Ravens Confidential
Three downs with …Ray Lewis
1. On quarterback Jake Delhomme and the Panthers’ offense: “Patience. Anytime you see Steve Smith make a big play, Jake is going to buy some time. That’s one thing he does very well, he knows how to buy time for his receivers to get out of the routes and make a big play. Those are the things we have to stop.
"We also can’t let DeShaun Foster get started. Going back and looking at the film, he’s had some pretty good runs on the past few teams he’s played. So, there are a lot of things. This is going to be a great test for our defense this week."
2. On how Steve McNair will respond to a poor outing: “I expect Steve McNair to respond the same way our defense needs to respond. Everybody is in the same game. We had the opportunity to win that game. OK, where can we get better?
"That’s the bottom line for Steve and for everybody else. How can we not make the same mistakes we make those same silly or crazy mistakes that we made and let’s keep playing football?"
3. On responding to the team’s first loss: “Win, lose or draw, we have one mindset: one game at a time. We didn’t talk about going 16-0. What we talked about was trying to get to the playoffs, bottom line. If we do that, what we need to do is win the games we are supposed to win, split the games we’re supposed to split and dominate at home.
"If we do those things, we’ll be OK. To worry about anything outside of that is really a conflict of what the ultimate goal is, which is getting back to the playoffs and to the Super Bowl."
Panthers Confidential
Three downs with …Julius Peppers
1. On turning it around after an 0-2 start: “We had a slow start. The biggest reason for the turnaround is just working hard and getting better each week. After the first game we realized that we didn’t play as good as we knew we could play and we weren’t as good of a football team as we thought we could be at the time. We just had the mindset of getting better each week.
2. On his impressions of Steve McNair: “People say that they are struggling a little bit. I see the same Steve that I have seen over the years: a tough guy who can still play. He can still play the game. He can definitely beat you."
3. On running back Jamal Lewis: “He looks the same to me. He is more of a downhill runner. He will hit the hole and then get downhill, not really a lot of change of direction. He wants to get it, hit it and go.
"We’ve got to have guys ready to step up and not be scared to come up and have contact with him because he is all runner. We’ve got to get bodies on him."
