BALTIMORE | The Baltimore Ravens and Washington Redskins both play their home games in Maryland, yet this rivalry is about as flat as a cheap, old bottle of champagne.
The Ravens and Redskins open their preseason schedule Thursday night, and the focus has nothing to do with bragging rights.
“It’s an extension of training camp,” Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said. “It’s an opportunity to keep growing as a football team and growing as individual players. We’re not game-planning for the Redskins. They’re not game-planning for us. We’re just going to come out and run our basic stuff - see how guys play, how they play together and how they execute.”
Washington happens to be the opposition, although Harbaugh wouldn’t treat the game any differently if it was the Ravens’ real rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers. This is an opportunity for the Baltimore coaching staff to measure the progress of the starting units, although it’s likely that the Ravens will begin substituting liberally before the end of the first quarter.
Winning, quite simply, is not the priority. The Redskins and Ravens will start worrying about that Sept. 13.
“You want to go out there and you want to play well when you’re in there, and that’s what we’re excited to do,” Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco said. “We’re excited to go out there and play in some live action and play well.”
This will be an entirely different preseason opener for Flacco than last year, when he was a clueless rookie who entered in the fourth quarter with the rest of the third-stringers. Flacco was 0-for-3, lost a fumble and was sacked twice.
“Last year I didn’t even know how much I was going to play and didn’t really play until [there were] like five minutes left in the game,” he said. “This year I’ll be starting the game, and we’ll see what happens from there. It’s a lot different mindset.”
Like Flacco, Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell isn’t putting a whole lot of importance on winning the game, given that he should be on the sideline long before the outcome becomes evident. Campbell is playing in a contract year and needs to prove something after owner Dan Snyder spent the offseason trying to find someone else, but that - and this so-called rivalry - won’t raise his level of intensity.
“We don’t expect to play a whole lot,” Campbell said. “… You use these games to get you back in the flow and back into the rhythm of playing. The regular season games are the ones that count and go down into the record books, not the preseason games.”
The evidence: Washington coach Jim Zorn is resting defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth and probably won’t play running back Clinton Portis. Wide receiver Santana Moss, who’s nursing a strained hamstring, likely will watch from the sideline.
The Ravens’ scratches will include wide receiver Mark Clayton (hamstring) and linebacker Terrell Suggs (heel).
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