. I have 30 picks between them, too. Not my fault y’all change quarterbacks.”

• After saying, “There’s no place like BALTIMORE!” Reed accidentally thanked New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick (oops!) instead of his former head coach Brian Billick while acknowledging past and current members of the Ravens front office. It might’ve been a Freudian slip, as Reed has recently told Belichick he wants to be part of the Patriots coaching staff. In any case, current coach John Harbaugh’s reaction was completely appropriate…

• On showing up to Baltimore for his first public appearance as a rookie, wearing a throwback Cleveland Browns’ Jim Brown jersey, Reed said: “Baltimore booed me… I walk on stage and they’re like ‘Take it off! Take it off!’ I took it off and y’all loved me ever since. I loved it all. especially when I heard that “Reeeeeed!” in M&T Bank Stadium. What I wouldn’t give for one more interception.”

• On what he might be doing if he weren’t giving this speech: “I’d rather be smoking a cigar, just chillin’, taking my time.”

• On his bronze bust, which must be one of the best likenesses that will ever be displayed at the Pro Football Hall of Fame: “I look just like the guy.”

• Reed also spoke about the recent mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which happened just hours before the Hall of Fame ceremony: “In general, across this country, it’s something we really need to address. I ask America, what’s our standard?”

• And, finally, a few big-picture parting thoughts that he wanted to leave everyone with: “I never compared myself to any other player, and you shouldn’t compare yourself to anybody else or worry about the people who don’t like you,” Reed said. “Everyone has their own greatness, and you reach your own greatness [depending] on your environment and structure, the company you keep, and your attitude. There will be good and bad, right and wrong. Your reaction and choice—good or bad—has consequences that affect you and those around you. Help somebody. That’s what we’re supposed to. That’s what being human is about, leaving this place better than we got it.”

The gesture was small in the grand scheme of things, and a ceremonial and promotional stunt all wrapped into one: Lamar Jackson throwing out the first pitch at an Orioles game, on the eve of the start of Ravens’ training camp. But the mash-up did what it was supposed to do, and caused us to wonder about Baltimore’s 22-year-old quarterback of the present and future.

Maybe it was because of the charm of Jackson’s boyish mannerisms as he bounced around Camden Yards on his first trip to the stadium, wearing an Orioles jersey with his—and Cal’s, of course—number eight (“Legendary,” Jackson said in respect), while doing stuff like eating a Boog’s turkey sandwich and meeting guys like Trey Mancini and Chris Davis in the Orioles clubhouse.

Or maybe it was how Jackson, like a good student, appeared to quickly pick up the whole pitching concept. He took instructions from outfielder Dwight Smith, Jr. (lower your shoulder, this isn’t football; but use the threads on a baseball for grip like laces on a pigskin), and practiced a few throws in the batting cage beneath the stands while waiting out a 90-minute pregame rain delay on Wednesday night.

Finally, after the skies cleared around 8:30 p.m., Jackson, now the guy, trotted out toward the pitcher’s mound, and waved his arms to excite those of the announced 20,786 paying fans still in attendance. When it was time to throw, he pretended to shake off a few signs from Smith, his stand-in catcher, then cocked his right arm, and tossed a hard, fast strike. It was just what everyone, we presume, wanted to see.

Jackson flexed and smiled as he walked from the field. “I loved it,” he said. “I had to show up and show out.” The outcome was exactly what he wanted, too, which was to not embarrass himself throwing a baseball—like rapper 50 Cent once did. (Just a bit outside!)

Cue the jokes about the Orioles needing a pitcher. . .

But O’s manager Brandon Hyde said he’d first try out Jackson somewhere else, like centerfield, shortstop, or second base given his speed and baseball teams’ premium on strength at those “up the middle” positions.

Jackson agreed. “Probably,” he said about playing centerfield, when he met with the media before the O’s played the Nationals, “but I’m a Ravens quarterback right now, so I’m good.”

Yes, he is. That might be the biggest takeaway of this week’s football-baseball crossover act. In just his second pro season, Jackson begins the year as the undisputed starting quarterback of his Ravens—the first time in a decade that anybody besides Joe Flacco can say that.

That’s why this Ravens QB—one who’s endearing, yet still maturing (aren’t we all?) and is as relatively unproven as a pro quarterback (yes, despite his 6-2 record as a rookie starter) as his skills are unconventional—was asked to come to Camden Yards in the first place thanks to our two pro sports teams getting along. And it’s why he stood in front of reporters and answered questions, covering a variety of topics and touching on his development as a billboard-status face of the franchise.

He addressed his disappointment with his Madden video game rating, 24th-best among NFL quarterbacks, and low on passing ability. But his speed and agility? No. 1. “I don’t make Madden,” he said. “It’s them.” He talked about how he’s spent the offseason (he worked out some, throwing footballs with Ravens backup quarterback Robert Griffin III and wide receivers like Willie Snead, which should be a positive signal to fans who want to see improvement there). On the Baltimore summer heat, he said being a Florida native is no solace. “I’m one of those people complaining I was sweating a lot,” he said. And he even discussed how he prefers to top his hot dog.

Because in addition to Jackson’s pregame appearance reminding us that Ravens training camp starts next week, National Hot Dog Day was observed at Orioles Park on this night, too. In a season of many fantastic fan giveaways, the O’s had one of their best, offering ketchup, mustard, and relish t-shirts—a creative nod to the famous and kid-friendly between-innings hot dog scoreboard race.

“I don’t really eat mustard,” Jackson said about his preference, “so ketchup and relish. I go from there. Pretty standard.” Like we said, charming.

On the morning of October 27, John Moag rushes from his Murray Hill home, locking the door behind him, then spinning and stepping briskly into a damp, foggy autumn morning. The sky is thick with low, threatening clouds.

Today, of all days, how could he let himself run late? He’s got only half an hour to reach Baltimore-Washington International Airport for a top-secret meeting on the deal of his career—one that might help heal a whole city’s wounds, that might bring millions in economic development to his hometown. Might. If all goes well this morning.

Reaching the forest-green Lexus in the driveway, Moag stops short, amazed to see that the car’s interior has been transformed to a bon voyage party. He peers inside at the mounds of orange and brown balloons. Little chocolate footballs are sprinkled over the seats.

Peggy must have gotten up before dawn to pull this off. Drawings by 12-year-old Lauren and 10-year-old Alex are part of the surprise. One shows a plaintive Dad on his knees before an enormous football. A prayer bubble over his head reads, “Please, give Baltimore the ball!”

His wife is one of the few people he has con­fided in about his negotiations with the Cleveland Browns. She’s always reacted in low­key fashion-until now.

Moag twists a balloon between his fingers until it pops. He grabs another and pops it. Then another. Finally, Moag shoves the remain­ing balloons into the back seat and then slides hurriedly behind the wheel.

This is really cute and thoughtful and nice, he thinks, but I have got to get my ass to this airport.

Negotiating under cover of secrecy, Baltimore and the Browns resembled nothing so much as two jilted lovers, eyes meeting across the Appalachians.

The Baltimore Browns? As Moag sped toward BWI that morning, the concept was unthinkable to sports fans in Ohio and Maryland. Nine days later, when Governor Parris Glendening appeared at a downtown press conference waving a lease agreement that binds the NFL’s Browns to playing in Baltimore for the next 30 years, they’d learn that the unthinkable had happened. “This is a great day for the state of Maryland,” the governor exulted, promising economic gains and social benefits.

In Cleveland, it was another kind of day-one of travesty and, perhaps, betrayal. Instantly, the Browns faithful erupted, outraged at this blow to the civic ego. Even some guilt-ridden Baltimoreans joined in the chorus, remembering the emptiness they felt when the NFL Colts departed for Indianapolis in 1984.

In short order, the uproar went national. Hastily convened Congressional hearings gave politicians a chance to voice shock and dismay. A Sports Illustrated cover caricature showed Browns owner Art Model! punching a Cleveland fan depicted as, well, a dawg.

Only the parties who agreed to the deal seemed to think it made perfect sense.

By last summer-when negotiations between Baltimore and the Browns turned earnest-mov­ing football franchises from city to city was business as usual in the NFL. The modern-day spate of moves dates to 1982, when owner Al Davis shifted his Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles. In an ensuing court fight, the NFL lost a $50-million antitrust judgment.

Jittery, the league for the most part opted to ignore the issue. It didn’t lift a finger when the Baltimore Colts (originally from Dallas) left for Indianapolis. Or when the St. Louis Cardinals (originally from Chicago) moved to Arizona. Or when the Los Angeles Rams (originally from Cleveland) moved to St. Louis. Or when irre­pressible Raiders owner Davis moved his team from Los Angeles back to Oakland.

In post-Colts Baltimore, the populace lived in a state of foggy football nostalgia. The Colts Marching Band remained active. Radio airwaves still crackled with talk of Johnny Unitas and The Greatest Game Ever Played, the 1958 NFL championship.

Civic leaders toiled to win readmittance to the NFL, only to lose every round in the league’s rntb.e.’ii’ii iame. ot mu’iiic.a c.itie.’ii. ‘Ii.me and again, team owners would flirt with Baltimore, only to turn around and use the city’s charms to extort better terms from other suitors.

In Cleveland, Browns owner Art Modell felt spurned as well. The baseball Indians and bas­ketball Cavaliers were playing in sparkling new homes, and Cleveland’s once-dingy downtown was glittering with new museums built in part with government funds. But Modell’s team was still stuck in aging Cleveland Stadium, losing money every year. Eleven years had gone by since his first discussions with Ohio officias about a new or refurbished stadium.

Later, of course, the prospect of a Browns move from Cleveland would shock the sports world. And many would question whether either Modell or Baltimore had legitimate grievances. But back in August and September, negotiating under cover of secrecy, Baltimore and the Browns resembled nothing so much as two jilted lovers, eyes meeting across the Appalachians.

Smitten with suddenly rosy prospects for the future, they fell into each other’s arms and quickly decided to elope. The new couple broke the news to their families when Glendening waved that lease agreement in the air.

In response, stunned Clevelanders and Baltimoreans asked the same question: “The Baltimore Browns? How long has this been going on?”

In a late January 1995 telephone call, newly inaugurated Governor Glendening thanks Baltimore attorney Herbert J. Belgrad for his eight years of service to the campaign to bring NFL football back to Baltimore. “But I need my own person,” the governor says. “The NFL needs to see a new face.”

Belgrad, whose term as chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority is expiring, has already reached the same conclusion. “As much fun as this job has been,” he’d say later, “there comes a time when a person should step aside.”

Glendening senses that the football campaign is in trouble. For seven years, the MSA has extended a lucrative offer to the league and its owners: Come play in a new downtown Baltimore stadium financed by lot­tery revenues; we’ll make your franchise one of football’s most profitable, to the tune of nearly $30 million a year. But so far, no takers.

The biggest blow came in 1993 when the NFL awarded expansion franchises to Charlotte and Jacksonville. Some involved in Maryland’s bid reacted with outrage, hurling accusations at league executives.

Ever since, the two parties have regarded each other with mutual mistrust. One thing Glendening wants to do now is rebuild bridges with the league. Antagonism, he concludes, “doesn’t get you a team.”

Leadership is another pressing issue. After the failed expansion drive, then-Governor William Donald Schaefer asked Orioles owner Peter Angelos to step in and find Baltimore a team. So far, though, that has succeeded only in sowing confusion: NFL owners aren’t even sure any­more whom they should call to deal with Baltimore-Belgrad? Angelos? Schaefer?

Glendening wants one person in charge. But who should it be? “I want someone who’s aggressive, tenacious and can deliver,” he tells confidants. “I also want someone who doesn’t need the limelight.”

John Moag, a partner with the powerhouse Washington law firm of Patton Boggs, has his eye on the post-a fact he’s made known to mutual friends of his and the governor’s. Former Governor Harry Hughes and U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer sing Moag’s praises to Glendening.

Politically, Moag’s a perfect fit: Baltimore will be relieved if the post goes to a city native, and Maryland’s Washington suburbs will be reas­sured if it goes to someone with D.C. connec­tions. In an early February phone call, Glendening formally offers Moag the position. “I hear from all kinds of people that you’re interested in this job,” he says, “but I haven’t heard it from you.”

