University of Maryland sophomore Jalen Smith, the 19-year-old former Mount St. Joseph’s star, typed out a message yesterday in an attempt to process the shocking news he’d just learned.

March Madness, the whole thing, cancelled.

It is, and the feeling applies to a lot of us at this point.

As novel coronavirus fears and prevention measures sweep the country, the NCAA—the national governing body of college athletics—made the unprecedented move on Thursday to cancel the 68-team men’s basketball tournament as part of a decision to end competitions in all spring sports.

It’s the first time in the 80-year history of the bracket-busting tournament that it won’t be played—and the news came quick. On Wednesday, it was announced March Madness games would be played without fans, which was weird enough to think about.

A day later, hundreds of thousands of college kids like Smith were digesting a sudden end to their seasons, and their entire playing careers, in some cases, like Terps senior captain Anthony Cowan, Jr. And Smith, too. He might test the NBA waters and enter the draft.

Business as usual in the U.S. is suspended for the time being. Many government officials have taken measures to limit public gatherings in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19—for which there’s no vaccine and specifically impacts those over the age of 60 and those with underlying medical conditions.

That goes for events like weddings, court trials, conferences, and schools. After the Big Ten conference cancelled the rest of its spring seasons earlier on Thursday, Maryland coach Mark Turgeon released a statement saying that “the health and safety of our student athletes and entire program is paramount. This is an unprecedented situation that is much bigger than basketball.”

It sure is. In the local sports world alone, Orioles opening day, as directed by Major League Baseball, has been pushed back for at least two weeks. Spring training games in Florida have been cancelled, though the team will still practice and continue precautions they began last week.

And the postseason hopes of teams from colleges like Maryland, Loyola, Johns Hopkins, Towson and many others are now over before players even took the field. Same goes in the ranks of public schools throughout the state, which will be closed for at least the next two weeks.

Mancini has tumor removed; Awaits test results

Meanwhile, all the coronavirus news has overshadowed another big piece of news with the Orioles this week.

Trey Mancini, the team’s most established figure and a fan-favorite, had surgery yesterday to remove a malignant tumor from his colon. He expects lab results back next week, and there’s no timetable for a recovery yet. He left the team last week after a colonoscopy revealed the tumor.

Mancini, 27, shared his thanks with everyone who sent messages and notes of encouragement. “The outpouring of love and support I have received has made an extremely tough week so much better,” he said. “I have the best family, friends, fans, and teammates imaginable.”

Yanda retires from the Ravens

Finally, longtime Ravens offensive lineman and potential future Hall-of-Famer Marshal Yanda formally announced his retirement—and look, his buddy Joe Flacco returned to Owings Mills for the press conference at the Ravens practice facility…

The Ravens have already announced that Yanda will be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor at M&T Bank Stadium. Until then, we’ll remember the scene of the grizzled, sweaty, and frustrated 13-year-pro in the Ravens’ locker room after their shocking early playoff exit against the Tennessee Titans in January. That showed the type of person he is.

Yanda was adamant at calling out Titans rookie defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons for allegedly spitting in Yanda’s face during the game. “I just want to put him on notice in the media,” Yanda said. “I’ve never done this in my career, but I just wanted to let you know there’s a right way and a wrong way to play football, and that guy did not do it the right way today.”

Turns out the notice was a parting gift.

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 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 . . .

If you ever lose a coveted job you’ve held for 11 years to somebody just out of college, in part because of an illness or injury, then have to explain how it feels to the world, make sure to remember what Joe Flacco said on Wednesday, December 12, 2018, surrounded by reporters at the Ravens practice facility.

It was a few minutes after coach John Harbaugh announced that rookie Lamar Jackson would continue as the team’s starting quarterback, even as the franchise’s former Super Bowl-winning QB is now back healthy after dealing with a right hip injury for more than a month.

“It’s out of my hands,” Flacco said of the decision, in his first public comments since he was injured November 3 against the Steelers. “I got hurt. They drafted Lamar in the first round. At some point, something was going to happen between the two of us.

“I’ve obviously had five weeks to think about it and prepare myself for this situation and the possibility of it. Yes, I’m disappointed that I can’t be in that locker room in the same capacity that I’ve always been. But this is my situation right now, and I’m going to do my best to handle it the right way.”

That’s never an easy thing to do, to accept: “It’s part of the game, man.” To support: “[Lamar is] playing well, so we just need to keep getting some wins and see what happens.” To keep your dignity while being honest: “It’s different. I want to play football. It’s going to take some getting used to, but you have to be professional.”

The writing had been on the wall for a few weeks—indeed we recently wrote “Is the Joe Cool Era Over?”—but when Harbaugh texted Flacco on Tuesday morning to come into his office and made the change official, it had to be difficult news for Flacco to stomach, though you won’t hear him say it.

“I don’t know if it was the hardest conversation because, I think in both of our minds, we probably knew that the talk was coming at some point,” Flacco said.

Since Flacco went out with an injury, with the Ravens then on a three-game losing streak, Jackson has injected new energy into the team. The Ravens are 3-1 with him as the starter, beginning with three wins before an overtime loss to one of the league’s best teams in Kansas City last Sunday. Baltimore could make the playoffs for the first time in three years, and that’s, really, what the point of the season is.

The way Jackson plays—running, running, and running some more—is exciting and different. But it also makes him particularly susceptible to injury. Jackson hurt his ankle just last week. Plus, scenarios could present themselves when Flacco’s arm could be useful, like late in last Sunday’s game when the Ravens needed to score quickly. Instead, Flacco stood on the frigid sideline in a winter hat and jacket, consoling Jackson after his end-of-game fumble and predicting that the Chiefs kicker was going to miss a field goal. (He did.)

So, this might not be a no-going-back, changing-of-the-starting-QB guard, anyway. Flacco could very well see the field sometime soon, maybe even on Sunday against Tampa Bay. We’ll save the potential goodbye for the final regular season home game of the season at the end of this month.

Beyond that? The sticking point really is, the $25 million that Flacco is owed next year is an exorbitant amount for a team to pay for a backup quarterback—even a Super Bowl winning one that’s handling things professionally.

If Jackson continues to prove his mettle the last three games of the season and helps the Ravens to the postseason, and it’s clear that Flacco would not start next season, in a perfect world, he and the Ravens would negotiate a new lower-paying contract and the team would continue to have one of the better quarterback situations in the league. A promising young QB and a seasoned elder statesman closing out his career as a backup is a valuable combination in the injury-riddled world of professional football.

If that doesn’t happen, though, the Ravens could simply cut Joe Cool, or try to trade him. Does he end up in Washington? Or New York? Those are teams who could use a quarterback, even for a year or two. Or maybe Flacco, at age 33 with a wife and five kids, and having endured debilitating injuries the last two years, will just retire.

It’s hard to imagine Flacco in different-colored uniform, or that he’d want to stray very far from Baltimore. He’s lived in relative close proximity his entire life, from growing up in southern New Jersey, heading to college in Pittsburgh, transferring to Delaware, then being drafted by the Ravens and marrying and raising a family here. Heck, his brother is now the quarterback at Towson.

Uprooting from all of that isn’t easy, even for someone with a multi-million dollar net worth. Which, let’s not fool ourselves, cushions the blow of a job loss, too. But that still doesn’t mean it’s easy to step aside with grace.

“The season goes on,” he said. “Just because I’m not playing doesn’t mean the season comes to a halt and ends. There are times that I may feel like that, but everything keeps going. It may move on in a little bit of a different way, but it moves on without you. At some point, you realize that.”

It doesn’t seem like Ravens coach John Harbaugh is a fan of the old sports adage that a player shouldn’t lose his or her job because of injury. “We’re going to go back to junior high clichés, now?” Harbaugh said this week, when asked if he subscribes to that theory. “We’ll do what gives us the best chance to win, period, end of conversation.”

Ah, but when we’re talking about Joe Flacco—and the Ravens coach was, as the question was asked about the quarterback—it’s really just the start of the conversation.

Is the Joe Cool Era over?

