Week 6: Baltimore at Indianapolis

If Baltimore has any place in the American popular imagination, it most likely relates to either crime or shellfish. This is both unfortunate for and unfair to Charm City, which also offers the longest o’s of any American accent, its own brand of cheap, seltzerian regional beer, and people wearing what are probably the last non-ironic Vinny Testaverde jerseys in circulation anywhere in the continental United States. It’s also a legitimately weird and interesting and sad and troubled city – it’s a lucky coincidence that the Chesapeake Bay and the amazingly delicious blue crabs therein are nearby, but it’s not a coincidence that two brilliant television shows have been set there. There’s a soul to Baltimore, and if it’s a bruised and downcast one, it’s still preferable in your author’s mind to the blinkered Chamber of Commerce positivism of cities like…well, Indianapolis seems to fit, here.

It probably hasn’t done wonders for the city’s tourism bureau that Baltimore’s TV shows – Homicide and The Wire – are both portraits of declining-to-fallen communities wracked by broad, end-stage post-industrial futility and its attendant violence and despair. But for the same reasons that your author is partial to teams from other faded metropolises – Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, uh, Utica – we’re inclined to favor Baltimore’s football team. The city needs and loves its Ravens, and seems uniquely enraptured of a very particular idealized version of football the team embodies well: that of dirt-caked war-as-recreation; fundamentally a struggle, very possibly unwinnable and very, very difficult.

Football doesn’t sound like that much fun, described that way, and it’s kind of not, but Baltimore’s embrace of the game on those terms is just another reason why what the Irsays – owners of the Indianapolis Colts, which were the Baltimore Colts before the Irsays moved the team to Indy in the dead of night back in 1983 – did to the city sucks so badly.

Whether the Irsays’ betrayal of Baltimore and subsequent flight to the grim Republican mildness of Indianapolis matters to the Ravens players is probably immaterial in this game. The Ravens defense – which is the only part of the team worth talking about, still – is generally just kind of pissed off no matter what, which is either their charm or a good reason to feign an injury, depending on whether you’re watching at home or playing against them, respectively. They’d be equally physical and aggressive against Indianapolis whether the Colts’ ownership had stolen Baltimore’s team or donated millions of dollars to build a children’s hospital. They’re professional football players. They’re supposed to be that way.

But, because professional football is the brutal way it is, the Ravens defense has been pretty badly worn down by injuries: linchpin NT Kelly Gregg is done for the season, and starters and backups all over the secondary are either dinged-up or out. Corresponding injuries on the Colts offense – which may finally get something like its complete O-line back this week – may do something to mitigate that, but it’s hard to imagine Indy doing much on the ground even with Gregg out of the picture. Which means that the most important match-up, once again, will be the Colts passing game against the Ravens pass defense. Baltimore has dominated in all defensive facets, while only half the aerial half of Indy’s offense has done anything right this year, and even then has only done so in three quarters of two games.

And, of course, it may not matter much because Baltimore’s offense is so lame. The Ravens have run the ball very well this season – and should do so again against the Colts’  worst-in-the-NFL run defense – but are still obviously lacking some confidence in rookie QB Joe Flacco, and thus have passed sparingly, conservatively and poorly. Flacco hasn’t been terrible, and has a fine offensive line and decent instincts, but the ceiling is fairly low for Baltimore if some sort of passing counterpoint remains beyond their reach.

The Colts have looked wan, disinterested and out of sync this year; their home city is a wasteland of chain restaurants and cover bands and people who are way too pissed about their tax burden. The Ravens are enjoyably ferocious on defense and come from a city that’s one of the nation’s more intriguing enigmas (and has produced some decent bands). They deserve it for revenge alone, but justice, as Baltimore natives know well, isn’t a given. The team capable of scoring three or more touchdowns in a game usually wins, wherever they’re from and however corny their owners are.

COLTS BY 4