I hate Terrell Suggs. I hate him because he’s the perfect embodiment of everything wrong with the Baltimore Ravens. He plays dirty, beats up women and cries when they lose. During the pre-season, he refused to utter the words “Pittsburgh Steelers” in a childish act of defiance after getting owned in the playoffs yet again. He’s cocky, arrogant, and walks around with a self-important swagger despite having never won a damn thing.
I also hate him because he absolutely tortures Steelers.
Granted, our offensive line has made mediocre players look like world-beaters on more than one occasion. However, Suggs has taken it to whole other level. It doesn’t matter who lines up at tackle, it doesn’t matter if they keep a back in to block, T-Sizzle always finds a way to wreak havoc. Loudmouths like Ed Reed and Stabby McStabberson routinely write checks their ass can’t cash. Suggs talks a big game then goes out and plays even bigger.
Yesterday, the local media held a conference call with Suggs in anticipation of this weekend’s renewal of the NFL’s hottest rivalry. In this era, where we have so much access to athletes’ thoughts through their Tweetybooks and Faceyspaces, coaches have worked overtime to stress not giving opponents any of the dreaded Bulletin Board Material (TM). Well, in this interview, Suggs gave the Black and Gold enough material to cover an entire wall.
You can download the interview by clicking here. Word of warning, the language is NSFW so make sure you have your headphones plugged in and no women or children are around. Coast clear? Go ahead and give it a listen. I’ll wait…
There are three segments that really jumped out to me. First was Suggs bringing up Mike Tomlin saying in a pre-season press conference that the Steelers were “going to war” with the Ratbirds in week one. Obsess much? I’m pretty sure Big Ben or James Harrison aren’t sifting through John Harbaugh’s pressers looking for perceived slights. Then we had T-Sizzle daring Steeler Nation to bring the hate on Sunday. I can’t decide what was more arrogant, his thinly veiled reference to the scoreboard operator’s playing of “Renegade” or the absolutely dickish glee he seems to have at being Public Enemy #1.
But the best part of the clip was when he basically called out Hines Ward. The sarcastic little comment about his “smiling face” tells me that Hines really gets under his skin. Of course, Hines tops a lot of NFL’s Dirtiest Player lists for exactly that reason. He’ll jack you up and when you manage to finally hit hm back, he just jumps to his feet and laughs about it.
We’ve been talking a lot about Hines and his role in the offense going forward. While I’m still on board the Young Money Train, I think for this week if Hines is healthy, he needs to start. He’s well past the point where we can expect him to make a huge play that decides the game. But what Suggs inadvertently told us he can do is mess with the Ratbirds’ heads. And when you have two teams as evenly matched as Pittsburgh and Baltimore, every little edge counts.