NOTEBOOK: OFFENSIVE LINE MOSTLY STEADY; TUCKER GETTING HIS KICKS

By Joe Platania

OWINGS MILLS -- When the Ravens established their running identity -- a between-the-tackles, smashmouth type of approach -- there was only one player that could fill the bill.

Jamal Lewis filled it so well, he will be inducted into the team's Ring of Honor.

"I never thought, 12 years [after being drafted], that I would be standing here," Lewis said Monday afternoon as he addressed his impending induction, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 27, when the Ravens host the Cleveland Browns for a national-TV game.

"[Baltimore] is where I grew up," Lewis said. "Hanging around guys like Ray Lewis, Shannon Sharpe and Rod Woodson, it's probably why I felt like a defensive player playing offense."

Opposing tacklers were often put on the defensive by Lewis' thick build and running style, which carried him to 10,607 career yards -- 21st on the all-time list -- and 58 touchdowns.

Drafted fifth overall from the University of Tennessee during the 2000 draft, Lewis succeeded the smooth-but-smaller Priest Holmes as the Ravens tried to build an offense that could dictate tempo to its foes.

"Everybody in our division played great defense," general manager Ozzie Newsome said. "We needed someone that could break tackles. We needed a tackle-breaker.

"During our [1999] bye week, I was able to go to the Alabama-Tennessee game. There were a dozen first-round picks in that game, and whenever a play needed to be made, Jamal made it."

Lewis said the game had evolved to the point that runners like himself were dwindling in rank -- not to mention numbers.

"You can thank Tom Brady and Peyton Manning for that," Lewis said with a smile. "Now, it's more [running back] by committee. Teams want to keep guys fresh and keep them from getting injured.

"I don't know if I'd make it today."

Lewis first made it as the youngest player to take part in a Super Bowl and the author of an AFC-record 2,066-yard season in 2003.

"That was a great year," Lewis said. "I had [very few yards] in the opener at Pittsburgh and [head coach] Brian Billick said that if they don't give it to me 30 times the next week, there's a problem."

During the first game on the team's SportExe Momentum surface, Lewis burned the Browns for a then-single-game record 295 yards.

It has been quite a while since the Ravens inducted players into the Ring of Honor in consecutive years. The team welcomed longtime kicker Matt Stover into the Ring in 2011.

The last time the Ravens installed new names into the Ring during back-to-back campaigns was when defensive end Michael McCrary's 2004 induction capped off a run of four straight inductees in as many seasons.

The Ravens have won six of seven games played when a new member has gone into the ring, losing only on McCrary's big night against the Kansas City Chiefs.

But Baltimore has won eight straight games against Cleveland, making such an occurrence unlikely when Lewis' name is revealed on the upper-deck facade on both sides of the stadium, now in its 15th season.

There is usually a connection to the honoree whenever the choice of opponents is made for a Ring induction game.

For instance, Stover scored more points during his career against the Cincinnati Bengals than any other team, which is why his ceremony took place during the Ravens' win against the Bengals last year.

Lewis is no exception, as his 295-yard effort during the 2003 home opener -- an NFL single-game record at the time, which Minnesota's Adrian Peterson bested by just 1 yard four years later -- came against the Browns during a 33-13 Ravens win.

During that game, Lewis ripped off an 82-yard touchdown run, which stood as the longest run in Ravens history until Le'Ron McClain tied the record with an 82-yarder of his own at Dallas in 2008.

Later that season, during a 35-0 December victory, Lewis gained 205 more yards at Cleveland for 500 total rushing yards during two games against one opponent during a single season, thought to be a league record.

After his contract was terminated in Baltimore, Lewis went on to play for Cleveland for three seasons, surpassing the 1,000-yard mark during two of them, gaining 2,806 yards and scoring 13 more touchdowns before retiring.

Lewis, who is eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2015, ended his career with 10,607 yards and 58 touchdowns.

Surprisingly, the 2003 season proved to be Lewis' only Pro Bowl campaign, but it was one during which the big, brusing 5-foot-11, 245-pound back -- a first-round pick from Tennessee (fifth overall) in 2000 -- averaged almost 130 yards per game.