“Well, Governor,” Moag responds, “I thought it would be a little presumptuous of me to put you on the spot like that.”

On February 9, the day Glendening announces Moag’s appointment, the clock is already ticking down on Baltimore’s NFL hopes. State legislators are threatening to revoke financing set aside for a football stadium.

In a strategy born of necessity, Glendening asks lawmakers to give him until the end of the year.

Arriving at Glendening’s office, Moag’s optimism shows when he bursts in wearing a broad smile. ”Governor,” he announces, “I think we’ve got a team.”

Ever since the team’s founding in 1946, the Browns have ranked high among Cleveland’s civic treasures. The franchise was among the first in pro sports to sign an African-American player: Marion Motley joined the Browns in their debut season, a year before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. Playing first in the All-America Football Conference and then in the NFL, the team won seven championships in its first 10 years.

In 1961, New York businessman Art Modell bought a majority interest in the team. The pric­etag on the Browns was a then-record $3.925 million, including $500,000 in cash which the 35-year-old Model! scrambled to raise by hitting up banks and friends and selling some New York business interests. In Modell’s third season as owner, the Browns thumped the Baltimore Colts in the 1964 NFL championship game, winning by a score of 27-0.

In those early years, Modell established him­self as a blue-collar owner, traveling by bus with the team and staying at the same hotels as players. It was a style that matched the Brooklyn native’s background: After his father’s death, the then-14-year-old Model! had gone to work at Bethlehem Steel, earning 57 cents an hour as an electrician’s helper.

Within a few years of joining the league, Model! became a force among NFL owners. In 1970, he paved the way for a merger between the American and National football leagues by agreeing to shift the Browns into what would become the American Conference. And, serving on the league’s broadcast commit­ tee, the onetime television entrepreneur helped develop Monday Night Football, the television hit that would help vault pro football to new heights of popularity.

On March 29, Moag opens negotiations with the Cin­cinati Bengals, flying into that city to visit with Mike Brown in his office. “Look,” the Bengals owner explains, “I very badly want to stay in my town. But I don’t think it’s going to work out here, so I need to be prepared.”

Moag listens intently, gauging the sincerity of Baltimore’s most amorous NFL suitor of the moment. His reply is simple: “We can do business.” But from the start Moag senses Brown’s reluctance to leave Ohio.

Detailed lease negotiations with the Bengals begin, but Moag is already looking ahead. He chooses to run his own ver­sion of football’s option play.

Meeting with Frank Bramble, chairman of First National Bank of Maryland, Moag delivers an update on the Bengals scenario. “Things are fairly serious,” he says, “but I’m still very pes­simistic.” Knowing Bramble is in frequent con­tact with Cleveland bank investor Al Lerner, Moag is confident his words soon will find their way back to Lerner, a minority owner of the Cleveland Browns.

A lease document with the Bengals is 85 per­cent done when word of a planned June 14 visit to Baltimore by Mike Brown is leaked to the Cincinnati media. The resulting uproar on the banks of the Ohio River is predictable-and effective. On June 29, the Cincinnati City Council gives preliminary approval to a bond issue to finance a new stadium.

Moag is disappointed, but not surprised.

Brown was gonna take almost anything to stay there, he thinks.

Maryland’s new strate­gy—high secrecy, firm deadline—has failed on its first flight.

The economics of professional sports under­went dramatic transfor­mations in the 1980s that hurt old-school owners like Art Modell who rely on football for their livelihoods. They suddenly found them­selves struggling to keep pace with brash and independently wealthy competitors who ignored the bottom line and spent lavishly on player contracts and team facilities.

Modell faced another economic handicap as well. In 1974, he had taken over operations of Cleveland Stadium in a 25-year lease deal between the city and Modell’s newly formed Stadium Corporation. Over the last 22 years, Modell says, he has spent nearly $50 million operating and maintaining “that old barn.”

Built in 193 1, Cleveland Stadium once made up for its numerous shortcomings with sheer size. Even in losing seasons, the Browns regular­ly drew 70,000 fans.

But in the new sports economy, big attendance numbers don’t translate into profitability. Instead, the financial health of teams increasing­ly depends on amenities found only in new stadi­ums-skyboxes for corporate clients and plush club-level seating for well-heeled fans. “You cannot make it in sports today,” Modell insists,

“without what [Orioles owner Peter] Angelos has in Camden Yards.” The condition of stadi­ums has played a major part in every franchise move of the modern era.

In 1992, documents filed by the league in a court case over a labor dispute provided the first public indications of the Browns’ bleak financial condition. The team lost $9.1 million between 1986 and 1989, according to the documents, which also identified Modell as one of the league’s lowest-paid owners, earning $195,000 a year (which does not include earnings from the Cleveland Stadium Corporation).

“I’m a little embar­rassed by this whole thing . . . I guess this shows the carpetbagger from New York City is not milking the franchise, huh?” Modell said at the time.

Any community sympathy for Modell’s finan­cial plight was soon overwhelmed by controver­sial personnel moves-especially the Modell­a pproved release from the team of popular quarterback Bernie Kosar, an Ohio native, in

1993. The Browns have never qualified for the Super Bowl, despite several narrow misses in the ’80s. The team’s last championship came against the Colts in that game 31 years ago.

Was John Moag Jr. destined to become the dealmaker who would bring pro football back to Baltimore? When his family moved to Baltimore from Chicago in 1965, they took up residence within walking distance of Memorial Stadium, home of the Colts. On game days, young Moag guided cars loaded with fans into parking spaces in his parents’ backyard. As an upperclassman at Loyola High School, he donned the mascot costume of the Loyola Don, leading sideline cheers for the football team.

In the fall of 1972, as a freshman at Washington College in southern Maryland, Moag headed Kent County’s organization for presidential candidate George McGovern. As a senior, he was president of the school’s stu­dent body.

Diploma in hand in 1977, Moag went to work for Congressman Steny Hoyer, earning $25 a day as a driver. “We got lost a lot,” laughs Hoyer. “I gave him a lecture: ‘I want you to get me from point A to point B in the quick­est possible way.”‘ That was a lesson the young Moag would take to heart.

After graduating in 1981 from the University of Baltimore School of Law, Moag returned to Hoyer’s office, this time as the congressman’s chief legislative aide. “He was extraordinary,” says Hoyer. “He’s very smart, and a very quick study. He could write a 20-page speech in 10 minutes.”

Later, Moag moved on to Patton Boggs. At age 33, he became the youngest partner in the history of the firm, and presumably the only partner who’d seen two dozen concerts by the Grateful Dead.

Now 41, Moag lives in Baltimore County with his wife, Peggy, and their two daughters. He heads the Baltimore office of Patton Boggs and supervises operations at five other branch­es around the country. His Maryland client list has included the likes of the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

In his biggest success at Patton Boggs, Moag shepherded through Congress a proposal to erect a federally funded marine research center in downtown Baltimore. By 1994, when the $160 million Columbus Center rose up in the midst of the Inner Harbor, it was clear that Moag had learned how to play to win.

On the muggy, mid­summer morning of July 18, Parris Glendening stands at the window of a meeting room in a subur­ban Virginia hotel, look­ing across the Potomac River into Washington, D.C., home of the NFL Redskins. This scenery prompts the governor’s strategy, as he decides to use this bit of geography to endear himself to his hosts, NFL commission­er Paul Tagliabue and New York Giants co­owner Robert Tisch.

Over an early break­fast, Glendening tells the two men how his 15-year-old son, Raymond, a fanatic Giants fan, has forged a friendship with a Prince George’s County police officer who once played for the Giants. “For almost 10 years in a row,” Glendening adds, “Ray and I would catch the Redskins-Giants game at RFK [Stadium in Washington] and then drive up” to New Jersey to see the two teams play again at the Meadowlands.

Smiles and nods from Tagliabue and Tisch tell Glendening that he has a foot in the door. And, in a way, that’s all the governor had been look­ing for when he asked Mercantile Bankshares Corp. chairman H. Furlong Baldwin, a Baltimorean with NFL connections, to set up a meeting designed to smooth ill will between Maryland and the NFL.

“There is a new administration and attitude,” Glendening tells his hosts. “I want you to see me as a different governor.”

Glendening moves to the next topic on his agenda. Baltimore is the only city in the country with public funding in place for a new stadium, he reminds them, and he wants to make absolutely certain that the league understands that the city no longer intends to play the foot­ball fool. He recites Maryland’s ultimatum: “We want a team, or the money goes away.” Ideally, the governor adds, it would be an expansion team in Baltimore.

Expansion, Tagliabue tells him, is out of the question until the next century. Glendening knows what this means. The city will have to play its siren song, luring a team to Baltimore just as the Colts were lured away by Indianapolis. Glendening is confident that Tisch and Tagliabue realize what’s bound to happen.

After the meeting, the governor hopes that he’s managed to reopen lines of communication with the league establishment. A couple of days later, Mercantile’s Baldwin calls Glendening with the lowdown on how the NFL bigwigs reacted to his pitch. “Mission accomplished,” Baldwin reports.

Talks between Art Modell and Ohio’s elected officials about the Browns stadium situation date back to 1984, when Cuyahoga County proposed building a $150 million domed stadium. Modell endorsed the plan, which died when voters rejected a property-tax increase to pay for it.

Two years later, the first proposals for what would become downtown Cleveland’s Gateway sports complex included a stadium to be shared by the Browns and the Indians. At the time, Model! was quoted in the media as saying the site was too small. (In 1995, he would insist, vehemently, that the Browns were never formal­ly asked to be part of Gateway.)

When Jacobs Field opened at Gateway in 1994, the Indians were among baseball’s best teams-as well as the toast of their hometown. One close friend of Modell’s says the Browns owner grew jealous of the Indians’ success. “His ego was nicked,” says this friend. “The last two years, all you heard about around town was the Indians. Suddenly, Modell wasn’t top cat anymore.”

Downtown Cleveland, meanwhile, continued on its crash course toward an improved image. Work was underway at Gateway on a new arena for the Cavaliers. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was rising on the edge of Lake Erie, as was the Great Lakes Science Center. The Flats, once a grimy industrial area, was reborn as a sparkling conglomeration of nightclubs and neon.

Cleveland Stadium just kept getting older. Negotiations between Modell and Ohio politi­cians over stadium renovations date to 1987. At first, Modell had asked for a lease extension through 2008, vowing to pump $10 million into improvements. But the plan—which included a heavy penalty should the Browns move—never won City Council approval.

In January 1995, a task force appointed by Mayor Michael White recommended renovating Cleveland Stadium. In May, White endorsed the recommendation of a second task force that the project be financed in part with a 10 percent parking tax. But four days later, Modell announced that his negotiations with the city were over until after the 1995 football season, a moratorium that has since become infamous in Cleveland.

White pressed ahead. The City Council even­tually approved a revised tax plan. A proposal to complete the financing package by extending a county-wide “sin” tax went before county commissioners, who decided to put the issue before voters in November.

In the aftermath of Modell’s decision to move his team to Baltimore, the two sides presented wildly divergent accounts of why the negotia­tions failed.

Modell claimed that the city and county missed numerous deadlines and couldn’t finance the plans they eventually submitted. “For six years, I have been waiting for something to hap­pen,” he complained. “I’m out of options.” At a time when public investments were showered on the Indians, the Cavaliers and the two lakefront museums, he fumed, “I’m trying to get my lava­tories to work.”

Elected officials, though, felt that the only option the city and county failed to offer Modell was the choice between grass and artificial turf. They contended that Modell never issued dead­lines in the first place. In 1995, they said, he failed to warn them that time was running out. “This has all been a put-up and a charade,” Mayor White charged, “designed to ensure his deceptive negotiations” with Maryland would go forward.

(In November, after the deal was announced, Cleveland pressed its case in the Ohio courts, winning an injunction blocking-for the moment-the Browns move to Baltimore. As this issue went to press, the case remained unre­solved-as did questions about whether Modell eventually would agree to let Cleveland keep the name “Browns” in the event the city wins another NFL franchise.)

