No Love Loss: Steelers vs Ravens!

It’s the week fans of smashmouth football have been waiting for… the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers first match up of the 2009 season.  The stakes of this game are not what fans had expected them to be.  Instead of the two fighting for possession of the AFC North, as most anticipated, they are in a battle for one of the two AFC Wildcards.  Both teams are coming off heartbreaking week 11 losses where Pittsburgh fell to the previously 2-7 Chiefs, and Baltimore’s loss left the Colts with a perfect 10-0.   The Bengals have surprisingly reigned supreme in the AFC north; knocking both the Steelers and Ravens off twice already this season. With only one divisional game left to play against the Browns, who unexpectedly gave them the closest divisional game, the Bengals have pretty much punched their post season ticket.  Meanwhile, the Ravens continue to fight for theirs while the Steelers try to hold onto their current post season spot.

While every game for the rest of this season is a fight for the play-offs, this one means more to both sides than any of the other “must-win” games on their schedules.  The history between the two teams has built a rivalry so intense that most fans and players alike have had this game circled on their calendars since the schedule came out during the off-season.  The rivalry between the two teams started back in 2000; not on the field but within press conference exchanges.  The Ravens gave the Steelers their first shutout loss at Three Rivers Stadium since 1989 during the 2000 season, and following the win, then Baltimore tight end Shannon Sharpe went on to criticize Pittsburgh during a post game press conference saying that “The Steelers have some real problems that they need to have addressed. That’s probably the worst in my 11 years I’ve seen a Steelers team look. And I’m sure Bill Cowher is very disappointed, because they’ve got a lot of internal turmoil.” 

Pittsburgh came roaring back later in the season beating Baltimore 9-6 and with Coach Cowher having his own words for Sharpe: “Can you guys please go tell Shannon Sharpe that our problems here are fine?  And I appreciate his concern after the first game about all the internal problems we had.  Tell him we’re fine.  Thanks.”  Although the Steelers went on to a winning season that year, they weren’t as successful as the Ravens whose season ended with the defeat of the New York Giants in the Super bowl with a whopping 34-7 victory.  The Ravens defense of 2000 was compared to the Steelers 1970’s “Steel Curtain,” which had sports media questioning whether they really were the best defensive unit of all time.  From that point on, trash talk became a staple of the two teams’ match-ups every season, with continued battles between them for top defensive rankings and supremacy in the AFC North.
  
That is not to say the trash talking has not escalated to on-the-field and post-game altercations.  In 2002, then Steelers wide receiver Plaxico Burress and Ravens cornerback James Trap, were ejected from a game for a physical altercation on the field after the end of a play.  Joey Porter, who was once the Steelers most well known trash talker, had his share of mouthing off with Ray Lewis.  Most newsworthy was in 2003 when he confronted Lewis on the Ravens’ bus preparing to leave for the airport after a game in Pittsburgh believing that he had mocked Porter’s sack celebration dance on the field after tackling a Steelers running back for no gain on a run.  At the time, Lewis took Porter’s attack in stride telling the media “People have been kicking sand for years, he ain’t never started that. He just brought it back up.”  That game in Pittsburgh wouldn’t be the only time the Ravens and Steelers faced off in 2003.  The Ravens had already clinched their post season spot at a time that most head coaches were resting their starters.  Not Brian Billick, though. Baltimore’s starters played the entire last game of the season against the Steelers (who had already been shut out of the play offs) and into overtime, defeating them 13-10.  Never one to miss a chance to speak out, Porter once again had something to say post-game. He summed up the hatred between these two teams perfectly: “A smart coach, you don’t play your players that long in a regular-season game that has no meaning…. And he played them all the way to the end in overtime, just to beat us.  That lets you know how serious the rivalry is.”

For two teams who pride themselves on their defensive units, key members of both teams’ units will be missing for this Sunday night’s match up.  The Ravens Terrell Suggs and Steelers Troy Polamalu are both assumed to be out, although neither team has officially ruled either player out. Adding a further blow to the Ravens defense, they have lost Fabian Washington for the remainder of the season, leaving his starting position to be taken over by rookie Ladarius Webb. On top of injuries to the defensive sides of the ball, the Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger suffered a concussion during Sunday’s loss and a decision has yet to be made about him starting for Sunday night’s match-up.  The question being, even if the injured Roethlisberger starts Sunday night, how effective can he be? With both teams being in must-win situations, these glaring absences from Sunday night’s line up may just be what ends up costing one of these teams the game. Whether it’s the Ravens best pass rusher, or the Steelers best ball hawk, is yet to be determined.

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin was quoted last year before the AFC Championship as saying “Us and the Ravens.  It’d be a big game if it was a scrimmage.”  Well this coming Sunday is certainly not a scrimmage…it’s a showdown between two AFC rivals, both desperately in need of a win.