Lewis -- whose 7,801 yards as a Raven are a team career record -- set a single-season team mark with 14 rushing touchdowns that year, one during which Baltimore went 10-6 and won its first AFC North Division title before falling to the Tennessee Titans at home during the wild-card round.

His 2,066 rushing yards that year are surpassed in the NFL record books only by the 2,105-yard season the Los Angeles Rams' Eric Dickerson posted in 1984.

Not only that, Lewis set another Ravens record with 12 games of 100 or more yards in 2003, nearly half of his team-best 30 games at or above the century mark.

Lewis' acquisition came as a result of a trade that may have been general manager Ozzie Newsome's best-ever transaction.

In 1999, the Ravens traded their second-round pick that year for the Atlanta Falcons' first-round pick in 2000. Atlanta took tight end Reggie Kelly with the Ravens' pick, but then slumped to 4-12 the following season.

That allowed the Ravens to hold the fifth overall selection, with which they snagged Lewis, who happens to be an Atlanta native.

That year, Lewis became the youngest player to ever take part in a Super Bowl at 21 years, five months, scoring the game-clinching touchdown and gaining more than 100 yards during the Ravens' 34-7 win against the New York Giants during Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa.

(Stover is the oldest, taking the field for Indianapolis during Super Bowl XLIV in Miami in February 2010, mere days after turning 42.)

During the team's playoff run, one of Lewis' highlight runs was a touchdown burst up the middle against the Denver Broncos during Wild Card Weekend, when he plowed over his college roommate, linebacker Al Wilson.

For his career, Lewis averaged 4.3 yards per carry, tied with Chester Taylor for the second-best per-carry average in Ravens history. Priest Holmes and Ray Rice each boast rates of 4.6 yards per attempt.

Lewis' 47 total touchdowns as a Raven, 45 of them rushing, are a team all-time record, and his 284 points scored (including one two-point conversion) are third-best; kicker Billy Cundiff (294) passed Lewis for second place last season.

RAVENS' RING OF HONOR

2012 -- RB Jamal Lewis (to be inducted Sept. 27)
2011 -- K Matt Stover
2008 -- T Jonathan Ogden
2006 -- LB Peter Boulware
2004 -- DE Michael McCrary
2003 -- Owner Art Modell
2002 -- Baltimore Colts Hall of Famers: QB John Unitas, WR Raymond Berry, RB Lenny Moore, DT Art Donovan, DE Gino Marchetti, TE John Mackey, T Jim Parker, LB Ted Hendricks
2001 -- RB Earnest Byner

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JOEY P'S TRIVIA TIME: Today's question:

We pay dubious homage to the NFL's replacement officials by going back to the Baltimore Colts era.

The Ravens' single-game record for penalties is 21 -- one off the league record -- set in Detroit in 2005. What is the highest number of penalties charged to the Colts during a game?

The answer will be revealed at the bottom of this entry.

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O-LINE STILL STEADY: The Ravens' reconfigured offensive line of (left to right) Michael Oher, Ramon Harewood, Matt Birk, Marshal Yanda and Kelechi Osemele -- with occasional Bryant McKinnie cameos -- has performed better than expected.

The unit, featured in the September print edition of PressBox, did have occasional trouble with Trent Cole and Jason Babin -- Philadelphia's speedy defensive ends -- but according to the official stat sheet, quarterback Joe Flacco was hit just once and sacked twice.

That represents a decline from the Cincinnati game, during which the fifth-year quarterback was sacked three times and hit on an additional four occasions.

“I thought we did OK," head coach John Harbaugh said. "There was a couple things in there, I think they had one where they made us miss inside, too. Joe got hit a few times more than I would want him to get hit, but that’s a pretty good pass rush team.

"I thought we did OK with that, just from watching on the sideline. Now I may watch the tape and feel differently about it, so we'll see."

Film might sometimes lie, but numbers don't: the Ravens have committed 12 total penalties during the season's first two games, with the offensive line responsible for just one of them, a Birk holding call against the Eagles.

Yanda was also called for unnecessary roughness during one of the many on-field scrums in Philadelphia, but offsetting calls do not figure into the official penalty statistics.