In early July, after five months on the job, John Moag is back at square one. Negotiations with the Bengals are dead. Which NFL prospect would Maryland flirt with next?

The answer comes in a phone call to Moag’s office from First National Bank of Maryland’s Frank Bramble. “John,” Bramble says, “Al Lerner would like to meet with you.”

It looks like Moag’s option play is working. A few months back, he had ordered background reports on key executives and owners at NFL franchises in financial trouble. He’d been partic­ularly impressed with Lerner’s bio. This isn’t a guy who places casual calls, Moag thinks. This isn’t a guy who wastes time playing games.

The son of Ukranian immigrants, Alfred Lerner grew up in New York City, living in apart­ments attached to a succession of candy stores his father owned. He graduated from Columbia University, then signed on with the Marines. After his discharge, he moved briefly to Baltimore, earn­ing $75 a week selling furniture for Ethan Allen.

Lerner then moved to Cleveland and turned his attention to real estate, earning his first fortune during the ’60s and ’70s by buying, selling and syndicating apartments and shopping centers.

In the ’80s, Lerner moved on to banking. He invested in Equitable Bancorp of Baltimore and eventually became director of Baltimore’s largest bank. He and a partner also made a run at Cleveland’s leading bank, AmeriTrust Corp. Though the duo never succeeded in gaining con­trol, they did manage to turn an estimated $30 million profit before walking away.

In 1989, Lerner sold Bancorp of Baltimore to MNC Financial, Inc. He later became chairman of MNC and is widely credited with rescuing the company from deep trouble.

With a fortune estimated at more than $850 million, Lerner is a fixture on Forbes magazine’s annual list of the 400 richest people in America. He and his wife, Norma, live in the exclusive Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights.

Lerner’s involvement with the Cleveland Browns dates to 1988, when he bought a 5 percent share in the team. At about this time, Modell’s health faltered and he was no longer able to travel in the players’ plane and stay in the same hotels. Lerner and Modell began flying together in Lerner’s plane to Browns road games.

Lerner’s interest in owning an NFL expansion team in Baltimore dates at least to the early ’90s. (By some accounts, his overtures date back to 1985.) But no firm proposal developed until the waning weeks of the 1993 expansion campaign, after the NFL awarded a team to Charlotte. Baltimore, desperate for someone with NFL connections, turned to Lerner. But the strategy flopped when Jacksonville got the second team.

“Lerner became our last hope,” recalls Herb Belgrad. “And I guess there was some degree of disappointment because we anticipated he would make an all­-out effort to lobby the owners in advance, and that Art Modell would be by his side . . . A lot of the preliminary effort that we had anticipated never took place.”

In the end, not even Modell voted for Baltimore. (Today, Modell says owners were reluctant to choose between the two recently spurned cities of St. Louis and Baltimore, so they opted instead for Jacksonville.) Despite mixed feelings about Lerner’s performance, the leaders of Baltimore’s expansion campaign never blamed Lerner or Modell for the defeat. Other villains-most notably, NFL Commissioner Tagliabue and Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke-earned Baltimore’s ire by oppos­ing the city’s bid more directly.

At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of July 28, John Moag walks through Baltimore-Washington International Airport, bound for a runway ren­dezvous with Al Lerner. Moag expects to meet a very substantial and very straightforward man. Once aboard the plane, he’s not disappointed. Lerner offers Moag a bottle of water, as the two sit and exchange introductions.

“I want to know where you guys are coming from,” Lerner says simply.

The two discuss Maryland’s deal in broad outlines. Already, Lerner knows most of the details from his participation in the Baltimore expansion effort. Moag tells Lerner of the year’s-end deadline, and he stresses the impor­tance of secrecy.

”You’re going to have to leave town by Monday,” Modell tells his wife of 26 years. ”You can’t be livlng here when I make this announcement.”

The meeting is short, simple and serious. Lerner asks only a few questions. “I have been through many years with this man, trying to make things work in Cleveland,” he says of Art Model!. “I believe Art has come to the conclu­sion that it is simply not going to work out.”

As the meeting ends, Lerner promises to call soon. After leaving the plane, Moag drives to Annapolis to meet with the governor. As a dealmaker, Moag has learned to check his emotions-Don’t get too pumped up, don’t get too discouraged, he often reminds himself-but now he briefly loses that equilibrium. “The fact that Al Lerner flew in here to talk to me, to find out what our situation was, indicat­ed to me that Art Modell was fed up in Cleveland,” Moag would say later.

Arriving at Glendening’s office, Moag’s optimism shows when he bursts in wearing a broad smile. “Governor,” he announces, “I think we’ve got a team.”

“John, are you certain?” “Yes.”

“You know we’ve heard this before. Are you really certain?”

“Yes.”

Moag is anxious for the meeting to wind down so that he can get to Bethany Beach and join his family on vacation. Glendening offers Moag a piece of parting advice: “Now John, look, I don’t want you to be worrying about this on your vacation. After all, it’s only your career.”

“Thanks a lot, Governor.”

Moag’s enthusiasm proves infectious. A few nights later, over dinner at a restaurant, Glendening confides the news to a friend: “I think we have a better than 50-50 chance of get­ting the Browns.”

His friend is confused: “The Browns what?” “The Cleveland Browns.”

“Yeah, sure. Have another beer.”

On the evening of September 6, in the warehouse adjacent to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the private Camden Club is jammed with sports celebrities, visiting dignitaries and business elites. In a few hours, Cal Ripken is expected to play in his 2,131 st consecutive game for the Orioles, topping Lou Gehrig’s leg­endary record.

Al Lerner and John Moag are among the cele­brants. Though the rest of the negotiations between the Browns and Baltimore would be veiled in secrecy, on Ripken’s triumphant night Lerner and Moag meet in this thoroughly public forum. The two drift off to a corner for 15 minutes of low-key talk, mostly about Maryland’s chances to swing a deal for a team by dealing directly with the NFL offices. Both men think such a strategy is a longshot at best.

It’s Moag who presses the conversation for­ward. “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t get to work on this deal,” he tells Lerner. “Then we can put it in a safe-deposit box and keep it quiet until you’re ready to run with it.”

“Fair enough,” Lerner responds. “I’ll call you Thursday. It may be time for you to meet Art Modell.”

Art Modell was born on June 23, 1925. After his stint at Bethlehem Steel, he served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Upon returning to New York he sold ABC on a plan to familiar­ize the public with the new technology of television by installing custom-made TV sets in 200 New York City super­markets. Later, Modell owned a televi­sion production company and became a partner in an advertising firm.

After buying the Browns and moving to Cleveland, Modell had an immediate impact on the city. In the early ’60s, he was a fixture on the downtown nightlife circuit, gathering regularly around Table 14 at the Pewter Mug restaurant with the likes of George Steinbrenner­the shipping magnate who would later buy the New York Yankees-and Michael D. Roberts, who would become editor of Cleveland Magazine.

“He liked people and had a sense of generosity, not only with money but with his feelings,” Roberts once recalled. “There was a sensitivity about him, countered by a sometimes curt manner. Sometimes he was ruled more by emotion than by logic.”

Modell lived at Winton Place, a lake­front high rise 10 minutes west of downtown. He was well-liked, known for kindness and generosity. When Browns star Ernie Davis died of leukemia in May 1963, Modell char­tered an airplane to fly the Browns contingent to the funeral in Elmira, New York.

In 1969, the 44-year-old Modell mar­ried Patricia Breslin, an actress who sacrificed her career in Hollywood to join Modell in Cleveland. Modell immediately adopted his new wife’s two sons, David and John.

In the ’70s, Modell’s business ventures grew broader in scope. His Cleveland Stadium Corporation purchased an amusement park in Tennessee, property in Cleveland’s suburbs and a hotel in downtown Cleveland. But by the early 1980s, his real estate dealings were deeply in debt. He tried to sell the busi­ness to the Browns, but was blocked in court by Browns minority owner Robert D. Gries.

Some observers suspect that Modell’s biggest financial mistake was his reported failure as a younger man to buy life insurance designed to help his heirs pay off estate taxes. Around the National Football League, says finan­cial planner Robert K. O’Dell, Modell’s current situation is known as the “Robbie Dilemma,” after the late Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, whose family was forced to sell the team in 1994 to pay estate taxes.

But for Modell, who had heart bypass surgery in 1990 and a hip replacement in 1993, such an insurance policy had become prohibitively expensive by the time he saw what happened to the Robbie family.

On September 17, Moag strolls into a tobacconist’s shop in Georgetown. “I’ll have two boxes of Davidoff Double Rs,” he informs the clerk.

This is not one of Moag’s usual errands. He’s not much of a cigar smoker, but lately he’s been asking friends what brands are top of the line. Moag signs a credit card slip to pay the tab. It isn’t until he and the cigars are back in his car that he checks the receipt. Two boxes of Davidoff Double Rs cost $890.

At noon on September 18, Moag strolls purposefully into Al Lerner’s New York City office, cigar boxes tucked under his arm. Maryland Stadium Authority general counsel Alison Asti and MSA executive director Bruce Hoffman also have made the trip.

The first thing the Marylanders notice is the breathtaking view, floor­to-ceiling windows offering a panora­ma of Central Park. The trio walks past a dining table, set with china and silver for eight, on their way to meet the Browns contingent gathered in the chairs and sofas arrayed near Lerner’s mahogany desk. Awaiting their arrival are Lerner; Modell; Modell’s son, David, vice-president of the Browns; Jim Bailey, executive vice president of the Browns; and attorney James Berick.

Moag hands one box of cigars to Lerner, an aficionado whose devotion is such that he maintains a humidor in his office. Lerner demurs, suggesting that perhaps Moag should offer them to David Model!.

“No, no,” Moag protests, extending the second box in David’s direction. “I’ve got one for you too.”

Finally, Moag, now empty-handed, turns to the elder Model!. “And Art,” he announces, “I’ve brought you a $200 million stadium.”

After a round of introductions, it’s the stout, snowy-peaked Modell who breaks the ice, in a voice that betrays his Brooklyn origins. “I know you’ve been burned time and again,” the Browns owner says, “but I’m here in good faith. I’m not going to use you. I don’t think it’s appropriate to use Baltimore to extort a stadium out of Cleveland.”

Modell’s voice starts to shake with emotion as he talks of leaving his home of 35 years. Referring to the stadium situation in Cleveland, Modell says, “I’ve waited long enough. It’s clear to us that nothing is going to happen.”

Asti is impressed. In nine years rep­resenting the Stadium Authority, she’s negotiated near deals with many of Baltimore’s NFL suitors-Buccaneers, Rams, Raiders and Bengals. Now, hearing the strain in Modell’s voice, a glimmer of hope punctures the cloak of her cynicism. Maybe he is coming to Baltimore.

Moag speaks first for the Maryland contingent.

“I want you to know,” he assures Modell, “that if you’re interested in doing business with us, I will be very straightforward. I will not bulls–t you.”

When a waiter arrives, carrying a tray filled with salmon, chicken breast and London broil, it’s time to break for lunch. Guests serve themselves from the tray, then take seats at the dining table. Moag and Lerner dominate a spirited political discussion about the coming presidential election campaign. Members of the Cleveland contingent express hope that then-undecided Colin Powell would opt to enter the race.

After lunch, Moag sums up the state of negotiations by saying, “You know what this deal is, Mr. Model!. I don’t have to sit here and rehash it.”

As the meeting continues, it becomes clear that only three major issues remain unresolved. First, the Browns want to cover moving expenses by sell­ing personal seat licenses. (Increasingly common, PSLs force fans to pay a one­time fee for the right to buy season tick­ets.) Second, Modell and Lerner want to form a new firm, the Maryland Stadium Corporation, to manage the new stadi­um. And finally, the Browns want the right to select a concessionaire.

In the minds of Moag, Asti and Hoffman, none of these issues is insur­mountable.

How is it that Baltimore, a city without an NFL team since 1984, could bring a $200 million football-only sta­dium and lay it on the table before Art ModeII? Oddly enough, the answer starts with the often-vilified Colts owner Robert Irsay.

