What defines a team seeking great results in a season? The teams that have found themselves successful have often been the ones who have best been able to overcome adversity.
The 2014 season of the Baltimore Ravens has been one of tumult and one of surprise, but most importantly one of defying expectations.
Normally when a team faces extreme distraction and adversity, those detriments can either produce a team that is wrapped tighter together and use that as a pathway to success, or they wilt under the pressure.
The 2013 Miami Dolphins are a perfect example of the latter.
The Dolphins looked to have a strong chance at the playoffs when the Richie Incognito/Jonathan Martin saga engrossed the country and forced head coach Joe Philbin to have to deal with that issue, early in the year, in greater detail with each approaching press conference.
Though the team, minus Martin and Incognito, fought through the mess, the Dolphins were never the same. Though the Fins lost what would have been a playoff-clinching game in the season finale, they could have locked up a playoff spot months before, but for the strain and distraction of “Bully-gate.”
Similarly the New Orleans Saints were a team that missed the playoffs the year (2012) that their head coach Sean Payton was suspended for the “Bounty-gate” scandal in which players were paid bonuses for putting hits on specific players.
Without Payton’s leadership, despite still having Drew Brees at the helm, the Saints were not able to recover from the scandal’s wake and salvage a good season.
The Ravens, logic might dictate, would be struggling this year given the Ray Rice saga. Unlike the Saints, but like the Dolphins, the distraction happened during the season – primarily in the preseason – but when the team could least have afforded the sideshow.
Owner Steve Bisciotti, who is usually press-avoidant during the season, save for his annual appearance at Ocean City’s Ravens Rap, has held no fewer than two major press conferences on the subject of Rice’s domestic violence case, not even counting a sit-down interview he did with national television media.
John Harbaugh had to individually address reporters the day Rice was cut from the Ravens, and just this week, the NFL Players Union announced its opinion that the Ravens were not being helpful to their investigation on the matter, while Rice filed a grievance against the team for their decision to cut him.
Yet somehow Baltimore is 5-2 heading into Sunday’s road contest with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Somehow the players have been able to marshal their energies onto the field despite the constant specter of the Rice story-chasing media around them.
The difference is due in part to a change in attitude on the team.
In 2013’s disappointing season where the team missed the playoffs, Harbaugh had rid the team of figures he is alleged to have considered divisive. Gone were firebrand locker room leaders like Bernard Pollard or strong leaders like Ed Reed. Gone were veterans Anquan Boldin and Brendon Ayanbadejo, and retiring was Ravens’ legend Ray Lewis.
Gone was also the spirit of the team in many ways. Without an X-Factor leader, the team did not have that person to pick them up when things got tough. Maybe Terrell Suggs has some of that – but he’s not the inspiration leader that Lewis was¸ or the quiet motivator Reed could be.
This year, the pressure was taken off Suggs a bit with the addition of Steve Smith… or Steve Smith Sr., as the Ravens’ code name for him goes.
Smith is never afraid to get in the face of an opposing player, never afraid to make his opinions known, and has even been one who has fought his own teammates at times, besides going to war against coaching decisions or management decisions.
Smith is exactly the type of player Harbaugh seemed to fear having in his locker room – but exactly the type of player the Ravens so desperately needed.
Smith is a guy who leads by example – and became one of the NFL’s leading receivers this season in the process, despite whispers that his age was starting to show on the field, and Smith’s own admission that he wasn’t the same type of #1 receiver anymore.
Sure, the critics will say that the Ravens have only won games against teams they should beat, and are 0-2 against teams with a winning record heading into Sunday’s contest.
But the Ravens have beaten the bad teams convincingly. The two games they lost have been by a touchdown apiece. They aren’t getting blown out, but are staying in games when they don’t blow out an opponent.
They haven’t been drowning in distraction. That is something that could easily have occurred. Unlike last year’s losing of Dennis Pitta for most of the year, Baltimore has had an answer this year with Owen Daniels who has played very well.
When starters Kelechi Osemele and Eugene Monroe have missed time due to injury, the Ravens have gotten solid play from other linemen including James Hurst and Ricky Wagner.
And despite the Rice story becoming the #1 topic on national talk radio, and televised talk radio for that matter, as well as a news story so important that it became a lead on evening news shows, the Ravens have done what they like to do best – play football.
At 5-2 they are doing pretty good at it.
