The 2000 Ravens remain one of the most iconic teams in NFL history, a perfect blend of all-world talent, unforgettable personalities, and a lunch-pail work ethic that resonated with Baltimore’s blue-collar fan base. With their legendary defense and ball-control offense, the team rolled to a 12-4 regular season record before buzz sawing through the Broncos, Titans, and Raiders in the playoffs and treating the Giants like an afterthought in Super Bowl XXXV.

The team’s on-the-field achievements deserve celebration, but their arrival in 1996 helped heal the emotional scars that formed when the Colts bolted for Indianapolis a dozen years earlier. It wasn’t the smoothest of starts for the returning team. They played in crumbling Memorial Stadium, lost more than they won, and searched for an identity of their own in the shadows of Johnny, Raymond, Gino, and Art. All that was forgotten when a new crop of superstars—with names like Ray, Jonathan, Peter, and Goose—captured the franchise’s first Lombardi trophy.

Twenty-five years after that defining season, a few of the team’s stars and the man who led them look back at what made the 2000 Ravens one of the greatest teams of all time.

Brian Billick, Head Coach: The Super Bowl run was wholly unexpected and that’s what made it extremely special, not only to the team and the fans, but also to the city of Baltimore, which had lost its beloved Colts. Looking back now makes you realize how great a season that was.

Jonathan Ogden, Left Tackle: We were a great mix of talent, and it was such a good group of guys. It’s always special to look back and remember that we reached the mountaintop. That’s so difficult to do, at any level, and being able to win a championship in the NFL is something I think about all the time.

Qadry Ismail, Wide Receiver: We were like the island of misfit toys. Just an eclectic group of guys. The team was so dominant, but I think more than anything, we just learned how to play together. The camaraderie we had that year felt different. Every day in the locker room, the personalities were on full display, but nobody cared about individual achievements. That’s what made the year so special.

Chris McAlister, Cornerback: That team is my brotherhood. Everyone contributed to the journey. Being with that group…there’s nothing I can compare it to. I’ll always remember and love those guys.

Matt Stover, Placekicker: It was a privilege to be a part of that team. Looking back, you realize how hard it is to win it all. To do it at the highest level was incredible.

Peter Boulware, Linebacker: That season was one of the best experiences of my life. The brotherhood meant so much to me and everybody came together for a singular purpose. It was a special group and a special year.

The team defense ranked first in the league in points allowed (165), rushing yards allowed (970), rushing yards per attempt (2.7), and turnovers forced (49), and set the all-time record for the fewest points allowed in a 16-game regular season (165 total points, 10.3 per game). During a week 4 shutout of the Bengals, the defense gave up just four rushing yards.

Billick: We were the Bullies of Baltimore and bought into that reputation. Part of that swagger develops because of how good we were defensively. We played with athletic arrogance.

Boulware: We intimidated teams by destroying their run game. That was our mentality every week. Then we’d bring the pressure on passing downs. We knew we’d get a sack, fumble, or turnover.

McAlister: It was all about being fearless against the run. Football is different now. Back then, we would try to hurt people legally. Every snap, we came downhill to inflict pain. That’s how we imposed our dominance.

Boulware: If you look at the talent we had on that defense, it was incredibly gifted on an individual level. It’s hard to get a collection of outstanding players to set aside their egos and sacrifice personal recognition for the betterment of the team. But that became our identity, not just a message from the top, and it turned into something special.

McAlister: The way guys pushed each other was relentless. Rod Woodson and Ray Lewis demanded a standard of excellence every day and created a will to dominate your teammates. It sounds strange, but that was the mindset. Ray would challenge me to not let the offense catch a single ball during drills. If you’re competing that hard against your brothers, imagine how hard you played when someone from another team lined up across from you.

The team endured a historic touchdown drought between weeks 5 and 9, failing to cross the goal line in five games and an NFL record 55 consecutive offensive possessions. Despite the futility, the team went 2-3 during the tough stretch thanks to its dominant defense and Stover, whose kicks tallied 49 consecutive points. The challenging stretch could have derailed the season, but it instead galvanized the team and gave it its championship identity.

Billick: That stretch became a defining point in the season and showed that we weren’t going to fracture as a team, which isn’t always the case in the NFL when you go through something like that. I realized we needed a strategic recalibration, and knew the defense was special enough that if we ran the ball effectively and didn’t turn it over, we could win the Super Bowl.

Ismail: A lot of it came down to inconsistent quarterback play. But credit to the coaching staff for leaning into our strengths. We had [running backs] Jamal Lewis and Priest Holmes, who were real dudes, pounding the rock. Jonathan Ogden and Orlando Brown Jr. were two big-bodied tackles anchoring the line, and Jeff Mitchell was holding things down at center. It all started to come together from that point on. Control the field position with the run game, throw the ball to Shannon [Sharpe] in the middle, and take occasional shots on the outside. That became our identity.

Ogden: We just continued to fight. We were thankful we had a great defense, and we understood that we weren’t pulling our weight offensively. We weren’t happy about that, so we kept working to get better. When Trent [Dilfer] replaced Tony [Banks] at quarterback, Billick adopted a more conservative offensive philosophy. We started running the ball more and leaning on Priest and Jamal. The mindset became: Let’s find a way to get 14 points and not turn the ball over.

Boulware: As a defense, we decided to do more than keep teams off the board. [Defensive Coordinator Marvin Lewis] came into a defensive meeting and said, “Preventing points isn’t good enough anymore. Take the ball away. If we take the ball away, we can score on turnovers.”

Ismail: I honestly can’t remember a moment where any of the defensive guys acted like they were above us. Ray Lewis was an eternal optimist. I remember coming off the field, showing my frustration at our inability to move [the ball]. Ray looks over and says, “Hey, hey, hey, baby, don’t, don’t do that. I’m telling you, watch this.” I’m still trying to calm down and took a swig of Gatorade. I look up at the scoreboard and back down at my cup, and Ray is already back on the sideline [after forcing a turnover]. “I told you we’d get it back for you. Now go play,” he says before patting me on the ass and walking away.

McAlister: I think that’s when we became closer as a team, especially as a defensive unit. Our mentality shifted. It became, “As long as teams don’t score, they don’t win.” Those games showed we had what it takes to get the job done. If we were stuck together, we would be fine. We told the offense, don’t worry about it. Just keep fighting.

Ismail: Without the consistency of “Money” Matt during that stretch, there is no Super Bowl. We knew that whenever the field goal team trotted out on the field Matt would get us three points.

Stover: We could’ve fallen apart as a team when we weren’t scoring touchdowns, but we didn’t. To know they felt like we wouldn’t have won games during that stretch without my kicking is a special thing to look back on.

Billick had taken over as head coach in January 1999 and immediately made his mark with as much bravado as the players and added much-needed structure to practices. He also empowered the team’s outsized personalities, with none bigger than Tony “Goose” Siragusa.

Ogden: We got some good players. We drafted well early on, and [General Manager] Ozzie Newsome created a strong foundation for the organization in terms of how we identified talent and the types of players we were looking for. Then Steve Bisciotti bought into the team and brought stability to the organization. Billick was the final piece that helped get us over the top.

Ismail: Billick put together a great coaching staff. He did a masterful job of letting people do their jobs and coach us the right way.

Billick: I wanted to change the team’s expectations of what they could accomplish. In my very first meeting, I told the players that they’d need to decide if they wanted to play in the Pro Bowl or go to the Super Bowl. I let them know that I’d treat them like men if they acted like men. I asked [the veterans] to take responsibility for the culture that we were developing. The younger players bought in because the veterans led the way.

McAlister: Everybody knows Ray was the face of the team, but Goose was probably the most dominant personality and influence. He was completely unfiltered—toward coaches, players, everybody. That’s why everybody loved him. And on top of that, he would do whatever the team needed on the field. The people who knew him best saw his softer side, too. If Goose liked you, he really liked you. You were like family.

Stover: Goose busted everyone’s balls. No one was off limits. That’s important for team chemistry.

Billick: We had a lot of characters who had a lot of character. They had a great time off the field, but also knew when it was time to get to work. Most teams can’t flip the switch like that.

Baltimore bullied its way through the AFC playoffs, dismantling the Denver Broncos 21-3 at home in the Wild Card round before victories against the Tennessee Titans in the Divisional Round and the Oakland Raiders in the AFC Championship game. The Ravens outscored their opponents 95-23 and allowed only one offensive touchdown. It was one of the most dominant championship runs in NFL history.

McAlister: Against Denver, we wanted to dominate in front of our fans and protect our house. People always ask me, “What’s the loudest stadium you ever played in?” I always say Baltimore. At times I couldn’t even hear the guy next to me. We had to use hand signals to communicate because our fans were so rowdy when the other team had the ball.

Boulware: We entered the playoffs with confidence and talked some pretty good trash. We’d already proven what we could do week after week. So, when we said we were going to stop [Titans running back] Eddie George, shut down the Broncos, or contain the Raiders, it was based on everything we had accomplished that season.

McAlister: The Oakland game was billed as a great matchup—top offense versus top defense—but they didn’t fully understand what was coming. We knew we’d destroy them.

Boulware: We found out that [Raiders wide receiver] Andre Rison had planned a team Super Bowl party before they played us. That didn’t go over well in the locker room.

Billick: If you weren’t mentally and emotionally prepared for the physicality we had on both sides of the ball, you weren’t ready for what we brought.

During the 34-7 Super Bowl win, Giants quarterback Kerry Collins threw for only 112 yards, zero touchdowns, and four interceptions, and was sacked four times. His 7.1 quarterback rating is the lowest in Super Bowl history. New York passed the 50-yard line just once, mustered only 152 yards of offense and scored its only touchdown on a kickoff return. Stover booted a 47-yard field goal and McAlister picked off Collins near the goal line to preserve Baltimore’s lead at the half. The championship was essentially won when Jermaine Lewis immediately answered the Giants’ kickoff return for touchdown with an 84-yard kickoff return for a score.

Billick: The Giants were coming off a 41-0 win over the Vikings in the NFL Championship game. They were extremely confident, as they should have been. But I knew the game was ours. The Giants weren’t prepared for how physical we were going to be because they had never experienced it.

Boulware: The Giants didn’t have a chance. That’s how we felt going in. It was one of the most complete wins of our season.

Ismail: We weren’t overthinking the matchup. We were just staying in the moment and handling our business.

Stover: It’s harder to breathe in the Super Bowl. I had to keep telling myself, “Just watch the ball. Slow down. Breathe.”

McAlister: I knew the Giants liked to take shots at the end zone when they got near midfield. Understanding their tendencies let me see the play develop and get in position to make a play on the ball. The interception gave us even more confidence and momentum coming out for the second half.

Stover: I’ll never forget—we’re in the tunnel, getting ready to go out, and Woodson yelled, “Offense gets us 10 points, we win.” We went into halftime with a 10–0 lead, and the defense said, “It’s over. They’re not scoring twice on us.”

Billick: The players believed the game was ours at the half but knew that when they had a team by the throat, they had to finish them. They kept pushing and didn’t let up.

Ogden: When Jermaine returned that kick for a touchdown, I knew we were going to win.

Billick: There was no way the Giants were going to come back in the fourth quarter, so I could look around and soak in the scene. Those were special moments.

Boulware: I was humbled and thanked God for the opportunity, because I don’t care how good you are or how prepared you are, lots of things that are outside of your control need to go your way to win a Super Bowl.

Ismail: I remember thinking, “Wait, what happens now?” Once the confetti started falling, family members joined us on the field, and everyone was soaking in the scene. In the locker room, guys were jumping around, losing it, having the time of their lives.

McAlister: The excitement didn’t fully hit until the confetti dropped from the sky. The grueling two-a-days in training camp, the hard practices, the season-long grind—it all felt worth it in that moment.