When Irsay moved the team to Indianapolis, he sparked a panic among Baltimore’s civic leaders. Was Baltimore about to lose its major-league standing? Fears deepened that Orioles owner Edward Bennett Williams might move his baseball team to his hometown of Washington, D.C.

In 1986, then-Governor Hughes asked Herb Belgrad to look into strategies for dealing with the crisis. Three short months later, Belgrad gave new governor William Donald Schaefer a remarkably prescient set of recommendations.

First, Belgrad concluded that reno­vating Memorial Stadium wasn’t a viable solution in the new sports economy of the ’80s. Only a new sta­dium would suffice. Second, he said, rather than a multi-purpose stadium, Baltimore would need a baseball-only stadium for the Orioles first-and then, perhaps, a football-only facility if the NFL ever returned.

Schaefer, who was mayor when Baltimore lost the Colts, took Belgrad’s report to a skeptical General Assembly. An arduous uphill lobbying

campaign eventually convinced legisla­tors that the state should invest heavily in professional sports as an economic development tool.

“Now that everybody loves Camden Yards, people forget just how contro­versial it was,” recalls attorney Alan M. Rifkin, who was then legislative counsel for Schaefer. Rifkin predicts a similar phenomenon over football will unfold in the coming years.

When John Moag considers the upheaval over franchise moves in pro­fessional football, he sees a simple, hard truth about the new sports economy. Cities that choose to make professional sports teams an economic priority-by spending big money on state-of-the-art facilities-will get and keep teams; cities that don’t will lose them.

On October 6, less than three weeks after the New York meeting, the deal is in the hands of the lawyers. At the Washington law offices of Jones, Day, Rea vis & Pogue, Alison Asti meets with Modell’s lawyers for a day­long, line-by-line review of a proposed stadium lease. But the deal hasn’t cleared every hurdle yet. The days ahead bring some tense moments. When the two sides reach an impasse at one point, Moag calls a halt to the talks.

Lerner and Moag smooth things in a subsequent phone call, during which Lerner explains one of his golden rules of deal-making by relaying an anecdote about his father: The elder Lerner was once on the verge of buying a liquor store, but the deal turned sour when he and the seller argued over who would take possession of some toilet pa per stored in the building. Lerner concludes his tale with a moral: “Never let a deal fall apart because of the toilet paper.”

By mid-October, negotiations are back on track. The two sides agree on an $80 million cap on PSL revenue. Stadium management issues are resolved.

Pen in hand, Modell doesn’t hesi­tate. He already has steeled him­self to the task at hand.

On the weekend of October 14, Alison Asti flies to Milwaukee for a sports-facilities conference attended by team owners, municipal officials and members of the media. She overhears talk about the state of Baltimore’s negotiations with the Buccaneers. Someone stands up in a meeting at one point and discusses the critical nature of the upcoming referendum vote in Cleveland. Is n’t it interesting, Asti thinks, that no one has a clue?

Back in her hotel room, Asti opens a package that’s been overnighted from Cleveland. It contains a nearly final ver­sion of a lease agreement between Baltimore and the Browns.

On the morning of October 27, John Moag arrives on time for his 8 a.m. meeting after all. In fact, he’s the first one at BWI, pulling up in his bal­loon-bedecked Lexus. Governor Glendening’s car arrives just as Al Lerner’s plane taxis toward the air­port’s private Signature terminal.

Glendening emerges and surveys the scene. “That’s a nice plane,” the gover­nor marvels.

Once aboard, Glendening takes a seat across from Art Modell, while Moag sits down next to the Browns owner.

“I bet you didn’t think this was ever gonna happen,” Modell says, slapping Moag’s knee.

“There were days when I wondered,” Moag responds.

Modell then turns to Glendening, whom he is meeting for the first time. “This is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done,” he says in a somber tone. The two chat amiably for more than half an hour, touching on health care issues and pausing on the coinci­dence that both their wives are active in the hospice movement.

Eventually, the moment of truth arrives. Pen in hand, Model! doesn’t hesitate. He already has steeled himself to the task at hand. I know this is the right thing.

He and Moag each sign two copies of the lease. One copy will head back to Cleveland. The other will end up in a locked drawer in Moag’s desk. Both sides agree that the deal won’t be announced until the end of December.

The Cleveland contingent, which includes Lerner and David Model!, passes out victory cigars. Glendening, an avid anti-smoker, declines to partake and soon grows uncomfortable in the haze. Modell notices the governor’s dis­comfort and extinguishes his cigar.

But the atmosphere remains exceedingly thick. Excusing himself, Glendening is the first to leave the plane. The others stay aboard for another 45 minutes, cele­brating and ironing out details.

On October 31, the veil of secrecy surrounding the deal is falling away. Media in both cities are already chasing rumors of an imminent Browns move to Baltimore.

Modell is certain the leak originated in Maryland; Moag suspects it started in Cleveland. In either case, Modell’s now in a bind. If he confirms a move, he risks ruining his team’s season. If he denies a move, he’ll have to admit his deception in the months to come. And then there are the voters to consider: The referendum on Cleveland Stadium renovations is just eight days away.

I’ve got to level with the public, Modell concludes. He calls John Moag and tells him it’s time to schedule a press conference.

Later, in the Modells’ Waite Hill home, Art informs his wife of 26 years about the change in plans. “You’re going to have to leave town by Monday,” he says.

“Why?” Patricia asks.

“You can’t be living here when I make this announcement.”

Patricia is crestfallen at the thought of never again seeing her house, of leav­ing Cleveland. She realizes that she has just a few days to pack. Slowly, she faces up to the task before her.

I’d go with Art to the North Pole if he wanted me to, she tells herself.

That evening, in Baltimore County, Peggy Moag returns home from Halloween trick-or-treating with Lauren and Alexandra to find her hus­band pacing the house like a caged lion. Peggy and the girls give him space.

At 8:30 p.m., three hours ahead of schedule, John walks past his wife on his way to the stairs. “I’m going to bed,” he says, distantly.

“Okay,” Peggy replies, not wanting to ask.

Forty-five minutes later, John reappears downstairs.

“I’m going for a run,” he announces. “Okay,” Peggy says.

But he never leaves the house.

Instead, he heads for the screened-in back porch, where he lights a cigarette.

One evening later that week, Moag hears a caller to a sports-talk show on WBAL radio announce in breathless fashion that the Browns are moving to Baltimore and that he heard the news from one of the governor’s bodyguards. The show’s hosts, skeptical of such a longshot possibility, simply move on to the next caller. Whoa, Moag thinks, if the state police are talking, we’ve got a serious problem on our hands.

On the night of November 3, Baltimore’s WBAL-TV breaks the story.

The next morning, as the news spreads through Cleveland, a gentle snow is falling—eerily reminiscent of the weather that 1984 morning in Baltimore when the city learned of the Colts’ departure.

At 11:45 a.m on Monday, November 6, Patricia Modell finishes packing in her suburban Cleveland home. All weekend, she’d been too busy organiz­ing to really focus on events. Now, the situation finally hits home. A cou­ple of Modell family employees notice the shell-shocked expression on her face and ask if she’s alright.

Patricia reassures them. She’s deter­mined not to cry.

Fifteen minutes later, while Patricia is in a car headed for the airport to catch a plane bound for Florida, her husband is 358 miles away in downtown Baltimore.

Despite the fact that temperatures have dipped under 50 degrees, Art Modell is not wearing an overcoat as he climbs a makeshift dais in a down­town parking lot, the planned site of the city’s new football stadium.

Joining him on the platform are Glendening, Moag and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke. Minutes later, the gover­nor delivers the news that will shock Cleveland and surprise Baltimore: The Browns and Baltimore have eloped.

This story is a joint project of Baltimore and Cleveland magazines. Jim Duffy is senior editor at Baltimore. Geoff Brown is a contributing writer at Baltimore. Shari Sweeney and Jay Miller are contributing editors at Cleveland. All reconstructed dialogue comes from at least one party to the conversation.

Standing before a group of reporters after one of the Ravens’ offseason practices yesterday, Hayden Hurst laughed and briefly looked to the sky when he heard the question. Any update on “the one that got away?”

“Haven’t heard anything back,” said the 25-year-old tight end, who will begin his second pro season this fall. Then the guy known as “Thor,” for obvious size and red-haired reasons, shrugged his big shoulders, part of a body to which he’s added 20 pounds of muscle the last few months. “Unfortunately, that’s the way of the road.”

He was referring of course to the seemingly innocuous but eventually viral tweet he thumbed last Sunday:

It’s a message that, if you or I shared it, would likely have traveled only as far as our close friends’ phones, and elicited a few jokes. For Hurst, that happened, too, but being an NFL player in a media world obsessed with clicks, his “missed connection” on a flight from his hometown of Jacksonville to Baltimore on Spirit Airlines (man of the people!) also attracted more attention than he ever imagined. The story ended up in places as far away as Good Morning America and Fox News.

A dropped ball, the headlines read. Teammates, current and former (like Terrell Suggs), ribbed him: “Shoot your shot,” they said. Strangers on the internet sent an assortment of funny memes, and others questioned the situation: “Hold on . . . NFL [player] can’t catch up with tall brunette . . . did the Ravens sign the wrong person?”

Hurst playfully responded with some details (he was busy taking a picture with a fan near a security line at BWI), as did the guy who asked for the picture. “Relax,” Hurst wrote back, summing up his reaction to the reaction.

In reality, he’s got bigger fish to fry.

For one, the reason Hurst was on a plane to Baltimore in the first place was to get here for the Ravens’ organized team activities (OTAs in NFL parlance), 10 days of voluntary practices. One of the Ravens’ two first-round picks last spring (along with quarterback Lamar Jackson), Hurst is fired up to kick off what he hopes is a rebound year from a season derailed by a stress fracture in his foot at the end of training camp last August.

He finished last season with 13 catches for 163 yards and a touchdown—stuff any person on the street would dream about doing. But it wasn’t the kind of production Hurst was looking for as a highly-touted rookie. The added weight he’s put on is intended to protect his body, so injuries like the one he sustained last season (which required a metal screw be surgically inserted in his foot) don’t happen.

“I’m kind of on a mission this year,” he said Thursday. “I’ve got a lot to prove.”

And, moreover—and unfortunately what none of the stories about his tweet said—Hurst is continuing to do great work off the field with the start of charitable foundation in his name, which focuses on helping teens with their mental health.

Hurst, as we documented last year, has struggled with anxiety and depression, like millions of Americans. And, given his platform, he’s resolved to speak openly about his experiences, to help others who might not know how to seek help or even be aware of their problems.

“In sports, you hear, ‘We have to be tough men, we can’t talk about mental health.’ Or ‘If you seek help, it’s weakness.’” Hurst told Baltimore last season. “I think that’s a load of crap now. It’s incredible that it affects so many people, and in so many different ways. It needs to be talked about.”

The Hayden Hurst Family Foundation, which officially launched in April, held a charity golf tournament this month to raise money to fund the 81 therapy sessions (Hurst’s jersey number) it will provide to 20 local student-athletes through the Better Tomorrow’s Start Today organization.

Hurst and his mother, Cathy, who runs the foundation, visited three Baltimore schools—St. Frances Academy, Poly, and Coppin State University—and one in Hagerstown to speak, take questions, and provide forms for mental health services.

“We’re trying to help kids realize it’s OK to say you’re not OK,” Cathy said. “I’m glad to see that the foundation is starting to get some traction, and people are really excited to hear that Hayden is not just a football player. He really cares.”

That’s really the moral of this whole story, tweet included. Pro football players are people, too.

There are still two days, six rounds, and 222 more picks to be made in this year’s NFL Draft—and you can’t fairly grade how any team does until years from now, after the college kids selected pan out like Jonathan Ogden, Ray Lewis, and Ed Reed or flop, so to speak in pro football terms, like Kyle Boller.

But through the first night of what’s really an annual nationally televised administrative spectacle, it’s hard to say that the Ravens haven’t already won.

And not just because of the promise and skills that new general manager Eric DeCosta’s first ever pick—speedy 5-foot-10, 170-pound Oklahoma wide receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, selected 25th overall in last night’s first round—brings to the roster.

