Posts from the Baltimore Ravens Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

It's pretty common to see a college team using a live animal as their mascot. Ralphie the Buffalo leads Colorado's football team onto the field, for example, and a succession of bulldogs named Uga have inspired Georgia. It's not quite as common in the NFL, though. Most of the time NFL players and animals meet up, the consequences aren't that great for either side.

The Ravens are trying to change that, however, by using a pair of actual ravens as part of pre-game festivities. That caught the eye of PETA who are urging the team to rethink their plan.

"[The] bright lights, screaming fans, and loud noises - such as air horns, bands, and amplified sound systems - are terrifying for animals who can't possibly understand what is going on. Regardless of how these birds are trained, they are likely to be severely distressed by the overwhelming confusion of the situation."

Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun asks a good question: Why should they be treated any differently than Kyle Boller?

I'm all for treating animals with respect but judging from the amount of birds that seem to make their homes in stadiums, this seems a bit overblown. They might lack understanding of what's going on but that doesn't seem to affect them enough to steer clear of loud, bright places. The Ravens appear to agree and indicated that they won't be changing their plans.

I just figured ESPN.com's Mike Sando got a few head coaches on the horn, asked them some questions about why Rodney Harrison is such a dirty player, and then wrote up a nifty column about the findings. Turns out, the entire Hashmarks crew got in on the action, which is why I'm happy to announce that soulja boy aficionado Zach Thomas has been named the NFL's brainiest player! Unfortunately, there won't be any trips to the Playboy Mansion for the winner; instead, Thomas will be rocking a set of new encyclopedias. Nerd.

The smartest defensive player in the NFL is ... linebacker Zach Thomas, according to ESPN.com's survey of head coaches. ... With votes from six head coaches, Thomas beat out Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis for the top spot. Lewis was the second-leading vote-getter with four nominations. ...

In addition to Thomas and Lewis, five defenders earned multiple nominations. That list included Ravens safety Ed Reed (three votes), Denver Broncos safety John Lynch (three), St. Louis Rams safety Corey Chavous (two) and two recently retired defensive linemen in Michael Strahan (two) and Warren Sapp (two).

I can't argue with the findings -- Thomas, a fifth-round pick, was considered too small to handle the rigors of the position in the NFL. I'd say he's done a little more than that.

Baltimore Ravens cornerback Derrick Martin was arrested over the weekend for marijuana possession. Since Martin isn't a big name, that's the kind of story that usually gets reported and then forgotten.

But Martin lied about it, and the Baltimore Sun showed absolutely no skepticism at all about that lie, so here we are, still talking about it.

To review: As soon as Martin claimed that he hadn't been arrested, the Baltimore Sun put up a headline reading, "Ravens' Martin Mistakenly Linked to Drug Arrest: Initial media reports implicated cornerback for Cleveland airport stop, but clarification revealed man had same name, birth date."

Hell of a coincidence, huh? Two guys with the exact same name and exact same birth date, both listing addresses in Owings Mills, Maryland, the city where the Ravens' headquarters are located.

Now the Sun has finally caught on that no, it wasn't another guy named Derrick Martin who was born on the same day as the Derrick Martin who plays for the Ravens and lives in the city where the Ravens are based. It was the Ravens' Derrick Martin who was arrested. Glad we've cleared that up.

Yesterday's news that Ravens cornerback Derrick Martin got arrested in the Cleveland airport for marijuana possession didn't raise much of an eyebrow. Sadly, we're all to accustomed to NFL players running afoul of the law and TSA agents finding weed in a travel bag is all too believably routine to elicit surprise. Martin denying it was him, though, is a new twist.

The Baltimore Sun apparently believes Martin's story, since they are running a story about the case under the headline "Ravens Martin mistakenly linked to drug arrest." A click on the link, however, finds an AP story which merely says that a man with the same name and date of birth as Martin was arrested in the Cleveland airport.

A Ravens spokesman, Kevin Byrne, says that Martin denies the incident ever happened. According to the Carroll County Times, the Derrick Martin who was arrested listed his hometown as Owings Mills, Maryland. Raven watchers know that's where the team's headquarters are located, which makes it a pretty plausible address for a player on the team.

That all adds up to one helluva coincidence. There are eight Derrick Martins living in Maryland listed on Whitepages.com, though none of those men live in Owings Mills. If Martin is telling the truth, great, but if he isn't he may be making things much worse for himself. The marijuana charge carries a $100 fine as penalty but the NFL frowns upon players trying to cover up arrests.

(H/T PFT)

Baltimore Ravens cornerback Derrick Martin was cited for drug possession at Cleveland Hopkins Airport Saturday, WKYC in Cleveland is reporting.

According to a police spokesman, TSA screeners discovered Martin with three bags of marijuana. It is not clear exactly what crime he's accused of or how much marijuana he had on him.

Martin was the Ravens' sixth-round draft pick out of Wyoming in 2006. He played eight games as a rookie and all 16 in 2007, including three starts at cornerback.

Via PFT.