Ismail: The afterparty at the team hotel was unbelievable. The entire organization was celebrating. Only the players, coaches, and owners were allowed to touch the Lombardi Trophy, but all our guests were taking pictures with it. I remember thinking, “This is pretty darn cool.”

McAlister: There were plenty of cigars and lots of bourbon. We had a good time.

Stover: My wife and I had been through everything together—the move to Baltimore, the difficult early years. Everything that had built up over time culminated in that moment. I felt complete gratitude for the journey and the opportunity to be part of the organization.

Billick: Everyone on the team was aware of what the victory meant to Art Modell after all he had been through in reestablishing the team in Baltimore. We were very emotional when he came into the locker room, realizing it was a lifetime accomplishment for him.

A dreary day and cold rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the 200,000 fans who lined the streets and crowded around City Hall two days after the Super Bowl victory to celebrate the team that brought football glory back to Baltimore.

Ogden: Baltimore is a football town at heart. It was great to see that passion for football come back. In those first few years, fans were almost trying to remember what it was like to have a team again.

Boulware: My first year, we were 4–12 and still played at Memorial Stadium. Those early years were all about trying to find an identity and building something from the ground up. Even now, 25 years later, being a small part of laying those foundational pieces is something I’m proud of. That’s what made the Super Bowl victory so sweet. I’m grateful we could come through for the fans. They loved us, and we loved them.

Ismail: Baltimore is blue-collar city that loves good football. That’s what matters to them, and that’s what I really appreciate about the fan base. They didn’t know who we were when the team arrived, but they still showed up in force. Other places I’ve played are good football towns, but Baltimore is different.

Stover: The fans accepted us as their own and we were amazed by their passion. The city wrapped its arms around us. Being part of the team that brought them a championship is something I cherish.

McAlister: To be part of the team that brought a championship to Baltimore was an honor, especially after everything the fans had been through after losing the Colts. The Super Bowl run helped bring back some of the pride, grit, and hard work that defines Baltimore. The city is filled with hardworking people, and they appreciated the way we played that year. Our game wasn’t pretty or flashy. We were gritty and fought through adversity together. That’s what resonated most. It took all of us to get it done.

Four hours before the start of April’s NFL draft, Eric DeCosta and his staff gathered in a circle inside the Ravens’ Owings Mills war room. Per tradition, team chaplain Johnny Shelton led a group prayer. DeCosta has contributed to the organization’s draft process since he arrived as a fresh-faced intern in Baltimore the same year the franchise did. Now, as he prepared for his fifth draft as the team’s general manager, he was more emotional than usual during this annual ritual.

“I basically said, ‘If you have faith, you keep working, you trust people, there is always going to be hope,’” he recalls.

Minutes later, a cacophony of ringtones and phone vibrations filled the room, and the reason for DeCosta’s sentiment became clear: Lamar Jackson was signing a five-year contract extension with the team.

For the public, the superstar quarterback’s contract status had been a season-long melodrama simmering with the kind of juicy ingredients that the sports zeitgeist feeds on: trade demands and franchise tags, sprained ligaments and bruised egos, cryptic Tweets and mysterious memes. But behind the scenes, DeCosta navigated the two-year saga with a measured, drama-free steadiness that one person in particular seemed to appreciate.

“I didn’t have to learn anything about Eric,” Jackson said at the press conference announcing his extension. “He’s a businessman…he was professional the whole process. I was cool with it.”

DeCosta’s level-headedness and dogged determination—along with a keen eye for talent—have fueled his ascent from a 25-year-old personnel intern with an “office” in the hallway, a card table for a desk, and a salary south of $20,000 to one of the most prestigious positions in the NFL. Those are among the qualities that caught owner Steve Bisciotti’s eye more than a decade ago, when he told the then-little-known DeCosta that he wanted him to succeed legendary GM Ozzie Newsome and they’re what kept DeCosta in Baltimore even as ambition gnawed away at him.

Eventually, his patience was rewarded. Now, the kid who dreamed of running a team has a corner office with the only franchise he’s known in his professional life, in the city where he met his wife, Lacie, and where they’re raising their three kids. After an off-season in which he drafted receiver Zay Flowers in the first round, signed coveted (if mercurial) free agent wideout Odell Beckham Jr., and secured his All-Pro quarterback to throw to them, he believes he’s positioned the team for both short-and long-term success.

You could say that he’s cool with all of it.

He keeps the rejection letters in a bottom drawer of his desk, not out of anger or spite, but as a reminder that in a sea of nos, all it takes is a single yes. They came from virtually every NFL team, a cascade of, Thanks but no thanks and Don’t call us, we won’t call you.

And really, who could blame them? NFL bigwigs don’t come from places like Taunton, Massachusetts, the blue-collar town south of Boston where DeCosta grew up. As a kid, he played baseball, basketball, and hockey, but he was also drawn to the wonkier side of sports. After watching Dallas win Super Bowl XII in 1978, he became a Cowboys fan. For six-year-old Eric, that meant more than just watching the games.

“I studied the roster, I studied the front office, I studied the coaches, I studied their drafts,” he says, a hint of his New England accent still poking through. “The Cowboys built their team differently. They had a guy named Gil Brandt who was their scouting director. He was known for unearthing great football players at every level. That resonated with me.”

DeCosta’s father, Joe, who made bolts that were used for Navy subs, and his late mother, Donna, a bank manager, stressed academics. DeCosta has always been a voracious reader. He would devour The Boston Globe sports section and The Sporting News, examining mock drafts and creating his own. He didn’t play organized football until ninth grade, and although he found success on the field, he was lightly recruited in large part due to his slight stature. At 5-foot-9, 180 pounds, he was no one’s idea of a menacing defensive end or a punishing fullback, his two high school positions. Still, Colby College coach Tom Austin found a roster spot for him at the Division III program in Maine.

“We’re interviewing him and this young sprout from high school asked me, ‘Knowing that you’re in the process of rebuilding the program, is the college committed to football?’” Austin says. “It really took me back, because you don’t get those kinds of questions from a prospective.”

At Colby, DeCosta became a team leader, showing up for practice early, watching tape in the coaches’ offices, and calling out teammates who gave less than maximum effort.

“He was respected because he lived it,” teammate Gregg Suffredini told Colby News. “The kid could barely bench his weight, yet he was in the locker room every day…trying to get better, faster, stronger.”

“I LIKE URGENCY…SOMEBODY THAT PLAYS LIKE IT’S THEIR LAST PLAY EVERY TIME. ”

DeCosta’s football class at Colby was the first to graduate with a winning record in 33 years, but he was too savvy to fool himself into thinking he could play pro ball. So he decided to pursue coaching and landed a graduate coaching fellowship at tiny Trinity College, where he earned a master’s degree in English.

He thought he might be a writer until one day he ran into a friend who had just finished an internship with Washington’s NFL team. That inspired DeCosta to send letters and his resumé to every team. It wasn’t long before the floodgates of rejection opened. The responses ranged from businesslike to bizarre.

“While we appreciate your motivation, we do not have any openings at the present time nor do we anticipate any in the near future,” wrote Green Bay Packers GM Ron Wolf.

“Presently there are no positions available, nor are there any future changes contemplated,” the New York Giants put it. “We will keep your resumé on file and notify you if things change.”

Then, lest DeCosta had missed the screamingly obvious: “The thrust of this letter is one of pessimism…”

Twenty-eight of the league’s then-30 teams blew him off—but one that didn’t changed the arc of his life. Washington hired DeCosta as a training camp intern, and instantly, he was hooked. Wheeling TVs into meeting rooms, setting up phone lines—whatever the task, he attacked it with vigor. When the gig ended, DeCosta headed back to Trinity. He thought his NFL dreams were dead. He applied to law school at the University of Connecticut and was awaiting a decision when he got a call from the new NFL team in Maryland. His bosses in Washington had recommended him. Was he interested in a position?

“The day they offered me the job I remember I got the acceptance from UConn,” he says. “My mom wanted me to go to law school. My dad and I were playing tennis, and my dad said, ‘Eric, if your heart tells you to do this, you gotta do it.’ And he hesitated and said, ‘But don’t tell your mother I told you that.’”

DeCosta was Baltimore bound.

As an area scout for the Ravens, DeCosta was responsible for evaluating college players in 17 Midwestern states. He’d hop into his Pontiac in August and return in November with 30,000 more miles on the odometer. Early in his tenure, he brought tape of cornerback Duane Starks to Newsome, who ended up drafting the future stalwart in the first round.

“He has a passion for scouting,” Newsome says. “He’s not afraid to voice his opinion, but he’s able to listen to others and change his mind.”

DeCosta, who was named the team’s director of college scouting in 2003, has a distinct philosophy when it comes to analyzing players.

“I like urgency. Twitchiness. Guys that get from point A to point B quick and with anger,” he says. “I like guys that are physical and productive players. I don’t want to bet on guys. Sometimes I don’t have time for development—I’m looking for instant gratification. I want somebody that plays like it’s their last play every time, is quick to the ball, sudden, and plays with an element of physicality that others don’t play with.”

In 2007, DeCosta attended a party for Ravens front office staff and coaches at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills. Toward the end of the night, someone grabbed his arm. It was Bisciotti. The owner asked the scout to stick around for a drink. DeCosta didn’t know Bisciotti well and was “nervous as hell.”

DeCosta assumed other scouts would be there as well, but when he showed up to the bar, he found just Bisciotti and his wife, Renee. Over a bottle of wine, they discussed DeCosta’s future.

“He said, ‘You know, you remind me of me. I want you to be my general manager,’” DeCosta recalls, a hint of disbelief still registering in his voice even 16 years later. “He said he didn’t know when it will be but when Ozzie retires, you will be my next GM.” Then he pauses. “I didn’t expect to wait 12 years.”

By the time DeCosta became assistant general manager in 2012, the word was out in the NFL: He was a hot commodity. Seattle, Chicago, and Green Bay were among the teams that pursued him for a front office position, but DeCosta sat tight. He and his family were immersed in the community. Lacie is a Baltimore native, and he’s served on the board of the Maryland SPCA (where he’s still an ambassador) and the Irvine Nature Center.

Finally, in February 2018, Newsome made it official—he would be stepping down at the end of the season. Bisciotti announced that DeCosta would become the team’s new GM. The owner said “everything” about DeCosta made him confident that he was ready for the job.

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

But the mentor and his protégé still had work to do. Before Newsome’s departure, DeCosta advocated for a quarterback whom he described as a “magician.”

“Every year he would be ahead of me in evaluating college prospects,” Newsome says. “He was doing a corner from North Carolina. He came to the office and said, ‘I want you to take a look at this.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ so he pulled up the play. It was Lamar Jackson throwing this post pattern…it was Louisville versus UNC. He said, ‘Did you think Lamar could make that throw?’ And I said, ‘I do now.’”

The Ravens did their homework on Jackson, interviewing him, bringing him to Baltimore, and soliciting opinions about him from their own coaches and others outside the organization. When the 2018 draft arrived, he was on their board—meaning, among the players they coveted—but they felt they could get him with a pick lower than the 16th, which they held. After trading down several times, they drafted tight end Hayden Hurst with the 25th pick. At that point, a Ravens official came into the war room and asked Newsome and DeCosta to go downstairs for the traditional press conference.

What transpired next seems like a scene straight from the Kevin Costner movie Draft Day. DeCosta looked at Newsome and said that they should probably stay upstairs. Philadelphia had the final pick of the first round, and he wanted to ask Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman about trading for it. Newsome gave him the green light.

“So I called Howie and said, ‘If our guy is there, we might want to trade back into the first round,” DeCosta says. “I said, ‘What are you guys looking for?’ He said, ‘We’ll take your second round pick this year and we’ll take your second round pick next year.’”