Brown feels like a valuable addition, and at least Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson agrees, given the child-like joy in his live reaction on social media last night, close to 11 p.m. (In the video, “Hollywood,” refers to the rookie’s nickname, and where he grew up, 40 miles from where Jackson did in Boynton Beach, Florida. You’ll also hear a mention of Brown’s diamond neck chain, which actually features a likeness of himself.)

That’s all charming and makes us want to be 21 years old again—and have a few million dollars headed our way—but just wait for the real heart-warming stuff to come when it’s the Ravens turn to make headlines again the next two days.

Some time tonight, when they’re ready to make their third-round pick, Westminster native Miles Taylor will step onto the stage in Nashville and announce the team’s selection. Taylor was born with cerebral palsy and went viral a few months ago for a video of him deadlifting 200 pounds. Among other reactions, Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed Taylor his “new hero.”

Taylor, 24, recently visited the Ravens headquarters in Owings Mills with his personal trainer, a high school friend who got him into lifting. He impressed coaches and players in the workout room, learned he’d be part of the draft festivities, and shared his story with the team’s public relations group. It’s worth a watch.

“Cerebral palsy doesn’t define who I am,” Taylor said. “I just want to be a better version of myself. It’s so cool to be able to inspire people.”

If that’s not enough motivation to catch some of the draft broadcast, maybe this is. On Saturday afternoon at the Ravens’ Draft Fest at the Inner Harbor, with players like Jackson and Ravens second-year tight end Hayden Hurst on hand, superfan Mo Gaba, who was born blind and at age 13 is fighting cancer for the fourth time, will become the first person to read off an NFL Draft selection from a Braille card.

Gaba is from Glen Burnie and has attended Johns Hopkins Children’s Hospital for multiple rounds of chemo and surgeries. He’s been a fixture on local sports-talk radio in recent years, and struck up a unique relationship with an Anne Arundel County police officer that works in his school. It’s easy to love him.

This interview of the Orioles’ Trey Mancini interviewing him last year is precious. “Every day when I wake up in the morning, I always feel like I’m going to achieve something that’s pretty cool,” Gaba said then, sitting in his wheelchair on the field at Camden Yards. “I just think positive.”

Coach John Harbaugh surprised the kid live on the radio earlier this week to say he’d be reading the Ravens fourth-round pick, No. 123 overall, to the nation . . .

After all that, there’s not much left to say. Except for a few more names to be announced, along with Ravens hats to be put on draftees, and future contracts to be signed. Because, for now, the Ravens certainly have inspiration covered for us all.

Excuse us for feeling like the Ravens and Orioles are colluding on some master plan to make us learn as many new names and storylines as possible before they begin their 2019 seasons. It’s hard to keep up with all the changes.

This week alone: Terrell Suggs gone, to Arizona (here he is in Cardinal red—weird); Eric Weddle signed with a team in Los Angeles; C.J. Mosley, he of the cathartic playoff-berth sealing interception and a four-time Pro Bowler, is now the richest inside linebacker in the NFL, with the New York Jets; Joe Flacco was officially traded to Denver; and outside linebacker Za’Darius Smith said he’s headed to Green Bay. There’s no telling how many hours the Ravens’ social media staff spent posting nostalgic thank you tributes to the departed.

Meanwhile, former Orioles captain Adam Jones signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks (are there good crabs in the southwest or something?)—he got a video tribute, too—and first-year O’s manager Brandon Hyde named Alex Cobb the team’s Opening Day starter.

And we haven’t even talked about the big additions to town: safety Earl Thomas and running back Mark Ingram, whom the Ravens signed at the start of the NFL’s free agency period and whom the team will introduce at a press conference in Owings Mills on Friday morning.

It’s always difficult to say goodbye to familiar and respected sports heroes—which we’ve done a lot of the last few months (see Buck Showalter, Flacco, and Jones). But change also creates opportunities, and fresh starts. Two-plus months into this year, that’s the story of Baltimore’s biggest teams. The question now is what comes of the all the new?

Well, for starters, the Ravens’ addition of Thomas, who has been widely regarded as one of the league’s best safeties but missed most of last season with a broken leg, seems fitting for a franchise that will see Ed Reed inducted to the Hall of Fame this August at that position. Thomas was the leader of the Seattle Seahawks’ legendary “Legion of Boom” a few years ago.

A pairing with fellow safety Tony Jefferson has already led a few observers to create equal parts patriotic and funny “Thomas Jefferson” references to the twosome.

The continued changing-of-the-quarterback guard will get the most attention, though. The Ravens thanked Flacco for the memories after the trade was made official, and he in turn thanked them.

At around the same time, second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson, who has been handed the keys to the offense, posted to his Instagram account a self-recorded video of him driving 105 miles per hour on a highway, apparently without wearing a seatbelt.

The video ended up on TMZ, and Jackson apologized for the “bad decision,” and said he “will set a better example going forward.” Jackson is 22 years old, and we’ve praised him before for his authenticity, but clearly has some growing up to do.

He deleted the troublesome video from his account, but left public his thoughts on all the free agency moves, which also don’t seem to sit right.

The only thing that would have made this week more interesting is if former Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell chose to sign with the Ravens instead of the Jets, which he was reportedly close to doing.

We’re also close to the O’s first game of the year, now less than two weeks away against the Yankees in New York. Cobb, who was 5-15 with a 4.90 earned run average in 28 starts for the Orioles last season, is now apparently the O’s best pitcher.

That might not sound promising, but we’ll take our chances with something new.

The reported trade of Joe Flacco to the Denver Broncos—which won’t become official until next month, per NFL rules—shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Ravens made it clear they were moving on from the oft-maligned, Super Bowl-winning quarterback several times over the last few months.

But the news of Flacco’s impending departure does deliver a sense of finality for an era that started 11 years ago and saw ups, downs, the streakiest of flawless playoff performances in 2012 en route to a championship, followed by a much debated monster contract, and all the questions and discussion about Joe Cool’s unassuming demeanor along the way.

The last few years haven’t been great on the field for the now 34-year-old— he was 24-27 as a starter the last four seasons, and he faced several different injuries. The last of those, a hip injury suffered against the hated Steelers (it seems appropriate Flacco’s final game as a Raven came against Pittsburgh), coupled with rookie Lamar Jackson’s electric play in his place, put the strong-armed Flacco out of a job in Baltimore for good.

Maybe Flacco was never elite, as a nation of football fans and local sports-talk radio callers loved to publicly ponder, but Flacco sure does leave a lasting legacy behind that’s comparable to those of other heroes in Baltimore sports history.

Flacco, the New Jersey native and University of Delaware alum with a last name perfectly suited for the Baltimorese dialect, is the best quarterback to ever play for the Ravens franchise. Replicas of his No. 5 jersey hang in closets, restaurants, and bars everywhere. He might not have done things exactly the way you (or Ray Lewis) would have liked, but he gave years of Ravens teams what was needed, a steady presence and dose of understated class at arguably the most important position in pro sports, even as so much changed around him. It’s a career that, in all likelihood, will become more appreciated as the years go on.

Right now, it feels weird to imagine Flacco wearing an orange and blue Broncos uniform. (Though you don’t even have to imagine it; here’s a Photoshopped look.) But, pending a retirement or a catastrophic preseason injury, that’s what we’ll see for real next year. The Ravens, under new general manager Eric DeCosta, have agreed to trade Flacco to Denver for a fourth-round draft pick.

You won’t hear any public comments from Ravens coaches or players about the move until it becomes official on March 13. For now, we’re left with Flacco’s thoughts before he left the Ravens locker room for the final time — “I love the people of Baltimore,” he said. “I can’t imagine a better 11 years.” — and other reaction, like from safety Tony Jefferson, who acknowledged Flacco on Wednesday after the trade reports broke:

Ah, Denver. The site of the “Miracle at Mile High,” the beautiful, cathartic 70-yard touchdown heave from Flacco to wide receiver Jacoby Jones in the final minute of the 2012 divisional round playoff game that was the most astounding of all the moments of the Ravens’ Super Bowl XLVII winning season, and probably of Flacco’s entire Ravens career. It’s a “where were you when?” sort of thing.

There were plenty of other memories, like various rivalry games with the Steelers, and for every cool touchdown pass a seemingly comical scramble, or fumble, around a collapsing pocket. Or when he sauntered into the end zone with a rare touchdown run. Or wore an ugly fu man chu on his face. Or graciously paused to sign autographs or take photos around town (as he did one evening with my wife and dog after dinner; lineman Marshal Yanda was the photographer.)

But that was Joe Flacco. He was who he was, and is who he is. This isn’t an obituary, after all, but it is the end of Flacco’s football time here. (Well, at least Joe’s. His brother, Tom, still has one season of eligibility left as the quarterback at Towson.)

Onward the NFL goes. Flacco, a father of five, will relocate across the country, get paid $18.5 million, and become the source of polarizing debate for another city, while the Baltimore sports scene will move on to the Lamar Jackson era. Flacco himself officially ushered that in with his gracious acquiescence to the 21-year-old (“It’s out of my hands,” he said)—and with his part in the decision to stay on the bench of the Ravens’ wild-card playoff game against the Los Angeles Chargers.

Fans chanted for Flacco to enter the game then, and how could they not? This was a guy who gave this city a whole lot, including a championship and plenty of classic, quirky local commercials—featuring corny jokes and looks ranging from boyish crew cut in a Pizza Hut jersey (Flacco’s Favorite!) to manly makeover and talking to kids while hawking banking services.

We’ll miss those spots, of course, but Flacco will be back this way someday, when his name and number are affixed to a concrete façade at M&T Bank Stadium, alongside all the other Ravens greats like Lewis, Ed Reed, and Jonathan Ogden. Because that’s the company that Flacco keeps.

There was a little less than 10 minutes left in the third quarter, and the Los Angeles Chargers were already leading by 17 points and looking like they were about to score again, when Ravens coach John Harbaugh finally approached quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Joe Flacco on the sideline and broached the touchy subject that many others—like the pockets of 70,000-plus fans at a frenzied M&T Bank Stadium who had started to boo and hiss; and the television and radio announcers; and the social-media commenters—had already been discussing.

Who should be in at quarterback?

The polarizing question of the last month served as the central conflict in Sunday afternoon’s oftentimes frustrating and bizarre (how about those replay reviews?) wild-card game, the Ravens’ first playoff appearance in four years. For the first time since the electrifying and—as one Chargers player said Sunday, “ridiculously fast,”—21-year-old Jackson took over as starting quarterback from an injured Flacco in November, the Ravens looked downright bad. They struggled to create any offense, and they fell behind 23-3 in the second half before somehow rallying to have chance to tie the score with under a minute to go. By then, a lot of fans had left.

In a moment you might see this week on one of the NFL’s behind-the-scenes mic’d up segments (since five different cameramen were capturing the images and audio), the Ravens trailed 20-3 when Harbaugh crouched down in front of the Ravens’ QB duo as they sat beside each other on the bench. There they were, the former Super Bowl-winning hero who had been there, done that in the playoffs, wearing a winter hat; and Jackson, in a body-length black hooded coat, the youngest quarterback to ever start an NFL postseason game, who had -1 passing yards and was sailing the ball over and under receivers while dodging a flurry of defenders.

“I wanted to know what they thought,” Harbaugh told Baltimore. “We could have gone with Joe then.” Indeed, fans behind the Ravens bench and elsewhere in the stadium were calling for the switch. Twitter and text chats were abuzz with the topic. CBS Sports analyst Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, mentioned the possibility of pulling Jackson at halftime, saying it’s hard to leave a former Super Bowl winner like Flacco on the bench in a game like this.

It was like a Greek drama and a Roman circus rolled into one three-hour, 17-minute story. The protagonist: Jackson. The dispatched, lightning-rod former starter: Flacco. The stage: a long-awaited home playoff game. But in reality, there wasn’t as much debate on the sideline as there was everywhere else.

Flacco, perhaps having already accepted his fate a long time ago or not wanting to get beat up by a ferocious defense, got out of the way, and told Harbaugh he should leave Jackson in. “Stay with what we’re doing,” he said.

