Lost in the drunken confusion (see also: me) of the New Year and Brian Billick firing is the Ravens 2008 home/away opponents.  While everyone at the New Year’s party I’m at thinks I’m totally dorky because I walked away from the keg of delicous Schlafly Hefeweizen (right out of my beautiful kegerator) to make this post, I felt obligated and I hope you can sympathize.  Oh, the sacrifices I make (including posting this with Internet Explorer)…

Home: Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans, Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins

Away: Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants

Looking at the schedule from a traveling to see the team perspective, I’ll be driving/flying to the Bengals, Browns and Colts games and hoping to make it to M&T for the Jaguars and Eagles games. 

Of course, this is drunk me saying this.  Sober me has different plans.  Let’s just hope that drunk me prevails.

At any rate, HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM RAVENS TOUCHDOWN!!!

This post is rife with spelling errors. I apologize. Kind of. Okay, so I blame copious amounts of beer.

Well, Christmas came a few days late for some in Ravens nation — Head Coach Brian Billick was fired today, less than 24 hours removed from the conclusion of the 2007 season. You can imagine my surprise when I returned home from the grocery store with oodles of booze for tonight’s New Year’s Eve festivities and flipped on the NFL Network — I was floored.

Good thing I picked up plenty of champagne. I’ve got a lot of stuff to toast this evening.

Not shocked in the least bit, Billick released a statement shortly after being let go. From WBAL:

“It has been a great ride with the Ravens and the fans here. My family and I have grown to love this area, and this is where we will continue to live.

“I’ve always bragged that this is the best organization, and it is because of the people here. They are the most competent. They made my job easier because of the support they give to make sure the focus is always about finding a way to win. In particular, my relationship with Ozzie Newsome is special. I think the way we worked is the way coaching and personnel should. I’ll miss our scrimmaging about how to make things work for the team.

“The passion, the dedication and the willingness to work by the players is so appreciated. Even in this difficult season, they fought through it. My respect for the players - every single one who has played for the Ravens in the last 9 years - is hard to articulate. They have my complete respect and admiration.

“I believe in the partnership that Steve Bisciotti has assembled. The process does work. I was part of that. He had to make a hard decision, and he did what he believes is best for the Ravens. We are friends and will remain friends.”

And Bisciotti’s statement about the 180 departure from “Brian Billick will return next season” type statements that were made earlier this season:

“I just changed my mind. I can’t explain it to you. It’s the toughest decision I’ve had to make.”

Earlier today, Mike Preston reported that Bisciotti sent some team employees to interview players about Billick. From the Sun story:

According to a report on Fox’s pre-game show, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti sent some team employees into the locker room to conduct interviews with players about whether coach Brian Billick had lost control of his team.

According to the report, Billick had, in fact, lost the players.

No shock there, but this decision is about money. Bisciotti will bring Billick back for one more season but force him to add an offensive coordinator.

Hopefully, that person won’t be a yes man for Billick, and the Ravens might be onto something. With a new offensive coordinator, there is a long-shot chance they might get left tackle Jonathan Ogden back for another season.

I’m not really shocked that Preston was wrong, but I honestly didn’t see this coming either. I thought that Bisciotti would see that it was a $15M decision and keep Billick around for another season and force him to turn over playcalling duties to an OC. Again, I’m floored (but excited) about the news.

Finally, rumors are running rampant that defensive coordinator Rex Ryan is the last man standing. Apparently, all of the coaches were summoned into a room with Bisciotti and Newsome. Rex Ryan was escorted out and all of the remaining coaches were fired.

The massacre at 1 Winning Drive has sparked a new era of Ravens football.

Media reactions:

• Baltimore Ravens (official site)
• Baltimore Sun
• Washington Post
• WBAL
• ESPN
• Fox Sports
• Sporting News
• MSNBC
• Examiner

Blog reactions:

• Ebony Bird
• Blogimore Ravens
• B’More Birds Nest
• Inside Charm City
• The Big Lead
• The Loss Column
• ExtremeRavens forums
• Die Hard Steel (speculation that Billick is headed to Atlanta)

Your turn:

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Edit: The post had so much traffic it brought down the entire Sports Cartel Blog Network server! Lawls…

You’ll have to forgive the brevity of this game preview. Today is my birthday and I’m still recovering a little from last night’s pre-birthday festivities. I’ll be recovering from tonight’s birthday festivities tomorrow and then New Year’s Eve festivities on Tuesday. If anyone knows how to bump your name up on the liver replacement list, I’m all ears.

