Curtain Closes on Ravens

So Brett Favre holds his own Ram Appreciation Day inside the Dome at America’s Center, tossing out six souvenir footballs to members of the home team, and slinks out of the playoffs looking less like the best quarterback of his generation and more like Ty Detmer under glass? A shame it had to happen that way.

And the Oakland Raiders are eliminated from the playoffs by a rule more poorly conceived and written than your usual “Arliss” script, recovering a fumble that looked like a fumble, felt like a fumble and smelled like a fumble--except the rulebook said no, forget everything you just saw, that’s a forward pass, even though New England quarterback Tom Brady had no intention of passing the ball forward at the time he was hit, and even winked about it during the Patriots’ post-victory news conference? A shame it had to happen that way.

And the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens are bounced from the tournament in the second round, by a score of 27-10, by being held to 22 net rushing yards, by the Pittsburgh Steelers?

A shame it had to happen a year too late.

Where were these Steelers when we needed them last January? Oh, right. Vacationing after a 9-7 third-place finish in the AFC Central, with Coach Bill Cowher wondering about his future in Pittsburgh, wondering what to do about quarterback because Kordell Stewart obviously wasn’t the answer, wondering why the Steelers had wasted the No. 8 pick of the 2000 draft on Plaxico Burress.

The 2000 Steelers were a year away, as they say, which meant we had to spend 12 months listening to Brian Billick and Shannon Sharpe and Tony Siragusa bray about the greatness of a one-dimensional Raven team that, in its own way, was as charmed as the 2001 Chicago Bears, who finally saw their myth matched by the severe reality of Donovan McNabb running free out of the pocket.

The 2000 Ravens set a record for fewest points given up during a 16-game regular-season schedule, and that was enough to convince too many people who really knew better that this was the Greatest Defense In The History of Defense. It wasn’t, as those same people now realize, having regained their senses and re-examined how Baltimore fattened up its defensive resume in 2000--namely, eight games against Cincinnati, Cleveland, Jacksonville and pre-resurgence Pittsburgh.

The Ravens then went on to the Super Bowl by rolling past three flawed AFC rivals--Denver didn’t have Brian Griese, Tennessee didn’t have much more than Eddie George, Oakland didn’t have a contingency plan for Rich Gannon sitting in the shadow of a falling Siragusa. And the Ravens won that Super Bowl largely because the NFC sent along its weakest representative in more than two decades.

That didn’t stop the most obnoxious champions in memory--that reputation is fully deserved--from carrying on as if they were the Lombardi Packers reborn in the age of multimedia overkill. Yet the Ravens’ championship felt uncomfortably similar to the rule that determined Brady’s fumble against the Raiders to be, quote-unquote, an “incomplete pass.”

It might not be right, but that’s the way it is.

According to the numbers on the scoreboard, the 2000 Ravens were the best team in football. And according to the NFL rulebook, as it is written, referee Walt Coleman acted correctly when reversing his original call on Brady’s apparent fumble and instead concurred with the rule that states when a player is “holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body.”

Which, of course, is absolutely ludicrous.

Has anyone ever seen a player attempt a forward pass by tucking the ball back toward his body? OK, Minnesota Viking fans who watched Spergon Wynn in action this season might have, but aside from them?

You read that rule, and you re-read it, and you’re afraid to delve deeper into the NFL rulebook. What other insane ramblings are buried in the back pages? When Player A lines up in punt formation, whatever he does next with the ball shall be ruled a punt, even if the player runs with the ball or passes the ball or autographs the ball or deflates the ball and uses the leather to fashion handsome wallets for his offensive linemen.

Perhaps acting to head off such scrutiny, NFL officials have promised to revisit the rule during the off-season and possibly rewrite it. Which is the reasonable thing to do, though a little too late to do the Raiders any good.

That rule turned a Patriot turnover into a Patriot incompletion, which set up Adam Vinatieri’s tying field goal, which set up Vinatieri’s deciding field goal in overtime. It was almost enough to make you feel sorry for the Raiders, who really believe this NFL-out-to-get-Al-Davis conspiracy stuff. Until you got a look at Channel 2’s idea of “objective journalism” and listened to its panel of ex-Raiders Willie Gault and Rod Martin and ex-Raider PR man Steve Hartman.

A very strange weekend, all in all. Fox’s Pat Summerall wrapped up the Rams’ 45-17 rout of Favre and the Green Bay Packers by studying a camera close-up of Ram Coach Mike Martz and wondering aloud, “This guy ... Mike Martz ... a genius?”

John Madden said he thought Martz was and went on to add that Martz’s Ram offense just might be the greatest of all time.

Here we go again.

Martz is not a genius. Neither is Billick, which no doubt will come as a shock to him, nor Jon Gruden nor Andy Reid nor Bill Belichick. How do we know this? Because geniuses usually use their time to invent medicines or write great works of literature. Rarely do they spend their Sundays wearing bad windbreakers and yelling at 320-pound long snappers.

If Martz is so smart, why did it take him a full year to figure out Kurt Warner + Marshall Faulk - a real defense = no return to the Super Bowl?

If Billick is so smart, what was Elvis Grbac doing out there at Heinz Field, charged with defending the Ravens’ Super Bowl championship against the ball-hawking Pittsburgh defense?

If Gruden is so smart, what was he doing calling timeout before Vinatieri’s decisive field-goal attempt, thinking it might “ice” the kicker? The only thing iced at the time was the Foxboro Stadium playing surface. All Gruden’s timeout accomplished was giving Vinatieri’s teammates enough time to clear a spot in the snow for a clean kick placement.

Cowher? Well, it must be noted that he just pulled off the greatest victory in Pittsburgh Steeler history. Yes, greater than the Immaculate Reception game of 1972--which was great for Franco Harris and NFL Films, no doubt, but little beyond those two. And, yes, it was greater than the Steelers’ four Super Bowl victories--which were great for the city of Pittsburgh, but not quite the big-picture triumph of Pittsburgh 27, Purple Blight 10.

Sunday, Cowher’s team did the NFL a favor, the sport of football a favor, the entire country a favor. That still won’t qualify him for genius status. Humanitarian of the year is another story.