"You gotta take your hat off and hand it to them," As Hines Ward has been prone to say. This time the Ravens took the Steelers' heads off and handed them to THEM.
Overconfidence? Why wouldn't there have been? Going into the game EVERYONE talked of the Ravens starting line ups as if they were a hodge-podge of walking wounded and who-dats?
What didn't help was the Steelers brought more turnovers with them than the neighborhood bakery. They tackled like the opening day of training camp--probably worse. The only guy to run for more than 100 yards against their defense in the past three or four years did it again; with ease. And could have had more.
This time there were no blitzes by Troy Polamalu resulting in stripped balls from Joe Flacco. There were no knock-out hits by Ryan Clark. There were no passes through into the ground at the feet of wide open tight ends when a completion could be a tie at the end of a closely-contested game. There were no second half collapses by Baltimore after taking a 21-7 lead into halftime. There were no Ben Roethlisberger comebacks in the offing. There were no big stops on short yardage situations--OK there was one.
The Ravens pretty much handled the Steelers in every way except winning the opening coin toss. Their coach even did a "raise-the-roof" to the Baltimore crowd.
Take a photo from yesterday's game and frame it a a good old butt-whippping that everyone except the Ravens thought would have been the other way around.
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