In his weekly "Snap Judgments" column, SI.com's Don Banks has an interesting nugget on the Ravens and their ever-elusive search to find a competent starting quarterback:

If the indications coming out of Baltimore are correct and former Heisman winner Troy Smith does win the Ravens starting quarterback job this preseason, new offensive coordinator Cam Cameron is likely to be in line for much of the credit.

Not sure what "indications" Banks has picked up on, but this is the second time in a week that Cameron, fresh off a 1-15 run as the Dolphins head coach, has garnered praise from the media. In a story about rookie Joe Flacco, the Baltimore Sun's Jamison Hensley wrote of Cameron's willingness to fit the offense around a quarterback's strengths. Novel idea, that.

Apparently, the same holds for Smith, according to Banks' source:

"Cam's very good at figuring out a player's strength, figuring out what he does well, and then tailoring the offense around those skills,'' the Ravens source said. "He's got Troy moving around and doing a lot of the same things he had success doing at Ohio State.''

So after years of not having a legit starting quarterback, the Ravens suddenly have two, neither of whom are named Kyle Boller. And to think, all it took to turn Baltimore into a QB factory was to get rid of Brian Billick. Shocking.

A few days ago, MDS wondered if the Ravens would be able to turn Xavier Lee, college quarterback, into Xavier Lee, NFL tight end. Apparently, the dream has died: Baltimore released Lee because, well, they didn't see it happening.

From the Baltimore Sun obituary:

At Florida State, Lee went from one of the top recruits in the class of 2004 to one of the biggest busts in school history. He threw for 98 touchdowns and more than 9,000 yards in high school in Daytona Beach but started just six games - only two of them wins - for the Seminoles.

Last season as a redshirt junior, he was suspended twice for missing classes and was among 21 scholarship players left home when Florida State went to the Music City Bowl in the wake of an academic cheating scandal.

As MDS wrote at the time, head coach John Harbaugh never seemed sold on Lee being able to successfully transition from quarterback to tight end ("He's blocking in some fashion, not unlike a quarterback!"), and now we know definitively.

No idea what Lee's future holds, but his aspirations of being the "next Matt Jones" are on hold for now. For the Ravens, they'll have to somehow get by with a healthy-for-the-first-time-in-two-years Todd Heap.

For a long time it looked like the post-football life of Michael McCrary was doomed to be an unhappy one. The injuries that brought an end to his 10-year NFL career left him racked with pain and hooked on a variety of painkillers just to make it through each day. Then, adding insult to injury, Hurricane Katrina damaged a building he'd bought and hoped to turn into condominiums in New Orleans.

His partners told him that their insurance claim was denied and then sold the building at a loss, costing McCrary more than a million bucks. Thing is, the insurance claim wasn't denied and McCrary's partners had simply pocketed the $12 million their policy paid out. McCrary sued them and, yesterday, finally had a break go his way. He was awarded $33.6 million in damages.

"I've been dealing with this for about a year and a half and to have the court see through all the fog and the smoke that was put up ... was gratifying," he said. "It makes a strong statement to my ex-partners that they can't get away from this and hopefully will prevent them from defrauding anybody in the future."

McCrary's former partners weren't in court because they'd either been held in contempt or precluded from participating because of their disrespect for the process. Their sketchy history makes it questionable if he'll see all the money owed to him but .

There may not be any more chilling words to connect than Ray Lewis, legal trouble and Super Bowl. In 2000, it meant a murder charge for Lewis that eventually became a guilty plea to obstruction of justice when he testified against two other people.

Things aren't quite so dire this time around, however. TMZ has court documents filed by a company called Professional Events which allege that Lewis owes them $5,780 to satisfy their debt. Lewis and the other defendants hired the company to provide hostesses for a Super Bowl party this February.

A closer examination of the documents seem to place another defendant, Sharon Turner, at the forefront of the dealings with Professional Events. Lewis hosted the party but doesn't seem to have had any direct involvement with the company, which doesn't mean that he isn't liable, the company alleges his agent made a promise to pay them for their services, just that it may not be something that was really on his radar screen. The agent didn't return calls about the case.

The only other possibility I can think of to explain the non-payment is that Lewis may need that new contract more than any of us thought.

There are very few cases of NFL quarterbacks having much success as rookies. Ben Roethlisberger is the obvious exception, and Vince Young played surprisingly well after replacing the irreplaceable Kerry Collins. More often, though, these players struggle with the speed of the games, the voluminous playbooks and the defensive schemes devised to confuse them.

Kyle Boller is the perfect example, which explains why, after five less-than-spectacular seasons, the Ravens have drafted the next franchise quarterback, Joe Flacco. But unlike Boller, who, in retrospect, never had a chance with Brian Billick serving as his career counselor, Flacco will be mentored by Cam Cameron.

Cameron was rightfully canned after a forgettable 2007 season in Miami; although he may not be head-coaching material, he's a proven offensive coordinator, and has a solid track record in developing quarterbacks.

As Flacco continues his crash course in Baltimore's offense, the chance that he finds his way onto the field this season increases.