“We made the decision with what was going to happen here weeks ago,” Flacco said in the locker room later. “I really wanted to see the guys turn it up a little bit and make a play.”

With that, the deed was done, and in some ways, the Ravens’ quarterback situation was made clearer than it’s ever been since the Ravens drafted Jackson out of Louisville last April. “Lamar is our quarterback going forward, no question about that,” Harbaugh said afterward.

Flacco essentially and gracefully closed the door on his own career in Baltimore. And, in what was probably the worst game of his young NFL career, Jackson’s position in the Ravens’ quarterback hierarchy was somehow solidified. “He’s the future,” Ravens safety Eric Weddle said of Jackson, who went 6-2 as a starter this year. “He’s going to be a great one.”

Maybe a weight lifted from Jackson’s shoulder pads after the sideline chat, because he threw his first touchdown pass of the day to Michael Crabtree on the Ravens’ next drive, then threw another to him to pull the Ravens’ within 23-17 with two minutes left. They got possession back with 28 seconds left. But, on the first play of a possible game-tying drive, Chargers linebacker Uchenna Nwosu slapped the ball from Jackson’s right hand and his teammate Melvin Ingram III recovered the fumble. It was a fitting ending to what was, at many times, an ugly game, lowlighted by Jackson’s three lost fumbles and even a Justin Tucker missed field goal (what?!).

“There were a lot of things we could have done, I could have done, to put us in a better situation,” Jackson said. “We have to move on now, get ready for next year.”

Ah, yes, next year. No sense in stalling the discussion about it. Now we await news regarding a possible contract extension for Harbaugh, whose job Jackson might have saved. Will Terrell Suggs be back? “I would like to be a Raven for life,” he said. There’s also the matter of the eventual whereabouts of Flacco, who is owed $25 million next year. (The bet here is Washington.)

Harbaugh spoke wistfully of his now former starting QB, with whom he arrived with in Baltimore 11 years ago, and he also talked as if Flacco was headed elsewhere. That would either be by trade, or if the Ravens simply cut the 33-year-old father of five in the offseason. “Joe can still play,” Harbaugh said. “A lot of teams are going to want Joe. . . . I’ll be in Joe’s corner, wherever he’s at, unless we play him.”

Speaking to reporters in what was very likely his last media appearance in the M&T’s home locker room, Flacco said about his future plans, “It’s not really up to me. We’ll see what happens,” and he also reflected on his time here.

“I love the people of Baltimore,” Flacco said. “I can’t imagine a better 11 years. Just how many different life changes I went through and how much we won here. I’m not from too far up the road. People around here are a lot like the people I grew up with. It’s definitely a group of fans and a community that I loved to be around.”

After fielding a final question, he closed with “See you guys.” We sure will, somewhere.

About 10 minutes later, Jackson stood near the same spot in the corner of the locker room where Flacco held court, and spoke with a pair of team staffers for a few minutes. Then, in a quiet moment soon after, when someone asked about the tough day on the field, he acknowledged that truth, but then offered a few simple words that bode well for the future that everyone is so interested in: “It’s all good.”

The first impression was just about the same as the current impression. Back in August 2018, when we watched Lamar Jackson’s post-game interview following his stellar preseason debut at M&T Bank Stadium, there was this 21-year-old kid wearing a backpack, looking like he just got out of school, while also appearing completely comfortable delivering forthright answers to reporters’ questions.

“I was kind of lost,” Jackson said, very much a rookie, while describing his feelings about leading the Ravens out of the tunnel and onto the field, as he did in his first game in Baltimore that night, even with incumbent quarterback Joe Flacco starting the game.

More than one year and a playoff run later, having unseated Flacco amid a meteoric rise to stardom as quick as one of Jackson’s sprints downfield, Jackson’s personality, honesty, and sometimes unintentionally funny one- and two-liners to the media are even more endearing.

Like, when someone asked if he felt any different about showing up to work after last year’s cathartic regular-season finale that advanced the Ravens to the playoffs, after C.J. Mosley’s late-game interception? “I changed my clothes,” Jackson said, eliciting laughter. “That’s about it. Everything else in the same.”

He’s likeable. By being himself on and off the field—fast and dynamic, fun and authentic—Jackson had won over a postseason-starved fanbase, teammates, and coaches, all before he turned 22. “That’s what you appreciate about him,” coach John Harbaugh said this last season. “He’s not trying to prove to anybody that he’s this or that or the other. He’s very comfortable with who he is. You like being around people like that.”

We’ll take it one step further. Here’s seven reasons why it’s so easy to love Jackson right now:

He’s led the Ravens to the playoffs.

Let’s just start with the obvious. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Ravens missed the playoffs for a fourth straight year. Jackson is the single most important factor in why fortunes turned.

Yes, you’ll hear a lot about the Ravens’ great defense, and their ball-control scheme, or other players, but all of that would not have been highlighted or given a chance to thrive had Jackson not excelled when given the chance after Flacco’s hip injury last November.

There is no more critical position in the NFL than quarterback, and Jackson’s has emerged as a bonafide game-changer—with speed, poise, improvisation and, yes, tell the world—LAMAR JACKSON CAN THROW!

He shares.

He’s quiet and private in some ways—for instance, you probably haven’t heard Jackson talk about how his father died in a car accident when Jackson was just 8 years old, and how that happened on the same day his great-grandmother died from cancer—but he’s very outgoing and public in other respects.

If you want a good look at who Jackson really is, just follow his social media accounts. He’s an open book, as authentic as they come, just like your little brother or cousin that Instagrams their daily activities. Except almost 1 million people follow new_era8.

And his social media performance of late has rivaled his play on the field. As in…

He’ll take a picture with you, take one for himself, then post them both.

I still can’t figure out the logistics of this picture. He might have asked whoever took it to send it to him, which is great. But the point is Jackson seems to have embraced his newfound celebrity in Baltimore just fine.

“I just love it here,” Jackson said. “Anywhere I go, people notice it’s me, stuff like that. Even when I first came out of college, when I first got drafted, whenever I go out, people always came up to me, this and that, ‘Lamar!’ They want to take pictures and stuff, so it’s pretty cool to have that going on. People don’t hate me here, so I love it.”

He’s a creative writer, and an appreciative neighbor.

Jackson went all “this is your captain speaking,” with beautiful and inspiring metaphors in a New Year’s social media post that made us want to start tailgating.

That came after he thanked his neighbors for the appreciation:

His mom was his agent heading into the NFL draft.

This confused and concerned some NFL teams, but didn’t put off the Ravens.

Jackson’s bond with his mom, Felicia Jones, is as strong as they come. She is his immediate family and most prominent champion. At the start of Jackson’s freshman season at the University of Louisville, the team had plenty of quarterback options on the roster, but needed a punt returner. Jackson’s athleticism made him an attractive option, and someone on the staff asked him to go return a punt one day at practice. When Jackson’s mom found out, she called the head coach, Bobby Petrino.

According to Sports Illustrated, she said, “Punt returner doesn’t look like quarterback,” and “reminded them all of the promise Petrino had made to her and her son while sitting on a couch in their South Florida home. Jackson never went back for a punt return in practice again.”

Similarly, when teams wanted her son to play wide receiver, which happened often, Jackson always said no. Be it when he was playing in high school, or being recruited to play in college, or the pros, many coaches or observers have suggested Jackson go play another position like wide receiver. His throwing accuracy was the culprit. At every step, NFL included, the coaches ultimately adjusted to him. He won the Heisman Trophy at Louisville as college football’s top player in 2016, the Ravens drafted him at the end of the first round, and he’s already about to make NFL history.

He’ll be the youngest quarterback to ever start an NFL playoff game.

At age 21 Jackson set a league record, and have the chance to for another: as the youngest starting QB to ever start in a playoff game.

Not that he’d admit that stat is a big deal. “I was 21 all year, so this is another game for me,” he said.

He’s reflective of the city.

This might be the elephant in the room. We’re not one to insert discussion about race where it might not belong, but you can’t deny a few things here. Baltimore’s population is 64-percent black, at last U.S. census count. Football is America’s most-watched sport. To have a promising, young black player at quarterback, the team’s most prominent position, is a big deal here.

Jackson’s presence as a headliner—it’s been 11 years since the Ravens last had a black starting quarterback—has to be a welcome sign for the majority of the city, especially its youth. Once asked about seeing kids wear his No. 8 jersey, Jackson said, “I love it. I might buy my own jersey and wear it. I might join them.”

You can’t make this stuff up, and it’s why we’ve quickly learned to love Lamar.

EAT

Jan. 4-6: Nick’s Inner Harbor Seafood Farewell Party

Cross Street Market, 1065 S. Charles St. Fri., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Free.

After a string of high-profile restaurant closings last year, Baltimore is, sadly, adding another to the list as we bid farewell to Nick’s Inner Harbor Seafood. Raise a glass to this 50-year-old Federal Hill institution and celebrate the stall’s long run with one last pound of steamed shrimp and, of course, some freshly shucked oysters. Don’t worry if you’re a little late to the party—Nick’s plans to extend its normal hours if enough seafood lovers want to stay for another round.

DRINK

Jan. 6: The Baltimore Ravens vs. Los Angeles Chargers

Locations vary.

This Sunday, the Ravens, our newly crowned AFC North champs, will face off against the Los Angeles Chargers at M&T Bank Stadium, meaning the city will be in pregame mode all weekend long. If you want to be at the heart of the action, head to Pratt Street Ale House for can’t-miss drink deals or stop by the Bmore Around Town Purple Tailgate, where you can indulge in an open bar and the chance to snap a picture with Super Bowl champion Jamal Lewis. In Federal Hill, Mother’s Grille is offering a $35 all-you-can drink special on their infamous Purple Patio, and in Hampden, Frazier’s will serve up $2.50 cans of Boh and discounted appetizers all afternoon long. For more playoff specials and celebrations, check out our game-day roundup.

SEE

Jan. 4-Sept. 7: Press Press at the George Peabody Library

George Peabody Library, 17 E. Mount Vernon Pl. Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free.

Since its founding in 2014 by local artist and writer Kimi Hanauer, Press Press has been making waves in Baltimore and beyond for its grassroots approach to publishing that amplifies voices that often go unheard. Press Press is entering its fifth year as the George Peabody Library Research Residency’s artist-in-residence, which culminates with this exhibition of the initiative’s entire body of work, including pieces like 100% Yes Manifesto and Megaphone! Megaphone!, in the atrium of the historic Mt. Vernon library. The exhibit runs through September 7, so if you can’t make it this weekend, you have plenty of time to make the trip.

HEAR

Jan. 6: Neighbors Play Normal’s

Normal’s Books & Records, 425 E. 31st St. 7:30 p.m. Free.

Chances are you’ve been humming “Auld Lang Syne” under your breath since Tuesday. Wash away the last few traces of holiday music during Normal’s Books and Records first show of the year, featuring four of the bookseller’s favorite Abell acts. On the chill end, sway to ukulele covers by the John Street Genes and indie folk by James BonTempo & Truth Tables. On the other, post-punk outfit Silver Gulls and local rock supergroup In Love With the Weather Girl are guaranteed to bring up the energy—a perfect post-new year palate cleanser.

DO

Jan. 4-6: Ice Skating at the Four Seasons Hotel

Four Seasons, 200 International Dr. Fri., 4-8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 12-8 p.m. $15-25.

This weekend marks the final few days of rooftop ice skating at the Four Seasons Hotel in Harbor East, and whether it’s your first visit this winter or your 50th, it’s worth the trip. In between attempting triple axels on the 1,500-square-foot rink, take in the sights while listening to live music, sipping on hot cocoa, and snacking on roasted chestnuts. Afterwards, grab a drink or two at The Bygone, the hotel’s top-floor restaurant, to warm up and catch another glimpse of that breathtaking view.

Our hearts are still racing from last week’s Ravens game against the Cleveland Browns—in which linebacker C.J. Mosley clinched a playoff run with a critical interception in the final seconds of the fourth quarter. (Sorry not sorry, Steelers.) This Sunday, our AFC North Champions are taking on the Los Angeles Chargers in the wild-card game at M&T Bank Stadium—and Baltimore is ready to party.