***

GOOD-TUCK CHARM: Undrafted rookie kicker Justin Tucker has gone 3-for-3 on field goals during each of the first two games, but an even more eye-opening statistic is what he has done on kickoffs, the aspect of the game that put Billy Cundiff into the Pro Bowl in 2010.

Tucker has kicked off 15 times during two games, with 14 of them sailing into the end zone and nine of them resulting in touchbacks. As a result, the kick-coverage team has kept opposing returners from breaking loose.

The unit allowed an average of 29.2 yards per return last year, with one touchdown. So far this year, it has yielded yardage of 18.8 per kick runback.

The self-effacing Tucker simply addressed it in his own eloquent, mellow way.

"I was very happy with the way I struck the ball today, but in the end, we did not get the win, and that is what I would have wanted," Tucker said. "I am pleased with the microcosm of the event that I had today with the 56-yard field goal, but ultimately, I would have rather won the game.”

Even though Tucker's 56-yarder veered toward the right upright just before halftime, it did go through about a third of the way up the pole.

That means it would have been good from the NFL-record distance of 63 yards, accomplished by Tom Dempsey (1970), Jason Elam (1998), Sebastian Janikowski (2011) and David Akers (2012).

Could Tucker join that list one day soon?

"I feel like I hit the kicks really well and I am delighted with that, but I think I will let the sport gods decide where they believe I can hit from," he said. "I think I can hit from the 60s on a really good day.”

***

CONCUSSION TALK: Inside linebacker Jameel McClain is not thought to have suffered any serious concussions during his four-plus seasons in the NFL.

But he grew up in south Philadelphia hoping to be a boxer like one of the city's most famous sons, heavyweight champion Joe Frazier. In fact, "Smokin' Joe" himself signed a pair of gloves for McClain when he was a child.

In boxing, concussions can occur just as quickly, if not more so, than football. It's probably why McClain has aligned himself with MedStar SportsHealth to promote concussion awareness via a new advertising campaign that will be unveiled Tuesday at the Under Armour Performance Center.

McClain and Dr. Andrew Tucker, the Ravens' head team physician, will outline the campaign's goals and objectives, along with Ravens team president Dick Cass and Union Memorial Hospital chief executive officer Bradley Chambers.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Like many in the media, Sam Donnellon of the Philadelphia Daily News addressed the replacement officials during Sunday's Ravens-Eagles game, along with a shot at Baltimore's physical defensive reputation:

"[Head coach John] Harbaugh and his quarterback believed there could have been twice that many [penalties] if all the clutching and grabbing was called on the Eagles' single-man coverages.

"(You probably thought you never would live long enough to hear the Ravens complain about borderline legal defensive plays, didn't you?)"

***

JOEY P'S TRIVIA TIME ANSWER: Here's the question we asked you earlier in this entry:

We pay dubious homage to the NFL's replacement officials by going back to the Baltimore Colts' era.

The Ravens' single-game record for penalties is 21 -- one off the league record -- set in Detroit in 2005. What is the highest number of penalties charged to the Colts during a game?

ANSWER:

Penalties are often borne out of frustration, as a game that supposedly was well in hand suddenly undergoes a strong momentum shift in favor of the opposing side.

During the Colts' final road game as a Baltimore-based team, that's exactly what happened on Dec. 11, 1983, at old Mile High Stadium in Denver.

For some reason, the Colts had to play the AFC Western Division's Broncos twice that year, the same season Baltimore drafted Stanford quarterback John Elway, then traded him to Denver.

Elway was knocked out of a raucous first meeting in Baltimore in September, but he was credited with the first of his 47 fourth-quarter comebacks during December's 21-19 win against the Colts.

That day, the Colts were flagged for a Baltimore-record 16 penalties, most of them during the second half as Elway threw three touchdown passes to rally his team from a 19-0 deficit.

The replay rule wasn't in effect, but if it were, Elway's first touchdown -- a 21-yard pass to Clint Sampson -- likely would not have counted, because the receiver had one foot out of bounds after the catch.

Posted Sept. 17, 2012