Even when he’s been healthy (which Flacco is not right now, missing the last two games with a hip injury and likely to miss another this weekend), even when he was piloting the offense of an eventual Super Bowl championship team in 2012 (which he’s not—the Ravens haven’t made the playoffs the last three seasons), and pretty much every week during the fall and early winter the last 11 years, Flacco’s play, his contract, his sideline demeanor, his commercials, press conferences, everything, has been analyzed, scrutinized, and debated. Each nuance led to this main thought: Is Flacco the right quarterback for the Ravens? It comes with the territory of having the job in the first place.

Now that the former Super Bowl MVP hasn’t played since Nov. 4 against the Steelers, which was then the Ravens’ third straight loss, the volume has been raised on the hottest of hot-button sports-talk topics around these parts the last decade.

Flacco is 33 years old, relatively young in life standards, but getting up there in the pro sports world, and we know what he brings to the table. Meanwhile, 21-year-old rookie Lamar Jackson is something new. His running ability is exciting. His 190 rushing yards are the most for a rookie QB in his first two games. He makes plays we haven’t seen in a while, earning high praise.

“It’s the Lamar show,” said veteran wide receiver Michael Crabtree. “You just have to sit back and watch, because he’s electrifying.”

Jackson’s passing skill has been questioned. But, about that . . .

While Jackson has only started two games against suspect opponents, he’s won them both. That’s still nothing compared to Flacco’s body of work, but it suddenly looks like Jackson, the former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Louisville, might be part of a core of young players that new general manager Eric DeCosta could build around once he fully takes over from the retiring Ozzie Newsome after this season. Teams don’t draft quarterbacks in the first round of the NFL draft, as the Ravens did with Jackson, to not play them.

There’s also the unavoidable awkwardness of the Ravens coaches wanting to get the fast and elusive Jackson on the field, even when Flacco’s on it, pushing the incumbent starting quarterback off to the side as a decoy wide receiver, or vice versa. And there’s also the fact that Harbaugh said in a post-game press conference a few weeks ago that he’d like to get Jackson on the field more.

And then there’s the money. The Ravens could cut Flacco after this season (he’s due $25 million next year) without taking as big a salary-cap hit as they would in years past.

Of course, the idea of this quarterback transition happening so soon could all be a moot point and a huge overreaction.

Maybe the Ravens lose on Sunday with Jackson making his first road start in Atlanta, drop back to a 6-6 record and never fully recover. Maybe Jackson gets hurt while running like a madman around the field, or not going out of bounds to protect himself. Maybe Flacco is healthy next week and starts anyway. Or maybe Jackson plays so well this week that you can’t bench him with the Ravens riding a three-game winning streak and in line for a playoff spot.

There’s a lot of maybes. Ultimately, Harbaugh, who has worked in unison with Flacco since Harbaugh took the job as Ravens coach in 2008, when Flacco was a rookie, says he’ll decide who to play if Flacco’s health allows him to return.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in a better position than the head coach,” he said. “I feel very, very confident that I have a good handle on it, understand the team and what we need to do when the time comes—which is not here yet. I don’t think you start making these decisions until you get to the bridge. I’m not crossing the bridge until we get to it. I think that’s a pretty good cliché, pretty apt.”

Here’s one certainty, though: If it does become clear that this is Flacco’s last year wearing the purple and black—if he does lose his job because of injury—he deserves a proper send off, like Adam Jones received with the Orioles this year. Joe’s been Cool for more than a decade. He won a Super Bowl championship with a streak of playoff performances that will go down in Baltimore history so long as we’re talking about sports. That shouldn’t be forgotten just because of what might be next.

Tom Flacco is used to it. He’s fielded questions about his brother, the NFL quarterback, since Tom played football in high school five years ago in New Jersey and older brother Joe was already with the Ravens. But there’s still times when the practice aggravates him, like in the press conference that followed Towson University’s win at nationally ranked Villanova earlier this fall.

A reporter from Philadelphia repeatedly asked about Joe Flacco. All Tom wanted to talk about was the team, and how everyone else played. “I don’t give a shit,” he finally said, cutting off the string of questions.

And if you’re wondering how he’s similar or different from his brother that might also show you.

It’s a story. When the younger brother of Baltimore’s Super Bowl winning quarterback shows up to play in the same city, it’s going to get attention.

“It’s a hard position for him to be in, especially in this city, but it’s kind of cool at the same time,” Towson head football coach Rob Ambrose says. Even more, when he’s about to play against older brother’s beloved alma mater, Delaware, on Saturday.

Tom is in his first season as the starting quarterback at Towson. Like Joe, who transferred from NCAA Division I program Pittsburgh to “small school” Delaware in search of more playing time—a move that set him on his path to professional football, and essentially laid the groundwork for this family tale—Tom left Division I Rutgers last summer, after spending the previous two years as a backup at D-I Western Michigan, to transfer to Towson. Like the school his brother attended a short drive up Interstate-95, its football team plays in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA).

Tom, the youngest of the five Flacco brothers, now 23 and already with a degree from Rutgers and pursuing a master’s in applied information technology at Towson, has lit up the scoreboard and stat sheet while leading the Tigers to a 6-1 record and No. 10 national ranking. Tom recently was added to watch list for the Walter Payton Award, given annually to the top offensive player in FCS football, and he just won this third Colonial Athletic Association Offensive Player of the Week award. He’s averaging 280 yards passing per game, has thrown 17 touchdowns and has rushed for 515 yards for four TDs ahead of Saturday’s game at the 21st-ranked Blue Hens.

Tom insists Joe’s presence in Baltimore didn’t influence the decision to transfer to here. “It wasn’t going to deter me from coming here,” Tom said. “And it didn’t make it more attractive.” But there is a logical connection. Towson assistant coach Jared Ambrose (coincidentally, the younger brother of the head coach, Rob), was graduate assistant football coach at Delaware and worked with the offense when Joe was there, reaching the 2007 FCS national championship game. Ambrose told Flacco 2.0, who was then a kid watching in the stands, about the talent on this year’s Towson team, and the potential to play right away.

Another perk? The family dinners now on the weekend are pretty nice. On the Sundays when the Ravens play at home, Tom, who lives on Towson’s northern Baltimore campus, will usually go up to Joe’s house nearby on Sunday nights to eat Italian food and see his four nephews and niece. Their mom, Karen, brings and cooks fresh spaghetti from Severinos Pasta Shop from their native New Jersey. Can we come?

“When I was at Western [Michigan], I would never admit it, but I guess I just admitted it, I missed it,” Tom says. “Now I’m definitely grateful for being around my family.”

Joe’s enjoyed it, too. He attended Towson’s season-opening win at Morgan State in person and has streamed other games on TV or the computer. The two exchange messages about each other’s games. “It’s been cool,” Joe Cool says. “It’s unique that he’s right here. I’ve been waiting to see him play for the last three years.”

If you see them stand next to one another, or sit at the dinner table, you don’t have to be a detective to see that they’re brothers, based on their facial features alone, though Joe’s a bit taller (listed at 6 feet, 6 inches) than the 6-foot Tom. How else are they similar? They share the same last name. Come from a competitive, athletic family. Their other brother, Mike, was drafted by the Orioles in 2009 then played college football as a tight end; and another brother, John, walked on the Stanford football team as a wide receiver. These Flaccos play quarterback. Close your eyes when listening to their quotes, and they sound similar. Tom says they share the same outlook on the life, but that’s largely where the comparisons stop.

“You talk about the relationship with his brother and he has it,” Ambrose said. “But everybody wants to compare the two. He doesn’t want any part of that. Tom’s Tom and Joe’s Joe.”

How they’re different? They’re 10 years apart and, yes, have different personalities. “Joe would probably be the best guy you’ve ever played poker against,” Rob Ambrose said. “He has a poker face in everything he does. Tom is a lot more overtly excitable. Joe’s excitable, you just can’t tell.”

And on the field, “The way I play is different, obviously,” Tom says, “You can see if you watch.” Forget being “Joe Flacco’s brother,”—that’s a good thing—Tom seems more interested in shedding other, more dreaded labels like “athletic,” or “running quarterback.” In football parlance, if you’re a quarterback, that’s usually code for “throwing the ball is not the strongest part of his game.” (At the same time, though, older brother has been dogged through his career for being “immobile,” so sometimes you can’t win.)

