Some people are fans of the Baltimore Ravens. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Baltimore Ravens. This 2015 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.


Your team: RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE RAY LEWIS RAY RICE STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH STAB PUNCH…

Oops, I meant the Baltimore Ravens. Sorry. Force of habit. Here is a gif from this preseason showing Ravens admirably remaining true to character at all times…


This fucking team. They are never not the scum of the Earth. RAY RICE.

Your 2014 record: 10-6. Let’s see how it ended!

Oh yeah. Ohhhhhh, that’s the stuff. You know your organization is filled with horrible people when karma swings in the favor of the goddamn PATRIOTS. Every Patriots game should end with Bill Belichick getting an asteroid to the face, but pit him against Baltimore and he’s suddenly he’s the good guy. Anyway, the Ravens blew two separate 14-points leads in that game. They were also tricked into covering ineligible receivers despite the fact that the referees ANNOUNCED that those receivers were indeed ineligible. Suckers. WHO KNEW DECEPTION WAS A COMMON PART OF FOOTBALL STRATEGY?! It’s marvelous to watch this team get beaten and played for fools, and then to watch them pout like babies about it.

Your coach: Would-be Mexican border wall contractor John Harbaugh. I assume Harbaugh believes you can build a wall simply by screaming at the bricks. THOSE IMMIGRANTS ARE AN ILLEGAL-TYPE THING, YOU GUYS!

I saw John Harbaugh in person this offseason. I spotted him at BWI airport early in the morning. He was flying to Dallas (OMG TO TRADE FOR TONY ROMO?!) with two kids, presumably his daughter and a friend of hers. Just the three of them over in the gate area. No one bothered them because it was so early. He looked very normal and pleasant. In that moment, I could really see myself liking John Harbaugh, you know? Just relating to him as a person. So often, we forget that our idols can be tender and human, you know? But then I see something like this...


And then I remember: Fuck John Harbaugh.

Your quarterback: IS HE ELITE?!!!!


We’re at the point now where, when Joe Flacco dies, his obituary headline will be JOE FLACCO, POSSIBLY ELITE QUARTERBACK, DEAD AT AGE 85. I am not a Ravens fan, and so it comforts me to know that this team can be undone at any moment simply by having this man mysteriously revert to average form at the worst possible moment. He’s like a superhero who has NO control over how or when he can use his powers. It’s only after the bad guys get away that he starts shooting fireballs out of his hands again. His regular season stats are underwhelming. His brilliant postseason play can be rendered meaningless within SECONDS with a couple of ghastly turnovers. His frequent and baffling transitions between mediocrity and All-Pro status are literally the only interesting thing about him.

By the way, the Ravens lost Torrey Smith this offseason. They drafted Breshad Perriman but he’s already suffered a knee injury. So this offense will be largely dependent on Flacco throwing to a 36-year-old wideout and giving a 50-pound running back 300 touches. Oh, but this is a Super Bowl contender. You keep telling yourself that.


What’s new that sucks: Say hello to rookie tight end Maxx Williams. MAXXXXXXXXXXX. He’s the man whose name you love to touch!!!

He’s white and he’s a ginger and his name is MAXX. He will be a God in this town.


Also: You have Matt Schaub now. Enjoy.

What has always sucked: Oh, look! It’s the most despicable organization in football. Everything awful that happens in football originates here. Look at the past year alone:

• A videotape came out of their star running back knocking his fiancée unconscious in an elevator.


• They reached out to police only AFTER that tape had surfaced.

• The victim on the tape accused the team of forcing her to apologize publicly for getting knocked out in that elevator


• Two team officials escorted Janay Rice to a meeting with Roger Goodell to help “support” Ray Rice’s case to Goodell. That was so sweet of them!

• An Outside The Lines report accused the team of trying to suppress the tape of the punch and that owner Steve Bisciotti, whose name always makes me want Italian cookies, attempted to subtly bribe Rice into shutting up by offering him a front office gig.


• In general, the team handled the entire Rice affair with all the sensitivity of a Don Lemon interview.

• Their fans did this:


• Their head of security was accused of assaulting a woman.

• Their other running back got cut after a DUI.

• One of their d-lineman was arrested for cruelty to a fucking pet alligator.

• Their city nearly burned to the ground and the franchise’s standard-bearer thought the solution was to film himself shouting at a camera in a dark room:

Look at this fucking idiot. The Ravens could bomb a small village and the worst thing about them would somehow still be Ray Fucking Lewis anointing himself America’s Motivational Preacher. The depth of my contempt for Ray Lewis cannot be measured by standard instruments. He is a fraud and clown and a repulsive self-promoter who deserves to fall off a dam. I fucking hate him.


