TIME: 8:00 pm
PLACE: Edward Jones Dome, St. Louis
TV: WMAR-TV, Channel 2; MASN2
ODDS: "pick em" O/U: 34 1/2
(If you bet on preseason games, the loser is probably YOU!)All eyes will be on sophmore Quarterback Troy Smith who starts tonight and will likely play the entire first half and possibly longer if the coaches deem necessary. Ravens brass surely don't want to throw rookie ball-slinger, Joe Flacco into the mire prematurely. His trial is at least a year away. Kyle Boller is a known commodity and stock in his enterprise continues to fall. The smart talk on Boller is he was Brain Billick's boy. That's what led to his contract extension. While he has a cannon for an arm, he has never matured to read defenses looking totally helpless on any play that doesn't proceed according to script. Besides that, sadly, when Baltimore fans turn on a local athlete, that fellow is toast. Ask Eddie Murray what it felt like to be an Oriole in 1988 as if it was his fault for the O's 0-21 start. The team knows what they have in Boller. He'll be there as a fall-back at this point. It's all about the future on offense. Tonight, it's Troy Smith's chance to prove he's the man of the moment. If he fails, it's going to be chaos on that side of the ball for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, it's becoming almost a story of what could have been for key players on the Ravens defense. Ray Lewis is one of two players who played the Ravens first game against the Oakland Raiders in Memorial Stadium back in 1996. (Kicker: Sure Shot, Matt Stover is the one fellow who came from Cleveland). Few dominant linebackers last longer than Ray Lewis (13 yrs.) has starting this year. Look at the greats and see how long Gino Marchetti (14 yrs.), Lawrence Taylor (13 yrs.), Mie Singletary (12 yrs.)and a host of others lasted playing middle linebacker -- to make it twelve years is quite the feat of surival. Ed Reed, Bart Scott, and Terrell Suggs are at the prime of their careers. Suggs is playing as an unhappy camper suffering a serious injury as in "wounded pride," for being slapped with the franchise tag. His holdout perhaps shows signs of the future. He'll walk off to greener pastures next year. Chris McAllister is getting old too. The Baltimore Ravens faithful have been treated to a historic defense which started to show true potential in the 1999 season. Through out the past decade, even when injuries wiped out key starters, the black and gold bad guys continued to lead the NFL in many defensive categories. When the unit has been fully assembled, they've been pure hell for the best of offenses. All that time, who can name all the QB's who've started for the Ravens? It's hard to think of Captain Sunshine, Trent Dilfer, as the Ravens' QB to kiss the Lombardi trophy. Will this Ravens unit ever see playoff action in January again? It's a long shot. 2006 was the year where everything looked right, but the team imploded before 70,000 of their closest friends against the hated team from Indianapolis. Had the Ravens beaten the Colts on that fateful day, that game would have gone down as one of the most historic achievements on Baltimore home field.
Tonight's game is decision night for the fates of a number of players while coaches begin to envision their opening day lineup against Carson Palmer, the Cincinnati Bengels, and the antics of Chad Johnson. Key veterans, Samari Rolle (CB) and Willis McGahee (RB) are out for the preseason and will hopefully be ready for play for the season. Haloti Ngata (DT) and Ed Reed (S) are shown as "limited." Two tackles Adam Terry and Jared Gaither are out. Daniel Wilcox (TE) and Demetrius Williams (WR) appear to be best rested for tonight's action further limiting Troy Smith's offensive options.
Okay, the usual disclaimer for preseason games... Priority one is not sustaining injuries to keye players. The game is about auditioning talent, looking at individual performances, and assessing game options. Still if winning didn't matter, they wouldn't keep score, would they?
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