thundercleetz

I love this idea. The Westport Waterfront area is a great location, and a new soccer stadium would many opportunities. Look no farther than the European soccer game that sold-out at M&T Bank Stadium over the summer. This stadium would be an ideal place to hold all types lacrosse games as well as this sport expands.

Hopefully Burgess picked up some of New England's signals.

From ESPN's power rankings this week:

On the topic of the offensive line, Oher and Yanda did an excellent job filling in.

What I saw today with watching Joe and Brady was two very similar QBs. To me, both guys are the same style of QB. Very similar pocket poise, excellent mechanics, an almost mired throwing quick, compact throwing motion. It is scary what Flacco is capable of.

What got me the most mad was the offensive pass interference against Mason. Mason caught the pass, got out of bounds, no flag. Belicheck turns to the ref, looks him in the eyes, and makes a pass interference motion. Low and behold, the flag comes out.

I guess the answer to that is we took a risk and it failed. It is simply the balancing act of sticking to your gameplan as opposed to compromising it at times and going for the big play. Hindsight is 20-20. If we don't blitz maybe Brady finds Welker over the middle, maybe he is sacked, who knows? If that play works, obviously it is seen as a good risk. Honestly, I did not like the call, I thought it was a little impatient. But how many times have we seen that play work for us and the QB throws an errant imcomplete pass in the face of our blitz? I cannot blame the thought process behind the call.

Usually I would say I am happy our players are expressing their minds and ultimately saying what all of us feel, but after what Harbaugh did today this is not good. Especially considering the league is in bed with the Pats and we are a team that is attempting to improve our image. By the way, was anyone reading his lips? It was five minutes of straight bombs. The best part was after the defensive holding call you could hear Harbaugh yell on the telicast "HE DIDN'T EVEN TOUCH HIM!"

I disagree, the Steelers won the Super Bowl with the strategy we employed today. Keep it close, let your QB win it in the end. Today showed me we have the QB to win these types of games, even if we only run the ball 17 times. Now, do I only want to run the ball 17 times each week? Of course not. What I am saying is think before you blame Cam for the loss and do not just look at the play call numbers. Cam could not help that Flacco underthrew Mason on the potential deep touchdown, or that Clayton dropped the fourth down pass, or that there was miscommunication for the Flacco INT. If Flacco throws that ball to the corner of the endzone its a TD (provided Clayton catches the ball, which is not much of a given anymore). Cam took great shots downfield when he needed to. Cam did a great job of countering the blitz with screens, dumpoffs, and draws. Can and Matsko were great in their blitz pickup schemes. For the most part, Flacco had time to go through all his reads. Yes, Cam's decision on 4th & 1 (and 3rd & 1 for that matter) to run the ball out of a single back set was poor, especially considering you have a 265-pound, Pro-Bowl fullback on the sideline. However, the bottom line is that he had our team in a great position to win the game at the end directing a masterful final drive. I understand Cam's thinking. He wanted to keep us out of the 3rd & longs. We were gaining so many yards on first and second down passing the ball that our third downs were very managable. If Willis or Rice was stuffed on first down, Cam did not want to run it again on second and potentially be stuck in a tough third down situation (even a solid four yard gain after a no yard gain leaves you with 3rd & 6). Last week those first down runs were going for big gains, not so much today. Also give Cam credit for having Flacco snap the ball on different snap counts getting us a couple of encrouchment penalties and ultimately keeping the pass rushers honest (do I have mention he did this on the road). You had to be impressed with the offense's time management and no-huddle capabilities today (once again, on the road). When is the last time you have seen this from a Ravens team? Much less than against the NFL's best. Cam did a lot more good today than bad, he is hardly the one to blame.

I am not misunderstanding you, I am arguing that we know we have mismatches against bigger receivers and that we did a pretty darned good job of gameplanning against the mismatch. My other point is no matter how good you gameplan, you are not going to be perfect. Just because Brady hit Moss for one big play does not mean our gameplan was terrible. This is just what happens when two great teams play each other, there are breakdowns on both sides. In other words, we did change our gameplan from previous weeks as it comes to bigger receivers.

I think this is unfair citicism dc. First, Moss is a Hall of Fame receiver, possibly the most talented receiver of all-time. The fact that we held him to 3 receptions for fifty yards is all you could ask for also considering Welker was held under fifty yards. To citicize the short corners on one play is a little unfair. When two great teams collide, great players will win individual matchups. Moss won that play. We were physical with Welker in the slot all day, and were able to contain him pretty well. Second, C-Mac is possibly a Hall of Fame corner, how many corners in the league right now are as good as C-Mac? I'll give you a hint, I could probably count them with one hand.

Carr taking the ball out of the endzone five yards deep irretated me as well. I think that is why he is beched more so than the fumble. The Pats kicker was getting some mad air under his kicks! As for Webb, remember he had a bad fumbling problem in the preseason/training camp as well. Hopefully he has gotten over this.

This upcoming week is going to be tough as far as listening to the media goes, but we are going to be ready to kick some Cincy butt on Sunday. No doubt!

Carr has been underwhelming on the returns, but I think he has been a pretty solid nickle back. He definitely has a place on this team. Chasing around Wes Welker was no easy task and Carr did admirably.

Can't complain on this as Harbaugh did the same thing later in the game (on the fourth-and-one that was stuffed in the fourth quarter). Nevertheless, I agree with you guys. Such a request should be denied or a delay of game penalty.

I have to disagree with you guys. Our gameplan put us in a position to win today at the end, that is all you could ask for.

