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Cake day: October 25th, 2023

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  • Homer take, but Steve Bisciotti seems to be a good owner, and these are some of the observations I’ve either gleaned or imagined:

    • Care about the community you belong to. I know lots of teams do it, but it seems like the Ravens are giving back to the community *every week*, and unlike a lot of teams, where it’s new draft picks and third stringers going out and giving back, we actually have Lamar Jackson handing out turkeys to those who need them.
    • Care about your team’s culture and know how to hire for it. It’s hard to hear the words “Baltimore Ravens” on sports talk shows without a comment about how well we’re run. With *extremely* few asterisks, ex-players always brag about how much they enjoyed their tenure here. It is absolutely common when a trade happens that the traded player was more interested in us because of an ex-Raven they asked about us.
    • Care about character at every level. Yes, we’ve had bad apples on the team. Every team has and every team does… but ever since Ray Rice’s very public incident, we’ve attempted as much as possible to steer away from players with character concerns. This one kind of goes hand in hand with the one above, and maybe it’s just a homer-stance, but y’know, we weren’t pursuing anyone with $230 million worth of allegations (nor should we.)
    • Be realistic about when to push the pedal. It’s hard knowing when your SB window is open and when it isn’t, and if you put all your chips in thinking it is and are derailed by injuries, it’s hard to come back from. I think that the Rams did a great job going all-in trying to establish a new fanbase after moving from StL, but generally that’s not a workable strategy. The cap *is* real, and someone has to care for it eventually.
    • Know when to interfere. When not to. When to make a strong suggestion. Etc. This is the hardest one that I think most owners get wrong (or recency bias has Tepper in my brain) but I’m just going to leave it vague here and let you infer that this should recommend being the opposite of Dan Snyder.

  • God yes. I’ve already posted about this in a comment somewhere else, but AI right now should be able to COMPLETELY fix

    • Delay of game
    • Encroachment / Offsides
    • False Start
    • Illegal Motions
    • Illegal Formations
    • Too many men on defense / offense
    • Illegal Shift
    • Illegal Substitution
    • Illegal touch / player out of bounds
    • Ineligible man downfield
    • Intentional Grounding
    • Sideline Infractions (ahem, MIKE TOMLIN)

    This isn’t remotely all the penalties in football, and there are still tons that I think would be very hard for CV/AI to tackle right now (holding, taunting, etc.) that are wildly subjective calls, but if we can knock off all of the above penalties as things that referees no longer have to worry about, then perhaps it frees up more bandwidth to spend on the more subjective calls.

    Obviously, as AI and computer vision develop, other things can be added in, and I still think there’s a need for humans on the field in officiating, but every year it seems like officiating gets worse.








  • In person, Ravens / Chiefs (the one we won)

    But the loudest I’ve ever experienced on television was when I was working in Albany, NY. This was years ago, back when the Bills still sucked, and had for a long time. Fitzpatrick was the QB.

    I was hanging out at McGeary’s, which was an awesome Bills backer bar. Bills / Pats was on TV, and I got a work call. Realizing how loud the bar was, I went out of the bar, across the street, and around the corner to take it – of course at some point the Bills did something good and the bar erupted so loudly that my boss said “Sounds like someone got a touchdown!” I laughed it off and said “Yeah, sure did.”

    Went back into the bar after, expecting the score to be 7-0 or maybe 7-7 or 7-14 or something, but it was still 0-0. “I heard you guys screaming all the way around the corner? What happened!”

    “Oh. We got a first down!”


  • The only things I can think of particular to our stadium:

    • Every seat is a good seat – there aren’t any obstructed views or anything like that
    • If you want to bring in outside food, you can, it just has to be in a clear backpack (The cost of a clear $10 backpack off Amazon basically pays itself back in a single visit)
    • If you aren’t staying in walking distance to the stadium, the light rail is a great way to get there. If you’re on the other side of the water, the water taxi is a fun experience.




  • our margin for error is way smaller than other good teams

    Here’s where this post rubs me the wrong way. What “good teams?”

    3 weeks ago, the “good teams” were the Niners, Chiefs, Bills, Lions, Dolphins, and Eagles. The Eagles have been pretty consistent, I suppose, but they were losing most of yesterday to the Commanders. Niners have dropped three straight and get to dwell on that during their bye. Chiefs just lost to the Broncos. No need to bury the Lions, and I’m figuring them to come out and murder the Raiders tonight – but we’ll see!

    Cards are underrated. -I- underrated them. I specifically said “There’s no reason we shouldn’t trounce them” even tho I had not seen the Cards play once this year. THEY LOOK GOOD! They’re an NFL team with dramatically improved coaching, a borderline elite run game, and a bunch of players who are out there trying hard to win.

    Did we look past them? Maybe. I don’t honestly think so. I think they were coached well, and are short on talent, but I think they deserve a better record than 1-6.

    TLDR, being exceptionally good is hard. I get that it’s hard to know where we sit, but thinking that we aren’t in the same tier as the Chiefs or Niners is a bridge too far. I wouldn’t trade with either one of them.



  • I had it called as Ravens / Lions before the season started, but right now I’m just hoping to get an Eagles / Lions matchup in the playoffs cause that sounds dope. Niners / Eagles / Lions are the teams I see as most likely. I don’t believe in the Cowboys, and I think that Seahawks are overrated, but not sure by how much yet.