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For the 20 players on the bubble, tonight’s game is feast or famine. The 73 man roster must be cut down to 53 tomorrow, so each of those 20 players on the brink of elimination are going to be playing for a job.

Tonight belongs to the personnel decision-makers and those 20 guys, all vying to survive another round of cuts. Unfortunately, tonight does not belong to the die-hard fan who wants to see the starters take a lot of snaps. I’d expect them to shut it down after a quarter of action.

So, what should we expect? Well, here’s what I’m looking for:

• Can the O-Line actually hold down the fort? In what I’d describe as a disaster, the Ravens have been brutally bad about jumping offsides. I know Jared Gaither was ruled academically ineligible by Maryland, but how hard is it for a handful of tree stumps to memorize a snap count and take on blocking assignments?
• Will the defense learn patience? Like a fat 45 year old comic book lovin’, video game playin’ loser at a strip club, the Ravens defense wants to make it rain and get that stripper to show her wares (insert Pac Man Jones joke here) during the first 45 seconds of Warrant’s flesh palace anthem, Cherry Pie. I know it’s kind of a far-fetched analogy, but hear me out — at times, I think the Ravens defense is too anxious to bring the house; to flush the passer out of the pocket; to force a game-changing play. Sometimes I think Rex has the defense thinking too much — which, to be honest, isn’t such a bad thing. That said, when you gamble as much as the Ravens defense, sometimes you lose. Let’s try to cut our losses by not hanging out in the neutral zone before the center snaps the ball.
• With 49 spots likely set, who will play well enough to earn those last 4 spots? My guess is that QB Troy Smith, WRs Devard Darling and Clarence Moore and G Brian Rimpf will fill out the roster.
• How will I be able to watch the game when I’m sitting at a Cardinals/Reds baseball game? Thank you, Google SMS.
• Will McGahee find his second gear? Willis has been hard to watch this preseason. He’s broken off one run of more than 10 yards, and that was in the first game against the Eagles. Ravens fans will go berserk if McGahee starts the season off struggling to break off gains of more than 2 - 3 yards.

I’ll treat this post as an open thread — feel free to load it up with comments about the game for when I get back… I’ll be interested to read what y’all have to say.

I hate the pre-season.  We haven’t had an opening kickoff and ESPN, CBS Sportsline and all of the other media outlets have already started to pontificate as to who the best team will be.

Unamimously, it seems, the Patriots are that team.  Just read this puff-piece the clowns at the Worldwide Bleeder wrote about their beloved New England Patriots:

Maybe it’s the acquisition of Randy Moss, Adalius Thomas and others in a surprisingly active offseason. Maybe it’s the proven leadership of Tom Brady. Or maybe it’s just that the Patriots are due, having failed to reach the Super Bowl the past two seasons, an eternity in the Bill Belichick era.

No matter the reason, the Patriots will enter 2007 wearing the label as the NFL’s best team. In the balloting for our preseason power rankings, each of the voters put the Pats atop his respective list, a clear indication that mercurial Moss is expected to toe the line (or at least minimize his distractions) under Belichick.

Aw.  How touching!

I can’t believe I’m about to do this… but shouldn’t the Colts be the #1 team?  I mean, shit, they just came off winning the freakin’ Super Bowl.  Every time I’ve ever seen power rankings before a season starts, it’s the champs on top until someone can knock them off.  As much as it pains me to say it, the Colts should be #1.  The Patriots should be #2.  Once the season starts, if ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Scouts, Fox Sports, et cetera want to crown the Patriots the best team in the known universe, that’s fine.

But at least show a little respect to the champs.

Anyway, I digress.  I just needed to get that off my chest.  Here’s what ESPN had to say about the Ravens:

Besides having younger legs at RB (Willis McGahee), the Ravens have loads of experience. But the flip side of being a veteran team is being an injury-prone one. Which way that pendulum swings might determine their fate.

I can’t really argue with that.  However, it’s worth nothing that the Ravens have so much depth it’s not even funny.  Should injury hit… Next Man Up!

ESPN and Scouts, Inc. have a really neat feature about each team’s “go-to” play. For the Ravens, not surprisingly, it’s a blitz from Bart Scott:

On this play, Baltimore exploits an offense’s concerns about perimeter pressure with Bart Scott’s (57) explosiveness. At the snap, NT Kelly Gregg (97) knifes into the A gap between the center and left guard, drawing a double-team, while DT Haloti Ngata (92) engages the LT. DE Terrell Suggs (55) bolts around the left corner, forcing the FB to step outside. Jackpot: The middle is open. Scott has less than two seconds to decide if a delayed blitz up the gut is the right move. Chances are, it is.