Max, I understand that the Ravens at time shot themselves in the foot. But you have to understand when two great teams collide in a close game, each team will make mistakes and each team will make plays. Did we miss tackles? Yes. Did Flacco throw and INT? Yes. Did coverage break down at times? Of course. The Pats are a darn good team and they are going to win their share of mismatches during the course of a game, as we did. They missed tackles, they had fumbles, they had costly penalties (not as much as us, but nonetheless). It is just the nature of a big matchup. If we played a mistake free game we would have blown them out, the same could be said for the Pats. That is just not how football works. What I take away from this game is that we have a team that can matchup with any team in the league and plays up to the level of competition. We also have a QB who can WIN games (not play to just "not lose") and is a guy who you WANT to have the ball in his hands with 2 minutes left. I understand you attention to the mistakes, but someone had to lose this game and today it was us. It is just disappointing that we lost on a play where our guy dropped the ball as opposed to the defense making a play to win it. The bottom line is that we are an elite team in the class of the Pats, Colts, and whoever else. Oh yeah, did I mention this was a road game in one of the toughest places to play in the NFL? Sign this team up for games in January!

Another HR for Wieters. This guy is really putting it all together and should be ready to rake next year. I'm liking a 1-5 of Roberts, Jones, Markakis, Wieters, Reimold. Or maybe even something like Roberts, Markakis, Wieters, Reimold, Jones. Nevertheless I like the core of those five guys (six if you add in Felix) and hopefully Bell and/or Snyder can come up next year and give us some extra pop.

The Pats signed Burgess to their practice squad today.

I think we need to stay balanced. Keeping the field stretched on offense is what is opening up the running game. At the sametime, without Mayo and Seymour, the Pats are weaker against the run than they have been in the past. Do not forget, last time we played the Pats Willis McGahee had a career game. Willis is in better playing condition than he was last time around, so Willis could be key this game. But Joe does need to keep the defense on their heels to keep only seven guys in the box. I am expecting to see a continuation of a lot of three receiver sets, and seeing Heap flexed out at times letting McGahee and Rice slash through the Pats defense inside.

And whose to say Flacco won't drop 600 yards of passing against the Pats?

Look who Denver has played, and look at their upcoming schedule... it's murder's row. We will know for sure what type of team Denver is by the time we play them. Our offense would have a field day against Denver's defense and Denver would not be able to run on us. I will take that match-up any day. Indy is the team that scares me. I like how we match-up against New England, but it is going to be a VERY close game, in my opinion.

You are right, their schedule is pretty easy: 4 Sun, Oct 4 San Diego 8:20 PM 5 Sun, Oct 11 @ Detroit 1:00 PM 6 Sun, Oct 18 Cleveland 1:00 PM 7 Sun, Oct 25 Minnesota 1:00 PM 8 BYE WEEK 9 Mon, Nov 9 @ Denver 8:30 PM 10 Sun, Nov 15 Cincinnati 1:00 PM 11 Sun, Nov 22 @ Kansas City 1:00 PM 12 Sun, Nov 29 @ Baltimore 8:20 PM 13 Sun, Dec 6 Oakland 1:00 PM 14 Thu, Dec 10 @ Cleveland 8:20 PM 15 Sun, Dec 20 Green Bay 1:00 PM 16 Sun, Dec 27 Baltimore 1:00 PM 17 Sun, Jan 3 @ Miami 1:00 PM Outside of divisional games, the only tough teams they have are San Diego, Minnesota, and maybe Green Bay. Pittsburgh will very well be in the mix of things when it is all said and done. The best we can hope is that San Diego wins next week dropping the Steelers to 1-3. That could be a difficult mental hole to dig out of. Other than that, we just have to take care of business ourselves. Honestly, our schedule is very winnable as well. The only difference between our schedule and Pittsburgh's is that we play Indy and New England instead of Tennessee and Miami (at the beginning of the season this might have been seen as a wash). Considering we started 3-0 and Pittsburgh started 1-2, if we can win one of the Indy or New England games (I like our odds better against the Pats) and split with Pittsburgh, we should be in good shape. I am not sold on the Bengals yet, but I am not overlooking them either. I believe our running attack would be too much for them. The reason they were able to stay in the Pittsburgh game is Pittsburgh's inability to run the ball outside of a couple of big runs early on.

I don't know what Unitas was like, but Joe definitely has that fire inside of him where he always wants the ball in his hands. He has a swagger he did not have last season. I know on a lot of the report cards they said Flacco had a couple of throws that should have been picked off yesterday, but re-watch those throws. The tipped pass on the screen was not really his fault, just a great play by the defender to deliberately bat the ball to the middle of the field. Flacco's throws that sailed were all to Ray Rice, he still needs to get used to throwing towards a shorter target. Then the pass to Mason in tight coverage, that was actually an excellent throw. Flacco put the ball near the turf where only Mason could catch it. If you look at that play, Mason actually dropped the ball. Flacco then threw two very nice balls in the end-zone to Clayton and Washington that were put in places where only our guys could catch them. If you ask me, Flacco earned an 'A' yesterday.

As good of a win this was for the Bengals, the Steelers lost this game themselves. The Sweed drop, the missed FG, many other instances as well. To me, this game showed two things about the Steelers: not being able to run the ball is going to hurt them a lot this season, and their defense is completely different without Troy Polamalu. With that said, this team is still going to be very good when Troy comes back, assuming he is actually healthy when he does. I am still not completely sold yet on the Bengals, until that last drive Carson and that offensive line looked very shaky.