“I’m a quarterback that’s athletic, not an athletic person playing quarterback,” says Tom, who was a three-sport star at Eastern High in New Jersey and also was drafted as an outfielder by baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies. He sounds like’s talking straight to NFL scouts. “I can be a quarterback, execute the play and if things break down, I can execute that second play to keep things going.”

“He’s 6-foot, but he probably doesn’t get a lot of credit for some of the things big tall guys do,” Joe says. “He can do a lot of those things . . . He’s a really good player, great athlete, he can really throw the ball. Obviously, he’s my brother so I have some bias.”

Which brings us to the big, timely topic at hand. Asked this week who he was rooting for to win on Saturday—his brother or his alma mater?—Joe said family first.

The Ravens-Steelers rivalry has brought some of the most memorable sports moments over the years: Big Ben’s broken nose, the tragic playoff defeat of 2011, and who could forget Tomlin tripgate?

This Sunday night should be no different as the Baltimore Ravens (2-1) head to Heinz Field to take on their arch rivals (1-1-1) in a showdown that will surely come with some hard hits.

“They’ve turned into little mini-shootouts, and they’ve been a lot of fun to be a part of,” Joe Flacco told reporters.

There is a certain brand of “AFC North” football, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin explained, which involves a lot of physicality and force.

“We’ve been going at it with these guys it seems like forever now,” he said. “You learn not to go into this game with any preconceived notion.”

One factor both teams are thinking about, though, are the new NFL guidelines prohibiting defenders from landing on quarterbacks with their full body weight.

“Let’s not turn this into the NBA flop fest,” Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Don Martindale told ESPN, referring to players embellishing contact (aka the Tom Brady special). “Because now the quarterbacks are making a mockery of it to the officials and the league. Now, you’re insulting the officials and the league if you do that.”

The Steelers QB has expressed concern about there being too many roughing the passer calls with the new guidelines and, when asked if they would apply to Terrell Suggs on Sunday, he had a pretty simple answer.

“Absolutely. If he gets close to me, I’m asking for the flag,” he said. He then went on to talk about his long-time relationship with Suggs. “We’ve played so many years against each other . . . I know he does a lot of talking about me, too, but I think there’s a lot of mutual respect there . . . some mutual respect trash talking, if you will.”

When asked if he could share some of that trash talk that Suggs gives him on the field, he said, “When it comes from him, it’s probably not family-friendly.”

On the opposite end of that spectrum was Tampa Bay’s Gerald McCoy, whose microphone picked up him apologizing to quarterback Ben Roethlisberger before hitting him in Pittburgh’s win last Monday.

“I don’t think you ever get an apology from a Raven,” he said with a laugh. “You know the whole world is watching and you want to give it everything you have.”

The Steelers will be playing without star running back Le’Veon Bell, who’s waiting to sign his franchise tender. The Ravens will still be without cornerback Jimmy Smith, who is still out on his suspension for using performance enhancers.

The good news is that C.J. Mosley will play Sunday night after recovering from a knee injury, which should give the Ravens defense a nice boost.

The Steelers defense hasn’t looked great so far and hopefully the Ravens can take advantage, especially considering Baltimore is the first team in NFL history to start a season with touchdowns on each of its 12 trips into the red zone.

What the Steelers will try to do to keep us out of the red zone is apply a ton of pressure up front, like they did against Tampa Bay, forcing four straight turnovers with QB Ryan Fitzpatrick looking very roughed up.

Joe, you’ve been warned.

“We know if we can get in his face and disrupt his timing it’s going to help the DBs out,” Steelers defensive end Stephon Tuitt said about Flacco. “We brought it from all over against Tampa Bay and that’s what you need to do against a veteran guy like Flacco.”

Martindale summed up what what it will be like watching the two adversarial teams battle it out Sunday night in prime time.

“I liken it to Ali-Frazier, Bird-Magic,” he said. “I think if you’re a sports fan, that’s how you view it.”

This highlight is the primary takeaway from the Ravens’ second preseason game last night:

That’s rookie quarterback Lamar Jackson, dipping and dodging his way into the end zone in the first quarter of his M&T Bank Stadium debut.

“I thought he was tackled twice—and he wasn’t,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said of the shifty Jackson, who won the 2016 Heisman Trophy winner as college football’s top player. “You always appreciate that when he’s on your team.”

Even Joe Flacco was impressed, laughing when asked about the play in his post-game press conference: “He obviously got a lot of reactions for it, and he should.”

But before we get too far ahead and anoint the 21-year-old Jackson as Baltimore’s next great sports icon, let’s mention this plainly: Flacco, as oft-maligned as a Super Bowl-winner can be, is still the Ravens’ starting quarterback.

If evidence were needed, the one series Flacco played to start the game, before he took the night off, was a touchdown pass to fullback and converted defensive lineman Patrick Ricard.

“That’s really all we needed from Joe,” Harbaugh said. “That was enough.”

And so, as is customary in the NFL’s preseason, the spotlight shined on unseasoned players and potential future stars, such as a backup quarterback like Jackson, for much of the rest of the Ravens’ 33-7 win over the visiting Los Angeles Rams, who didn’t even play their starters, so don’t make too much of the score.

That’s not to say Jackson’s ankle-breaking nine-yard touchdown run, or his 119 passing yards and 21 rushing yards over much of the first half and including the first drive of the third quarter, were not important. They were. They showed exactly why the Ravens drafted him at the end of the first round of April’s rookie draft, even after the team signed free-agent quarterback Robert Griffin III to a contract in the offseason.

“He does seem poised for a rookie,” Harbaugh said of Jackson, who decided to leave the University of Louisville after his junior year. “Even on the sideline, he may not know everything [and make a mistake], but he comes off the field and knows exactly what he did. He’s going to continue to blossom.”

Jackson might be the Ravens’ future quarterback, but, somehow, he’s already leading the team out of the tunnel when they run on the field. He did it during last week’s Hall of Fame game against the Chicago Bears, in which he threw his first touchdown pass. “I’m trying to score every drive,” Jackson said last night, by the way—and he was the first one out on the field again Thursday night in his Baltimore debut, though he needed some directions to the sideline.

“I was kind of lost,” Jackson told a small group of reporters in the locker room after the game as Flacco left to hold his larger press-conference in the team’s media room. “I don’t want to go out there and mess up everything with our routine. I was asking the vets, ‘Where do I go when we go out of this tunnel?’ It was pretty cool, though.”

So long as he finds his way to the end zone, like he did last night, Jackson can keep asking questions. We’ll see how it goes from here.

As if one Flacco wasn’t enough for us to constantly talk about, Baltimore is getting another. And he plays quarterback, too.

Tom Flacco, 10 years younger than his Super Bowl-winning brother, Joe, is transferring to Towson to play football this fall, in search of playing time he’s been unable to find at two previous college stops.

Flacco graduated from Rutgers in May with a degree in labor and employment relations, but he still has two years of college athletic eligibility left after sitting out the 2017 season and transferring from Western Michigan. He was a walk-on at Rutgers and showed promise in a crowded quarterback battle this spring before deciding to leave for an opportunity at Towson. Tigers coach Rob Ambrose confirmed the move late last month.

This Flacco, the youngest of Joe’s four brothers, is a little bit different than the one we know, according to Kirk Ciarrocca, who coached Joe at Delaware and Tom at Western Michigan. First off, Tom’s listed at 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds and was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies while he was a high school senior at Eastern (New Jersey), where he was a three-sport star and one of the most decorated quarterbacks in the region’s history. He runs around a bit more than his older brother, and shows, ahem, a bit more emotion.

“At times, [Tom will] make me smile because I’ll think, ‘Golly, are these guys different’,” Ciarrocca said. “Tom is much more outgoing than Joe was. He’s much more competitive. His reactions to things are much different than his brother’s. They’re just two totally different people. They’re both great men and are awesome to coach, but they’re totally different people.”

They look a little different, too. Here’s one and the other. If you spot them together at The Food Market, Miss Shirley’s, or Blue Moon Café—a few of the Ravens quarterback’s top dining spots—you’ll notice the difference.