We kind of suck

Let’s face it: the Ravens are probably going to lose their 10th straight decision today. In case you missed the last 9 games, we kind of suck. It’s so bad that loyal season ticket holders are selling tickets to the terrible towel-toting tools in Black and Gold. And let me tell you — there’s nothing I hate more than seeing those f*cking towels waving in our house.

All pleasantries aside, if the Steelers jump out to an early lead, it’ll turn into a home game for them as Ravens fans head for the turnstiles.

What’s at stake

For one team, a complete sweep of the division. For another, a complete shut-out by division foes.

For one team, the possibility of the #3 seed in the AFC (with a Steelers win and a Chargers loss). For another team, pride.

For me, I just want to see an entertaining game. Today is my birthday and I would like to at least see the Ravens put up a fight. However, something tells me that the team was done by week 10 and are just going through the motions. We’ll see.

Calling off the dogs

The Steelers will be rolling in to town with some notables missing. According to Die Hard Steel, the worthy Steelers blog counterpart on the Sports Cartel Blog Network, QB Ben Roethlisberger will sit and QB Charlie Batch will start, LT Marvel Smith is out with back surgery and T Max Starks will start in Smith’s stead. It’s also looking like SS Troy Polamalu and QB Blower-Upper/Steelers’ team MVP LB James “Silverback” Harrison will be watching form the sidelines, too. Pro Bowl RB Willie Parker will also sit, as I’m sure he can’t put much weight on his foot.

Thank the deity of your choosing that James Harrison won’t be starting on Sunday. In week 9, on Monday Night Football, Harrison destroyed the Steve McNair/Kyle Boller fumble factory like the firebombing of Dresden in WWII. In one of the most dominant defensive performances I’ve ever seen, Harrison recorded 9 tackles, 3 1/2 sacks, 2 forced fumbles and 1 interception.

Roethlisberger is also sitting. In the same salt-in-wound Monday Night Football game, Roethlisberger threw for 5 scores in the first half, spotting the Steelers to a 35-7 halftime lead. Against the Rams in week 16, Roethlisberger had his 3rd career perfect passer rating game (158.3). I like to bag on Big Ben, but it’s looking like I’ll have to eat a hot plate of crow: he’s *gulp* having a monster season and deserves all the accolades.

The Ravens, on the other hand, will be without a lot of notables due to injury. QB Kyle Boller (head), TE Todd Heap (thigh), RB Willis McGahee (chest), S Gerome Sapp (thigh), TE Quinn Sypniewski (head), TE Daniel Wilcox (thigh) and WR Demetrius Williams (ankle) are listed as Out on the team injury report. RB Mike Anderson (thigh), WR Mark Clayton (back) LB Ray Lewis (back) are listed as Questionable. LB Edgar Jones (foot) and T Jonathan Ogden (thigh) as Probable.

Without our top 3 tight ends, it looks like it’s up to Lee Vickers. Did I just type that?

Prediction

We’ll see more of the same as the Ravens stumble, fumble and flail our way to our 10th straight loss. Garbage time continues to be our friend, as we score the only meaningful points of the game late in the 4th quarter.

We’ve now gone 76 games since the last Ravens victory.  Bring on the draft!

Owner Steve Biscotti would have to be a brain-dead moron to raise prices after this season. Thankfully, he’s not Dan Snyder. The Sun is reporting that prices will stay the same for 2008, but 2009 is another story all together.

While this is certainly good news, it in no way makes up for the fact that the on-field product this season has blown massive chunks.

Imagine yourself as a Yankees fan. Pinstripes Daily, our New York Yankees blog, is reporting that Boss Hank has put on his Dan Snyder hat and raised prices by as much as 100%!!! As if the already crowded secondary ticket market doesn’t inflate prices that much already, can you imagine trying to see a game at Yankee Stadium now? Next you’ll tell me that beer is a $12.50 affair…

Anyhoo, it’s good to know that Biscotti has a barometer of fan-price tolerance. He knows what the market is willing to bear, so if he wants more money, he’ll have to put a better team on the field.

Well, it’s official now: UCLA made the decision to hire Ravens OC Rick Neuheisel.

Happy trails, Rick… and best of luck with those Bruins!