Did I miss anything? Oh, right! It was the Ravens who tipped the Colts off to the Patriots deflating footballs. So you have them to thank for Ballghazi. And Ray Rice. And probably the disappearance of MH370. They are the headwaters of all bad things. They are involved in so many awful incidents that you can’t even remember half of the awful things they did. I didn’t even get to Terrell Suggs, man. Their depth at Shitbag is unmatched. Jesus. Join us this season when the Ravens kill your grandparents. Fuck this team forever.

What might not suck: These are the Ravens, so you can always count on them to vie for the AFC North title and then become a potentially damaging playoff team, usually because Suggs has taken out enough opposing knees to clear the way for them. Even with Haloti Ngata traded away and the skill positions depleted, this remains the most frustratingly competent evil team in sports.


Hear it from Ravens fans!

Joe:

I live about three blocks from Camden Yards and I often go for a run past that stadium on down to M&T Bank stadium where I do a few laps around it. Two weeks ago during a run I see Flacco walking out of the main entrance wearing a nice black suit with fucking brown dress socks and tan shoes. He had to have lost a bet. I will never claim to be a fashion expert but I can’t trust a man that does that. I feel confident saying after this occurrence alone that he is not elite.


Alex:

Because we’ll inevitably hear about how Joe Flacco has the most road playoff wins of any quarterback. You know why Joe Flacco has seven road playoff wins? Because he’s played in all of TWO home playoff games in his whole career, despite making the playoffs six different times. Look, I know I come across like a spoiled asshole writing this, but there’s a reason Tom Brady doesn’t hold that road playoff wins record.


Paul:

We cried about the Patriots bending the rules against us, while ignoring that our entire offensive playbook was designed around having Torrey Smith run into cornerbacks to get pass interference calls.


Jessica:

My sister and I went to a game together. Before the game, the guy sitting next to me said, “No offense, but do you actually know anything about football?” I’m the only woman who announces high school football in our county.


Michael:


Dustin:



I was never really into football until about 1999 (when we moved back to Maryland), and since the Ravens were the upstart team at that point, I gravitated toward them. My dad is a season ticket holder. I went to my first game in 2002 at 14 years old, my dad had an extra ticket next to him and I couldn’t have been more excited. We got beat to death by the Saints (prior to them ever becoming relevant), but still I had a great time at the game because I was wearing purple and I was too dumb to know better. As we were exiting and tried to cross a street, an impatient over privileged asshat decided he wanted to pull out. Had my dad not shoved me I probably would’ve been run over. I turned around in time to see my dad sprinting down the road, catch up to the truck (while in motion) and punch clean through the window while screaming obscenities to get out of the car and face the beating like a man. The man didn’t... he sped off. That told me all I needed to know about other Ravens fans... Most will care for their own, but if we inconvenience them, they will run over a child.


Tim:

Our fans fucking suck. We worship Ray Lewis like the son of God, but he may or may not have killed a man. We tried to pretend that the Ray Rice event wasn’t a real story for as long as possible. Baltimore makes Newark look like Beverly Hills. Fuck Billy Cundiff and fuck Lee Evans.


Ryan:

Our QB is like some kind insane quantum physics state. He’ll play good enough in stretches to really make you get pissed off when he’s throwing the ball at the feet of receivers apparently only he can see, all while having all the personality and emotion of a saltine cracker.


Tom:

Our fans are morons. 1/3 of them don’t think we should’ve cut Ray Rice, 1/3 of them know why we did and want him back anyway and 1/3 think it’s all one big conspiracy.




Nick:

Did you know that literally everything the NFL does is a conspiracy against us?

Juan:

When I buzz my hair, people tell me that I look like Aaron Hernandez. We’re the same height and weight, half Puerto Rican, and we’re the same skin color. One day, I walked into McDonalds to place an order wearing my Ravens hoodie, and the cashier asked me if I was Aaron Hernandez. This was after he was found guilty of murder. I wanted to respond with a laugh and say “Yes, I am. I killed a bunch of people, broke out of prison, was signed by the Ravens, and here I am ordering a celebratory meal with my new contract money at McDonalds.” Until I realized that I was something the Ravens would do, and something a Ravens player would do. With a dejected sigh, I simply said that I was not Aaron Hernandez.


John:

At the end of the 2011 AFC Championship game vs. the Pats when Billy Cundiff (I can hear my blood pressure going up) missed a 32-yard(!) field goal to tie the game, sealing the Raven’s loss, I cried. My girlfriend, concerned, said she’d never seen me so emotional about anything in my life. She subsequently broke up with me.