Younger bro threw for 188 total yards and average 8.6 yards per carry in limited playing time during two seasons at Western Michigan. How often will he see time on Johnny Unitas Stadium field? Flacco Part II obviously hasn’t moved here to sit the bench, but he will compete with returning starter, sophomore Ryan Stover (no, not Matt’s son), and an incoming freshman. Towson, entering its 50th season of football, is looking to improve off last year’s 5-6 record and seventh-place finish in the Colonial Athletic Association. The Tigers open the season Sept. 1 at Morgan State.

Meanwhile, the 33-year-old Joe is also looking for a rebound season, amid the Ravens signings of a few other new QBs: former Redskins starter Robert Griffin III and rookie Lamar Jackson.

In the meantime, here’s some high school glory days tape of Tom Flacco until we get some of him in black and gold this football season:

Draft day in the NFL is just as big an event as the Super Bowl. It’s where college athletes’ dreams come true and fans of all 32 teams wait anxiously—and oftentimes impatiently—to see how the team’s roster will shift for the upcoming season.

Last night, the Baltimore Ravens made two grade-A picks in the first round—according to sports analysts—after trading down twice for the first time in the first round since 2012. With the 25th overall pick, Baltimore selected South Carolina tight end Hayden Hurst and Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson with the 32nd overall pick.

Like many die-hard Ravens fans, we immediately started our Google searches to find out about our newest recruits and we’ve compiled some facts for you here.

Lamar Jackson is the anti-Joe Flacco.
The 2016 Heisman Trophy-winner is known for his athleticism and ability to move in the pocket unlike Flacco, who is a traditional pocket passer with an insanely strong arm. Jackson has been compared to QB Michael Vick in his prime, but even the man himself thinks Jackson is “five times better” than he was in college.

John Harbaugh says that Flacco isn’t going anywhere.
Speculations have begun that this may be Flacco’s last year in Baltimore due to the recent signing of RGIII and now Lamar Jackson. The Ravens head coach wants to make it very clear that Joe isn’t going anywhere just yet.

“[Jackson’s] a great quarterback. But Joe Flacco is our quarterback,” he said in an interview. “That’s the thing we got to remember. Lamar is going to have a great chance to develop. When you get to this stage in a quarterback’s career, you’ve seen done in New England and you’ve seen done in a lot of places. This doesn’t really change things in a sense that we’re going to go with Joe and he’s going to roll.”

Hayden Hurst was the top tight end in the 2018 draft class.
At 6-foot-5, 250 pounds he has the athleticism to put up big stats in the NFL, Hurst is just the tight end the Ravens need. He’s a force on the field with his blocking and catching. In his last two seasons at South Carolina, he caught 92 passes for 1,175 yards and three touchdowns. Hurst will be able to fill the void the Ravens have with Nick Boyle and Maxx Williams, who are both better at blocking.

Hurst has a history in major league drafts.
He was selected in the 2012 MLB draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates and spent two years as a pitcher and one year as a first baseman in the Gulf Coast League. Hurst went back to football in the summer of 2015 and was an immediate starter. He credits his background in baseball for his exceptional hand-eye coordination and maturity playing professional sports.

“I feel like tracking a baseball is a little bit harder than tracking a football,” Hurst said. “I think that’s the biggest thing that I carry over from baseball is just the maturity. I’ve experienced some things that some guys haven’t with failure.”

Ozzie Newsome was able to work magic with those two trades.
First the Ravens traded out of the No. 16 pick, giving the Buffalo Bills its first- and fifth-round picks (No. 154). In return, the Ravens are getting the Bills’ first-rounder (No. 22) and third-rounder (No. 65).

Then, Baltimore traded back for the second time with Tennessee getting the Titans’ first-round (No. 25) and fourth-round picks (No. 125). Ravens gave Tennessee the No. 22 spot they just got from Buffalo and a sixth-rounder (No. 215).

Newsome called is “masterful” how he was able to trade down twice and still manage to get two great picks in the first round.

Not for nothing, but being a backup quarterback in the NFL is a dream job. A team pays you at least a million dollars a year to maybe play in a game. Fans scream in support of you when your superior struggles, and nobody expects anything if you happen to see the field and have responsibility thrust upon you.
 

Well, perhaps Baltimore’s best job, which has been open for a few months, has been filled again. The Ravens on Tuesday agreed in principle to a one-year contract with former Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, the idea being that he will be Joe Flacco’s backup. The deal is reportedly worth $1 million, plus a small signing bonus, and will become official next week.
 

Griffin, 28, is a bit of a headliner, but he hasn’t played in the NFL in more than a year. Known as RGIII since he first made national headlines in college at Baylor, when he won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s top player as a junior, the Redskins selected him No. 2 overall in the 2012 NFL Draft. He was the league’s rookie of the year, showing off a strong arm and trademark brand of electric playmaking ability, throwing for over 3,200 yards and rushing for 815. But he sprained his knee that season in a December game against the Ravens, of all teams, and his career never fully recovered.  

The Redskins released Griffin in 2015 and the Browns did the same in 2016 after a not-so-great year of play, and Griffin was out of the league completely until impressing the Ravens in a workout in Owings Mills last week. Flacco’s previous backup, Ryan Mallett, is currently a free agent. “You look at the quarterbacks out there and, where we’re at right now, I’m pretty excited about this player,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said of Griffin during a press conference Wednesday. “I’m really feeling like we got a steal. . . . I felt like he really wanted to be here, really wanted to be a Raven, felt like this was the place for him.”
 

Indeed . . .

Almost immediately after the signing was announced, social media commenters and sports writers wondered why the Ravens decided to take a shot on Griffin to be the No. 2 QB and not, let’s say, Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who faced the Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII, who is still available. Many observers think Kaepernick is being blackballed for starting the league-wide social justice protest of kneeling for the national anthem last year.  

It didn’t seem the Ravens wanted to touch the hot-button issue with 10-foot pole after Harbaugh floated the possibility of signing Kaepernick last preseason. (At the time, the team sought more reinforcement for Flacco, who’s endured some injuries in recent years, including a herniated disk last season.) Plus, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said in December that several Ravens players kneeling for the anthem before the team’s Week 3 game in London and fans’ reactions to that was a factor for low attendance numbers at M&T Bank Stadium last season.
 

So, the RGIII experiment begins.  

A bit of internet snooping reveals that Griffin, also known for a gregarious personality and charm, was recently married, in March in Miami, to Grete Sadeiko, an Estonian heptathlete (that’s the crazy track and field competition with seven different events). Check out their wedding highlight video:

So, there’s some good karma around this signing. Griffin’s honeymoon period is still going strong, and he just landed a cushy new job. Doesn’t get much better than that.

After watching his team go a third straight season without a playoff appearance, Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti announced a (future) change at the top of the organization Friday.

No, John Harbaugh is still head coach, but Bisciotti told reporters at his annual “State of the Team” press conference at the Ravens’ Owings Mills headquarters that longtime general manager Ozzie Newsome, the architect of the franchise’s two Super Bowl championships, will step down at the end of the 2018 season. Newsome has been on staff since the Ravens’ first season in 1996.

Ravens assistant general manager Eric DeCosta will take over control of the 53-man roster then, a move that’s the culmination of a succession plan hatched after the 2013 season, when Newsome was given a five-year extension with the idea that DeCosta would take over when the contract was through.

“That’s a year away,” Bisciotti said, “so Ozzie will step down as GM, and has assured me that he’s not going anywhere, and that he will work with me and work with Eric for a smooth transition.”

Bisciotti made the announcement in response to a question about whether he considered firing Harbaugh or Newsome after the Ravens missed the playoffs for the fourth time in the last five years.

“It was certainly a consideration, but not one I was inclined to make this year,” Bisciotti said.   

DeCosta, who has been courted by many NFL teams to be their general manager the last few seasons, has repeatedly declined interview opportunities in order to stay with the Ravens, most recently last offseason with the Green Bay Packers. 

It seems his loyalty is being rewarded now, as the team looks to reclaim its perch among the league’s consistent playoff contenders. The Ravens have a 41-41 record since its Super Bowl XLVII win, and since signing quarterback Joe Flacco to a mammoth contract afterward. 

Newsome will remain with the organization after 2018 in a consulting role and Bisciotti joked “he’ll be the highest paid scout in America.” A 1999 Hall of Fame inductee as a tight end, Newsome became the NFL’s first minority general manager when he was promoted from VP of player personnel in 2002.

