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There’s a Void in The Ravens Locker Room

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Confessions of a Sports Nut

One week ago here at RSR, I offered a warning of caution about the Ravens in the wake of their loss in Cincinnati on October 26.

In short, I wrote: “I have a bad feeling that loss in Cincy might leave a mark. An ugly mark.”

I hinted, even, that the Ravens could be in for a tailspin after giving away a game like that against a division opponent.”

I’m not here today to say I was right about that. There are still gobs of football left to be played in this 2014 season. Nothing in the AFC North is settled. Not. Even. Close. As I wrote in my daily blog at Drew’s Morning Dish this morning — www.drewsmorningdish.com — there will be one or two “swing games” that will change the course of this season for the Ravens from now until December 28. Win those games and you’re in the post-season. Lose ’em and you’re home again in January.

That said, I am here today to support my presupposition that the Ravens could be in trouble by telling you WHY it’s happening.

It’s very simple: The Ravens don’t have a leader on their team.

If you’re rolling your eyes now and thinking to yourself, “Here we go again, another doofus saying the team hasn’t been the same since Ray Lewis left”, I’m here to tell you…

You’re exactly right.

This team hasn’t been the same since Ray Lewis split following the Super Bowl win in New Orleans.

And that’s just a fact.

Sunday night’s embarrassing display of discipline – or lack thereof – from veteran players like Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil is precisely why impressionable “non-starters” like Albert McClellan do dumb stuff on a punt return that gives Pittsburgh valuable position.

Suggs, by default, became the team’s “elder statesman” when both Lewis and Ed Reed departed after the 2012 campaign.

And, the Ravens locker room has suffered for it.

And, so, too, has the on-field product.

I could tell you a couple of “pull the curtain back” stories about Suggs and his locker room behavior on Wednesday’s when the media is allowed in to interview players during the season. He’s the guy who would turn his CD player up as loud as he could just as the press members gathered at Haloti Ngata’s locker (next to Suggs’ locker) in order to make it difficult for the questions and answers to be heard. He’s also the guy who would shout an obscenity — intentionally — while your microphone was on and you were talking to Marshal Yanda about the next opponent.

Ray Lewis NEVER did anything like that in the decade or so that I covered the Ravens and had the privilege of “working the room” on Wednesday’s. Neither did Ed Reed.

Take a look at this year’s “official team photo” and tell me if you notice anything odd. I’d love to just let this one linger a while, but instead I’ll drop a hint. Dig up the official team photo and find Suggs and see what that tells you.

Sunday night in the waning moments of a 43-23 ass beating in Pittsburgh, the NBC cameras locked on to the Ravens bench to catch a glimpse of the soundly beaten visitors. There was #55, smile on his face, chatting away with an unseen member of the team.

You’d never see Ray Lewis smile on the sideline at Heinz Field after he just had his lunch handed to him by Ben Roethlisberger on a Sunday night in front of the entire football world.

You’d have to look long and hard at Ray’s game-by-game history to see how many “away from the play” penalty flags he drew that hurt his team. In fact, the Ravens as a team had more of them last night in sixty minutes than Ray Lewis incurred from 1996 through 2012.

Some of you might be ready to crack the whip on John Harbaugh for this amateur-night behavior of Suggs and the others on Sunday evening in Pittsburgh, but that kind of stuff always needs to FIRST be patrolled by the players themselves. That’s how it’s handled. Someone in the locker room pulls McClellan aside at halftime and says to him, “We don’t do that stuff around here, kid.” Who SHOULD that person be? The defacto team leader, Terrell Suggs, should be the message sender — at least in my opinion, anyway.

I remember a few years ago there was a story out of New York where Joba Chamberlain, as a rookie, stormed into the dugout after a quick hook in the late stages of a game and threw his glove in disgust. It bounced off the wall and came in contact with a Yankees player. Derek Jeter, the story goes, grabbed Chamberlain’s glove and said, “The Yankees don’t act like that. Take your beating like a man and go get ’em tomorrow.”

That’s leadership.

That’s what Ray Lewis did to Ray Rice on the first day Rice walked into the Owings Mills facility and stood in the cafeteria line with his shorts “lower on his waist line than they should have been”. Lewis said to the rookie running back, “Umm, young man, we don’t dress like that around here, just so you know.”

That was leadership, too.

The Ravens didn’t lose in Pittsburgh because Terrell Suggs isn’t a good leader.

The Ravens lost because the Steelers quarterback is better than Baltimore’s quarterback. The Ravens lost because the Steelers turned two turnovers into fourteen quick points. The Ravens lost because no one stepped up to make a big play when the moment called for it. And, the Ravens lost because their lack of discipline distracted them throughout the game. They were more interested in winning the scrap with Pittsburgh than scoring more points than Pittsburgh.

That lack of discipline, as a team, gets put squarely on the shoulders of the player deemed to be “the team leader”.

In this Ravens team, that person is Terrell Suggs.

For better or worse.

And, for the last two seasons, it’s been worse.

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