Larry Brown Sports

Winning in the NFL on a weekly basis is difficult enough, let alone winning four straight games in the playoffs against the best teams in the league. Generally speaking, the team that wins the Super Bowl deserves the right to be called the best. The Baltimore Ravens earned that right by beating the San Francisco 49ers this year, but Frank Gore is not willing to fully admit that.

“It’s tough,” the Niners running back said Sunday according to ESPN.com. “I just feel like we [were] the better team. They got away with one today. We showed we were the better team. It was just a couple plays here, a couple plays there.”

Any Super Bowl is bound to come down to a couple plays, but I disagree with Gore that the Niners showed they were a better team. If anything, they showed that they were completely outmatched until the stadium lights went out and things seemed to turn in their favor.

“I think we’re the better team,” Gore said. “[I'm] just happy the way we kept fighting. Any other team probably would’ve just laid down, and we let people know what type of guys we’ve got in the locker room, type of warriors we are. It just didn’t happen for us today.”

Gore has every right to be proud of what his team accomplished, but it seems like we have at least one person who pulls the “the better team lost” card every year. Last year, it was Baltimore linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo who refused to give credit to the AFC and NFC champions. Would the Niners have beaten the Ravens three out of five times if the two teams played a series? It’s possible, but this is the NFL. The team hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the season is is No. 1.

Anquan Boldin has been one of the top offensive performers for the Baltimore Ravens this postseason and has helped lead them to the Super Bowl. It would be hard to imagine the Ravens playing without him in the future, but that might end up being the case.

Per Rotoworld, ESPN’s Adam Schefter said on “NFL Live” Thursday that the Ravens may end up releasing Boldin after the Super Bowl because of salary cap issues they’re facing.

Schefter says the Ravens are $5 million over the salary cap for next season, and that’s without factoring in a new deal for quarterback Joe Flacco. Boldin is scheduled to earn $6 million next season. Cutting him reportedly would save the team $5.5 million against the salary cap.

Though releasing Boldin is not something Baltimore would want to do, it’s something they may have to do.

Boldin was acquired in a trade with the Arizona Cardinals after the 2009 season for a third and fourth-round pick. Though he has not recorded a 1,000-yard season with the team, he has 14 touchdown catches. He also has five touchdown catches in seven playoff games with the team, including three this postseason.

Image via YouTube

Courtney Lenz is a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader, but she is not welcome at the Super Bowl despite her team being one of the two that is playing for a championship. On Wednesday evening, Lenz sat down for an interview on “Access Hollywood” and explained why she has been barred from the big game. She says that it ultimately has to do with her weight.

“They said that I had quote, unquote, a rough year,” Lenz said, via the Chicago Tribune. “I’d been benched earlier in the season for a little bit of a weight gain. We do get weighed every week during the season, and you can’t fluctuate at all. I gained, I think it was 1.8 pounds. I had been consistent and they let me cheer previously and then I gained 1.8 or 1.6 pounds and they said because I had gained weight and they wanted me to be consistent or they wanted me to lose, they benched me for a game and because it was a disciplinary action, that was the reason.”

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During the 2012 regular season, 11 NFL quarterbacks threw for more than 4,000 yards. Through the 2008 season, only two quarterbacks in league history had ever thrown for more than 5,000 in a single season — Dan Marino with 5,084 in 1984 and Drew Brees with 5,069 in 2008. Then, in 2011, Brees, Tom Brady and Matthew Stafford all threw for over 5,000 yards. Eli Manning just missed the mark with 4,933.

Statistics would tell you that the game is changing and offense is taking over. The Ravens and the 49ers would tell you that we’re still watching the same old NFL, and defense still wins championships.

The Guardian recently examined the spending habits of all 32 NFL teams for the 2012 season, and the numbers show that 17 teams spent more money on defense than they did on offense. Of the 12 teams that made the playoffs in both the NFC and AFC, exactly half dedicated more of their salary cap dollars to defense than offense. Two of those teams remain standing, and their overall numbers are strikingly similar.

The Ravens dedicated $64 million to their defense this season, which is the fifth-highest amount in the NFL. The Niners spent $61.4 million on that side of the ball, which places them seventh in the league. San Francisco also ranked in the top 10 in offensive spending with $58.5 million, while Baltimore came in it 23rd with $49.1 million.