Bisciotti said he’s looking for changes in the scouting department—recent rookie drafts haven’t necessarily panned out great for the team—and DeCosta is a “great leader of the scouts.” 

DeCosta has worked for Newsome for 20 years. Before being named assistant general manager in 2012, he was the Ravens’ director of player personnel and director of college scouting.

“I think he has learned from Ozzie,” Bisciotti said. “It’s Ozzie’s department, but most of all the interaction with the scouts is with Eric. I’ve seen the way he goes about the business, embracing technology and analytics. I like working with him. … There are people running other franchises who got the job because Eric wouldn’t take it.”

Harbaugh, meanwhile, will appear on NBC’s pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage of Sunday’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles. No doubt he’ll be asked about this front office move, and his own future.

Bisciotti said Friday that the coach is safe heading into what will be his 11th season at the helm of the franchise.

“I’m not going to give a playoff or bust edict to you all, or my coach,” the owner said. “He’s been under the most pressure he’s been under his whole life. I may as well replace him now if I tell him make the playoffs or you’re out of town next year.”

He also brushed aside a question asking if the franchise was getting “stagnant.”

“I don’t think we’re stagnant at One Winning Drive,” Bisciotti said. “Disappointed, embarrassed, and determined, but not stagnant.”

Monday Night Football was a success for the Baltimore Ravens with a 23-16 win over the Houston Texans. It wasn’t an ideal victory, but they managed to come out on top, keeping the team’s playoff hopes alive. 

Joe Flacco and the offense struggled to move the ball down the field and the crowd at M&T Bank Stadium wasn’t shy about expressing their disappointment with a chorus of boos in the fourth quarter. After 100 yards in penalties for amateur mistakes—we’re talking to you, Matt Judon—the defense still managed to force three turnovers that made all the difference in the game.

The real hero of the night was the special teams squad, aka the Wolfpack. Veteran punter Sam Koch set up the team’s first touchdown with a completion to wide receiver Chris Moore on a fake punt. Koch is now 2-for-2 on the season in completions on fake punts and 4/4 in his career with 48-yard and a quarterback rating of 116.7. Flacco says that he would make a pretty decent backup, backup QB if it ever came to it.

“He definitely has the ability to throw the football,” Flacco said in a post-game conference. “Whether he has any idea about what’s going on back there, who knows.” 

Koch also showed off his crazy accurate leg for the second week in a row by dropping five punts inside the 20-yard line forcing Houston to drive long distances to score. After Monday’s game, he was named AFC Special Teams Player of the week, leading the league with 29 punts inside the opponents’ 20-yard line and a net punt average that puts him just outside the top 10.

Fellow Wolfpack member Justin Tucker shined on Monday night, as well, making a 53-yard field goal look like a cakewalk. He was 8-for-8 in November for field goal attempts and was named AFC Special Teams Player for the month of November. It’s his fourth time earning that title in his six-year career. 

With the Ravens offense ranked 31st in the league (yikes!), Tucker has been the team’s primary scoring weapon. His seemingly bionic leg has an 88.5 success rate, making him the 12th best kicker in the league.

Going into Sunday’s game against Detroit, the Ravens and the Lions—which both have had slow starts and struggling offenses—don’t look all that dissimilar. Seems to be a safe best that the Wolfpack will make the difference once again.

“I’m glad we were able to have a good night on Monday night,” Tucker said. “That’s why you play the game . . . have a big night and get a win with your teammates.”

“Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck.”
—Don Shula, Hall of Fame head coach

The success of an NFL head coach often depends upon the player in charge of running the offense. A quarterback’s proficiency, in turn, can be greatly enhanced by the guidance of an outstanding coach.

Bill Walsh and Joe Montana. Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr. Tom Landry and Roger Staubach. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Chuck Knoll and Terry Bradshaw.

Each formidable pairing combined to win multiple Super Bowls, as did Shula and Bob Griese. Shula also got to the Super Bowl with Johnny Unitas and Dan Marino.

In case you didn’t notice, every person listed in the previous paragraph has been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, except Belichick and Brady, who will certainly join them in Canton, Ohio, one day.

This brings us to John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco, who have been at it together for 10 years with the Baltimore Ravens, going back to the 2008 season when the head coach and quarterback were both rookies. Though this tandem’s viability as Hall of Fame material is open for debate, there’s no arguing the Harbaugh-Flacco combination is a winner—as evidenced by 10 postseason victories, including Super Bowl XLVII in February 2013.

And they’re not done yet.

For more on Harbaugh and Flacco’s relationship from draft day through the Super Bowl, read the full story at PressBoxOnline.com.

History to be made at Poly-City game.
On Saturday at M&T Bank Stadium, Jacey Lee, 16, a junior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, will become the first girl to take the field in the school’s 129-year football rivalry with Baltimore City College. She initially joined Poly’s JV team after her stepbrother invited her to come practice with him, and Lee is the first girl to ever make varsity. Lee is 5-foot-4 and plays defensive tackle. “I like hitting,” she told The Sun. “As soon as I get off, somebody is in my face. I either got to push them, or they push me.”

Joe’s back—again.
It’s hard to believe, but a little over a week since he took a violent hit to the head that left him concussed, Joe Flacco says he’s ready to play Sunday when the Ravens face the Tennessee Titans in Nashville. Flacco went through the NFL’s concussion protocol and was cleared to practice fully on Wednesday, albeit with stitches covered with tape on his left ear, where his helmet was ripped off by Miami Dolphins linebacker Kiko Alonso last Thursday night. Offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg joked with reporters yesterday that Flacco should have used his stitches to scare kids on Halloween. Joe Cool predictably didn’t, but he did post a throwback photo from 1995 in which a Frankenstein did appear.

WWE rolls through Royal Farms.
It’s not really a sport, though maybe there’s still some out there that think pro wrestling is real and not scripted. Anyway, WWE Raw made a stop at Royal Farms Arena on Monday Night. The highlight in wrestling circles was Samoa Joe’s return to the ring, and it seems like everyone had a good time.

Maryland women’s basketball picked second in Big Ten.
What?! The Big Ten coaches and media picked the defending conference champion Terps to finish second in the league, behind Ohio State. Though they might be in a rebuild mode, after losing two All-Americans and seeing a National Freshman of the Year transfer, consider it motivation for one of the area’s top programs in any sport. Maryland begins the season next Friday against Albany.

The Astros give us hope . . .
The smaller-market team formerly known as the Houston “Lastros” (for obvious reasons) won the World Series on Wednesday night in Game 7 against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Three years ago, in a prophetic cover, Sports Illustrated featured eventual World Series MVP George Springer alongside the headline “Your 2017 World Series Champs,” referencing the idea that the Astros were building the game’s “next big thing,” with a blend of old-fashioned scouting and new-age statistical analytics. It might be a bit of a stretch to see our Orioles in the same light, but the Astros should at least give us some inspiration that a championship-caliber team can be built in short time. You heard it here first: O’s in 2020.

And if we needed more optimism and feel good-vibes going into the weekend, Astros shortstop Carlos Correa proposed to his girlfriend Daniella Rodriguez right after his team took the national title. Good luck topping that, every other guy on the planet.

Hit on Joe Flacco Ignites NFL Concussion Conversation
Although the Ravens managed to come out with a win, the offense took a major hit late in the second quarter. As Miami’s defense put the pressure on, quarterback Joe Flacco tucked the ball and ran up field, but as he began to slide Miami linebacker Kiko Alonso dropped his shoulder and drove into Flacco’s head. A woozy Joe managed to signal for help and was later diagnosed with a concussion and a deep cut on his left ear that required stitches.

The Ravens took the hit on their QB personal and after already leading the game 13-0, they continued to slaughter the Dolphins with the final score 40-0. The victory was the best performance from the Ravens this season.

Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was in a rage after witnessing the hit, even more so when Alonso was given a 15-yard penalty, and not an ejection, for the hit.

Ravens got their mojo back.
Despite the huge hit, the dominating performance from the Ravens last night reminded us why our defense is one of the best in the league and also revived the team’s playoff hopes. The Ravens are now 4-4, placing them in second place in their division after coming off a three game losing streak.

