The Ravens’ reigning Defensive Player of the Year tore his Achilles within the offseason, and their face-of-the-franchise center linebacker was proclaimed accomplished for the yr in mid-October.
They handed their late-game destiny to a rookie free agent who had unexpectedly snatched the kicking job from the veteran who’d misfired on the climactic second of the earlier season.
Their quarterback was taking part in out the final season of his rookie deal with out an extension in place and with debate raging about whether or not he was adequate to be the franchise centerpiece.
They squandered a fourth-quarter lead in Week 2, misplaced by 30 in Week 7 and fired their offensive coordinator in the midst of a three-game December dropping streak. Even within the final sport of the season, they clung to what had been a 22-point lead by their fingernails as a youthful, sooner opponent bore down on them.
If you assume the 2022 Ravens are off to a tumultuous begin, simply bear in mind they don’t have anything on the 2012 Ravens, a staff that by no means appeared to face on stable floor till Ray Lewis and Joe Flacco and John Harbaugh and Ed Reed handed the Lombardi Trophy from one triumphant grip to the following on the finish of a wild night time in New Orleans.
The Ravens are celebrating the tenth anniversary of that staff, their final Super Bowl champion, throughout per week when their present staff is looking for its combating spirit within the wake of one other self-defeating efficiency.
Perhaps it’s a cliché to look again for some cause to consider in what’s forward. Harbaugh, for instance, stated he wouldn’t invoke the story of 2012 to his present gamers as a parable of resilience.
“Yes and no,” he stated. “It’s not something I do; some of the guys do. I’ve heard Josh [Bynes] talk about that; Anthony Levine Sr., Sam Koch — some of the guys that were here — [Justin] Tucker. They mention those kinds of things to the guys every now and then. I don’t usually talk about that kind of thing, unless it’s a specific story. But it’s true of any season, really. We’re capable of achieving everything. OK, let’s go to work.”
Tucker stated he nonetheless attracts on experiences from that season, his first on the way in which to turning into essentially the most correct kicker in league historical past: “There were lessons learned in that 2012 year that certainly have applied to what we’re doing now. … The two of us who are playing currently, still, that were on that particular team, we’re certainly able to draw on those experiences and apply them as necessary, if necessary. This is also a unique team with its own dynamic, trying to figure ourselves out along the way.”
Bynes agreed: “We started off, what, 9-2 that season and ended up losing four out of our last five? Anything can happen in this [2022] season, and we’re still right in the midst of it. We still have a lot of time left to continue to build.”
If the Ravens want proof that horrible luck, shaken religion and humiliating defeat might be stops on the street to the promised land, they may do worse than to review 2012.
We are inclined to do not forget that season by way of the triumphs — Flacco’s heave to Jacoby Jones to maintain them alive on a frigid night time in Denver, playoff vindication towards the New England Patriots, the opening barrage within the Super Bowl and their frantic scramble to stave off the San Francisco 49ers after the lights went out. But it’s equally, maybe extra, instructive to recollect 2012 by way of the missteps and failures, the occasions their backs had been pinned to the wall.
The Ravens considered themselves by way of this lens. A staff of future, working again Ray Rice known as them as their playoff run gained momentum. Lewis defined it as they ready for an AFC championship sport rematch with the Patriots: “We kept keeping each other up and no matter who got hurt, next man up, next man up. And that’s kind of the staple that we’ve had around here for a very, very long time. It’s always next man up, and for us to fight through all the bumps in the roads that we have went through all year, I just think that’s an awesome, awesome credit to our team.”
It started with the tip of the earlier season, when essentially the most proficient, seasoned staff Harbaugh had ever coached got here inside a dropped landing cross and a wayward 32-yard area aim of knocking off the Patriots, who all the time appeared to face in the way in which. A CBS digital camera captured Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs mouthing the phrases “Oh my God,” on the sideline as he watched all of it slip away.
