Since the Ravens have a bye this week I decided to watch the America’s Game special on the 2000 Ravens and their win in Super Bowl XXXV. I really enjoy this documentary and believe it is a must watch for any Ravens fan as it gives great insight by Ray Lewis and other players as to how that record setting season unfolded.
There is a part of the documentary when Trent Dilfer is talking about the feeling he experienced after winning the Super Bowl.
“We didn’t capture the hearts of America, and we didn’t need to.”
This sentence has always resonated with me being a proud Baltimorean and a Proud Ravens fan. More often than not we as fans hear the criticism of our football team, analysts across the country claiming “they are not yet an ‘elite’ team”, “Joe Flacco is not a good enough quarterback to win a championship”, “the Ravens are not good enough on offense and their defense is the only reason they win games”.
We endure these comments from players, analysts, so called “experts”, and Jamie Dukes week in and week out it seems. This brings us back to that quote by Trent Dilfer; he hit the nail on the head when he said those words. The Ravens will never be as “loved” by football fans across the nation like the Cowboys or Steelers are (why anyone would want to love the Steelers is beyond me) but it doesn’t matter!
We love our Ravens, we know what they are capable of and soon the rest of the country will know also. They call us the Baltimore Bullies, the Baltimore Bruisers, they claim we go out to hurt other teams and that by doing so makes our small market franchise unappealing other fans.
But we love it!
Our team is 3-1 in their bye week; they sit alone atop the AFC North, and own the number 3 defense in the league. So fans I encourage you to drink your purple Kool-aid, enjoy the success of our team, all the talk in the world from players and critics alike cannot change the fact that we have a 3-1 team who is an elite force in the NFL.
We don’t need the acceptance of other fans or cities.
We know what we’ve got in the Ravens.
And those naysayers and critics be damned.
