MVN - Most Valuable Network

Camp Hardball

“When you pull on that jersey, the name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back”

“Miracle”

     That has to be one of my all time favorite quotes of any sports movie. That quote says it all. When you suit up, it is about the team and not the individual. Camp Hardball, as we will now affectionately call it, will be all about the team. The TEAM knew that from the minute they walked into the locker room. When Samari Rolle first went to his locker he found it was not there. He thought mayve he had been cut already, but all of his stuff had been simply moved. One of the first things the new coach did was remove the clicks. No more groups of defensive players on one side and offensive players on the other. They are all together. That is what Camp Hardball will be about, the team. Thanks Mike Brown for that title. That is a fitting name for the beginning of this era, the era of Harbaugh.

     There have been some other changes in how camp and the season will be run. No players will have multiple lockers any longer, everyone is equal.  No one will sit at practices or camps, not even the reporters. The benches have been removed. Also all players will stay with the team during training camp, with bed-checks.

     Ray Lewis is apparently 100% on board with Coach Harbugh’s philosophy. Last season saw Ray Lewis publicly criticising Brian Billick numerous times. In a recent interview Ray Lewis made it a point to say that he has never held out of any camp. For him it is about winning and the team, not his contract. One has to wonder if this was directed at Terrell Suggs (who yesterday agreed to terms on his grievance).

     Other players have commented on how Harbaugh talks to them and not down to them. This kind of sheds light on what Brian Billick’s locker room became. Where once he had the team fired up as the underdog, in the end they resented his arrogance as much as we did. It is what it is. (my favorite Billickism)

     No matter what happens this season in the win/loss column one thing is for sure. In my opinion, the lack of discipline on the field we saw and complained constantly about last season will be gone under Harbaugh. Here you have to wonder if that was the mandate from Ozzie and Bisciotti. It may also be what they liked in this young coach.

It is official that Quinn Sypniewski will be out for the season with the knee injury he suffered in the first camp last month. This has to be a problem area for the team while trying to rebuild an offense. Todd Heap is one of the best tight ends in the NFL, but he has been a little injury prone at times. Maybe this is due to the Billick system where the defense was not spread out enough to prevent Todd from being slammed as soon as he touched the ball. I hope so. I would love to see what this team does when it is healthy. Last season it wasn’t, and this led to a majority of the problems.

In other totally unrelated news former Oriole Miguel Tejada made a comment recently that he felt he had to admit his truthful age now because he felt he owed it to the Houston fans for being so good to him. I guess us in Baltimore and those in Oakland treated him like dirt. Also, a groundskeeper has found an old birth certificate hidden behind the water cooler in the clubhouse showing Miguel’s real name to be John Johnson from North Dakota, and his true age is 55. More on this breaking story as information comes in.

 (To see the complete article about the news rules for camp go here. For the Ray Lewis interview go here)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Mike Zoran, Ravens Roost Writer Articles / Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.