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Only in this soap opera, Ronald Stach, aka “the Goof on the Roof”, is a deadbeat dad with delusions of grandeur. Wait — isn’t that a popular soap opera plot line?

Plot synopsis: On December 12, 2007, Ronald Stach had enough of the Ravens and their piss-poor play, and decided to protest by sleeping on the roof of his favorite bar, vowing not to come down until the Ravens won or Billick was fired. The media was called and ‘ole Ronnie Stach had his 15 minutes of fame.

Fed up with all the media attention that the Goof was getting, Goof’s ex-wife, Kelly Stach, decided to blow the whistle on all the child support money he owed her. Sha-zam!

With each interview that her former husband gave to television and newspapers about his obsession with the Baltimore Ravens, Kelly Stach’s frustration grew.

For more than two weeks, the Dundalk woman stood on the sidelines as Ronald Stach - dubbed the “Goof on the Roof” - became a celebrity for camping out atop a Southeast Baltimore bar until the hometown football team snapped its losing streak.

Kelly Stach was determined to expose her former husband, a part-time construction worker, whom she calls a deadbeat dad.

“I just think it’s horrible that everyone out there thought he was this great supporter of the Ravens, and he hasn’t supported his own kid in the last 18 years,” Kelly Stach said in an interview yesterday.

On Wednesday, Kelly Stach said, she called Baltimore police to let them know that her former husband was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court in connection with a child support case, in which court documents say he owes her $34,465. That figure is as of 2004, and Kelly Stach said the amount now is about $43,000.

So what have we learned?

1. Don’t f*ck with Kelly Stach.
2. Pay your child support. On time.
3. Being a media whore can come back to bite you in the ass.
4. The Ravens lost to the Dolphins on purpose*, presumably to keep this idiot on a roof.
5. The Goof’s struggles pale in comparison to those of the village of Anatevka. He also was sans-fiddler.

The Goof’s antics remind me of the 2007 Ravens season — a fumble, then an opponent recovery. Only in this instance, the correct team ended up with the ball. I could go on and on about deadbeat dads, but I won’t — the Goof painted a pretty nice picture.

* I was so tempted to write “porpoise.” Get it?

Jeffri Chadiha of ESPN.com picked MVPs for each of the 32 NFL teams.  I honestly can’t find anything wrong with his choices for the AFC North:

Pittsburgh: Ben Roethlisberger, QB. After an injury-plagued, error-filled 2006 campaign, Big Ben has proven that his troubles are behind him. He’s going to his first Pro Bowl because he has shown that he can handle an offense built around his strengths.

Cleveland: Derek Anderson, QB. All you have to know about Anderson is that Browns general manager Phil Savage said he “saved our season.” Anderson also happens to be the most improved player in the NFL.

Cincinnati: T.J. Houshmandzadeh, WR. There haven’t been many positives for the Bengals this season. Houshmandzadeh’s career-high and league-best 103 receptions (through 15 games) — along with his first Pro Bowl appearance — qualifies as one of the few.

Baltimore: Ed Reed, FS. He’s still the best playmaking safety in the NFL.

When you take in to account that Reed’s playmaking ability has been stripped away to help with the patchwork secondary, his season has been pretty darn remarkable.

It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone with a pulse that the Ravens are in desparate need of an offensive overhaul. Therefore, when people start putting one and one together, they sometimes get two, three… or Martz.

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Lions’ Offensive Coordinator Mike Martz may be on the move in 2008.

Martz has a long-standing reputation as an offensive ‘genius’ (sound familiar to anyone else?), leading the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl victory as an OC and a Super Bowl appearance as a HC. Previously, he served as the QB coach of the Los Angeles Rams (1992-94), WR coach of the St. Louis Rams (1995-96) and QB coach of the Washington Redskins (1997-98) before becoming the Rams’ OC in 1999, when he led the Rams to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV.

During the seven-year tenure with the St. Louis Rams, Martz was involved with two of the franchise’s three Super Bowl appearances.

However, if you ask anyone in the Motor City about Martz, they’ll tell you that he failed to deliver the same high-octane offense that his reputation would lead you to expect. Again, sound familiar?

From the Detroit Free Press (plus bonus Edwin Mulitalo nugget):

Martz arrived here with a well-earned reputation as an offensive whiz. The problem is that when you bring in Martz, you get more than just his brain. You get a coordinator who still thinks of himself as one of the best head coaches in the league. You get a coach who expects to build his own offense, which is not necessarily the offense the head coach wants.