Whether you’re hoping to post up at a tailgate or gather with other die-hards at a neighborhood bar, there are plenty of purple parties to celebrate the Ravens’ first playoff run in years. Here’s where to head before kickoff:

101 Baltimore: If you’re planning to catch the game on South Charles Street in Federal Hill, this neighborhood hangout will be offering plenty of drink deals. Cheer on the birds while downing $5 Chambongs (6-oz. Champagne shooters), $6 Orange Crushes, $7 glasses of red and white wine, and $15 domestic buckets. Just next door, sister-spot Banditos Bar & Kitchen will highlight $5 32-oz. Modelo, Shocktop, and Bud Light beers, as well as $18 Corona buckets. 1118 S. Charles St. 443-682-9480

Alexander’s Tavern: Spend your Sunday at this Fells Point staple, which will offer a game-day menu in conjunction with its regular bottomless brunch deals. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., sip all-you-can-drink Bloody Marys, mimosas, and screwdrivers for $15 while also enjoying half-priced nachos and tots. Other football specials include $2 New Amsterdam half shots, $3 22-oz. Bud Light drafts, $5 Baltimore bombs, and free shooters for every Ravens touchdown. (Sister bar Huck’s American Craft will have similar specials.) 710 S. Broadway. 410-522-0000

Bmore Around Town Purple Tailgate: Super Bowl champion Jamal Lewis will be pregaming at this bash thrown by the tailgating experts at Bmore Around Town. Make your way to Stadium Square on West Ostend Street to get down to live music by DJ Crome while enjoying open bar access for three hours before the game. The $40 admission fee also includes shucked oysters, a build-your-own Bloody Mary bar, life-sized games, and raffles to benefit the Kamryn Lambert Foundation. A barbecue buffet will highlight brisket, smoked turkey, pulled pork, hamburgers, hot dogs, mac and cheese, French fries, and all the fixins’. 701 W. Ostend St. $40-45 443-865-5935

Donna’s Tavern: Dundalk locals flock to this neighborhood hangout for its epic football parties, which feature raffles, giveaways, and free shooters for every Ravens touchdown. Noteworthy playoff specials will include $4 grape bombs, $6 burgers, $9 crab pretzels, $10 crab cake sandwiches, and $12 Budweiser buckets. 6607 Pine Ave., Dundalk. 410-633-6677

Don’t Know Tavern: Belly up to the bar at this South Baltimore spot to watch the game alongside other purple fanatics. Don’t Know will offer $3 Miller Lite drafts, or—if you’re drinking with a crew—go in on $14 Miller Lite Buckets, $15 Miller Lite towers, or $20 Blue Moon towers. 1453 Light St. 410-539-0231

Frazier’s on the Avenue: Nothing screams Baltimore pride like gathering with other fans at this Hampden institution. Grab a seat at the bar to crack open $2.50 cans of Natty Boh while chowing down on discounted appetizers all afternoon. Snack specials will include $5 tots, onion rings, nachos, soft pretzels, and taco flatbreads. 919 W. 36th St. 410-662-4914

Jimmy’s King in the North Playoff Tailgate: Throw on a jersey and get hyped for this lively pregame hosted by Jimmy’s Famous Seafood. Held outside of the future home of Hammerjacks on Russell Street, the tailgate will feature music spun by DJ Buddha, as well as familiar ’90s covers by local rockers Here’s to the Night. The $45 price of admission also includes a premium open bar, bottomless beer, lawn games, a photo booth, and a full buffet. Football fare to look out for includes pit beef, cream of crab soup, Italian sausage, homemade meatballs, and crabby chicken cheesesteaks. 1300 Russell St. $45. 410-314-6968

Lee’s Pint & Shell: This Canton hangout will host a free, one-hour open bar after the game if the Ravens win. The only catch? You have to show up to Lee’s (in your purple gear, of course) before kickoff. No matter the outcome, the bar will feature buck-a-shuck oysters, $3 Natty Boh drafts, $3 Blue Moon drafts, $5 Smirnoff grape bombs, and $5 Smirnoff Crushes during the game. 2844 Hudson St. 410-327-2883

Minnow: Make the most of your Sunday Funday with an all-day happy hour at this seafood-centric spot in South Baltimore. For the playoff game, Minnow will be featuring half-priced small plates and drink specials from 1-7 p.m. in the bar. 2 E. Wells St. 443-759-6537

Miss Shirley’s: This comfort food staple is paying homage to Eric Weddle’s ice cream sundae ritual with “Weddle’s Playoff Pancakes”—a tall stack buried beneath plenty of sweet toppings. Starting this Purple Friday, all three locations will offer the Ravens-inspired flapjacks topped with blackberries, white chocolate chips, purple whipped cream, purple cream cheese icing, powdered sugar, and black and purple sugar sprinkles. You can also add a scoop of Taharka Bros. ice cream for good measure. The Ravens pancakes will be on the menu throughout the entire playoff run. Multiple locations including 513 W. Cold Spring Lane. 410-889-5272

Mother’s Grille: We can only imagine how spirited the Purple Patio at this Federal Hill mainstay is going to be this weekend. Equipped with satellite bars, flat screens, and plenty of Ravens decor, the outdoor venue is a go-to party spot for home games. As always, Mother’s is offering fans a $35 all-you-can-drink deal for three hours beginning at 9 a.m. 1113 S. Charles St. 410-244-8686

Ottobar: This Remington rock club is gearing up for another one of its Ravens ragers in the bar upstairs. Be sure to bring a dish to share for the potluck party, which also features discounted drinks, beer buckets, and plenty of giant screens for bird watching. 2549 N. Howard St. 410-662-0069

Pratt Street Ale House: Located just a football’s throw away from the stadiums, this game-day destination is always down to cheer on the birds. In honor of the playoff run, the Ale House is offering $3 domestic bottles, $4 Oliver Brewing Company pints, and $5 house wine and rail drinks throughout the day. 206 W. Pratt St. 410-244-8900

The drive of Joe Flacco’s life didn’t begin in hostile Heinz Field or even in a stadium. It
originated in the predawn hours of June 13 at his home in Owings Mills
following a phone call from his wife, Dana, and concluded 135 minutes
later in a hospital room in Voorhees, NJ.

“At a quarter to five in
the morning she called me and was like, ‘I haven’t gotten any sleep all
night, I’ve been debating calling you for two hours. I think it’s
time,’” he says six weeks later, at ease on a couch in an office at the
Ravens’ Under Armour Performance Center. “So I was like, ‘Call your mom
up, call your doctor, see what they say.’ They told her, ‘Take your time
but come in.’ She got in around 6:30 and they told her, ‘It’s time,
you’re staying.’”

Flacco was excused from practice, jumped into
his Ford F-150 and raced up I-95. “I left here at like 6:45 in the
morning and got up there around 9.”

The NFL’s most-successful-yet-still-curiously-maligned quarterback was determined to witness the birth of his first child.

“Everybody
was [asking] me, ‘Are you gonna look? You don’t want to do that,’” he
says. “I was like, ‘I’m definitely looking.’ I was right there on the
side of the bed, I watched the whole entire thing, from the time when
you could barely see his head to the time he was out. It was pretty cool
to see him come out.”

A slight smile creeps onto Flacco’s face as
he recounts the day, his most momentous one in a year filled with them.
Throughout a season that included a scintillating comeback in
Pittsburgh and a heartbreaking playoff loss in New England, criticism
from within the organization and a media-driven “controversy” fueled by
his candor—not to mention, contract negotiations that seemingly devolved
from complicated to contentious—Flacco’s public demeanor remained
unchanged.

It’s all white noise to the impossibly even-keeled QB,
who thrives on the steadiness that so maddens fans who mistake it for
stoicism.

“We taught him never let anybody see you sweat,” says
his father, Steve, for whom Joe and his high-school sweetheart Dana
named their son Stephen. It’s a lesson Flacco, 27, has leaned on
throughout his unlikely career, one that’s won him an unprecedented
number of football games but no popularity contests.

“My dad’s my
best friend,” he says. “The biggest thing he preached was being tough. I
think a tough guy doesn’t really show many emotions. Not to say that I
don’t have emotion, because that’s not true. But when things are going
bad, as a leader, you can’t act like anything is wrong. You go out there
and take each snap like it’s the same, no matter what the score is, no
matter what happened on the last play. It’s just the way I was brought
up, it’s the way my parents are. You definitely end up more like them
than you admit.”

“Until I got here, they hadn’t won a playoff game since the Super Bowl year. Every year we’ve won a playoff game. It’s not what we want to do overall, but we’ve had very good seasons.”

If that’s true—and most of us eventually concede
that it is—then, throughout his life, little Stephen Flacco, like his
daddy, will cherish two things above all others: family and football.

Of
the NFL’s 32 starting quarterbacks, Joe Flacco may be the only one
who’s been ribbed his entire life for having a big head—literally.

“His head was always humungous for his body,” says his brother, Mike, a baseball player in the Orioles minor-league system.

“They
call him the Kingdome, the Superdome,” his father says. “When he was a
sophomore in high school he was six-four, 165 pounds with a size 7 ½
head.”

The oldest of five boys and a girl, Joe seldom got into
trouble throughout his childhood in Audubon, NJ, a suburb of
Philadelphia.

“He was very responsible,” his mother, Karen, says. “He was known as Father Joe.”

Baseball
was Flacco’s sport of choice until seventh grade when Steve, a former
running back at the University of Pennsylvania, allowed him to try
football.

“Because I started so late, by the time I got there,
they already had kids who had been playing quarterback, so I played
running back, tight end, receiver,” Flacco says. “I always had a knack
for throwing the ball. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t go out and
mess around and play football as much as we could. I always had a
pretty good arm, so I knew I wanted to play quarterback.”

In high
school, Flacco shot up to over six feet, the first in the family to
eclipse the mark. His father is 5-feet-11-inches, his mother 5-feet-6.
Despite putting up gaudy numbers—he once threw for more than 450 yards
and three touchdowns and ran for two more in a 67-35 loss—Flacco
received only a smattering of scholarship offers. He accepted one to the
University of Pittsburgh.

After redshirting his freshman year and
serving as a backup his sophomore season, Flacco transferred to the
University of Delaware, much to Pitt’s chagrin, where he figured he’d
have a better chance to play, even if it wasn’t in the spotlight of
Division I-A. “Joe is a tremendously gifted athlete,” Delaware coach
K.C. Keeler says. “He’s just got a world of talent, and you could see
that very quickly when he got here.”

Because Pitt was upset that
Flacco transferred, the school chose not to release him, forcing him to
sit out a season. When he got a chance on the field, Flacco led Delaware
to the Division I-AA national title game his senior year, smashing
school records in the process. NFL scouts started showing up in droves.

“I
remember Joe calling me during the whole draft process, and he was a
little upset because [Ravens general manager] Ozzie Newsome had called
two or three times and had asked why he wasn’t a captain,” Keeler says.
“It was one of those strange years where we had a consensus All-American
tailback, who was a four-year starter for us, and we had an
All-American offensive lineman. Those two guys were voted the offensive
captains.

“But the team was Joe’s. He said, ‘Can someone tell
those guys with the Ravens that this was my team?’ The best thing I said
was this team took on Joe’s personality; it never ever panicked. It
played with a steady belief in itself. It never got too high or too
low.”
Apparently, Newsome was convinced.

Baltimore took Flacco
in the first round of the 2008 draft, making him only the second
Division I-AA quarterback in history drafted that high. When the season
started, Flacco was under center.

“Obviously I didn’t know as
much as I know now, but I think the biggest thing for me as a young kid
was to calm my mind down and say, ‘Hey, it’s football, go out and
play,’” he says. “When I was a rookie, I didn’t want to come in here and
step on people’s toes and act like I was some big deal. I felt like I
had to prove myself.”

Flacco and a fellow rookie, head coach John
Harbaugh, led the Ravens to the AFC Championship game, and both were
praised for exhibiting poise beyond their years. Yet, as the victories
kept coming—Flacco’s 44 regular season wins are the most by a starting
quarterback in his first four years in the NFL—his reputation morphed
from a stable leader to a “game manager” incapable of using his arm to
lead the defensively-strong and run-oriented Ravens to victory.