Even after Flacco left the game, the offense was still able to move the ball with Alex Collins dominating the running game with 113 total yards. Even the defense managed to put points on the board with two pick-sixes from middle linebacker CJ Mosley and cornerback Jimmy Smith.

“We got back to playing Raven football tonight,” said linebacker Terrell Suggs after Thursday’s victory.

Manny Machado a finalist for the 2017 Golden Glove for third base
Here in Baltimore, it’s hard to be surprised to learn that the Orioles third baseman Manny Machado is one of three American League Golden Glove finalists. Machado joins Tampa Bay’s Evan Longoria and Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez as candidates for the award that honors the game’s top defenders. Machado had a standout season—despite the team’s losing record—with unbelievable throws, saves, and 33 homeruns.

Machado won his first Gold Glove in 2013 and was voted the Platinum Glove winner for the game’s best fielder in 2015. The 2017 Gold Glove awards will be announced on November 7 on ESPN.

The Maryland Terrapins face off against Indiana for the homecoming game.
This game has a bit of added pressure not only because it’s the homecoming game (who really wants to lose that?) but also because the Terps haven’t been able to win against Indiana since 2014. That victory three years ago was Maryland’s first-ever Big Ten conference win.

Both teams enter the game with nearly identical records of 3-4—Indiana has struggled to find a conference win so far this season. Matchups between Maryland and Indiana over the last three seasons have proven to be high-scoring events, with the Terps averaging 33.7 points and Hoosiers averaging 34.7 points.

At least the future for University of Maryland is looking bright!

Back, back, back. Joe Flacco returns for Ravens opener.
The quarterback is back from his back issues. Catch the theme? After missing most of the preseason because of a lower back injury (which raised the possibility of the team signing the controversial Colin Kaepernick), Flacco returned to practice last weekend to start preparing for the Ravens’ season-opener on Sunday afternoon at Cincinnati. Still, his health status isn’t exactly clear.

“It’s good,” Flacco told reporters of the back in general, as well as “I honestly don’t know how I did it,” about how the injury happened. And, “I really don’t know the actual answer to that,” about if he feels vulnerable to re-injuring the back, for which he said a spine doctor told him rest was the best medicine.

This isn’t exactly an inspiring start to the season for the most important player on the Ravens’ roster, but, hey, there’s plenty else to be excited about as the new football year begins.

Can we have nine Manny Machados, please?
To quote Buck Showalter, “I like our guys,” but how can you not love Manny Machado at this point? He did it again this week, hitting his third walk-off home run in just 19 days (the shortest span since Sammy “Corked-Bat” Sosa did it in 1996). For extra dramatic effect, he hit it at 1 a.m. Wednesday to end a rain-delayed game against the Yankees, among the teams the Orioles are chasing for, yes, a still-possible playoff spot. (As of this writing, the O’s are two games behind Minnesota for the American League’s second and final wild card position.) 

Visiting fans from the north at Camden Yards serenaded our beloved Manny, the recently named A.L. Player of the Month for August, with chants of “Fu-ture Yank-ee,” and we sure as heck hope not. That’s a story for another day, though a few hours after Machado’s latest heroics The Big Leagues Daily’s Dan Clark started a tongue-in-cheek GoFundMe page (goal: $400 million), after getting more than 1,000 retweets in support of the idea, to show the world we want to keep the modern-day Brooks Robinson here. For now, let’s enjoy the Manny Magic, at the plate and in the field, as he and the rest of the once left-for-dead O’s (as in 4 percent chance to making the playoffs) keep their, and our, postseason baseball hopes alive.

Every (win) is bigger in Texas.
Especially when the University of Maryland football team is doing the winning. To start their season, the Terps, a three-touchdown underdog, pulled off a wild 51-41 win at preseason nationally-ranked Texas last Saturday afternoon. Despite losing starting quarterback Tyrrell Pigrome to a season-ending knee injury mid-game, Maryland notched one of the best victories in the program’s history, and certainly the biggest win of coach D.J. Durkin’s tenure, coming in the first game of his second season. 

#mood:

Up next, the Terps host Towson on Saturday, and, if you’re still on the fence about going, three words: Baltimore Cheese Steak. It’s the newest concession at Maryland Stadium, a “thinly sliced griddled rib eye steak, topped with a white cheese sauce blended with Old Bay and a touch of Sherry,” information important enough to include in a school press release. 

John Urschel fibbed — making him even smarter than we thought?
The recently retired former Ravens center and still math genius revealed on Freakonomics Radio that he was enrolled as a full-time Ph.D. student at MIT during the 2016 football season, and that the Ravens didn’t know. “I guess since I’m retired, I’m allowed to say, I was full-time, full-time,” he said.

Urschel took classes remotely and, for example, studied and worked on assignments on Sundays after games, during off day Mondays and before practice on Tuesdays. “I did not tell anyone this,” Urschel said. “Well, except MIT. But I don’t think an NFL team would be extremely happy to hear that I’m working towards my Ph.D. also in the fall.” Such was his (former) life in pro football. 

Serena Williams and fiancé Alexis Ohanian have baby girl.
We’re still waiting for pictures. C’mon People. But, seriously, congratulations to Ohanian, the Howard High alum and Reddit co-founder, and Williams, the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, on their firstborn, a six-pound, 13-ounce girl.

Let’s call what it is—kismet.
First, let’s be clear. Boog Powell is no Boog Powell. By which we mean the rookie Oakland A’s outfielder—a 5-foot-10, 185-pound contact hitter—is hardly Boogian in stature. Nor had the 24-year-old hit a major league home run before Monday. It’s all the more reason to suspect that the baseball gods were in action this week, organizing the circumstances around the young Powell’s first career round-tripper. Not only did he smash his first HR in Baltimore, home of his legendary namesake, his shot over the right-field fence nearly reached the original Boog’s BBQ stand in right field.

The two Boogs—the younger Boog’s real name is Herschel Mack Powell IV, he acquired “Boog” to avoid confusion with his father and grandfather—then met in-person the next day. Naturally, Baltimore’s beloved former first baseman brought lunch. “We got him a real nice pork sandwich with a little mustard BBQ sauce—he said he didn’t like horseradish—and some onions,” big Boog told Baltimore magazine later.

Boog, of course, had nothing but nice things to say about the Oakland ballplayer.

“I’ve known about him for a couple of years now. He’d been with [the] Tampa Bay and Seattle [organizations] before, but it looks like he found home now. He got a hit off Zach Britton the other night and that’s no easy feat for a lefthander.”

Amazingly, there was one more Boog for those two Boogs to meet—“Boog 3”— stout 12-year-old Jeffrey “Boog” Powell of Tennessee’s Little League World Series team, who face-timed with the professional pair while in school Tuesday.

Our Boog, for his own reasons, received his nickname from his dad as a kid. “In the South they call little kids who are often getting into mischief ‘buggers,’ and my dad shortened it to Boog,” he once said. “Hardly anybody ever calls me John. I don’t know if I‘d even turn around if someone called me that.”

Gervonta Davis fights for world title Saturday.
Baltimore’s boxing star—who trained at the Upton Boxing Center—Gervonta Davis will be co-featured in Floyd Mayweather’s junior middleweight bout on Saturday night. Davis will be defending his 130-bound belt for the second time against Francisco Fonseca. “I think I have the skills to be able to carry on what he is leaving the boxing fans with,” Davis told ESPN. “I’m preparing myself to be a great, great fighter and also a big star in the sport.” All the action starts at 9 p.m. on Showtime PPV—or head to places like Corner Charcuterie Bar in Hampden, the QG downtown, or other bars that will be screening the fight.

Manny’s curtain calls.
All we can say is we hope the O’s somehow manage to resign our third baseman. Manny Machado was named American Player of the Week for the period that ended Aug. 20 after hitting four home runs, including a walk-off grand slam, driving in 12 runs, and batting .385. For an encore, Machado blasted another walk-off home run this week—in the 12^th inning no less—to pick up Zach Britton after the O’s closer botched his first save since Sept. 20, 2015. (Yes, nearly two years ago.)