“IT’S HARD TO NEGOTIATE WITH A FRIEND OR SOMEONE THAT YOU REALLY RESPECT. ”

The men waited nervously while the remaining six teams selected. Had any other team seen the same potential in Jackson that they did? Finally, Philadelphia’s pick—the last of the first round—came. DeCosta quickly called Roseman back and consummated the trade. Lamar Jackson was a Raven.

The Ravens have gone 53-29 since that day; Jackson’s record as a starter is 45-16. He’s thrown for 12,209 yards and 101 touchdowns. Still, another number looms large: zero. That’s the number of Super Bowls the Ravens have been to with Jackson at QB.

DeCosta is undeterred. Signing Jackson to an extension that works for the quarterback and the franchise had been a top priority for years. Most players want to communicate via text these days, DeCosta says, but he also negotiated with Jackson face-to-face, one-on-one many times. (In an unconventional move, Jackson served as his own agent.)

“It’s hard to negotiate with a friend or someone that you really respect,” DeCosta says. “Anybody that’s been married knows that. It’s hard to be honest and truthful sometimes with people that you love because you think it might hurt them. I tried to be humble and honest and as transparent as possible. I tried to look at it from Lamar’s point of view, too. If you can do that, sometimes it makes it a lot easier to meet halfway or find a common ground. We all get so wrapped up in our own positions that we think it’s about us and them and we make it a competitive, confrontational thing. A negotiation doesn’t have to be that. It took a long time and there were many hurdles, but we got there.”

DeCosta’s office is a bit fancier than his original workspace in the hall. There’s a sitting area, a bookshelf (Blink, The Extra 2%, and Finding the Winning Edge are among the titles), and a Peloton in the corner. The bike, along with a new pastime—pickleball—are two of his post-pandemic obsessions. Lacie says hobbies are not her husband’s thing.

“Eric works seven days a week most of the year,” Lacie says. “He’s extremely devoted to giving all of his time to the team and to our kids. He really doesn’t have any other pastimes except pickleball.”

On the wall hangs the typed rejection letter the 23-year-old DeCosta got from the Packers’ Ron Wolf. Also framed is a handwritten note Wolf sent to DeCosta a quarter-century later, congratulating him on becoming the Ravens’ general manager.

“You are a testament to pa- tience and perseverance,” he wrote.

After the draft room erupted that momentous day in April, DeCosta retreated to his office, where he was soon joined by Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who brought a bottle of whiskey. The two took small celebratory sips.

“Alright,” DeCosta said after briefly savoring the spirit, “it’s time to get to work.”

Beads of sweat still dripping from his coarse black beard, Mark Andrews emerges from the Ravens training facility munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After a mid-June practice under the stifling sun, one of the best tight ends in the NFL needs to get some food into his system. Not just because he’s hungry

“I just got an IV,” he says. “Didn’t eat like I should have last night. I had a huge lunch and didn’t eat too much for dinner. Glycogen storage was little bit depleted. I felt some cramping, so I wanted to get some fluids in me. And a little bit of complex carbs.”

Professional football players have a lot to worry about. Learning the playbook. Contracts. Injuries. Their Madden rating. But only a tiny percentage must constantly monitor their glucose levels while also punishing and pushing their bodies on the field. There are seven active NFL players with Type 1 diabetes according to the nonprofit JDRF (previously the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation).

Mark Andrews is one of them.

Andrews’ disease does not define him: He’s a devoted son and brother, a hard worker, and a loyal teammate first. Last season, his 107 catches and 1,361 receiving yards led all NFL tight ends. Both were franchise records. He established himself as quarterback Lamar Jackson’s go-to receiver, was named first-team All-Pro, and caught two touchdown passes in the Pro Bowl. What might come next for the 6-foot-5-inch, 256-pound star keeps defensive coordinators up at night. At 26 years old, he’s just entering his prime.

But whatever the future holds, Andrews will navigate it while wearing an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor (CGM) on his hip. Most fans don’t realize the extent to which the disease must be managed on a daily basis. The Dexcom CGM is connected to Bluetooth, which goes to his parents’, brothers’, and trainers’ phones, enabling them to see his glucose levels in real time. (They say he usually handles it on his own—eating sugar if it’s too low and taking insulin if it’s too high—but if not, they text him.) It also connects with his Tandem pump, which automatically administers insulin to him if he needs it. “Almost like your own pancreas,” he says.

Andrews switches out the Dexcom every 10 days. The pump must be reset and its insulin replaced every three days. Since being diagnosed 17 years ago, diabetes has been an inescapable part of his life. Just because he’s reached such lofty athletic heights, that hasn’t changed.

“Being a diabetic, there’s more to think about than just being a regular person,” he says. “It takes more effort to be hydrated, to eat the right things. It’s no easy thing. You just gotta do what you gotta do. I’ve taken that motto and I’ve applied it to almost everything in life. Whatever life throws you, just go on and handle it.”

As he’s proven throughout his career, if someone throws something at Mark Andrews, he almost always catches it.

Growing up in Arizona, Andrews was the most athletic kid in a family full of athletes. The youngest of four, he had boundless energy, be it on the playground, the baseball diamond, or the soccer field. His mother, Martha, recalls dropping him off at school one day when he was in kindergarten or first grade. From there she went to the grocery store, where her cell phone rang.

“It was a call from my home phone,” she says, which was odd because no one was home. “I answered and Mark goes, ‘Mom, will you come take me to school?’ I said, ‘I already took you to school.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, but I left my library book, so I ran home because I didn’t want to get in trouble.’” The school was 2-and-a-half miles from their house.

When Andrews started playing soccer, he was a star from day one. The game came naturally to him, and on the field, he had a seemingly endless motor. If there was an injury timeout, his mom says, he’d drop to the ground and start doing push-ups. Which is why when his grandmother noticed him becoming lethargic and taking frequent bathroom breaks during a baseball game one day, she got worried.

“Mark would never leave a game to go to the bathroom,” Martha says. “We picked him up from that game and took him to a soccer game and he had to run off the field to go to the bathroom that time too.”

A few days later, his father, Paul, a urologist, took him to the doctor. When the diagnosis came in, his parents were devastated.

“I remember sitting in the waiting room, and the nurse and doctor coming up to us and letting us know that I had Type 1 diabetes,” Mark says. “Being that young, you don’t understand, but seeing my mom and dad cry, I knew something was going to change.”

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas stops producing insulin—a hormone the body needs to get energy from food. People with the condition must artificially manipulate their blood sugar levels through insulin and food intake. It’s a never-ending dance that requires vigilant attention.

Andrews was just nine years old when his family began carefully monitoring everything that went into his body. “There are a lot of calculations that go on with diabetes. Figuring out what they’re eating, what they need to get through the day. I still don’t like to talk about what the long-term complications are,” Martha says, her voice wavering.

AS HE’S PROVEN THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, IF SOMEONE THROWS SOMETHING AT MARK ANDREWS, HE ALMOST ALWAYS CATCHES IT.

In the years after his diagnosis, Andrews began giving himself shots. Because he lacked body fat, he would bend over, squeeze his belly, and insert the needle there.

“He never really said, ‘Why me?’” Martha says. “He didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. Bottom line was he understood that if he didn’t do it, he was going to die.”

There were hiccups along the way. Once, after eating too much buttered popcorn at a movie, he collapsed in the kitchen. Martha, who always kept sugary foods in the fridge, rubbed frosting on his gums and forced Gatorade down his throat.

As life settled into a new normal, Andrews’ athletic career continued to thrive. He started traveling around the country playing club soccer. Other teams took notice of the tall forward who was a prolific goal scorer.

“It got to a point where I’d have two or three kids shadowing me the whole game,” he says. “They’d hack at my ankles, and I’d get frustrated. I started getting red cards. My parents thought I needed to play something that was a little more physical.”

Following in the footsteps of his older brothers, Andrews joined the high school football team.

“He was skinny, but he had talent,” says Kelly Cook, his high school offensive coordinator. “His tenacity and grit are what I noticed right away.”

In his first game, Andrews caught a pass for a touchdown and returned a kick for another. By his sophomore year, he was being recruited by colleges. By his junior year, he was a star receiver catching bullets from teammate and future NFL quarterback Kyle Allen. Every college program wanted him. But while most coaches saw his future as a tight end, Andrews was determined to play wide receiver. He signed with Oklahoma—which promptly redshirted him (which allowed him to practice, but not play in games) and switched him to tight end.

It worked. The quiet but determined Andrews accepted the move and dove into learning the intricacies of the new position. By his third season, he was one of the best players in the country. He won the John Mackey Award, named for the late, legendary Baltimore Colt and awarded annually to college football’s most outstanding tight end. Feeling he had nothing left to prove, Andrews decided to forego his final season with the Sooners and enter the NFL draft.

Surprisingly—at least to him—Andrews’ name wasn’t called until the third round. Even crazier, the team that took him, Baltimore, had selected another tight end, Hayden Hurst, with its first-round pick. Andrews was angry—not at the Ravens, but at everyone who overlooked him.

“I think he was extremely honored that Baltimore selected him, but I think it was a chip for him,” says his brother Charlie. “It was, ‘I’m going to go there and prove them wrong.’ He’s done that his whole life. He’s always been doubted, but he always achieves more than people think.”

“HE’S ALWAYS BEEN DOUBTED, BUT HE ALWAYS ACHIEVES MORE THAN PEOPLE THINK.”

Before this June practice begins, Andrews warms up by casually snatching footballs moving very fast out of midair with an almost second-nature ease. For one of the best pass catchers in the game, that’s not exactly big news. However, on this day, three months before the 2022 season opener, the person throwing those balls is. Jackson, the quarterback with whom he’s developed intense chemistry, is not here. Still mired in ongoing contract negotiations with the team, the former MVP has chosen to skip this organized team activity (OTA). (Jackson did, however, attend the Ravens’ mandatory camp later that month.)

Andrews isn’t worried about Jackson, whose work ethic he praises effusively. Both were taken by the team in the 2018 draft, and their on-field bond was instantaneous.

“I remember rookie minicamp, we hit it off perfectly,” Andrews says. “The way that he sees the game is very unique. It feels like every time I was able to look back at the ball and cut a route short, he would see me. He’s been like that from the start. That connection you don’t have with everybody. That’s my quarterback. There’s a special place in my heart for him.”

Results came early. With the Ravens trailing the Chargers in the third quarter of a game that first year, Andrews streaked down the middle of the field. Jackson hit him for a 68-yard touchdown.

“He hit me perfectly in stride,” Andrews recalls. “We hadn’t been throwing the ball a bunch that game but being able to hit at the right time and the right place, that’s what football is all about.”

The respect between the two extends beyond the field. In the summer, the NFL tweeted a list of top five tight ends according to the Las Vegas Raiders’ Darren Waller. Andrews was listed as number five. Jackson apparently saw the tweet and responded by posting, “Mark @No. 5???” He added a laughing emoji for good measure.

Andrews routinely defends his quarterback against the loads of criticism that he describes as “nonsense.”

“If you know Lamar, if you’re around him every day, you see the way that he works and cares for the city and his teammates, this organization, you know that he’s all in,” Andrews says. “He’s said it from the beginning: ‘You’re going to get a Super Bowl out of me.’ And he means that. He’s hungry, he’s ready. To all the haters out there: Go away. Leave the man alone.”

Before these OTAs, Andrews spent most of his offseason at home in Scottsdale, where he lives with his brother Charlie in a four-bedroom home he bought prior to signing a four-year, $56-million extension in September 2021. After the season ends, the brothers have old friends from high school over to what their mom calls the “bachelor pad,” to swim in the pool, play Call of Duty, or grill out back.

“His personality is so humble,” says Cook, with whom he’s still close. “He has this big body and he’s a superstar, but he doesn’t flaunt it. That’s one of the things that makes all the moms of the girls he dates love him. My wife loves him.”