There was no assure the Ravens can be again 12 months later, even with one of the best of luck. Lewis and Reed, their defensive linchpins, can be a yr older, nearing the finishes of their respective NFL rides. Suggs was their successor, the staff’s finest cross rusher and one in every of its loudest voices, however he tore his Achilles in April and was not anticipated again till late within the season, if then. Flacco had led the Ravens to at the least one playoff win annually of his profession, however his statistics didn’t paint him as a rival to Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, and the Ravens had but to pay him franchise-quarterback cash.
How may a Ravens fan not hear echoes of this situation within the setup to 2022, with the staff coming off a string of disappointing season endings, recovering from traditionally terrible harm luck and gazing quarterback Lamar Jackson’s unsure future in Baltimore?
As quickly as they took the sphere, the 2012 Ravens started throwing off blended indicators. They began the season 9-2, which would appear to place them in a unique class than the 3-3 Ravens of this season, however troubling portents abounded.
After they thrashed the Cincinnati Bengals 44-13 of their opener, the Ravens constructed a 23-17 lead on the street towards the Philadelphia Eagles thanks to a few lengthy area objectives from Tucker, the rookie who had taken incumbent Billy Cundiff’s job in coaching camp. But their vaunted protection couldn’t shut the door on Michael Vick, who threw for 371 yards and ran for the game-winning landing within the final two minutes.
Their second defeat was extra troubling nonetheless because the Houston Texans stomped them 43-13, sacking Flacco 4 occasions and intercepting him twice. “There’s no sugar coating it. … They whupped our [butts],” stated Suggs, who had returned from his Achilles harm for the Week 7 matchup. Seven days earlier, Lewis, not at his peak however nonetheless the staff’s verbal chief and most well-known star, had torn his triceps in a slender win over the Dallas Cowboys. He was considered accomplished for the yr and maybe for his profession.
Even because the Ravens returned to profitable after the debacle in Houston, veteran gamers, led by Reed, pulled Harbaugh right into a frank locker-room debate that verged on mutiny, within the phrases of some who witnessed it.
They wanted a miracle, within the type of a fourth-and-29 catch-and-run by Rice, to drag out their ninth win in additional time towards the San Diego Chargers. Next, they misplaced to the Pittsburgh Steelers at house and at Washington in additional time. Harbaugh fired offensive coordinator Cam Cameron, a call he known as essentially the most tough of his teaching profession to that time. But the wheels continued to come back off the next week because the Denver Broncos constructed a 31-3 lead on their method to a simple victory at M&T Bank Stadium. Suggs was taking part in with a torn biceps at this level, and his pal, nostril deal with Haloti Ngata, hobbled on a sprained knee. The Ravens clinched a playoff berth the night time of the Denver defeat because of a loss by the Steelers, however they took little consolation from it. “We’re a 9-5 football team,” Flacco stated. “And it feels like we’re 0-14 right now.”
We know the way the story went from there. Once they reached the doorstep of the postseason, Lewis introduced he was coming again and that the playoff journey can be his final. Bryant McKinnie pulled himself off the scrap heap to begin at left deal with within the playoffs. Anquan Boldin proved to be the hardest receiver the Ravens ever had, and Jones emerged as home-run risk within the clutch. Flacco performed one of the best ball of his life when he was wanted most. They beat Manning in Denver, Brady in Foxborough, Massachusetts and Harbaugh’s brother, Jim, within the Super Bowl. Reed intercepted a cross in his house state and shared a second of mutual appreciation with Harbaugh on the staff bus when it was throughout. Lewis went out on prime.
But there have been many moments in the course of the previous 12 months when this ending would have struck the contributors as far-fetched.
“Anytime there was that feeling of concern, our leadership always pulled us through, in whatever way we needed to at the time,” Tucker recalled. “That’s something that we’re currently working through right now as our own journey of this 2022 football season is unfolding.”
Week 7
BROWNS@RAVENS
Sunday, 1 p.m.
TV: Chs. 13, 9
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
Line: Ravens by 6 1/2
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Source: www.bostonherald.com