Ravens beef up roster (of their broadcast team).
We don’t need to get into the Ravens depleted roster and injuries woes (see: Joe Flacco’s back). But at least they are adding healthy bodies to their radio squad. The team and 98 Rock/WBAL NewsRadio 1090 announced this week that former tight ends Todd Heap and Dennis Pitta, and former running back Justin Forsett and linebacker Jarrett Johnson—popular, accomplished players one and all—will each join Ravens radio broadcasts for four games this season. They will work alongside play-by-play man Gerry Sandusky and former Baltimore Colt linebacker Stan White this year.

Paddle it forward.
Breast cancer survivor and Havre de Grace-native Carolyn Choate, 59, and her daughter Sydney, 27, left New York in kayaks two weeks ago, expecting to reach the Inner Harbor this Sunday. Their goal along the way is to raise $500,000 in honor of the late Dr. Angela Brodie, a world-renowned researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Brodie, who passed away this June at 82, developed the new class of drugs that Choate credits with saving her life. Choate, who lives in New Hampshire, was initially given three years to live after her diagnosis 14 years ago. She became to determined to find the researcher who had saved her life, finally meeting Brodie in 2014 at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, receiving a tour of the laboratory where Brodie did her groundbreaking work.

You can follow the kayaking journey here.

Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti says team will continue to pass on players with domestic violence history. 
Watching from afar, it was unclear who asked the question during the Ravens’ annual State of the Team press conference on Tuesday in Owings Mills, but kudos. It came not in these exact words, but team owner Steve Bisciotti answered as if it did. More than two years after video surfaced that turned Ray Rice from a loveable small-sized hero to a toxic, unemployable running back, are the Ravens still staying 100 yards away from drafting or signing players with questionable pasts, or nebulous “character issues”?

“Character is a pretty big pot,” Bisciotti said, “but some people we’re going to take off our board. That’s the way it goes. Domestic abuse? Not taking them. Kansas City is in the playoffs, partly because of a guy they took a chance on. Will we take chances like that again? I don’t think so.”

In the razor-thin, competitive, and big money NFL environment, the approach can make a difference. The Ravens had an 8-8 record with nine games decided by six or fewer points and . . . we all know what happened in the Steelers game on Christmas. As the Ravens self-made billionaire owner noted, Chiefs rookie wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who in 2015 pleaded guilty to beating his pregnant girlfriend while in college at Oklahoma State, has been a key player as Kansas City grabbed the second seed in the AFC postseason. In the name of winning, teams take calculated, if not morally questionable, risks. “It does [come up] all the time,” Bisciotti said, like with talented Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon in December (who, like Rice, was caught on tape).

The Ravens aren’t going there. Even with “the pitchforks,” out from fans, after a second straight playoff-less year, as the owner acknowledged during the 30-question, 70-minute media session. Bisciotti, general manager Ozzie Newsome, and coach John Harbaugh primarily fielded questions about how the team can improve.

“We need to get more out of Joe [Flacco],” Bisciotti said in one of the answers, which were typically measured and reasonable, and also included mention of a potential ticket price increase for next season.

West Baltimore boxer Gervonta Davis gets first world championship shot Saturday. 
As we wrote in the December issue, 23-year-old West Baltimore-native and up-and-coming boxer Gervonta “Tank” Davis was waiting for his first world championship title shot. He will get it on Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, against Puerto Rico’s Jose Pedraza, the IBF super featherweight (130-pound) champion.

Davis, a relatively small 5-foot-6 lefty, is pound-for-pound strong with amazingly quick hands and a remarkable backstory. He trains out of Upton Boxing Gym on Pennsylvania Ave., under the mentorship of coach Calvin Ford—the inspiration for The Wire character, Cutty—and has endured all kinds of rough situations, with drug-addicted parents for starters. Ford’s been a father figure, Upton a refuge.

“I dedicate this fight to my team,” Davis said Thursday at a press conference in New York. “I’m no Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, or Sugar Ray Leonard. I’m Gervonta Davis, and on January 14th, I will become a world champion.”

Saturday night’s fight will air live at 9:30 p.m. on Showtime. Watch early. Davis usually makes quick work of opponents. He’s 16-0 with 15 knockouts, 13 coming within the first four rounds, and is promising something similar this time around against the more experienced, taller Pedraza. If Davis wins, he will be Baltimore’s fourth world champion boxer; the others are Joe Gans, who owned the world lightweight title during the time of segregation more than 100 years ago, Vincent Pettway (1994) and Hasim Rahman (2001).

Orioles have a minicamp in Florida.

It’s not much, but just the sight of the Orioles black-and-orange uniforms under sunny skies makes winter feel a tad warmer. (And it really was yesterday!)

The start of spring training is the traditional sign that baseball season is near. Minicamp? Not so much. Not many major league teams even have them, but the Orioles have the last few years under Buck Showalter, who finds the time valuable. He and a small gang of players had a three-day camp in Sarasota, Florida, this week, mainly to evaluate those coming off injuries, and to look at a few of the organization’s minor league pitchers who are a bit more off the radar, but may be factors come the six-month, 162-game slog that is a major league baseball season.

Minicamp did not appear too stressful for veteran players like Chris Tillman, the O’s top hurler. Guys like him aren’t the focus. Select prospects are. Here Tillman, alongside Showalter and the team’s new pitching coach, Roger McDowell, watches young pitchers Garrett Cleavinger and Brian Gonzalez throw.

One pitcher not there? Yovanni Gallardo, who the Orioles traded to Seattle last Friday in exchange for corner outfielder Seth Smith. Gallardo went 6-8 last year with a 5.32 ERA in 23 starts, and spent a good amount of time on the disabled list with shoulder issues. Smith is a veteran, 34-year-old left-hand hitting outfielder, something the O’s needed (with Mark Trumbo gone, for now). Last season, while his batting average wasn’t spectacular (.249), Smith played in 137 games, had an on-base percentage of .342, hit 16 home runs, and a career-high 63 RBIs. Fun fact: Smith, a Mississippi native and multi-sport athlete, was Eli Manning’s backup quarterback at Ole Miss in the early 2000s.

Just 32 days until spring training and less than two months until Opening Day at Camden Yards. Not that we’re counting.

Terps win, Terps win!
With a 75-72 win over Indiana on national TV on Tuesday night, the Maryland men’s basketball team improved to 15-2 and 3-1 in the Big Ten, and should enter national top-25 polls early next week. The hero of their latest triumph? That would be 6-foot-7, 190-pound ginger-headed freshman guard Kevin Huerter. Call him Big Red. The former Mr. Basketball from New York, who had a late growth spurt in high school, sank a go-ahead three-pointer with just under two minutes left then grabbed a rebound and fed fellow freshman Anthony Cowan with a long pass to give Maryland a three-point lead with 1:12 to go. Fight on, turtles!

The Orioles were robbed of Gold Gloves, Cy Young nod.
There were clearly a lot of surprises this week and, while this one seems minor in the grand scheme of things, Orioles fans were shocked with the news. For the first time since 2010, no Orioles were awarded with Gold Glove awards. This is especially jarring since third baseman Manny Machado had the highest fielding percentage and the second-fewest errors at his position. The decision not to award Chris Davis, who we saw make some impressive catches at first base this year, is a bit more understandable considering his 10 errors to winner Mitch Moreland’s two.

But the real crime is that closer Zach Britton wasn’t even named a finalist for the Cy Young Award, when he didn’t blow a save all year. Granted, relievers don’t normally factor in, but his 2016 season was exemplary with a perfect 47-for-47 in save opportunities, a league-leading 0.54 ERA for pitchers who have worked at least 50 innings, and a span of 43 appearances without a single home run (from April 30 to August 24). Needless to say, manager Buck Showalter is not pleased.

“That’s a real poor reflection on the people who are evaluating him,” the skipper told MASN. “This guy had maybe the best year in the history of relief pitching. He should have finished in the top three in MVP, OK? He should. There’s nobody in baseball who’s more valuable to their team than Zach Britton is to the Orioles.” Preach!

One possibly silver lining? Quite literally, Mark Trumbo received the 2016 Silver Slugger Award for one of three American League (AL) outfield positions, the first Oriole outfielder to win the award since 2013. And, possibly best of all, Showalter was once again named a finalist for AL Manager of the Year with some stiff competition in the Indians’ Terry Francona. The winner will be announced next Tuesday, November 15, but we all know who gets our vote.