I bet Rex Ryan saw this online and had a good laugh — there’s no way mere mortals could understand his schemes and blitz packages.

Well, it’s the Thursday before a three-day weekend, football is right around the corner, the draft for my work league is set for this upcoming Tuesday (and I’ve got the 12th pick). Life is good…

With that in mind, I’ve got a lot of links to pass along today. This is the largest Quick Hits yet — so maybe I should amend the title to Long-winded Sprints?

• WBAL has a nice piece up on the fiscal impact of M&T Bank Stadium. Did you know that it brought $216M into the local economy last year? And the Ravens couldn’t afford to pay Adalius Thomas. Tsk, tsk. [WBAL]
• We’re not in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, but if you need a fix, the Professional Cheerleader Blog has a piece up about one of the dudes on the Ravens squad. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…. [Professional Cheerleader Blog]
• Cuts are coming. The Carroll County Times’ Aaron Wilson hazards a guess as to where the chips will fall. [Carroll County Times]
• Another CCT story — this one about Fullback Justin Green. He’s baaaaaack! [Carroll County Times]
• ProFootball365, one of Ravens Touchdown’s favorite football sites, has a nice article about Jared Gaither, and the opportunities he’ll have to play with Jonathan Ogden’s toe giving him the fits. While I’d much rather see Ogden play and Gaither groomed, it ain’t so bad. [RealFootball365]
• USA Today loves Ray Lewis. No, really, they do. Larry Weisman waxes poetic about Ray Ray, comparing him to a supernova. Sounds like someone has a crush! [USA Today]
• Hey, look! Another story about Jared Gaither! This guy rules, and I’m really glad that we picked him up in the supplemental draft. I think the DeCosta/Newsome tandem may have netted the Ravens another start in the making. [The Gazette]
• It wouldn’t be a Quick Hits without Mike Preston caterwauling about Brian Billick and how he handles training camp. [Baltimore Sun]
• Saturday’s roster cuts are looming. 73 down to 53. Edward Lee of the B’more Sun has a look at the decisions that have to be made. [Baltimore Sun]

Quotable:

“Preseason is boring. You’re watching film, and it means nothing. You risk injury for nothing. If I can just stay even keel until the first game, I’m good.”
- Ray Lewis

Since people really like to forecast how their team will do throughout the course of a season, I figured I would post my fearless predictions.

What are yours? Feel free to comment and let me know how far off base I am!

L - @ Cincinnati — tough game to open a season with. After the game, the National media will feel better about themselves for picking the Bengals to win the AFC North. Newsflash: it’s just week 1, guys.

W - Jets — The Mangenius will get his ass handed to him on a silver platter. Pennington will break something when Haloti Ngata finds an opening and delivers the hit of the season, which allows him to ride that massive tidal wave to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

W - Arizona — Easy peasy lemon squeezy. These guys are the Brewers of the football world. You know, the team that everyone says is about the turn the corner but never does?

W - @ Cleveland — Hey, Jamal! Meet Haloti.

W - @ San Francisco — Alex Smith is getting better, Frank Gore is a beast, but both like to fumble. With the Ravens defense, what do you think will happen?

W - St. Louis — Ah, St. Louis. By week 6, you’d think that they would have a special teams unit that was just plain fed up with gift-wrapping field position and hand-delivering it to their opponents. Figurs will rip one off against the Rams; the Defense will roll hard against Bulger, and everyone not named Orlando Pace will be hurting the next day.

W - @ Buffalo — Hrm. They still start JP LOSSman, right?

L - @ Pittsburgh — It’s always tough playing Pittsburgh at home. I don’t think that we’ll repeat last year’s results, but damn, would it be sweet to see Roethlisberger flattened again.

W - Cincinatti — Cincinnati hates playing in Baltimore. It’ll be close, but we’ll win.

W - Cleveland — It’s Cleveland. ‘Nuff said.

L - @ San Diego — In San Diego. If the Chargers have any injuries, we’ll do fine. If they don’t, and Merriman hasn’t been suspended for his steroid/HGH use, we’ll have to take this one on the chin. No shame.

L - New England — I’m scared to death of New England. At this point in the season, they’ll be rolling. Maybe Ben Watson will have justified me making him my keeper in a work fantasy football league. Hopefully not this week.

W - Indianapolis — Finally, we get over the Indy hump. Stupid assholes.

W - @ Miami – Any team desperate enough to start Trent Green after the Daunte Culpepper experiment can’t be winning more than 5 games this season.

W - @ Seattle – The crowd will be a factor in this one… as in, the crowd leaving between the 3rd and 4th quarters. Alexander is losing a step, the O-Line is a mess and who in the hell will Hasselbeck throw to?

