The Saints were not the only ones upset with Goodell and the league during Super Bowl week.
On Wednesday, the first day the Ravens were to report to Tulane University for their practice session, John Harbaugh and his Super Bowl-qualifying team found a facility that was under construction and barely fit for a JuCo football team let alone the AFC champs.
The players were grumbling immediately. The area was a makeshift baseball field with an exceedingly hard surface. It wasn’t a legitimate 120-yard field. And to make matters worse, the wind was whipping at 25 miles per hour on this Wednesday. Meanwhile, John’s brother Jim had the 49ers over at the New Orleans Saints facility using a real NFL field in an indoor bubble, practicing for the biggest game of their lives.
It wasn’t Tulane’s fault, and certainly no one with the Ravens wanted to grumble too loudly and embarrass the school or the league. The program was in the midst of a facility reconstruction project on their football facilities. But this was completely unacceptable.
Somehow, someone in the league office had royally botched the walkthrough at some point, and the Ravens wanted relief. Someone internally joked about what would’ve happened if Belichick had found that scene at Tulane. “It would’ve made for an interesting press conference,” one staffer said.
Instead, John Harbaugh simply threw a text to Jim Harbaugh and the two quickly had it resolved. Neither brother wanted either team anywhere near each other, and the Ravens just chose alternate times and they marched on at the Saints facilities beginning on Thursday. Crisis averted.
And of course, John Harbaugh sold it to the players as just one more hurdle, one more show of disrespect and doing it the hard way. In other words, “The Ravens Way,” where nothing ever feels easy.
In one of the final “Wise Words” deliveries of the year, Terrell Suggs took center stage and gave his Super Bowl address to his team:
“At this point there’s really nothing left to be said; this is the point, this is where we’ve all been working so hard for,” he said. “Just think of everything that we’ve been through, I mean all of y’all, from what you had to come through; even since coach showed up here in 2008. Just think of everything that we’ve been through, from the letdowns in ’08, the letdowns in 2010, the letdown last year, the injuries, everything. This is what we’ve all worked so hard for. I’m a just leave y’all with what I told up front in New England; Let’s finish! This is where we cash out at. We can’t ask y’all to give any more than all y’all have already given; we can’t ask y’all to give no more; but the opportunity to finish. Let’s let all that blood, sweat, the cursing out, all that pay off, and let’s just finish, as Ravens. All we’ve got to do is show up, and we’ll whoop this team’s ass!”
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As for the game itself, the jury was still out on Joe Flacco in the national media. He hadn’t thrown an interception in six weeks. He was amazing in New England and seemed to be his usual Joe Cool with the media during the week.
Someone asked center Matt Birk on Thursday how Flacco was holding up.
“Joe has been Joe,” Birk said. “He’s always the same, that’s the thing about him that you have to love. He’s not impressed by anything, or anything that he does. Obviously he’s a hot topic this week, but it doesn’t really affect him one way or the other. I really don’t think he cares too much.”
“I expect for him to be Joe [on Sunday]. To go out there and play solid like he always does. He’ll do whatever is asked of him to help our team win. He seems like one of those guys when I look back that just steadily keeps getting better. Joe is a big-time quarterback. He is. I don’t know why he’s under the microscope. I guess all quarterbacks are. He’s a big-time quarterback; I think he’s proven that. It really doesn’t matter what everybody else thinks. We know how we feel about Joe as a player and as a man and as a person. He’s a great guy – a great guy to play with. A great guy to block for, and we strongly, strongly believe in Joe’s abilities.”
Flacco even received glowing praise from the other guy who won a Super Bowl as the signal caller for the Ravens in 2001, Trent Dilfer. “To get to the Brady status, the Brees status, the Rodgers status, it takes a lot of improvement, and Joe Flacco is a guy that’s doing it,” Dilfer said on ESPN. “He has ice water in his veins. He’s had some of the heroic end-of- the-game moments … where he just doesn’t flinch. I think there are so many layers to quarterback play, and we can talk all night about what’s the most important. Maybe the most important is self-belief and having that no-flinch mentality, so no matter what the stage is, you believe you are the best player on the field.”
Hue Jackson, who was implicated in the Ray Lewis deer antler spray story, was in town doing Radio Row at the NFL Media Center in New Orleans. He was with Cam Cameron and the Ravens scouting crew back in March 2008 when Flacco first threw the ball in Newark, Delaware. Jackson expected Flacco to win.