Vince:

Flacco can’t hit a 7 yard out-route to move the chains, but can ejaculate a ball 60 yards downfield for Jacoby Jones to bumblefuck into a touchdown. I love Baltimore. I am an asshole.

Jordan:

Somehow everyone in Baltimore is under the impression that the Seven Nation Army chant originated here.


Tanner:

Natty Boh is a shit beer and Baltimore’s obsession with this piss water is fascinating.


Mark:

The owner looks like a central casting mafia character from a Rockford Files episode.


Danger Nut:

Between the Ravens organization, the NFL front office, and the fan base...Ray Rice came away as the least reprehensible.


Jeff:

A Baltimore fan complaining about Flacco is like someone who has been eating McDonalds hamburgers out of a dumpster for 15 years, and someone serves them a nice T-bone steak, and they turn around bitch that it’s not a filet mignon.


Jessica:

I had the nerve last year to applaud the Ravens for cutting Ray Rice on my Favebook status. Half of my “friends” admonished that I couldn’t be a “real” Ravens fan for calling for Rice’s termination. People still wear his jersey and argue Janay hit him first. In 2015.


Aaron:

“Following their first day of training camp – a spirited but cautious foray in helmets and shells – quarterback and Super Bowl XLVII MVP Joe Flacco, dropped his helmet on the grass path to the door, strolled towards the media hub, answered seven harmless questions, chatted with a reporter or two and went inside. Twenty minutes passed. Players signed autographs for screaming kids lined up behind ropes on their way into the building, and soon there was no one left outside but a handful of media packing up gear. And there was Joe’s helmet, resting on the ear fitted with Flacco’s all-important audio speaker linking him to coaches. Most of the quarterbacks I’ve met are cool on the outside and secretly neat-freak perfectionists at heart. I can’t imagine Peyton Manning or Tom Brady standing at a locker and not noticing or caring his helmet was missing. But that’s Joe. Maybe that’s what makes him so pedestrian in the regular season and so damn money in the playoffs; Joe cares when it counts.” - Peter King Buh gawd the man left his helmet on the ground! He’s a real fly by the seat of his pants fella... a real laissez-faire gun-slinger.


Matt:

You’ll never meet a more entitled, dipshit, whiny, fuckface, white trash bunch of derelict hicks on the planet. Apparently, the fact that their precious Colts were taken from them under cover of darkness one day in the past gives them the right for all eternity to bitch endlessly when, God forbid, their team doesn’t win the Super Bowl that year. The chip on these peoples’ collective shoulder knows no limits. EVERYone is against them, the NFL brass, the national media, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Santa Claus.


Will:

Terrell Suggs is the ugliest human on earth.

Jay:

The fanbase is unable to have a good time & take a joke. Then again what should I expect when I see grown males wearing Walmart Ray Rice jerseys tucked into their jorts? Fuck us all.


Joe:

A gentleman who has seats near my sister’s ordered a custom jersey. #2. POOPSALOT. I swear this is true.


Ryan:

Ray Rice is still the second highest paid player on our team.

J:

These fans feel like everything is owed to them and they are the biggest bunch of pusillanimous bed-wetters the second there is a bit of struggle with the team.


JD:

Going to a Ravens game is like visiting all of the white-trashiest parts of Baltimore at once. Waves of Harford County dudebros come flooding in to get drunk and pick fights with opposing fans. Our most hated rival is the Steelers, and most of the reason why is that the two teams and fanbases are basically copied and pasted. Our team let a woman who was abused get up in front of people and apologize for it. They stood behind Ray Rice despite having seen a video of him knocking a woman out, only to then cut him once everyone else got to see the video. And they had the balls to try to pass off cutting him as some benevolent and righteous act. Meanwhile, Terrell Suggs continues to be the defensive captain, despite his history of domestic abuse allegations. Fuck them.

Gopher:

Now that his brother is coaching at Michigan, the head coach is the biggest crybaby, douchebag, arrogant, egomaniac in the NFL. Seriously, WTF did the Harbaughs do to their kids? During the Ray Rice incident, it was revealed that Goodell gave an initial short suspension as a favor for Steve Bisciotti. However, this did nothing to temper Ravens fans from playing the victim card. “The NFL hates us, they conspire against us, they favor the Steelers, the Patriots, the Colts and any other team we can’t beat.” The former mayor stole giftcards from poor kids, at Christmastime, gave them to her boyfriend, got caught, was found guilty by a jury, and resigned. She just announced that she is going to run for mayor again. She will probably win. FML for ever moving here.


Submissions for the 2015 NFL previews are now closed. Next up: the Dallas Cowboys.