Darren Woodson and Tedy Bruschi see the Ravens leaning on their defense to lead them to a win over the Tennessee Titans. (0:31)

OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- All the talk leading up to Sunday's Baltimore Ravens-Tennessee Titans game was about a reunion with defensive coordinator Dean Pees and the need to keep quarterback Marcus Mariota from escaping the pocket.

How the discourse has changed between these teams from nearly two decades ago.

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For a three-year run -- from 1999 to 2001 -- the Ravens' chief rival wasn't the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was Steve McNair, Eddie George, Jevon Kearse and anyone who wore the Columbia blue of the Titans.

The Ravens and Titans bypassed any political correctness and didn't even act like the franchises had mutual respect for one another as they battled for control of the division as well as AFC supremacy.

"We didn’t like them," former Ravens defensive tackle Sam Adams said this week. "They were the pretty ones. They were the darlings of the league. We wanted to go and punch them in the mouth. It was always a fistfight."

This wasn't just trash talk. There were actual punches thrown during games.

Wide receiver Qadry Ismail, one of the more level-headed players, remembers a time when a Titans linebacker delivered a borderline dirty hit against him downfield. After Baltimore scored later that game, Ismail got his revenge.

"I walk over to him and it looked as though I was giving him like an 'Attaboy, we got lucky on that one' type of thing," Ismail said this week. "But I hit him as hard as I could in his stomach. He keeled over and I'm like, 'Yeah, that was for before.'"

Unlike today, there wasn't social media to spread their vitriol. Instead, Baltimore and Tennessee relayed their verbal jabs through their fullbacks.

The Ravens' Sam Gash would tell Ray Lewis and the other linebackers about how fullback Lorenzo Neal told him that the Titans were going to run through him. Neal would do the same with the Tennessee linebackers.

"When game time came, their linebackers were beefing with me and saying how they were going to kill me," Gash said this week.

The other memories of the Ravens-Titans rivalry were defined by two-by-fours, banshees, spears and a stadium foreclosure.

In the Ravens' 2000 Super Bowl season, the Ravens not only became the first visiting team to win at the Titans' new stadium but they handed Tennessee its first two losses there. During the final minute of that season's playoff win at Tennessee, Ravens tight end Shannon Sharpe turned to the Titans fans and yelled, "Maybe we should charge the Titans rent to keep playing in our house. Better yet, maybe we should just foreclose on it."

Ray Lewis and the Ravens once had a heated rivalry with the Tennessee Titans. ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP/Getty Images

Even Tennessee's scoreboard operator got into the act only a minute before the opening kickoff for that playoff game. Attempting to fire up the Nashville crowd, the Titans showed taped footage of Billick boasting in the locker room after the Ravens' previous victory at Tennessee.

That led to the Billick line: "When you go into the lion's den, you don't tippy-toe in. You carry a spear. You go in screaming like a banshee and say, 'Where's the son of a bitch?'"

The following 2001 season, Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher told his team before a game in Baltimore: "Even if we lose, just bring your two-by-fours to lay some wood into the Ravens."

That message got back to the Ravens and became the chief motivation in a 26-7 defeat of the Titans. After the game, Fisher's post-game handshake with Billick turned into a drive-by slap, barely connecting with Billick's hand at midfield before Fisher left without a word exchanged.

"They need to bring a bigger stick next time," Billick said.

Division realignment in 2002 put an end to the bad blood between Baltimore and Tennessee. The Ravens were placed in the AFC North, and the Titans moved to the AFC South.

Baltimore has since become heated rivals with Pittsburgh, but there was definitely a precursor to that feud.

"Pittsburgh was good, sure," Ismail said. "But, with Tennessee, there was just something different."

How many flags would be thrown if the Ravens and Titans played those games under today's rules? The consensus was countless.

"I used to say, 'I'm going to knock them down, let them get up on their own and knock them down again,'" Gash said. "It was a different mentality. In the end, we pushed each other and we made each other really good."