Official Ravens suck Game day thread

[Chromeburn]

Originally Posted by rm1369

Speaks volumes Chrome.

For the record, here is a couple Ballard quotes of the shit I apparently made up:

“Development of young players—that’s on us, and that’s on the coaching staff. I’ve always believed that coaches coach. You can't rely on a veteran player to coach up a young guy when that veteran is trying to fight for his own career and his own job."

“Young players don’t care what a guy did five years ago. They respect what you do today. They respect what you put on tape. If you bring a veteran in just to sit in the locker room and be a 'mentor' but he can't run or play anymore, the young guys see right through that."

Both said when he was questioned about going so young and not providing vet leadership. This is what I was referring to when I referenced Hankins, because that’s when he spelled out his philosophy. I guess with you not knowing he signed Hankins I shouldn’t have expected you to know his stated belief on the subject.

Now here are a few recent Ballard comments on the culture of his team:

"Instead of really creating competition throughout and throwing new blood into the locker room, new players into the locker room, I said, 'You know what? We're going to run it back.' That was a mistake." He also addressed the resulting entitlement and complacency: "There was an entitlement that, 'You know what, I'm back. I deserve to be back.'"

"Players in that locker room, they can B.S the media, they can B.S. their family, but they cannot B.S. each other. And Pat was on good teams, Pat was a great player, Pat knows what it looks like, so he saw the cracks. The biggest issue and our players know this because I voiced it, how about solving the problem? Like it's easy to voice the problem in public, but how about being part of solving the problem. That's what we need."

“A good culture has some friction in it, because there's some accountability within that challenges each other and never walks by a mistake, and we've got to get there. That was not done this year, and that's probably my biggest disappointment.”

You can obviously agree with Ballard’s philosophy. And you can believe there is no connection between that philosophy and the culture we have seen from the team during his tenure. What you can’t do is say I made it up. Or argue that every GM has that same philosophy. Or claim there has never been a culture issue with the team. For me, when he expressed that philosophy (and a few others) I disagreed with it. Strongly. It doesn’t help that he has tended towards “technical” coaches, not disciplinarian coaches and has never established a strong culture of accountability (his own words allude to it). You don’t have to connect the same dots between those quotes that I do. I really don’t give a fuck.

With that clarified, you can fuck off.

Enjoy the season.

I have a simple question for you, did you play any football?