In today’s NFL rivalries still exist, but they aren’t as heated or as chippy as they once were.
Part of that is due to free agency and players moving to new teams time and time again, developing relationships across the NFL landscape. And part of that is the style of play today, which is more wide-open, offense-centric unlike the NFL of yesteryear.
But for one Sunday at least, the matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens at Acrisure Stadium provided that old-school feel. It was a physical, nasty game, one that featured a lot of bumps and bruises coming out of it. It had plenty of chippy moments, too, in which skirmishes broke out as the two teams very clearly didn’t like each other and knew the stakes of the game.
For former NFL center Jason Kelce, who appeared on the latest episode of his podcast “New Heights”, the Steelers-Ravens game was truly a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.
“A Steelers and Ravens game, it’s always tight. It’s always physical, like that AFC North style of play that we grew up watching in Cleveland. And it did not disappoint. My goodness,” Jason Kelce told his brother and co-host Travis Kelce, according to audio via the show’s podcast page. “When you’re playing, especially when you’re older and the chippiness happens on the field, I feel like a lot of times you’re like, ‘Dude, will you stop all the nonsense? Like, what are you doing? Being ridiculous?’ You know what I mean? Like, can we just play football? Why you gotta get into all this other stuff. That’s the way I was. Now I find myself like, ‘Dude, I love it.’ I love when people are like getting in each other’s faces and talking trash. Like Broderick Jones going at it with [Marlon] Humphrey. They gotta get warned because they’re about to get kicked out of the game because they’re jawing at each other and hitting each other after the whistle. That’s the kind of football that gets you excited. And that’s what this game, that’s the energy this game had.
“That’s when you know the meaningful games are happening. And it was fun to see that kind of football being played. And the Steelers and Ravens, it was an old-fashioned bar brawl. It was two teams that knew how important the game was. They were going at it. And ultimately the Steelers won the game without scoring a single touchdown.”
Matchups between the Steelers and Ravens are almost always tight. They often come down to one score and who has the football last. Time and time again that’s the case.
That was largely the case on Sunday, too, and the added physicality and intensity in the matchup was only ratcheted up due to the stakes in the AFC North and in the conference as a whole.
It was great to see second-year RT Broderick Jones play with some fire, coming out swinging (metaphorically) early and taking it to the Ravens physically, leading to some chippy moments with Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey. Even rookie center Zach Frazier and rookie guard Mason McCormick mixed it up, leading to some intense moments.
That’s what Steelers-Ravens has always been. There’s a respect factor there, but the intensity is through the roof between the white lines, and it’s going to be a knockdown, drag-out fight to the final whistle.
Fortunately, the Steelers were the team standing at the final whistle and picked up a monumental win in a season full of them. Now they have to turn around on a short week and prepare for the Cleveland Browns and more AFC North football after the old-fashioned bar brawl.
Let’s see if they’re up to the task again.