As the off-season progresses, Andrews becomes all business. He usually works out at his outdoor home gym six days a week, then runs routes and catches balls at the local high school. His excellence is no accident.

“When the ball’s thrown, you’ve got to get open and you’ve got to catch it,” says Ravens tight ends coach George Godsey. “I know it’s very simple to say that, but there’s a ‘route tree’ that he has that’s very diverse. Mark can run every route. He loves it and he works hard at it.”

Maybe that’s because he appreciates it just a little more than a guy who hasn’t been through what he’s been through.

In May, Andrews and his mom again put together a team for the JDRF One Walk. Since he began participating in 2019, his team has raised nearly $76,000 in support of Type 1 diabetes research. Andrews spent much of the day talking with fans, signing autographs, and posing for photos.

“Even with all of Mark’s incredible success, he shows such compassion and genuine happiness to connect with kids,” says Michael Simoni, executive director of the JDRF Desert West Chapter. “As his mother, Martha, affectionately says, ‘The kids are his peeps, and he just loves being around them.’”

A business administration major in college, Andrews isn’t sure what he wants to do after football. As last season demonstrated, he has plenty left to achieve in the game. What he does know is that he’s blessed to be part of a tight-knit family, a top-notch football organization, and to be in a position to help others with the disease he’s proven doesn’t have to slow you down.

“I want to make an impact in Type 1 diabetics’ lives,” he says. “The ultimate goal is being able to have that belief that one day we’ll be able to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes. I wholeheartedly believe that we will.”

He pauses for a moment, then adds: “It’s going to be a team effort.”

ven though he’s wearing enemy colors, Ed Soth is greeted the same way he usually is when he walks into Robbie’s First Base—with some good-natured ribbing.

“We’re going to stop letting you in here with that hat,” says Robbie Davis Jr., half of what might be the most well-known Senior-Junior tandem in the world of Baltimore sports . . . memorabilia. “How’d you get to be a Yankees fan?”

The conversation that ensues is similar to ones that take place in bars, at barbershops, and during ballgames every day: a group of old friends shooting the breeze about sports. The fact that it happens to be taking place in what is likely the world’s only sports memorabilia/mail service store just adds to the fun.

When Robbie Davis Sr., 71, opened the store in this small Lutherville strip mall in 1989, he had no idea that one day he’d be working alongside his sons, Robbie Jr., 43, and Matthew, 32. He didn’t know that the business would morph from dealing primarily with FedEx and UPS packages to making deals for Frank Robinson and Johnny Unitas autographs. He certainly couldn’t have imagined that the family would star in an ABC reality series and be featured in a Netflix show scheduled to drop this summer.

The exchange going down is exactly what has attracted television producers, audiences, and, most importantly, regular old customers to Robbie’s.

“I grew up at the old stadium, used to sneak in all the time,” says Soth, who often comes in to send packages and stays to hang out. “Want to hear a funny story?”

It’s a rhetorical question—everyone at Robbie’s is always up for a laugh.

“One day I was there, I’m 11 years old, and I’m sitting in the stands and Mantle is in the field,” Soth says. “Ball is hit, comes right to me, and I reach over and grab [it]. Ball hits me in the hand and falls to the [warning] track. Swear to God, Mantle walks over, picks the ball up, looks at me, and I think he’s gonna toss it up to me. That sonofabitch turned and walked away.”

Sitting at his cluttered desk behind the counter, Senior, as many people call him, lets out a belly laugh. From his slightly less messy desk a few feet away, Junior does the same.

“We have a lot of people who just come in and talk sports,” Junior says. “We get 85-year-old grandmas in here on a Monday morning talking Ravens. They’ll say, ‘Did you see that play that Lamar made?’ I can’t believe my ears. That’s what makes it cool.”

Robbie Davis Sr. grew up in West Baltimore, where, as he likes to remind people, he was a “really good” baseball player at Edmondson-Westside High School.

“I always tell my son that even though he got signed to a pro contract, I was better than him,” he says. “And he can’t refute it, because I’m the only one who’s seen us both play.”

After graduating, he served as a combat medic in the Army before going into the car business. At one point, he co-owned 12 dealerships in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Among them were All-Star Dodge and All-Star Chevrolet on Route 40. Orioles’ legends Brooks Robinson and Eddie Murray were among the athletes that did commercials for the dealerships, and Davis developed friendships with several guys on the team. When the O’s went on road trips, Davis would occasionally house-sit for Murray.

“Eddie Murray knew me before I knew who he was,” Junior says. “To me he was just a guy who was friends with my dad.”

One of Senior’s partners at the dealership collected baseball cards, and he took note when the man made some money buying and selling them. When he left the car business and opened a postal services store in Catonsville, then another in Lutherville, Senior put out a few boxes of baseball cards on the weekends.

Quickly, he realized that the Topps were topping his sales. He began buying and selling other brands that were hot at the time, like Upper Deck, and closed the Catonsville store to focus on the one in Lutherville.

“. . . THE BEST PART WAS GETTING TO BE AROUND PEOPLE THAT WERE AS PASSIONATE ABOUT COLLECTING MEMORABILIA AS WE ARE.”

“You never have a business where you can make money right away,” he says. “Well, the first month we opened up we were in the black.”

Perhaps his biggest challenge was keeping his sons from playing with his inventory. Where Senior saw an investment, Junior saw a pastime.

“He would buy all these unopened boxes and tell me, ‘Don’t open them,’” Junior recalls. “He would put them in our house in this room, and of course, I’m a little kid, so I’d be in there opening the packs because that’s what kids do. It’s no fun to just sit there and look at a box.”

A baseball addict from a young age, Junior played center field in college and was signed by the Milwaukee Brewers. When his career fizzled out in the minor leagues, he began working with his father in the store. As Robbie’s grew, the Davises began buying and selling all kinds of sports memorabilia: jerseys, autographed baseballs, seats from the old Memorial Stadium and Cole Field House. One of the most expensive items they acquired was a Babe Ruth signed baseball for $20,000. They later sold it for a tidy profit.

As their reputation continued to grow, more and more athletes started stopping by the store. Al Bumbry has been friends with Senior since they met in the mid-’80s. The Orioles Hall of Famer, who was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the Army during the Vietnam War, still drops in often.

“The store presents a very social, laidback, easygoing atmosphere,” says Bumbry, the 1973 American League Rookie of the Year and a member of Baltimore’s 1983 World Series championship team. “People don’t feel pressured there because Bob’s a people person. Once he connects with you and becomes friends with you, he’s one of those guys that I would take in the foxhole with me.”

Lewis Brown was a 15-year-old kid when he first went to Robbie’s.

“Senior, he likes to take chances on people,” he says. “I didn’t grow up the richest, so sometimes I’d be in there and I’d go, ‘Mom, I want to get this,’ and she’d say, ‘Well I don’t have the money for it.’ There was a Barry Bonds-signed baseball. It was like a hundred and some dollars. He was like, ‘Just take it, and when you get the money just come in and pay for it.’ Ain’t nobody does that.”

It took Brown, now 35, a few weeks to scrape together the money. When he returned to the store, Senior offered him a job. He’s been working there ever since. When he was trying to save $10,000 for a down payment on a house, Senior asked how he was going to do it.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’ll figure it out,’” Brown says. “He goes, ‘I’ll lend you the money and you can just pay me back when you get it.’ That’s the type of guy he is.”

In 2010, the producers of the reality show Pawn Stars contacted the Davises with an idea. They wanted to film a series about the business and its cast of characters. The core four in the show would be Robbie Sr., Robbie Jr., Brown, and Robbie Reier, another longtime employee. There was only one problem: way too many Robbies. Thus, Senior became Senior, Junior became Junior, Brown became “Sweet Lou,” and the then-baby-faced Reier became “Shaggy.”

In 12 episodes of Ball Boys, the guys goofed on each other, debated sports, negotiated with buyers and sellers, and interacted with greats from the sports world. They played basketball with former University of Michigan Fab Fiver Jalen Rose. Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon fired footballs at them. The legendary running back Jim Brown came to the store, but of all the sports royalty they met, baseball’s hit king, Pete Rose, was their favorite.

After shooting a segment, Rose asked for a restaurant recommendation for lunch. When Senior told him the production company would only pay a pittance for their food, Rose whipped $10,000 cash out of his pocket.

“He’s the kind of guy that if you go to a bar you want to hang out with,” Senior says.

When Sweet Lou asked for a personalized autograph, Rose wrote, “To Lou, you big fat piece of shit.”

“I loved that,” Brown says.

The show ran for just one season in 2012, but it was rebroadcast for years after that and is still available on ABC’s app. It raised the store’s profile both locally and nationally—they still get customers who say they heard of Robbie’s from Ball Boys.

“It was awesome,” Junior says. “I liked being on TV, but the best part was getting to be around people that were as passionate about collecting memorabilia as we are. We met people from all around the country, and we got to share our stories.”

Bob Windsor, aka Burger King Bob, is milling about the store, going back and forth with Senior about . . .something or other. The two are old friends. They get together on Sundays to watch football at Windsor’s house, where he makes sure Senior always has chips to snack on and Hennessy to wash them down.

An avid collector, he’s bought everything from a Babe Ruth-autographed baseball to Michael Jordan’s shoes at Robbie’s. But the products aren’t what keep him coming back.

“If there was a pot belly stove and an old dog, you’d be there for hours every day,” says Windsor, whose nickname stems from his job as a “financial guy” for several Burger King franchises. “It’s that homey.”

That’s never changed at Robbie’s, but the preferences of memorabilia consumers are ever-evolving. After a down period in the ’90s and 2000s, cards are back in vogue. And not just baseball cards. These days, Pokémon is as popular as Paul Molitor.

“I had a kid buy two $8 packs and he got a $700 card in there,” Junior says. “That’s what these cards are all about now. It’s all about the gamble.”

That being said, there are some athletes whose appeal is timeless in Baltimore. Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson, Gary Williams, and Ray Lewis items always sell quickly. But there’s one athlete whose popularity Junior says is unprecedented.

“Nothing’s been like Lamar,” he says of the Ravens quarterback. “[Jackson] has been the biggest craze that we’ve seen in this business since we’ve been open. People can’t get enough of him.”

Although the Davises are hometown fans—they live and die with the Orioles and the Ravens—and love sports memorabilia, the business requires a sort of cold lack of sentimentality. Anything they acquire could be gone the next moment.

“People say, ‘Is this for sale?’” Senior says. “I say, ‘Come on, if it’s got a price tag on it, it’s for sale.’”

Still, there are a few items in which they seem to take special pride. Near Senior’s desk hangs a signed photo of Orioles Mike Morgan and Fred Lynn from the mid-’80s. Lynn’s note reads, “To Bob, the second-best ballplayer I know.”

“That’s because I always told him I was as good as him,” Senior says, chuckling.

Above Junior’s desk is another framed photo, this one with Lynn and Eddie Murray standing over Senior, who is sitting in a chair with his then-eight-year-old son, Robbie Jr., on his lap.

Neither of those items have a price tag.

Gerry Sandusky, the super-smooth voice of the Ravens, is sitting at an outdoor table at the Rotunda in Hampden on steamy summer day. He is struggling to speak. His eyes well with tears as he reflects on a particularly meaningful memory of his mother, a pivotal day that changed the course of his life. But true to his unflappable nature, the longtime WBAL sportscaster quickly regains his composure and continues his story.

In 1983, after graduating from Towson University, he was living with his parents in Florida, working as a part-time pool boy, and trying (unsuccessfully) to break into broadcasting. Although he had majored in finance and economics in college, a visit to the school’s football broadcast booth had bitten him with the sports announcing bug. But he had no real prospects. As he drove home from his pool job one evening, he felt stuck. “What have I done?” he thought. “I have no obvious career path.”