In an era where spread offenses and empty backfields have taken over, Baltmore general manager Ozzie Newsome and San Francisco GM Trent Baalke have decided to place an emphasis on defense. Their approach has carried them over some of the best offenses in the league in Green Bay and New England and all the way to New Orleans for Super Bowl XLVII. Finesse and scoring may lead to wins in the regular season, but the two teams in the Super Bowl have proven that smash-mouth football and stout defense can still prevail come playoff time.

Over the next two weeks, the media will spend a tremendous amount of time focusing on Ray Lewis and the final chapter of his career with the Baltimore Ravens. Since the 13-time Pro Bowler announced that he will retire after the season, the Ravens have appeared to play with more urgency. However, he is hardly the only reason Baltimore is headed to New Orleans for Super Bowl 47.

On Monday, Torrey Smith reminded reporters that there are 52 other players on the team who have earned a shot at the title just as much as Lewis has. And they want to capture the Vince Lombardi trophy just as badly as he does.

“We wanted to be here before (Lewis) said he wanted to retire,” Smith said according to Around the League. “We all want to win a Super Bowl. You know, Ray isn’t the only guy here. He has one (ring) and we all know that this is his last shot at it. Ed Reed has never been to the Super Bowl. Terrell Suggs has never been to one. Anquan Boldin has never won one, he’s been there. These are (who) I play for every day, we play for each other.”

Good for Torrey. He was in no way trying to upstage Lewis or understate what he has accomplished, but a team is a team. When players are asked question after question about the same person on their team, it starts to take its toll. It doesn’t matter if that player is a rookie or a 17-year veteran. Lewis has already won a Super Bowl. Do the Ravens want him to be able to end his NFL career on top? Sure, but they want to win a Super Bowl for the same reasons every other player in the league wants to win one. Ray’s retirement tour is simply a footnote.

Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Dean Pees has his hands full with trying to stop the New England Patriots on Sunday, and he knows more than the average person about just how deadly Tom Brady and company can be. Pees was a defensive coach for the Patriots from 2004-2009, so he has experience watching Brady from the sidelines and going up against him in practice.

So how does he intend to stop him this weekend in Foxboro?

“Hire Tonya Harding,” Pees joked on Thursday according to the Boston Herald. “If they were getting off the bus, I’d spray water outside the bus and hope it freezes.

“He is who he is. I went against him up there in practice for six years. He’s as competitive of a person as I’ve ever been around. He can give you this little boyish look on TV, but he is a very, very, very competitive guy. He didn’t even like losing in practice. The more we rode him on defense, because I had a couple trash talkers, the harder he played. He is who he is. He’s going to play well.”

That’s a cruel joke that legendary skater Nancy Kerrigan certainly would not appreciate, but you get the point. Pees gushed about Brady and called him a Hall of Fame quarterback, reiterating that he expects him to play well and that all Baltimore can do is try to disrupt him the best way they can.

While the way a playoff game will go is impossible to predict, common sense would tell you that the Ravens will have to score a lot of points this weekend if they want to advance to the Super Bowl. A certain Baltimore linebacker may think New England runs a “gimmick” offense, but talking trash isn’t going to help them stop it. Nobody knows that better than Pees.

The Baltimore Ravens are heading to Super Bowl 47, according to wide receiver Anquan Boldin. They still have to make an important stop in Foxboro to take on the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday, but the 10-year veteran doesn’t sound all that concerned about that.

On Wednesday, Boldin told reporters that the Ravens were going to make the outcome of this year’s playoff game against New England different than last year. You might remember in that game when Billy Cundiff shanked what would have been a game-tying 32-yard field goal as time expired. Boldin isn’t worried about a repeat performance from the Ravens.

“We’ll win,” he said confidently, according to the Ravens official website.

Boldin made a similar comment last week leading up to Baltimore’s game against the Denver Broncos, telling reporters that the outcome would be different than when Denver beat the Ravens 34-17 in Week 16. He was right. He did not, however, guarantee a victory.

Every player who is taking part in a conference championship game this weekend believes their team is going to win — or at least they should. The reason people take issue with statements like the one Boldin made is that a team seemingly gains nothing from them. It’s nothing more than bulletin board material for the opposition, and Brendon Ayanbadejo has already provided the Patriots with plenty of that by ranting on Twitter over the weekend. I’m always an advocate for letting the play do the talking.

Chest bump to Tom E. Curran of CSNNE.com