W - Pittsburgh — Ah, the home game. We’ll win simply because it’s my birthday and I said so. Plus, I’ll be there. That’s all the reason you need.

It may be a bit homer-ish, but I think that 12-4 is possible. If you account for the ’surprise factor’, it’s conceivable that the Ravens could go 11-5 or 13-3 again.

The only constant is that I’m ready for the season to kick off.  If I was asked by Hank Williams, I would enthusiastically be able to say that yes, sir, I am ready for the football.

Here’s an interesting stat: of all 32 NFL teams, the Ravens will travel the 9th most miles in 2007  (19,732).  The #1 team (St. Louis Rams) travel a whopping 34,352 miles, which includes a trip to Baltimore in October.  Being in the midwest and playing in the NFC west (with trips to Seattle, Arizona and San Francisco), the Rams must really be rackin’ up the Frequent Flier miles.

The team with the least amount of miles in 2007 is the New York Jets (9,186).

You can officially file this under useless information.

… and then there were 73. The roster needs to be trimmed down even further - to 53 players by September 1st.

Things of note:

• 7-year veteran guard Keydrick Vincent was released.
• Running back P.J. Daniels was placed on the Injured Reserve (hamstring) — does this mean that Cory Ross has a spot on the roster?
• Left tackle Jonathan Ogden passed his physical.

And just like that, I look like a complete moron for writing about how J.O. wasn’t a lock to play week one. Reports out of Ravens camp say that Ogden was taken off the PUP list this morning and will begin taking reps in practice. The Baltimore Sun’s story that ran last night online appears to be incorrect — Ogden wants to be ready for week 1.  At any rate, the Ravens needed to get him off the PUP list or risk losing him for the first 6 weeks of the season.

I’d be cautiously optimistic if I were the Ravens — you don’t want to push J.O. too hard and risk aggravating his toe injury. We need him for the deep playoff run we’re going to make!

The quote that we all don’t want to hear showed up in the Baltimore Sun:

“My goal is to get out there for Week 1,” Ogden told The Sun today. “It’s still too soon to really say with any certainty that it’s going to happen.”

Ogden is still on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list. If Ogden cannot start the season, well, it’s looking like Jared Gaither may be the guy who gets plugged in. Oh, John Feinstein, how art imitates life!

If Ogden misses the first game against the Bengals, no big whoop. Didya see what Joey Harrington did against the ‘vaunted’ Bengals defense? It won’t take much to move the chains on the Bengals, but maybe it would be wise to abandon that single-back formation in favor of, oh, I don’t know, another blocker for the weak side, just in case.

Ravens Touchdown spin: Hey, at least Ogden will be fresh for the playoffs!

As reported yesterday by the Baltimore Sun (and referenced on this here blog), Troy Smith is officially out of the frying pan. Drew Olson, however, is in the fire.

We pick up the story (in progress) from The Advocate (a Newark Ohio rag):

Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith has earned the job as the Baltimore Ravens’ third-string quarterback. His place on the team, however, is not yet guaranteed.

The Ravens cut former UCLA quarterback Drew Olson on Monday, leaving the former Ohio State star alone on the depth chart behind starter Steve McNair and backup Kyle Boller.

Ah, but ‘ole Troy ain’t out of the fire yet. Oh, no. Head coach Brian Billick is not sure if the Ravens will carry two or three QB’s.

“What still has to be determined is if we’ll carry two or three quarterbacks on the active roster,” Baltimore coach Brian Billick said. “Last year we carried two.”

So, what does this mean? Well, at a bare minimum, welcome to the practice squad — quite possibly the easiest of all jobs.

Ravens staff seem to like the potential they have with Smith. His biggest cheerleader is offensive coordinator Rick Neuheisel.

You just know there’s loads and loads of potential there,” Neuheisel said. “It’s difficult in the short time that we’ve been with him to get all that out of him, especially because he’s trying to indoctrinate himself into a new offense, new terminology and all that kind of stuff.

“We made the decision to bank on the huge upside that Troy has,” Neuheisel said.

Honestly - did anyone think that Troy Smith would be cut after they gave him that huge signing bonus? Not me, and certainly not Tony at Ravens 24×7. We’re some right-thinkin’ dudes.

Well, you knew the roster cuts were coming.  It looks like Drew Olson has officially lost the job to Troy Smith.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

The Ravens won’t announce the players who were cut to get down to the 75-player maximum (and don’t have to until tomorrow), but there were several players missing from today’s portion of practice open to the media, and the most glaring absence was quarterback Drew Olson. Olson was battling rookie fifth-round draft pick Troy Smith for the No. 3 position.

Here’s hoping that Troy Smith picks it up and can make the most of this opportunity!