He realized he was at turning point in his life. He returned to his parents’ house unsure what his next career move would be. At home, there was a present waiting for him: a white gooseneck lamp with a red bow and a card: “I hope this light shines a little light on your dreams. Love, Mom.”

His mother, Ruth, who died in 1985 of lung cancer, knew about her son’s broadcasting aspirations. “You go back to that moment,” Sandusky says. “It was an unbelievable act of kindness. On the very night I had lost my last thread of hope and was ready to quit, my Mom gave me the gift of confidence and encouragement.”

While chatting, the bespectacled Sandusky relaxes his tall, lanky frame in a steel chair, sipping bottled water. Even on a sticky August afternoon, he appears unruffled, wearing neatly pressed marine-blue slacks and a black polo shirt. His silver-gray hair is brushed off his forehead, adding an air of sophistication, as he reflects on his mother’s impact on his life.

After being bolstered by her support, Sandusky set out to find a way to break into broadcasting. Of course, his younger self had no idea that one day he would be the sports director at WBAL-TV and the play-by-play announcer for the Baltimore Ravens.

He approached WSVN-TV in Miami, where he convinced the staff to let him spend time in the newsroom, even though the station didn’t have an internship program. “For a year and a half, I’d hang out, ask questions, and learn from the anchors and reporters,” he says. By 1984, he was hired as a sports broadcaster.

“The big thing I learned was how to tell stories,” Sandusky says. “The other thing I learned was how to talk to a camera. You aren’t ‘broadcasting.’ You’re always talking to one person when you talk to a camera. I learned to think of a camera as just that, a person.”

But Sandusky had Baltimore roots. He lived here until he was 12, attending Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Towson while his father, John Sandusky, was a Colts assistant coach before briefly becoming head coach. The family—including his mother and four siblings, Jack, Jim, Joe, and Ruth Ann—lived in the Parkville area until the elder Sandusky’s career took them to New Jersey and then to Miami. When the opportunity presented itself, Gerry Sandusky had no qualms about moving back to Maryland in 1988 to work at WBAL-TV as the 11 p.m. sports anchor, even though he was leaving a bigger TV market.

He told The Baltimore Sun at the time, “Most people in broadcasting wonder what I’m doing, but Baltimore is the one place on the planet that I call home. You can either have great weather or a great town.”

“YOU AREN’T BROADCASTING. YOU’RE ALWAYS TALKING TO ONE PERSON WHEN YOU TALK TO A CAMERA.”

His wife, Lee Ann Sandusky, who met her husband in Florida, says he always wanted to return. “His mother died. His father remarried. He was craving a connection to his siblings,” she says. “We wanted to raise a family and be near family.”

The couple, who will be married 34 years on Dec. 31, have lived in the same Sparks townhouse for 31 years. “When we moved in, we had one car and no furniture,” Gerry Sandusky says. “We thought we’d stay for three or four years, but it was such a great neighborhood. There were about 30 kids.”

That suited the Sanduskys, who have two children: Katy, who is now 31 and an associate communications director for the National Network of Public Health Institutes in New Orleans, and Zack, 26, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and works at Plein Air Agency, a marketing company.

Sandusky has always been an involved dad, coaching the kids’ baseball and field hockey teams and volunteering at their school. “The beautiful part of my job is that I work nights,” he explains. And when he needed to coach or attend a school function in the evening, “On my dinner break, I’d run out to practice,” he says. “Like any parent, you just find time.”

When the kids were growing up, the family had a friendly football rivalry. Lee Ann, a Pittsburgh native, was (gasp!) a Steelers fan. Katy rooted for the black-and-gold with her mom, while Zack supported the Ravens with his dad. “It was the girls versus the guys in our home,” Lee Ann says. “The losers had to make breakfast.”

For a while, Lee Ann and Katy were the beneficiaries. “Gerry is the best omelet and pancake maker ever,” she says. But the family joined football forces when Katy, who went to Towson University, became a marketing intern for the Ravens. “We’re all Ravens fans now,” says Lee Ann, 61. “I had to throw out the Terrible Towel and the Troy Polamalu jersey.”

During the Ravens football season, Sandusky, 60, estimates that he spends about 40 to 50 hours at the station and another 20 hours working on his own. And each week, he is the familiar voice that makes the game come alive for his listeners, though he admits by the end of the game he is “completely and totally and utterly exhausted.” “It’s a little bit like riding the front edge of a storm. You don’t know what’s coming. That’s the part that’s most exhilarating.”

Sandusky learned early on that preparedness is key. “Chuck Thompson [the beloved Baltimore sports broadcaster who was the play-by-play announcer for the Colts] told me something years ago that I always remember. He said, ‘If you don’t bring it, you won’t find it in the broadcast booth,’” he recalls. “You have to do your homework ahead of time….What I love about it is that for three hours I’m nowhere else because you have to be right there for every play and be involved in every play.”

Sandusky’s latest challenge is keeping track of quarterback Lamar Jackson. “I had to change the way I do play-by-play to adapt to his plays because he is so good with his ball skills that you don’t know where the ball is,” he says. “Before Lamar, I’d try to be right where the ball is…With Lamar, I try to stay a heartbeat behind the ball. Frankly, with La- mar, you think you know where the ball is, but you’re wrong. I’ve had to learn more patience.”

Peter Schmuck, a former Baltimore Sun sports columnist and WBAL talk-show host, praises Sandusky’s on-air performance. “He’s good at capturing the excitement of the moment,” he says. “But he doesn’t do it at the expense of what has to be said. He also reflects on the angst felt by the fans when things go badly…He’s so good at what he does you have to smile when you listen to him.”

Perhaps no phrase of Sandusky’s elicits more grins than “the hay’s in the barn.” He uses the expression when a play signals a win for the Ravens near the end of a game. It originated from his Towson University football coach, Phil Albert. (Sandusky played tight end on the team until he broke his leg during his junior year.) The coach would say, “The hay’s in the barn,” at the end of each practice to indicate that the team’s hard work was done.

Sandusky thinks it resonates with football fans because “it speaks to everybody’s innate nature about how good it feels to do what you set out to do,” he says. “I remember feeling the same way in [football] practice. You’ve done the heavy work you came to do, and now it’s time to finish it up.”

But his friendly, on-air image took a hit in 2011 when his name came under scrutiny after Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant Penn State football coach, was charged with sexually abusing children. Many people wrongly assumed that Gerry Sandusky was related to him. He isn’t.

“It was terrible. It was awful,” Lee Ann Sandusky says. “He’s very proud of the Sandusky name because of his father.”

At the time, Gerry Sandusky, who now introduces himself as “Gerry with a ‘G,’ no relation,” gathered his family in the loft above the couple’s bedroom. (The loft, filled with football memorabilia, was a makeshift studio for Sandusky during the pandemic.) He told them: “You can’t punch every idiot who comes along.” Lee Ann says, “You choose how to handle them.”

But her husband kept the situation in perspective, she says: “He was emphatic. There were real victims who were part of this. His inconvenience was a small part of it.”

Even a decade later, he can still get a negative response when he’s introduced to someone new. He calls it the “Sandusky flinch.” “People literally flinch,” he confirms.

Deborah Weiner, a WBAL-TV news anchor and reporter, has known Gerry Sandusky for almost 20 years and remembers the Jerry Sandusky fallout.

“It was a pretty awful experience,” she says. “But he handled it the way he handles everything else, which is he can deflect like nobody else, and he has a great sense of humor, and while this wasn’t a humorous situation, there was this cinematic humor to being on TV every night as the good Sandusky and the news broadcast team is referring to that other guy with the same name. It was the stuff of movies, but he handled it with finesse.”

And Weiner emphasizes that Sandusky is much more than a football person. “I know Gerry is the voice of the Ravens but calling him the voice is slightly demeaning because he is pretty much the brain as well,” Weiner says. “He is one of the smartest people I know. His institutional knowledge is unsurpassed. I mean Gerry can be chatting about Mesopotamia history and [poet John] Milton, all in the span of the same minute.”

Tom Tasselmyer, WBAL-TV’s chief meteorologist who has worked with Gerry Sandusky since 1989, agrees that his colleague is more well-rounded than most viewers may realize. “I think he’s just a guy who loves to learn, and loves to learn your opinion on something,” he says. “You can talk to him about any topic, and if he doesn’t know it, he’ll go read something about it and have a discussion with you about it.”

“FRANKLY, WITH LAMAR, YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHERE THE BALL IS BUT YOU’RE WRONG. I’VE HAD TO LEARN MORE PATIENCE.”

Sandusky is an avid reader and appreciates the nuances of sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar. His favorite authors include Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Barbara Kingsolver. He always has a book in hand, recently reading Chimes of a Lost Cathedral by Janet Fitch. His hobby should serve him well as he recovers from hip replacement surgery, scheduled for Oct. 25, during a Ravens bye week. “I’ll make it a reading week,” he says.

Sandusky also keeps a daily journal, a practice he has been doing since college. “I just started to write to kind of figure my way out of things,” he says. “It was a sounding board, and it just became a habit.” He uses a fountain pen—he has several—to capture his musings because he likes the weight of the writing instrument and its relationship to paper. “It’s a connection that’s not present with a traditional ballpoint pen,” he says.

His journals provided background for his memoir, Forgotten Sundays: A Son’s Story of Life, Loss, and Love from the Sidelines of the NFL, published in 2014 by Running Press. Sandusky wrote it to honor his late father, who developed Alzheimer’s disease in his later years and died in 2006. He did it for two reasons. “At the end of his life, I saw all the things he had accomplished and stood for but forgot. There was a part of me that wanted to capture it in book form,” he says. “Also, we went through so much with the Sandusky name that I wanted people to understand why I would never ever consider changing my name.”

In the book, he also shares details of another tragic event—the death of his brother Joe in 1978 at age 19 of complications from pneumonia. He and Lee Ann started the Joe Sandusky Fund through the Baltimore Community Foundation in his memory to provide college funds to needy students. “Joe’s death was painful for Gerry,” Lee Ann says. “They were very close. Joe was a mentor. He was gregarious, smart, and good-looking. We take that spirit and continue that.”

Gerry also stays busy with The Sandusky Group, a media organization he founded in the mid-1990s. “It was an accidental business,” he says. He started helping medical professionals prepare for on-air appearances before forming an official company and now helps people with their presentation skills. “This is something I love doing,” he says. “It was a little nothing thing for a long time, and then it grew and became a bigger thing.”

Sandusky has come a long way since his mom gave him a lamp in Florida. But calling football games is just part of it. As his WBAL-TV co-worker Tasselmyer says, “Sports is what he’s known for on the surface. But his field of interest is unlimited.”

His parents would be proud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Forty? That’s young,” Billick says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman is worried that Lamar Jackson might talk too loud.

He’s worried that players and coaches from other teams—either watching live or on television replays—will clearly hear what signals the quarterback is yelling out at the line of scrimmage and find a pattern about what play follows, or which direction Jackson runs.

Think of how clear Peyton Manning’s famous “Omaha” call was on national television a few years back. Now put that situation in a mostly empty, cavernous football stadium. (Manning, the future Hall of Fame quarterback, revealed once he retired that the Nebraska city was an “indicator” word to his lineman that he’d changed a play, and gone to “Plan B”.)

Sensitive microphones can easily pick up language from players, coaches, or the sound of a sneeze, especially with no fans in the stands, which will be the case for at least the start of this Ravens season. It’s scheduled to begin next Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium against the Cleveland Browns.

“That’s one of the first things we started talking about,” Roman, the guy who picks the plays that Jackson calls in the huddle and the line of scrimmage, said this week, “how the communication is going to be a lot more evident, based on the fact that it’s not going to be nearly as loud. We’ll definitely mix some things up as we go.” He often holds his hand or play sheet over his goateed mouth so opponents can’t read his lips. A mask might do the job now.