You get a man who bats his eyes at his own playbook. Martz would need a million X’s and O’s to show how he feels about his X’s and O’s.

And because Martz sees himself as chairman of the NFL chapter of Mensa, he expects to have more input into personnel than most offensive coordinators. That’s a problem, because Martz’s talent evaluation needs some work.

Martz on Tatum Bell, before this season: “Tatum right now is a different level. He’s better than I thought he’d be, to be honest with you … He’s the whole package. … He’s got so much juice to him.”

Bell has not played since early October.

Martz on the talent on this year’s offense: “We don’t feel short anywhere.”

Martz on new offensive linemen George Foster and Edwin Mulitalo: “I think that George and Edwin are substantially better than maybe what we had at this point last year.”

Foster was a total bust and Mulitalo, who missed Sunday’s game with a concussion, has been mediocre.

So I’m here as a voice of reason: as nice as it would be to bring in Martz to reform our offensive system, as nice as it would be to see Martz using 4 WR sets like they were going out of style, as nice as it would be to see Martz using two TEs as receivers, not blockers, I just don’t see it happening.

Mike Martz and Brian Billick have egos bigger than the world’s largest artichoke. Do you really think that Newsome and Biscotti would let something like that happen?

First, I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. In this abortion of a season (the Ravens, not the Holiday), we had very little to be excited about. We lost more Pro Bowl players to injury than any other team in the league and we’re riding a 9-game losing streak in to the last game of the season against a team that can could pitch a divisional shutout (against a team who is struggling to find its first division win of the season).

Could it get any worse?

Of course!

Willis McGahee, the running back that made you say “Jamal WHO??“, will sit out the final game of the season with a pair of cracked ribs. McGahee was everything the Ravens could hope for in a trade. At times, he provided the only offense on drives that would have otherwise stalled. At times he managed to bounce away from a hole that closed and find open space on the outside. He had cutback ability and amazing field vision — something that the recently departed Jamal Lewis “rediscovered” in Cleveland — but more on that later (trust me, I’ve got a lot to say about the rejuvenated Lewis).

1,207 rushing yards. 1,438 total net yards of offense from scrimmage. 7 touchdowns. Not bad for a guy running behind our offensive line, eh? Not bad for a guy who Billick loved to call that quick out behind the LoS that every defense in the NFL had no trouble figuring out, eh?

Rest up, Willis. You’ve been everything you advertised yourself to be. We’ll stick it to ‘em next season.

With the holidays looming and all the last-minute planning my wife and I are doing with family, friends and each other, I’ve been negligent in putting together a game preview. Thus, we’ll skip the preview and go right to the gameday post.

Bringing everyone up to speed, Kyle Boller will sit, and Troy Smith will start. But you knew that — you read the blog.

The players seem to be on board with Smith and that was never more apparent than when he came in for the injured Boller in last week’s breakdown against the Dolphins.

“Troy is a winner,” Willis McGahee said. “He has won a championship and he’s been in big-time games. This is his first big-time game in the NFL, and I have every bit of confidence in him.”

“Troy is a football player, and that’s what I love about him,” Derrick Mason said. “He goes out there, makes plays and produces regardless of how big you are and what type of quarterback they say you are or are not.”

Unfortunately, Smith is thrown to the wolves this week as he takes on the sack-hungry Seahawks, who are second in the NFL with 41 sacks. If McNair and Boller can be tossed around like rag dolls in the pocket, Smith will really need to utilize his scrambling ability to avoid pressure and keep emergency back-up Cullen Finnerty on the bench. We don’t need a quarterback controversy, people.

Only a few more hours until kickoff. Keep checking back for the latest up-to-date information before, during and after the game!

Welcome to the NFL, Troy Smith!

Injury Update

It’s so bad, the Ravens should consider starting Poe. I hear he has legit shutdown ability…

All kidding aside, the injuries are really piling up. Here’s the latest word from NFL.com:

And here are the inactives: QB Kyle Boller (3rd QB), RB Cory Ross, LB Ray Lewis, T Jared Gaither, DT Amon Gordon, TE Daniel Wilcox, TE Todd Heap, WR Demetrius Williams.

Is it just me, or does Mike Holmgren look like a walrus?  You be the judge: