Baltimore's Bad Dream ... Brady in a Skirt

Baltimore Ravens' Coach John Harbaugh

Sunday's Don’t-Hit-Brady Game

Photo: Associated Press

Baltimore is having a bad dream over the notion of Tom Brady in a skirt.

It is so bad that you just want to run down the hall and tell your mother about it. Even after two days, the image just won’t go away.

See, Brady is an NFL golden boy, Super Bowl champion, etc., etc. His New England Patriots beat the Ravens 27-21 Sunday in Foxborough in a key AFC matchup.

But for a lot of Ravens fans, along with pro football commentators and observers nationally, some of that Brady mystique is taking a beating after perceived favoritism the QB received on officials’ calls Sunday.

Two particular drive-extending roughing-the-passer penalties against Ravens’ tackle Haloti Ngata and linebacker Terrell Suggs that led to two second quarter New England touchdowns are drawing major scrutiny around the league.

It was not so much that the refs threw the flags. Ngata was whistled for a clear blow to the side of Brady’s helmet. More questionable, Suggs was flagged for brushing Brady’s knees while falling to the ground -- the "Brady Rule." Clearly, the NFL must have rules to protect its quarterbacks, but Ravens coach John Harbaugh says Brady got calls his QB Joe Flacco didn’t. Harbaugh wouldn’t claim favoritism outright, but his words at his Monday press conference were clear.

Flacco "got hit (six) different times hard, and there was one call," Harbaugh said. "Tom didn’t get hit five times. We want him to be hit more than he was hit, but when he did sort of get hit, it was called. That goes to the credibility of the whole thing."

Others were even more strident on the charge of Brady favoritism. His former teammate Rodney Harrison on the NFL Sunday night pre-game show on NBC looked into the camera and told Brady to "take off the skirt." On the Suggs brush by, Brady excitedly pointed toward his knees and the penalty was called.

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis simply termed the penalties "embarrassing." Brady, who is coming back from a knee injury that wiped out his 2008 season, mockingly countered after the game that the refs were right to throw the flags. Brady, Lewis said in the tit-for-tat, "is good enough to make his own plays. Let him make his own play. When you have two great teams that are going at it, let them go at it. …The embarrassing part is when he understands that, and he walks up to one of us and says, 'Oh, that was a cheap one.' "

Lewis’ comments served to shine a spotlight on the seemingly obsession in the NFL with the pristine Tom Brady brand.

Harbaugh said he was submitting film to the NFL showing what he believed to be questionable calls. Ron Winter’s officiating crew called 14 penalties for the game for 126 yards – 9 for 85 yards against the Ravens, including a puzzling 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty against Harbaugh in the third quarter.

If anything, the Don’t-Hit-Brady Game came down, as usual, to none other than Patriots coach Bill Belichick. He may have outsmarted everyone again.

Belichick conceded he game-planned for penalties – noting that Winter and his crew have been the league’s most aggressive officiating crew at calling penalties the past two years. "It tells me the game's going to be tight. So yeah I did mention that to the team. And they did call it tight."

Those damn Pats.

Observations on Ravens’ Tony Fein’s Arrest

Let’s start this with a disclaimer. I wasn’t there, and I am relying on reports I read.

Tony Fein, a Baltimore Ravens rookie linebacker from Mississippi, was arrested Aug. 23 -- a Sunday evening at a restaurant at Baltimore’s Harborplace dining and entertainment district, hanging out with buddies, also supposedly Ravens. Fein allegedly shoved a city cop after being asked to show his hands after a security guard's report of a man possibly with a concealed gun (it turned out to be a cell phone).

Fein, listed at 6-foot-2 and 245 pounds, isn’t your typical rookie, but he's a good story. Fein, 27, served in the Iraq War before making his way to college and pro football. The guy is a winner of the Pat Tillman Patriot Award. Before his arrest, not many in Baltimore or elsewhere likely had heard of Tony Fein – he’s way down on the Ravens' linebacker depth chart behind the likes of Lewis, Suggs, Johnson, Gooden, Burgess, McClain, Barnes and Kruger.

Tony Fein might not remain in Baltimore once Ravens roster cuts come over the next several days, but some are likening his arrest to the famous and already historic case – only last month in July -- of esteemed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates was cuffed and locked up during an altercation with a white Cambridge, MA officer in his home -- sparking allegations of racial profiling that even elicited public remarks from Barack Obama.

Tony Fein’s arresting officer also is white. Fein’s agent, Milton "Dee" Hobbs Jr., declared in press reports the next day that Fein, too, was targeted by a racial-profiling cop because he is black.

Does Fein rise to the clamor of Henry Louis Gates’ arrest? Probably not. Fein’s no African American Studies scholar, and the case doesn’t rise to the stature of a presidential comment. Everybody is surmising that tensions were a little on edge at Harborplace last weekend because of a recent shooting and some roving gangs running amok and robbing people at the downtown venue during summer. Baltimore police pledged to tighten up enforcement in the wake of incidents.

As everybody knows, Fein simply should have followed the orders of the cop. That much is not disputed. We all know that police officers are public servants raising families like everybody else and that the work can be dangerous. But that this young black man was approached like that – in a Johnny Rockets restaurant of all places – is troubling to some.

Johnny Rockets isn’t a place where young black men go to brandish weapons. They go to Johnny Rockets to devour chili dogs, down root beer and flirt with young waitresses. Hanging out in a Johnny Rockets is pretty innocent.

Baltimore police are adamant that racial profiling did not occur in Fein’s case, and even agent Hobbs acknowledged in a press report he could "understand" how things transpired.

The police report noted that Fein was wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the dead of summer and that prompted suspicions. OK, young black guys do wear hooded sweatshirts. Out on the street, say at Bentalou and Baker in West Baltimore or along Bladensburg Road in Northeast DC, it can be a little daunting to confront the dreaded hooded sweatshirt while on a 10 p.m. walk.

But at a Johnny Rockets on a Sunday evening? Pro football players competing in training camp wear sweats. Doesn’t matter if it’s 85 or 90 degrees out. That's what they wear.

Bill Belichick, the Super Bowl winning coach of the New England Patriots, is famous for trolling the sidelines in his hooded sweatshirt – often with the hood up. Some could ask whether a Belichick would be approached and asked to show his hands if wearing his hoddie at a Johnny Rockets.