(On a related note, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said the other day, “Don’t they put that lip-sync thing out every year?” referring to the series of hilarious “Bad Lip Reading” videos that have linked nonsensical phrases to the movement of coaches’ mouths, “It’s going to kill that industry.”)

In the grand scheme of this most unusual and chaotic year, sign-stealing and code-breaking probably doesn’t rank high on the list of most people’s daily concerns.

As we work from home with kids hanging from our legs, and others struggle with the challenges of not working at all, we’re simply happy to even be talking and writing about sports, and that games are happening.

(And so are others, evidently. As we were researching something for this article, we noticed a Browns fan must have done some recent editing to M&T Bank Stadium’s Wikipedia page, labeling the Ravens stadium as “aka Baker Mayfield’s house” in the first line and picture caption. Can someone please change that?)

Football will be played, but like most everything else this year, it will be different. Because of the pandemic and government regulations, the Ravens home stadium—aside from the players on the field, coaches on the sidelines, and other team staff—will be empty on game days. Same goes for most road games, depending on the state and if policies change.

Fans know that the Ravens have a provocative in-stadium message during big points of a game. “Every decibel counts,” with a fake sound meter encouraging more. But the noise will literally be manually controlled this year. “It’s always great to have our fans there. They’re always energized,” linebacker Tyus Bowser said recently. “It’s going to be a different vibe.”

In fact, the NFL is reportedly requiring teams to play fake crowd noise to create some semblance of atmosphere (as well as background noise for entertainment and competitive reasons, like Roman said). And stadium staff will be allowed to play loud music until there’s 15 seconds left on the play clock.

In this new work-at-home (stadium) life, everyone who isn’t a player will be required to wear a mask on the sideline or anywhere else. Media interviews, typically done in person in or near the locker rooms, will be held over videoconference, like they have been the last month since training camp began in Owings Mills. Players will continue to be tested for COVID-19 every day. (They’re the most tested people in the country, it seems.) Reporters and team staff will spread out in the press box and capacity will be limited.

And, most notably, the Ravens recently said that cardboard cutouts of paying fans will sit in the purple seats at M&T Bank Stadium, which for the previous 22 years have been occupied by real humans. It’s a trend that other pro sports teams, from South Korean baseball organizations to the NBA bubble in Florida, have tried this year. If you ask us, it’s a brilliant idea.

For $45 if you’re a personal seat license (PSL) holder, or $55 if you’re not, your image can be one of the flat likenesses in the crowd on Sundays, and you can maybe catch the paper version of yourself in the stands while watching on TV. The team will tell you in which section of the stadium you should look. All proceeds from the cutout sales will benefit the Ravens’ COVID-19 relief efforts in the Baltimore area, and you can find more details about how to order yours here.

“Unfortunately, we can’t have fans at the game for the time being, so we wanted to give an opportunity for fans to feel like they were still there,” Deandra Duggans, the Ravens director of advertising and branding, said on the morning news the other day while showing a few examples of what the cutouts could look like.

Twenty-six of the NFL’s 32 teams have announced fanless plans, much like the Orioles have done this year. From a competitive standpoint, for the Ravens, it’s really a shame, given that Super Bowl hopes are very legitimate with Jackson, the reigning NFL Most Valuable Player, entering the prime years of his career. There should be plenty to cheer for. Originally, the team had plans to have 14,000 people in their roughly 71,000-person capacity stadium. Then the Ravens sent a revised proposal to the city and state with a cap of 7,500 fans at games, but that was shot down last week.

“That’s a bummer,” new Ravens defensive lineman Derek Wolfe said the day the decision was announced. “I’m more bummed out for the fans themselves, because they’re not going to get to [go]. Who knows? Maybe a couple of games in we might be able to start letting some fans in. Maybe by the end of the season, going to the playoffs, we’ve got a full packed stadium.”

We’re not going to blame anyone for being cautious, even with the idea of a crowd 10 percent of a normal one. So, dealing with the current reality, the Ravens have practiced at least three times in the last two weeks in an empty home stadium to get a sense of what the season will look and sound like.

On Wednesday, they practiced in the afternoon to mimic what the light will look like—mainly for Jackson and the wide receivers when they catch and throw, and for kick and punt returners when they look into the sky—during their 1 p.m. season opener against the Browns.

With no preseason games this August, the team ran through substitution patterns and game situations all with ambient noise blaring. After the first stadium practice, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said, “It was louder than I thought it was going to be. [It was] probably similar to what you have in the stadium when the crowd is there at a normal level.”

That’s good news for his fourth-year assistant Roman, and Jackson, and anyone else who doesn’t want to worry about other teams hearing what they’re saying.

“It’s different,” Roman said, “but once that ball gets placed and the whistle blows, it’s football. And we have to get ready to play some good football.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if we all don’t have enough to worry about, Lamar Jackson just announced that he’s going to be on the cover of EA Sports’ Madden NFL 2021.

That loud sound you just heard was Ravens fans around Baltimore collectively groaning, “Nooooooo!”

Some background: The concept of the so-called “Madden Curse” has been around for more than two decades. It started, innocuously enough, with San Francisco running back Garrison Hearst. Who? Exactly. A highly touted prospect, he played one spectacular season for the 49ers, appeared on the cover of Madden 1999, and suffered a hideous ankle break in the second round of the playoffs. He missed the next two seasons and, after returning from injury, had one more impressive season, but was never the same player again.

Still, that was a one-time thing. Hardly grounds for a curse, right? Until Barry Sanders appeared on the cover in 2000. How were Sanders’ stats that year? We’ll never know because he UNEXPECTEDLY RETIRED that season.

Okay, two is a coincidence, not a trend, which leads us to the Titans’ Eddie George. After an uncannily consistent career, he was honored with the Madden 2001 cover. His 2001 season was good, not great, and he uncharacteristically fumbled a pass in the fourth quarter against the Ravens (oh yeaaaaaah) in the playoffs, directly contributing to the Titans’ loss. He played four more seasons but once again, was never the same player again.

Yikes!
But here’s something to give Ravens fans hope. That one-two-three punch certainly started the Madden Curse off with a flourish—and it continued apace for several years, cursing the seasons of players like Mike Vick (Madden 2004—torn fibula), Donovan McNabb (Madden 2006—groin injury), Troy Polamalu (Madden 2010—torn MCL), and the Ravens own Ray Lewis (Madden 2005—not a single interception; Ravens didn’t make the playoffs).

All in all, more Madden cover boys have been cursed than not. But, luckily, we’re seeing a reverse of the trend. In 2018, Tom Brady reversed the curse, earning league MVP honors. (On the other hand, the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl that year. For any other team, a spectacular season. For the Pats, a bit of a bust.)

In 2016, Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was on the cover, yet finished the season with 1,450 receiving yards and was voted to his second consecutive Pro-Bowl.

And then there’s QB Patrick Mahomes, last year’s cover model. When the Kansas City Chiefs’ prodigy got injured in the seventh game of the season, it seemed like the curse had struck again. But he came back only three games later and went on to lead the Chiefs to a Super Bowl win.

Here’s the thing about athletes: Many are superstitious. But the best ones are super cocky, too. If there is a curse, they’re convinced they’ll be the one to break it.

As Jackson himself told reporters: “I’m not worried about a curse. Patrick Mahomes was on the cover and he won MVP [of the Super Bowl], so I would want that curse. I hope that’s a curse!”

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

FLOCK FESTIVITIES

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

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

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

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

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

PLAYOFF PARTIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On an April weekday morning near the end of his senior year of high school, Daniel Stern stood behind a podium in a crowded, wood-paneled Annapolis courtroom, wearing a gray suit and a purple shirt-and-tie combination as he emphatically pleaded his case. The skinny, super-articulate, high-achieving kid from suburban Baltimore wasn’t in trouble; far from it. Representing a fictional state prosecuting team from the private Park School in Pikesville, the then-18-year-old was delivering the closing argument in the championship of the 2012 Maryland state mock trial competition.

The case: State of Maryland vs. Drew Hunter, an imagined coach of a girls’ high school soccer team who, Stern argued to a panel of three adult judges, caused three players to suffer heat exhaustion during a hot, late morning practice in August. “One of them is still in the hospital!” he said, making the situation sound as real as possible. This coach, Stern said with the flair of a seasoned trial lawyer twice his age, should be found guilty of reckless endangerment and child abuse.

“This is a case about a coach who made bad decision, after bad decision, after bad decision,” Stern told the court, while laying out the facts of the case: Players were instructed to run in sprints in 104 degree heat, in a practice that lasted more than two hours, and the coach was slow to react when players collapsed. “We’ve proven it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The performance was convincing, room-owning, and vintage Daniel. He’d been the closer since freshman year. “He’s a very intense guy and he’s very passionate about whatever it is he’s doing,” says Tony Asdourian, one of Stern’s former teachers at the Park School and an assistant coach on that mock trial team. “That was true very much that day.” (The 13-member team won its second straight state title.)

Stern couldn’t have known it then, as a high school whiz kid a few months from graduation and bound for Yale University, where he’d lead two national championship mock trial teams, but the words he spoke—bad decision, after bad decision—are almost comically fitting given what Stern is doing nearly eight years later. He’s not a lawyer, but he is paid to use his analytical and lawyerly abilities, in sports. And in his hometown no less—in a job ensuring that Ravens coach John Harbaugh has all the information necessary to make good decisions during football games.

At age 25, the Baltimore kid in his fourth year working for the team of his youth. He joined the Ravens immediately after he graduated from Yale in 2016 with a degree in cognitive science, a major that can essentially prepare you for many professions. Today, Stern’s official title is football analyst, and he’s part of a handful of staffers in the Ravens’ analytics department led by director of football research Scott Cohen. (The Orioles aren’t the only number-friendly pro sports team in town.)

Stern’s title leaves room for interpretation, but in the context of this spectacular Ravens season—after beating the Steelers yesterday, they’re now 14-2 and remain the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl as the playoffs begin—the scope of his largely unheralded contributions has emerged more visibly.

During every game, the boy wonder sits in a chair right next to Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman in the weather-proof coaches’ level of the stadium. And like a play caller, Stern wears team-issued apparel and one of those big black Bose headsets with a direct line of communication down to the field to Harbaugh. The head coach always makes the final decisions, but Stern notably has Harbaugh’s ear, quickly and clearly relaying “the numbers”— the so-called win probabilities and risk-reward ratios of certain situations.

For years, Harbaugh has had a staffer in the booth in this role. At first, it was Matt Weiss, who is now the team’s running backs’ coach. Stern took over the job this season, and what he does informs some of Harbaugh’s key game-management decisions—including whether to go for it on fourth down, which has become one of the calling cards of this Lamar Jackson-led, “Big Truss”-infused team.

A fourth-down try, for instance, if it fails, gives the opposing team great field position of their own, and NFL coaches have traditionally hesitated to take the risk or make it simply on gut feel. But with careful, deliberate planning done throughout the week, very specific data provided by Stern on-the-fly on game day, and players like Jackson making things easier and also giving their own input, (As in, “Hell yeah, coach! Let’s go for it,” before a fourth-and-2 earlier this year against the Seattle Seahawks), the Ravens have noticeably bucked the conservative nature of their competition.

They’ve converted 17 of 24 fourth-down chances this season, a league-high 70-percent rate. (This shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. In the summer, the team hired a quantitative analyst, 2017 Skidmore College graduate Derrick Yam, after he wrote a paper of the benefits of going for it on fourth down.) That means more time on offense with a chance to score points, and more “truss” in the locker room.

Given the paranoid nature of pro football coaching staffs who don’t want to give away any trade secrets, Stern isn’t being made available for interviews now to talk more about his job, or how he’s ascended the Ravens coaches’ pecking order. But the kid who for 13 years attended the tiny kindergarten-through-12th grade Park School—just a short drive from the Ravens practice facility in Owings Mills—did speak enough about the nitty-gritty, calculus-style of his work responsibilities for an article earlier this year by Sheil Kapadia of the subscription sports website, The Athletic.