Orioles don’t make QO to catcher Matt Wieters.
Fan favorite and hometown boy Matt Wieters may not be wearing an Orioles uniform next year. While the team made a qualifying offer to Trumbo, they passed on the chance to extend the $17.2M, single-season offer to Wieters this time around. The catcher struggled a bit this past season with a .243 average and fell well shy of the above-average offensive number he has posted in prior years. Though he was an All Star, hit 17 home runs, and had solid fielding, the team likely wasn’t willing to pay big bucks based on his age, offensive production, and future injury risk. But Wieters, now a free agent, should have his fair share of suitors.

As far as the Orioles, they may not have to look very far for a replacement since Chance Sisco was named as the best position player in the club’s minor league system by Baseball America. The 22-year-old spent most of the season at AA Bowie before a promotion to AAA Norfolk, hitting for a combined .317 with six homers, 28 doubles, and 51 RBIs.

Tatyana McFadden wins fourth-consecutive New York City marathon.
We’ve got a real-life Superwoman in Clarksville native Tatyana McFadden. After a stunning performance at the Olympics in Rio, the Paralympic athlete returned to the states to dominate at the New York City marathon on Sunday. It is her fourth-consecutive title, finishing the wheelchair race in one hour, 47 minutes and 43 seconds. Not to mention that she completed the Grand Slam by winning in London, Boston, Chicago, and New York. The New York Times beautifully recounted McFadden’s multi-burough race, in which she thrived on the uphill climb of the Queensboro Bridge and stayed focus throughout:

McFadden pushed well ahead of the field at the start, before Schär, Amanda McGrory and Susannah Scaroni caught up by Mile 6 in Brooklyn. The pack stayed tight until the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Koch, a former New York mayor, had a trademark line — “How’m I doin’?” — and McFadden had an answer. Just fine. She even loves the crosswind. Makes it even tougher. Here she continued to pass the elite male wheelchair racers, including her coach, Adam Bleakney, a four-time Paralympian. What did he say to his star racer? “Not a word,” Bleakney said. “She was going too fast.”

Under Armour inks deal with MLB for uniforms in 2020.
Kevin Plank’s sports apparel empire has had tentacles in almost every major sport—and now it can add baseball to that roster. In its first major professional sports uniform deal, UA will take over for Majestic Athletic as the official on-field uniform provider for Major League Baseball starting in 2020. New Era will continue to provide hats for the league.

Based on the flashy uniforms that Under Armour has produced for University of Maryland, Northwestern, and Team USA, baseball teams in 2020 will likely get quite spruced up. We see many flag patterns in our future.

Ryan Mallett says he’ll be ready to fill in for Flacco on Sunday.
These haven’t been the best few weeks for the Ravens offense, which is why you might see the team switch things up on Sunday against the Jets. Ravens backup quarterback Ryan Mallett practiced with the team this week as Joe Flacco was nursing a right shoulder injury. Both head coach John Harbaugh and new offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg seem to think that Flacco will be ready come game day, but Mallett says he is prepared either way.

“You’ve got to be ready at a drop of a hat,” Mallett told The Baltimore Sun. “Something can happen during a game, any week of the season. So you’ve just always got to be ready.”

Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad speaks at Morgan State.
After becoming the first Muslim-American woman to compete and medal in the Olympic games wearing a hijab, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad came to Morgan State University to discuss race in sports and culture.

The symposium, titled “The Impact of Negative Images on Black Women Athletes,” also featured ESPN’s Jemele Hill, former WNBA All-Star Kara Lawson, and former Washington Post columnist Lonnae O’Neal.

“When I qualified [for the Olympics] . . . immediately, my life and my experiences in sport just kind of felt bigger than me,” Muhammad said according to The Sun. “I feel the same way when we think of firsts in swimming with Simone Manuel being the first African-American woman to medal in an Olympic swimming event. Those moments in our history are so much bigger than we are.”

But Muhammad was very candid when talking about how she is treated differently compared to some other athletes on Team USA. “As a black woman and as an African-American Muslim woman . . . everything we do is under a microscope,” she said. “We have to watch what we say. We have to watch how we act. We have to watch what we tweet. We’re being policed more than others. Michael Phelps laughs during the medal ceremony. . . Even with Ryan Lochte, it was ‘Well, boys will be boys.'”

Muhammad continued to come back to the importance of sharing her narrative with the goal of inspiring young athletes.

“I remember being a kid and being told that I didn’t belong in my sport,” she said, “For me, it has always been really important to try to reach our youth, specifically to let them know there is no limit to what you can do as long as you’re willing to work.”

And he wasn’t quite done. On Thursday night, Kim reached based three more times, going 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI to raise his average to .308 for the year. His biggest moment came in the seventh inning, when he grounded a ball into right field, driving in Michael Bourn from second to give the Orioles a 3-0 lead.

The Orioles moved into a tie for the first AL Wild Card spot and last night’s win eliminated the Yankees from the playoffs altogether. We’re not sure about you, but that makes us want to mimic Kim’s dance moves in this amazing Korean music video.

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Joe Flacco has fourth baby, and first daughter.
Maybe it’s just us, but it seems like the Flacco family is having kids at the same rate Joe was throwing consecutive completions on Sunday. And on Tuesday at 2:19 p.m., they added another one to the clan—but this time it was a baby girl. Joe and Dana welcomed Evelyn Renee to join brothers Stephen (4), Daniel (3), and Francis (1).

“It was definitely different. Seeing a girl come out after three boys was a bit of a shock,” Joe told BaltimoreRavens.com. “Everybody is beyond overjoyed, beyond pumped.” During every pregnancy, the couple has waited to find out the sex of their baby. “I was keeping my fingers crossed,” Joe said. “You hear fathers getting scared about not having boys, but I was starting to get to the point that I was scared about not having a little girl. It’s just something I wanted.” Congrats to the Flacco family on the new addition!

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Arnold Palmer had many Baltimore connections.
Legendary golfer Arnold Palmer passed away on Sunday at age 87 and The Sun‘s Don Markus chronicled Palmer’s various connections to Baltimore over the years. Markus recounted that Palmer earned his first professional win in the 1956 Eastern Invitations Open at Mt. Pleasant, played for more than 1,000 people in 1972 at the Pine Ridge Golf Course for a charity event, and made his last public appearance five years ago for a Maryland Special Olympics fundraiser at Martin’s West.

“I love Baltimore,” Palmer told The Sun prior to that 2011 event. “I think it’s one of the great cities in America. I’m big on the seafood.”

Another fun piece of trivia is that the iced tea/lemonade hybrid drink named after Palmer was rumored to be first invented at a local pub here in town.

“[People at the next table] asked what he was drinking, and he said, ‘Half iced tea and half lemonade,’ and she said ‘That sounds, great, what do you call it?,” PR executive David Nevins told The Sun. “Arnie said, ‘It doesn’t have a name, it’s just that she ran out of ice tea when she was pouring it. The woman said, ‘I’m going to order the same thing and call it ‘The Arnold Palmer.’ From that day on, it caught fire.”

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Barack Obama talks about the “Phelps face.”
Thursday was Team USA Day at the White House and many of the American Olympians who competed in Rio were present, including Bethesda’s Katie Ledecky and Clarkesville native and Paralympian Tatyana McFadden. President Barack Obama gave a speech in which he discussed specific accomplishments of the athletes and a couple of Marylanders got a shout-out. First he talked about Ledecky’s phenomenal swimming performance.

“Then then there’s this young woman named Katie Ledecky,” Obama said. “She obliterates her own records in the 400- and 800-freestyle, and lapped the field in the 800. Did you watch it on TV? Like there was nobody else in the pool. Crazy!”

A few minutes later, President Obama mentioned Michael Phelps, who wasn’t in attendance, presumably still at the Ryder Cup in Minnesota. (I guess the White House is old hat at this point.)

“Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympian of all time, breaking a 2,000-year-old record for most individual titles,” Obama said. “If you’re breaking a 2,000-year record, that’s pretty impressive. If they have to go back to the Greeks, that’s an impressive record.”

The President—on stage with First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, and Paralympic soccer player Josh Brunais—went on for 15 minutes about how proud he is of Team USA before cracking just one more joke.

“I could talk about this forever,” he said. “But if I keep going longer, I could get ‘Phelps Face’ from you guys.”