The Baltimore Ravens possess perhaps the most intimidating defense of their generation. They set NFL records with it and seem to relish these facts as much as they enjoy boasting about them.
Sound vaguely familiar?
Try as they might to assume the distinction, the Ravens may not yet be qualified to procure the mantel of the 1985 Bears, the modern-day standard bearer for suffocating defense. But they can compete with those Bears’ verbal artistry and flair for the dramatic.
“We just enjoy playing football and take pride in our jobs, that’s the main thing,” defensive tackle Lional Dalton said. “We’re just having fun. When a team is tight, they usually lose. We like to stay loose.”
Any looser and duct tape might be needed.
Dalton isn’t even a starter, but that didn’t stop him from explaining to anyone who stopped by his locker stall after the Ravens’ AFC divisional playoff victory over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday what his linemates had in mind with their group purchase of camouflage army fatigues.
“We wore them to breakfast, then came out early and jogged around the field in them,” Dalton said. “We were just trying to scare them.”
Former Bears defensive lineman Dan Hampton is somewhat amused by the Ravens, whose 165 points allowed broke the ’86 Bears’ record of 187 for fewest points allowed in a 16-game season.
“Baltimore has, what, a year and a half of playing pretty good?” Hampton said.
“[Wearing army fatigues] almost hearkens back to the Miami Hurricanes grating on everybody the wrong way. It was a lot of fun to see them get shot down. Baltimore, in many regards, is setting itself up to have a harder fall.
“They’re really trying to cash in [on their personality], but they’re way premature.”
This from a member of the team that recorded the “Super Bowl Shuffle” the day after their only loss of the ’85 season in Miami, and nearly two months before Super Bowl XX.
“The Super Bowl Shuffle was part of our team’s personality,” said Hampton, who wasn’t in the video. “With Baltimore it’s more of a self-promotion deal.”
Former Washington quarterback Joe Theismann said he still has nightmares–literally–of playing against the ’85 Bears defense. He also remembers the source of their verbal energy.
“If you’re going to compare the Bears and the Ravens, then you have to compare Jim McMahon and Trent Dilfer,” he said. “And there’s obviously no comparison there–in many ways.
“As much as the Bears were a dominant defense, Jim was the true personality on that team and his attitude carried over to both sides of the ball.”
The Ravens say they had the same attitude last season when they were 8-8 and only now seem to be gaining attention for it. To be sure, the reputation was solidified in the weeks after the regular season and leading up to the playoff game against Tennessee when defensive end Rob Burnett made a fairly typical comment: “When we go out there and play our game, Jim Brown couldn’t run on us.”
Still, they object when characterized as arrogant. “I think people mistake confidence for conceit,” Burnett said.
To be fair, their AFC Central rival Titans seem to bring the Ravens to a verbal peak.
“We felt Tennessee disrespected us by saying they had the best defense and we played off of that,” Dalton said. “They said if you play consistently, we always mess up eventually and beat ourselves. That fed us the fuel we needed.”
Of course, the Titans did in fact have the NFL’s top-ranked defense based on total yardage allowed, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Explained Ravens coach Brian Billick: “Going against the odds, you have to take that mentality on the road. It’s us against the world, even if it’s fabricated a little bit.”
Hampton said the dominating ’85 Bears relied on sports’ oldest motivational tool at times. “Sometimes it was a little contrived, sometimes a little embarrassing to wallow in the `everybody-is-against-us, feel-sorry-for-us’ stuff,” he said. “But I think all football teams have to go back to that emotion at times, that it’s a war, rally the troops around each other. All good coaches try to bring that out.”
And all the better when it works, Hampton said. “Everybody wants to feel vindicated. To think no one expects you can do something and then you do it, then you show everybody.”
“That,” said Theismann, “is why the Bears were so admired. If you’re not willing to put yourself on the line verbally, then you’re probably not willing to put yourself on the line any other way either. If you come out and make a statement, you’d better be ready to back it up, and the Bears always were.”
Before the Bears shut out the Los Angeles Rams 24-0 in the NFC championship game to advance to Super Bowl XX, defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan predicted running back Eric Dickerson would have at least three fumbles.
He had two.
“If they would have run him more [than 17 times],” Ryan noted afterward, “he would have had three.”
Billick said his players had no choice but to speak their minds going into the Titans game. “When you go into the lion’s den, you don’t tippy-toe in,” Billick explained after the win over Titans. “You carry a spear, you go in screaming like a banshee and kick the door in and say, `Where’s the son of a [gun]? If you go in any other way, you’re going to lose. . . .
“Our guys respect their opponent, they really do. It’s just confidence in their abilities.”
Like the Bears before them, the Ravens have a sense of humor.
Sharpe, a media darling throughout his career who gained widespread attention during his two Super Bowl appearances with Denver, has kept the schtick going with the Ravens, expressing mock anger Sunday at Titans fans leaving the game early.
“They’re calling us all kind of names, then all of a sudden we get up by a touchdown and they start leaving,” he said. “That’s not right, man. They should be made to stay. I think I’m going to go to Commissioner Tagliabue and say, `Look, if a fan comes to a game and they rag on the other team, when the other team wins, you’ve got to stay until the other team leaves the stadium.’ I think that’s only fair.”
At least one member of the Baltimore organization, however, is not amused by the Ravens’ trash talk.
“Frankly, they talk too boldly,” team owner Art Modell said after Baltimore’s victory over Tennessee. “There was too much talking. I promise there won’t be as much talking this week.”
But Modell may need to speak louder if he wants to be heard in his own locker room. “Hey, Art, guess what?” Sharpe yelled as Modell walked over to congratulate him. “We’re the new bullies of the AFC.”
Modell apparently needn’t worry too much about Sunday’s AFC championship game against the Raiders. It’s the teams’ first meeting since 1998, and “it’s hard to talk trash about somebody you don’t know anything about,” Sharpe said.
As for an encore to the camouflage fatigues, Dalton gave away his team’s plan. “This week we’re going to come in just jocks and boots,” he said.
But all kidding aside . . .
“People don’t have any idea of what we’ve been through the last three or four years,” Ravens linebacker Jamie Sharper said. “We’ve gone through a lot to get here. We’re not talking trash, we’re just saying what we feel.”
More to the point, “We’re just going to take the spotlight and grab it,” Sharper said.