The story essentially blew Stern’s cover. Here’s an excerpt:

The Ravens, like other teams, have built their own analytical model for fourth-down decision-making that accounts for a number of factors—factors that they prefer not to share publicly. There are two numbers to weigh with every decision. One is win probability—a percentage that reflects the team’s chances of winning based on the various options at any given time in the game. The other number is a break-even success probability. The model comes up with an estimate of how likely the team is to convert the fourth down. Part of the decision then comes down to how high that number has to be to justify going for it.

“It might be that there’s a decision that because we’re up by 14 points already, the decision that we make doesn’t change our win probability very much because we’re really likely to win the game no matter what,” explains Stern. “But in that moment we know that we would only need like a 15-percent chance of getting it to justify going for it. It doesn’t change our win probability that much in the game. It’s just the risk/reward calculus. So there’s situations like that, too.

“Or maybe there’s one where the win probability is really big, but it’s only because it’s a tight decision in a critical moment in the game. Like late fourth quarter, we could have a really tight decision where on average we’re gonna get it 55-percent of the time, we think, and to justify going for it we need to get it at least 50-percent of the time. So that’s a really tight difference. We would need to be very confident in our estimate of how likely we are to get it in order for that decision to be the correct decision. So it’s a really tight decision compared to one where the break-even is 20 percent and the probability of getting it is 50 percent”

Like we said, whiz kid. Here’s a little more:

What makes it easier, according to Stern, is that Harbaugh is familiar with concepts like win probability and expected points added (EPA). He wants to know the actual numbers in his headset during the game as he’s making decisions.

“We talk about all the different scenarios, and he basically gives me a percentage,” says Harbaugh. “So what’s the added win percentage of going for it? He’ll give it to me like one, two, three, four, five, six, up to whatever. Then you just decide if you want to do it. It’s not strictly based (on the numbers). I listen to it. If he starts telling me 3 and 4 percent, I get really interested. If it’s 1 or 2 percent, I’m still interested—especially if it’s short, if I think we can get it.”

Says Stern, “I just remind him during the game that this is what we were planning to do. If something’s changed, then he’ll argue back. You’ve just gotta be ready for him to push back, like, ‘You really think we should?’ Or ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I don’t take offense to that during a game at all. He’s the head coach so he’s gonna make the decision that he thinks is best.”

None of this shocks those that have known Stern since he was a kid. According to one Baltimore magazine staffer whose child was friends with Stern, he used to send his own text messages to set up playdates—in second grade—and once administered an I.Q. test to the child during one of them.

Asdourian, who, more recently, taught Stern calculus and is Park School’s math department co-chair, says, “He’s really just an extraordinary person. It’s impressive to see his mind at work. In class, he could pick up the subtleties of the chain rule or the fundamental theorem of calculus very quickly. In mock trial, he had this amazing ability to summarize everything that has happened in the case and give us a five-minute summary that would end up often being highly persuasive to the judges. He was always incredibly verbally facile and intelligent, and had wonderful instincts.”

The kid in Harbaugh’s headset graduated magna cum laude (with distinction for us lay people) from Yale, where in addition to co-captaining the university’s mock trial team to the top spot in the country, he worked as a student assistant for the Yale football team, as a sports broadcaster and producer for the school’s athletics department, and wrote for the student newspaper.

“He’s one of those people who talks about something like it’s pie-in-the-sky, but at the same time, it isn’t,” Asdourian says. “He would say, ‘I think one day I’d really like to work for a football team, like the Ravens.’ Some kids would say that and you’d go, ‘Well, I hope that works out.’ And when he would say it, he was intense enough and smart enough that you sort of go, ‘Huh, I wonder if he’ll actually pull that off?’”

We now have the verdict.

Google collects a treasure trove of data every year, and among these findings are geographical search trends that pinpoint exactly what was on the minds of residents in a given area. As the year comes to a close, we examined Google’s analytics to determine what Baltimore—and Maryland—was interested in most in 2019. Here are a few notable queries presented in no particular order.

The Ravens

It’s no wonder that Baltimore’s football team is a top city and Maryland trend. They’re having a historic season, led by electrifying MVP candidate Lamar Jackson, and debuting exciting new technological stadium features that enhance the game day experience. There are plenty of good stories surrounding this Ravens team— which has been nothing but a bright spot for the city this season. And given that they’ve clinched a home field advantage and the No.1 seed in the AFC, it’s fair to assume that they’ll again be one of Baltimore’s most buzzed about searches in 2020.

Billy Joel at Camden Yards

Who better to make Camden Yards history than Billy Joel? The Piano Man rocked the home of the Orioles this summer in the first-ever Camden Yards concert that could be a catalyst for future shows at the ballpark.

The Choptank

Atlas Restaurant Group came under fire for what was seen as a problematic dress code at one of its newest spots, The Choptank, which took over the south shed of Broadway Market in Fells Point. For a few weeks in September, it was a hot button topic across the city. It made headlines yet again when The Sun published a harsh review of the restaurant a month later.

Baltimore Homicide Rate

Unfortunately, Baltimore’s homicide rate rose again in 2019 to record numbers. There are reports that the number is the highest it has ever been, recently surpassing 2017. It’s sure to be a frequent topic as 2020—a mayoral election year—approaches.

Bay Bridge Traffic

Every summer, Baltimoreans make the pilgrimage across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore. Since beach traffic can be heavily congested, it’s clear that they wanted to be up to date on how long it takes to make the trip. The bridge will be a hot button topic of conversation in 2020 as talk about expanding it to include a third span will be up for debate. And though it might be winter, it’s never too early to start daydreaming of warmer days—peruse our guide to the Eastern Shore and start making a to-do list.

Popeyes

The nature of the Internet is such that sometimes things catch fire without much of an explanation. That’s exactly what happened this summer when a great chicken sandwich war was waged on social media. The viral debates came after Popeyes released a raved-about chicken sandwich to mania and long lines across the country. In its wake came passionate arguments about who has the best chicken sandwich among fast food chains. We think they’re all well and good, but frankly, between Royal Farms and BRD, Baltimore has plenty that can stack up to anything Popeye’s serves.

President Trump’s Comments About Baltimore

Baltimore was at the center of the political sphere a few times this year. Perhaps the most high profile example came when President Trump verbally attacked the city and the late Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, calling Baltimore “rat infested” and Cummings “racist.” In September, citizens came together to defend their city and gave Trump a spirited welcome when he came to visit for a Republican conference.

Sadly, about a month later, Congressman Cummings passed away from longstanding health complications. Political dignitaries came to pay their respects at his funeral as the city mourned its longtime representative. And just this month, things came full circle as Nancy Pelosi addressed Cummings directly in her remarks about the House of Representatives’ vote to impeach President Trump.

“There’s one person who isn’t with us in this room, but I know was present all day for the deliberations,” Pelosi said about Cummings at a press conference following the vote earlier this month. “He said, ‘When we’re dancing with the angels the question will be, what did you do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?’ We did all we could, Elijah. We passed the two articles of impeachment.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Youth Lamar Jackson jersey ($50).

Full size official football ($25).

Men’s coat ($99).

Poe mascot statue ($26).

Women’s light-up v-neck sweater($80).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s some truth in that too.

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

Yeah, everything in that funny video is accurate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always, we’re happy to see him.

We’re spoiled. Just about every time Ravens kicker Justin Tucker trots onto the field, we expect to see him kick that little brown football through those bright yellow uprights. And usually, he does.

As Tucker enters his eighth pro season, he’s the most accurate kicker in NFL history, active or retired, booting pigskins through goalposts at a 90% rate. This preseason, he’s at it again, going 7-for-7 on field goal tries, including a 49-yarder in the Ravens’ 25-16 win Thursday night over the Philadelphia Eagles.

A few kicks in August don’t mean much, but, importantly, we know that while other isolated end-of-the-bench kickers often wilt in the big moment— as in when an entire stadium of crazed fans, and millions more on television, are waiting to see whether you’ll be a hero or a goat—Tucker seems immune to pressure, though he says he’s not.

Just this week, in a story that aired on HBO’s Real Sports Tucker said, “When I run out there on the field, I’m nervous, I’m scared.” Sure he is.

The salient point, as the Ravens are about to embark onto a season of transition (including quarterback Lamar Jackson now officially taking the reins as QB1 as well as many other new parts on offense and defense), is that the closest thing that exists to an automatic kicking machine resides here in Baltimore. That’s why, in one of his first orders of business when he officially took over as Ravens general manager at the start of the year, Eric DeCosta made Tucker the richest kicker in NFL history, signing him to a reported four-year, $23 million contract.

If you ask the gregarious, goofy, and multitalented Tucker, who will turn 30 in November and whom we profiled in 2014 for his kicking and, yes—who knew?—opera-singing ability (see: the Royal Farms commercials), it might not be his last big money deal here.

“I haven’t even hit my prime yet,” Tucker told reporters this week. “I’ll leave it at that.”

Wait one second, we’ll pick that up here. Hasn’t hit his prime yet?

This is a guy who, if he retired tomorrow, would probably be a Hall-of-Famer (especially rare for a kicker) and join the other Ravens greats in the Ring of Honor at M&T Bank Stadium. He’s the clutchest of clutch (games against Pittsburgh and Denver are front of mind) and as dependable as a water main break in winter. He hasn’t missed a field goal inside 50 yards since 2015. He has 13 game-winning kicks. Pro kicker wannabees come here in the preseason to get exposure to possibly play for another team and pick up a few tips, because they know no one is going to unseat Tucker from his position as Best Kicker Ever.

Plus, Tucker has endeared himself to the community by booting balls in places like Patterson Park and singing “Ave Maria” at a Catholic Charities benefit concert and later performing the same tune to win an NFL talent show. He donated the $50,000 prize to the Baltimore School of the Arts. It’s easy to forget Tucker was a rookie out of the University of Texas, an undrafted free agent during the Ravens’ Super Bowl winning season in 2012. It feels like he’s worn his No. 9 jersey for much longer (and as if Matt Stover never left).

So, we haven’t seen Tucker’s best yet? That’s a welcome bit of great news, and entirely realistic.

Unless you’re someone like Tom Brady and have the means to employ a personal wellness apparatus to keep you spry despite your 40-plus years, kicker is the position most likely to allow for longevity in the violent world of professional football.

Tucker made his “prime” comment during a series of questions that included a query about if he was looking to play as long as, say, 46-year-old Indianapolis Colts and former New England Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri. (That would mean Tucker would play through the year 2035.) It sure sounded like he had similar intentions.

“He ain’t even hit his prime yet,” Tucker said of Vinatieri. “The guy is incredible. He’s one of my heroes in sports, in football. Any specialist who wants to get better, you have to watch the guys who have been doing it really, really well, or are currently doing it well, and who have done it well for a long time.”

Tucker’s already done that. And when he does miss, like during an extra-point try last season against the New Orleans Saints, it almost feels surreal. The fans always forgive him, but those rare misses serve as eye-popping provocations and gnawing reminders to him.

Case in point: Tucker keeps the very ball that he kicked wide right from 25 yards away—with the aid of a wind gust—in that one-point loss against the Saints on a shelf in his house, next to other commemorative balls he’s received during his career, like one for his franchise record 61-yarder against the Detroit Lions in 2013. He’s said it was as pivotal a moment in his career as any.

“I feel like I’m at a point in my career where it’s more important to take stock each and every day and appreciate every moment for what it’s worth,” Tucker said after Tuesday’s practice. “For me, that just means taking it one kick at a time. My goals for the season are as simple as coming out here and making whatever kicks I have lined up for me in practice. That might sound really elementary, but that is the truth. I just really try to take it one kick at a time.”