“I don’t think there’s any other quarterback besides Aaron Rodgers that can throw the ball the way that he can.”

“Sometimes
I think people perceive [the team] a certain way just because that’s
what we’ve been over the last 10 years,” he says. “Well, you know what?
Until I got here, until John Harbaugh got here, they hadn’t won a
playoff game since the Super Bowl year. Every year we’ve been here we’ve
won a playoff game. It’s not what we want to do overall, but we’ve had
very good seasons.”

None better than last, when Baltimore swept
the Steelers, won the AFC North division and came within one late
dropped pass of making it to the Super Bowl. Yet Flacco’s play still was
criticized. After a playoff win against Houston in which Flacco put up
pedestrian numbers, Ravens safety Ed Reed said it didn’t appear his
quarterback “had a hold on the offense.”

Flacco nonchalantly brushed aside the comment and proceeded to outplay Patriots legend Tom Brady the next week.

In April, Flacco appeared on local sports radio station WNST and was asked if he considered himself a top-five quarterback.

“Without
a doubt,” he responded. “What do you expect me to say? I assume
everybody thinks they’re a top-five quarterback. I mean, I think I’m the
best. I don’t think I’m top five, I think I’m the best. I don’t think
I’d be very successful at my job if I didn’t feel that way. I mean, come
on.”

Hardly a shocking answer, yet one that created a firestorm.
Anti-Flaccoites rolled their eyes, noting that his 2011 QB rating was
14th (out of 34 players). Of the more than 95,000 votes in a
SportsNation online poll, 61 percent indicated Flacco was not an “elite”
quarterback. Whatever that means.

“Joe doesn’t play games, he’s
going to tell you honestly how he feels,” Delaware coach Keeler says.
“It’s not like, ‘Okay, what would sound best in a sound bite?’ It’s not
that he’s not savvy—he is as smart as the day is long—but he’s not going
to compromise his belief system. [His attitude is] I know you’re going
to take the sound bite and use it however you want, but I’m not going to
change who I am. Like it or leave it, this is who I am.”

Perhaps
Flacco’s quiet disposition contributes to the way he is perceived. Fans
screaming at their TVs like to see similar outward emotion from their
heroes.

“Unless you are in the locker room or you know me, it’s
tough to get a read from me because I’m not a very outgoing person,” he
says. “I’m not really vocal in the way a rah-rah kind of guy is. I don’t
think [leadership] is when things are going bad let’s go yell at
somebody and get them fired up. I think we’re a bunch of professionals.
If we’re not fired up, something’s wrong. A pep talk ain’t gonna do
anything for anybody. Pregame speeches on Saturday night, I don’t think
they do anything, so I’m not gonna do them. When it all comes down to
it, we all have to have a little bit of self-motivation, and when Sunday
comes, we have to be able to turn the switch on. If we can’t do that,
we shouldn’t be professional football players.”

Matt Birk,
Flacco’s center for three years, sees Joe’s stoicism as an advantage.
“Joe’s always been Joe,” he says. “Joe might be a little bit quieter,
but, at the same time, when Joe does speak up, he’s doing it because he
has something to say. It’s kind of like the old E.F. Hutton ad: When Joe
talks, people listen.”

Flacco’s record speaks for itself. Since 2008, he has won more games than any quarterback in the league.

Phil
Simms knows a little something about winning. He earned two Super Bowl
rings quarterbacking the New York Giants, and is CBS Sports’ lead NFL
color commentator.

“If you put Joe Flacco in a quarterback-driven
offense with a franchise and a head coach and an owner . . . who’s
behind him, he would throw up numbers that are [impressive] just like
all these other guys,” he told SiriusXM NFL Radio in July. “But he’s not
on that type of team, he’s not [with] that type of head coach. What he
does with that organization for that football team, I think, is as good
as anybody else in the league.”

Rob Agnone played with Flacco at
both Pitt and Delaware. He spent a season with the Patriots, which makes
his analysis of Flacco that much more striking.

“He has more
natural God-given talent than any of the quarterbacks I’ve played with.
It’s not even close,” he says. “Tom Brady is by far the best quarterback
in the NFL, there’s no doubt about it, but just going off God-given
talent, arm strength, accuracy, I feel Joe has more ability than him. He
hasn’t proven it with [big] wins, and I think Joe would tell you the
same thing. He’s got to win the Super Bowl to be in that level, but he
has the talent to do it.”

Ravens wide receiver Anquan Boldin, who played with future Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner in Arizona, agrees.

“I
don’t think there’s any other quarterback besides Aaron Rodgers that
can throw the ball the way that he can,” he says. “He can make any throw
on the football field, from hash to sidelines, deep balls, you name it.
I definitely think he’s a top five quarterback. But he don’t care about
all that.”

Flacco is uninterested in the debate. His confidence
is iron-clad, his skin thick. He claims not to watch ESPN, instead
preferring to keep up with the Kardashians or other reality shows with
Dana.

“I don’t care how much respect I’m getting in the media, as
long as I feel like the people in this building respect me, then I’m
cool,” he says. “If it ever came to a point where I didn’t feel that
way, that’s when I’d feel a little bit hurt.”

“We all, at some point, started to play this game because it was fun. We lose track of that.”

Maybe 2012 will be
Flacco’s breakout year. The Ravens are using a more wide-open offense;
his first pass of the season was a beautiful 52-yard bomb to Torrey
Smith. Could that have been a harbinger of things to come, or is Flacco
destined to be remembered as Trent Dilfer is, a quarterback the Ravens
won in spite of?

“If that’s what people say, that’s what people
will say, it doesn’t mean it’s the truth,” he says defiantly yet not
angrily. “I hope we throw for 5,000 yards and win the Super Bowl. I
don’t want to be throwing for 150 yards a game and winning. I’ll take
it, but I feel that I give us the best chance of winning, doing what I
do best.”

Such is Flacco’s complicated relationship with Baltimore
that when he cancelled his annual appearance at the Special Olympics’
Polar Bear Plunge just a few days after the New England loss to spend
time with his pregnant wife, some actually ripped him apart.

Adam
Hays was not among them. A 28-year-old Special Olympian from Frederick,
Hays has met Flacco several times at events, including a casino-night
fundraiser a few weeks before the Ravens hosted him at training camp
this summer.

“When Joe came by what was really exciting for me was
to hear him say, ‘Nice to see you again.’” says Hays, who wears a
Flacco No. 5 jersey during Ravens games. “He’s very cool, and it seems
like he’s very relaxed. He seems like he’s very kind to everyone that he
comes in contact with. When I look around at my fellow athletes seeing
that Joe and the Ravens take their time out to help show us the skills
in football and just to be with us, it shows that they think of people
with intellectual disabilities as athletes out on the field. It really
means a lot that they see past those barriers.”

Flacco seems
unaware that his mere presence has such an impact on people’s lives. He
politely deflects a question about his work with the Special Olympics,
saying it’s something he enjoys immensely.

“It’s cool to see the
athletes out there having fun,” he says. “We all, at some point, started
to play this game because it was fun. We lose track of that.”

Throughout
his career, he has never lost track of who he is. He’s a father, a
husband, a son, a brother. He’s extremely confident in his athletic
abilities. He’s a winner.

What he’s not is an actor. His work for Pizza Hut makes Ray Rice’s commercial performances look downright De Niro-esque.

“I
feel completely awkward doing that stuff, but, sometimes, it’s too good
to turn down,” he says. “I turn off [my ads] as soon as I see them. If
I’m in the car and I hear my voice on the radio, I turn the station.”

Flacco
recently bought a house in New Jersey a mile from both his parents’ and
Dana’s. His folks attend every home game, and, before Stephen arrived,
the family used to hit a diner afterwards, win or lose. He’s so
comfortable in his own skin that he describes himself as a “pretty
boring person,” who likes to “play a little golf and hang out with the
family.” Not exactly Tom-and-Gisele tabloid fodder.

“He’s always
here after hours in the building, up by himself watching film, making
sure he knows the defensive looks, making sure he’s got a leg up on the
competition,” says tight end and close friend Dennis Pitta. “Every time I
get here, his car’s in the parking lot, and every time I leave, it’s
still here.”

When he climbs back into the driver’s seat after
another long day, Flacco heads to an ever-growing household. His younger
brother, Brian, and nephew, David, are living with him, Dana, and
Stephen, and it’s a safe bet that the family will expand soon.

“I
can’t imagine not having a good amount of people in the house,” he says,
his voice thick with a South Jersey drawl. “I’m not saying I need six
kids, but I wouldn’t complain if we get to that point.”

Is he a top-five quarterback? Let others waste their time with meaningless lists. Joe Flacco’s got work to do, games to win.

And a family to get home to.

Well, it all comes down to this.

As wild a regular season as they come—complete with a changing of the guard at quarterback, a frisky head coach on the hot seat, and a turnaround from a three-game losing streak to a playoff run—comes to an end on Sunday, when the Ravens host the Cleveland Browns.

It’s the biggest game at M&T Bank Stadium since, um, this time last year when the Ravens also had a chance to make the playoffs. And while pockets of empty seats were visible that day and on many days this season, players are hoping for a packed stadium Sunday, with so much riding on the game’s result.

The idea, of course, is for the Ravens to keep playing in the playoffs, something they haven’t done in three years. With a win, they will. With a loss, things can get crazy and the Ravens could miss the playoffs altogether. With that, here are five things to know before you watch Sunday’s game.

Win and in. Lose and who knows.
There are 96 different possible playoff scenarios (yes, 96!) in play for the Ravens, including being ranked as a high as No. 2 in the AFC, getting a bye and hosting a playoff game, to sitting at home and watching the playoffs next week like you and me.

The simple one is if the Ravens win they play again, but there’s also one where the Steelers win the division instead, and keep the Ravens out of the postseason. This video about it all would make John Urschel proud.

This could be Joe Flacco’s last home game as a Raven.
With a loss, or even a win in a less-than-ideal scenario, this might be the last time to see Joe Flacco in a purple No. 5 jersey, even if it’s merely on the sideline or for a ceremonial goodbye towards the end of the game. Unless of course the Ravens think he’s worth $23 million per year to be a backup QB, or they renegotiate his contract this offseason. Otherwise, odds are Flacco plays elsewhere next season, like . . . the Redskins.

What’s the deal with Hot Seat Harbaugh?
In the middle of the season, head coach John Harbaugh was reportedly on his way out of town. (And we wrote about enjoying the testy public tone of Hot Seat Harbaugh around this time.) But then Lamar Jackson took over at quarterback, and the Ravens’ fortunes turned around. That brought us to last Friday, when the Ravens released a one-sentence statement at 7 p.m., the night before their game against the Chargers, saying that the team will work with Harbaugh to negotiate a new contract, which expires after 2019. It’s the type of end-of-week media release usually sent when someone is getting fired, not supported.

“I think it’s a non-story,” Harbaugh said this week. “We’re just trying to win football games. We’ve kept it simple, kept it about football. Everybody is on a one-year deal. You’re on a one-week deal, as far as I’m concerned, in this league, players and coaches.”

Reading between the lines, this all looks like negotiating tactics. The Ravens either want Harbaugh back, or least want it to look like they do, and want to work out a new contract with the coach before he heads into a lame-duck year next year. The question is, does Harbaugh want to do the same thing? Not many NFL head coaches survive big-time quarterback changes but to his credit, Harbaugh has fully embraced the change from Flacco to Jackson, so he’s in a great position to do whatever he wants to do.

Moral of the story: Oftentimes everyone is always looking for the “next thing,” the next coach, or the next QB, without enjoying the present. This is a week to enjoy the present.

With a win, Eric Weddle is buying us all “Victory Breakfast.”
Speaking of contracts, Eric Weddle’s is pretty great. With a playoff appearance, combined with a Pro Bowl selection, which the veteran safety has already earned, Weddle will get an extra $1 million sent to his bank account.

That’s more than enough to buy a few “Victory Breakfasts,” as he’s enjoyed the last few weeks. Extra Reese’s, please.

Anything is better than last year.
In case you forgot what happened last New Year’s Eve . . .