Because, hey, even the great ones can be expendable. Tucker spoke to reporters in Philadelphia on an afternoon when, in a meeting arranged by Ravens assistant special teams coach Randy Brown (who also, weirdly, is the former mayor of Evesham, New Jersey), U.S. women’s soccer national team member and Garden State native Carli Lloyd was present at the Ravens joint practice with the Eagles.

Tucker, a few others, and now at least 1.5 million on Twitter watched the two-time World Cup champ kick a 55-yard field goal, dead center, out of the hold of the Ravens’ punter Sam Koch, after she made a handful from shorter distances. The performance caused one Hall of Famer to say a team should seriously consider giving Lloyd a tryout now.

“It was impressive,” said Tucker, the authority on such matters. It was also a very Tucker-like thing to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

EAT

Sept. 2: La Tomatina Tomato Fight & Festival

La Cuchara. 3600 Clipper Mill Rd. 1-8 p.m. Free. $18-20 fee for tomato fight.

On the list of ingredients that are synonymous with Maryland summer, tomatoes rank pretty high. This weekend, Basque-inspired favorite La Cuchara is devoting an entire festival to the ripe fruits while they’re still in season. Spend your Sunday sipping Bloody Marys, trying your luck in a tomato-eating contest and tomato-toss games, and partaking in the restaurant’s second annual La Tomatina fight to benefit local youth development program Baltimore SquashWise. Throw on a pair of goggles and pelt the plump fruits at friends and neighbors in the massive tomato war—which mimics the annual end-of-summer ritual in Buñol, Spain. Spectators can enjoy Union Craft beers, Spanish wines, $1 oysters, and signature pintxos (small bites) while watching all of the action from the sidelines.

DRINK

Aug. 30-Sept. 2: Space Camp at The Elk Room

The Elk Room. 1010 Fleet St. 4 p.m.-2 a.m.

Everyone once in a while, The Elk Room in Harbor East likes to shed its swanky speakeasy vibe and switch things up with a pop-up theme. (Who could forget when the cocktail bar transformed into an ’80s ski lodge last winter? Or the SoCal Summer-inspired menu a few months back?) This time around, the spot is running with a space camp theme—featuring a galaxy-inspired food menu and live DJ spinning synth tunes all weekend long. Of course, the drink options will also be out of this world. Bar manager Andrew Nichols has crafted a special selection of cocktails based on how he thinks each planet would taste. Make your way through the solar system with options like “Uranus” (Maker’s 46 Bourbon, blueberry, beet, wildflower honey, horseradish, and saline) and “Mars,” which mixes aperol with Peychaud’s bitters, yellow chartreuse, and sour watermelon. Space suits and alien costumes are encouraged.

SEE

Aug. 30-Sept. 2: Baltimore Art, Antique, and Jewelry Show

Baltimore Convention Center. 1 W. Pratt St. Times vary. $20

If you’re looking for an indoor activity to escape the heat (and predicted scattered storms) this weekend, spend some time strolling around Maryland’s largest antique event. The 38th annual bazaar is a Labor Day Weekend tradition for local dealers and collectors, showcasing more than 200,000 individual pieces from as far as Italy, England, China, and Japan. Highlights to look out for this year will include the iconic Norman Rockwell painting “Boy Graduate” and a vintage Bally Quarter slot machine dating back to 1941. Plus, there will be more than 30 top silver specialists, luxury watches and rings on display from local jeweler Samuelson’s Diamonds, botanical-themed porcelain works by Boston-based artist Katherine Houston, and the return of the captivating Booth Talk series—which allows visitors to hear many of the artists address overarching topics that inspire their work.

HEAR

Sept. 1: The Love Boat Yacht Rock Tribute

Union Collective. 1700 W. 41 St. 5-10 p.m. Free.

Union Craft Brewing is waving goodbye to summer in style this Saturday. Beginning at 1 p.m., the brewery is bringing back its second-annual Fiesta Del Sol—an end-of-season soiree featuring tacos and Micheladas from Clavel, The Charmery’s icy paletas (popsicles), music spun by DJ James Nasty, and plenty of baby pools and sprinklers for cooling off. But it wouldn’t be a proper summer sendoff without a live yacht rock soundtrack to sway to. After the party, stick around to hear The Love Boat—a smooth rock tribute band made up of musicians from local greats Psycho Killers, The Bridge, Electric Love Machine, and Yellow Dubmarine, with special guest vocalist Ms. Sara. Sip a cold one and enjoy the chill sounds (think the likes of Toto and Steely Dan) as the sun sets over Hampden.

DO

Aug. 31: Baltimore Bike Party Purple Friday Ride

St. Mary’s Park. 600 N. Paca St. 6:30-11:30 p.m. Free

In Baltimore, one of the few upsides to saying sayonara to beach trips and snowball weather is the return of the Ravens. And since we’re now well into preseason, this Friday is officially an occasion to paint the town purple. Don your most festive football attire for this evening bike ride around the city that will descend into M&T Bank Stadium for an after party with cold beers and a custom photo booth by Side A Photography. As an added bonus, for the first time ever WTMD will be broadcasting a special Baltimore Bike Party playlist throughout the night, so that participants tuning in via the station’s mobile app can jam out together while pedaling through the streets.

The Baltimore Ravens drafted Torrey Smith out of the University of Maryland in the second round in 2011, winning a Super Bowl title in 2012 with the help of eight touchdowns from the standout receiver during the regular season.

Smith added two more touchdowns in the thrilling overtime playoff win over the Denver Broncos that year, but the moment the city embraced Smith came earlier in his second year in Baltimore.

In the early morning hours before a Week 3, Sunday night match-up at M&T Bank Stadium with the New England Patriots, Smith learned his younger brother had died in a motorcycle accident. Obviously distraught, Smith visited with his family in Virginia and then decided to return to Baltimore and play to honor of his brother, catching two touchdowns in a game-winning effort and receiving the game ball for his performance. 

“They [my family] didn’t know I was going to play until the last minute. I texted my Mom when I got to the stadium,” an emotional Smith said afterward during the post-game press conference. “She was excited about it. She said, ‘Of course he would want you to play.’ He admired me so much, which is what makes it so tough.”

Smith, of course, left the Ravens after the 2014 season, but never forgot the city where he got his professional start—even after winning a second Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles this season. In 2016, he was named a nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award for his work centered in Baltimore while playing for the San Francisco Giants.

For the seventh straight year, Smith announced last wee that he will be hosting the Torrey Smith Family Fund Charity Basketball Game in Baltimore this offseason. The event, which will include current and former Ravens, is scheduled for March 17 at the Royal Farms Arena. 

The Torrey Smith Family Fund supports local after-school and teen mentoring programs as well as the Tevin Jones $5,000 college scholarship named after his younger brother. By the way, for some fun, check Smith’s Twitter feed. His 3-year-old son T.J.’s recent interview on the NFL Network is the best post-game Super Bowl interview to date.

(One more thing, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Smith and his wife Chanel Williams got married in Baltimore, making the cover of our sister pub, Baltimore Bride.)

Even manager Buck Showalter got in on the action, telling The Sun, “the thing I loved about it the most is that there was a Yankee fan trying to get into the field of play that he took it away from. That was probably the highlight for me.”

USA defeated the Dominican Republic 6-3 and went on to conquer Puerto Rico in the final, 8-0, to become the World Baseball Classic champions. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Keeping up with the Ravens.
With all the recent changes to the Ravens roster, let’s make sure we are all up to speed:

Hello: Running back Danny Woodhead, safety Tony Jefferson, and cornerback Brandon Carr.

Bye-Bye: Fullback Kyle Juszczyk and center Jeremy Zuttah are heading to San Francisco. Receiver Kamar Aiken is headed to Indianapolis. Defensive backs Shareece Wright and Kendrick Lewis were waived and safety Ladarius Webb was released.

Welcome Back: Quarterback Ryan Mallet, receiver Mike Wallace, linebacker Anthony Levine Sr., and defensive tackle Brandon Williams. (We’re particularly excited about Williams, both for his on-field performance and his killer dance moves.)

Good news for the Flacco-Pitta bromance fans: Tight end Dennis Pitta—Flacco’s favorite target and BFF—is staying in Baltimore. Pitta restructured his contract taking a pay cut for both the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Last year, Pitta led the league in tight end receptions (86) after being forced to take a two-year hiatus due to a hip injury. According to Ravens salary-cap expert Brian McFarland, Pitta’s cut will save the Ravens $2.5 million in cap space.

Lady Terps headed to the Sweet Sixteen.
Fear the Turtle! Despite receiving a lower than expected third seed, Maryland women’s basketball team continues to shine as they clinched their 13th NCAA Sweet Sixteen spot after defeating West Virginia 83-56 on March 19. West Virginia had a five-game winning streak going into the contest but the Maryland squad proved the Mountaineers were no match. At the end of the first half, freshman guard Destiny Slocum lands a buzzer-beating, three-point shot from beyond half court.

This marks the Terrapins 25th appearance in the NCAA tournament. Since 2002, coach Frese has led the team to eight Sweet Sixteens, six Elite Eights, three Final Fours and in 2006, the NCAA title. The Terps are set to face off against the Oregon Ducks in Bridgeport, CT on Saturday, March 25.

Purple Macarons at Petit Louis Bistro
Executive pastry chef Michael Brown has been hard at work, churning out these flaky macarons in preparation for football season at Petit Louis. Each one is hand-filled with a special purple cream, and features a hand-sketched Ravens logo on top. Pick up a dozen at the restaurant, or call ahead to order a custom purple macaron tower to throw a new dessert into the mix at your next viewing party or tailgate. Multiple locations including 4800 Roland Ave., 410-366-9393

Stalking Horse’s Purple Slushies
While navigating your way around the seas of purple jerseys in Federal Hill on a gameday, head to this Cross Street watering hole to sip one of its signature boozy slushies. “The Raven,” the bar’s frosty, grape vodka-flavored concoction, is a staple at Stalking Horse during football season. Trust us—the brain freeze is worth it. 26 E. Cross St., 410-244-6722

“Quarterback Crunch” Cupcake at IcedGems Baking
This beloved sweet shop habitually fills its display cases with purple velvet cupcakes and Ravens-themed sugar cookies once preseason hits. But one of its hottest purple-inspired treats is pastry chef Christine Richardson’s “quarterback crunch” cupcake—chocolate cake topped with a swirl of vanilla buttercream, lavender sprinkles, and a mini Nestle’s Crunch bar. Visit the bakery in Reisterstown or catch IcedGems’s cupcake truck on the road to snag one this season. 213 Main Street, Reisterstown, 443-690-7056

Purple bagels at THB Bagels & Deli
Though those mind-altering rainbow bagels have been taking over Instagram lately, we prefer ours in a simple shade of purple. At Towson Hot Bagels, the return of the Ravens means starting your Purple Friday with one of these beauties—whether topped with bacon and eggs or classic cream cheese. Multiple locations including 16 Alleghany Ave., Towson, 410-337-0006

The Raven Roll at Ruby 8 Noodle Bar
As an ode to the city, this sushi spot inside Horseshoe Casino—which recently debuted a second location at McHenry Row in Locust Point—features a “Raven Roll” on its menu. Though there’s nothing purple about it, the specialty roll is filled with lobster and avocado, and topped with hefty mounds of spicy lump crab meat. Multiple locations including 1525 Russell St., 443-931-4580

Baltimore BBQ’s Black Raven Sauce
Baltimore BBQ Company co-founders Adam Rosenblatt and Don Fisher teamed up with local roaster Baltimore Coffee and Tea Company to create their all-natural Black Raven barbecue sauce—a dark mixture fusing brown sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, and ancho chili powder with Baltimore Coffee and Tea’s signature Black Raven coffee blend. Grab a bottle at the Towson Farmers’ Market, or from more than 200 local grocery stores including Eddie’s, Graul’s, and Whole Foods Market.