Patrick Queen opened the door Monday, and a host of NFL analysts (including the one writing this story) have since walked through it.
After the Baltimore Ravens throttled the San Francisco 49ers Sunday night, the Ravens linebacker took a thinly veiled shot at both the Niners and his Week 17 opponent, the Miami Dolphins, when he said the following:
“We play a brand of football people don’t want to play,” Queen said after Baltimore’s 33-19 victory over San Francisco Sunday night. “Everybody want to be out here playing cute, playing basketball on grass, and we ain’t with that.
“You can do all that stuff; you’re just gonna get hit in the mouth every play, honestly. We could care less about all the pretty stuff that you can do, gimmick stuff. You still got to line up and play football; you still got to get touched. That’s our mindset. That’s how we’re going to come out and hit people in the mouth.”
During his Wednesday news conference, Mike McDaniel was asked about that storyline.
Are Miami Dolphins Too ‘Cute’ To Beat ‘Physical’ Baltimore Ravens?
His response — which was predictably exhaustive — was spot on. So here it is in full:
“Were they talking about me? I get cute a lot.”
“To spend your time worrying about narratives, I would be a stressed out individual because I know there’s a lot of narratives around even myself personally. You know, I think that generally, you know, there’s always going to be something that you have to prove.
“I don’t get upset about people insinuating or making statements about things as though they are fact. Speaking on, you know, whatever history that they have. You have an opportunity to prove a whole litany of things. It’s a great thing about this profession, what we do. You get an opportunity to define yourself every single game. And to do that, you have to define yourself every single work day.”
McDaniel continued, “It is kind of odd though. I feel like I haven’t checked lately, but I feel like we’re pretty good at stopping the run and running the football. That’s generally not associated with cuteness. Whatever.
“I mean, there’s always going to be something. We talked about it all the way back in Germany. Like if we didn’t beat the Chiefs, you know exactly what the narrative’s gonna be. Why would you expect anything else?
“You’re a young team that does have athletic, fast players. Until you know, whoever’s talking about it, if it’s an opposing team, you have the opportunity to prove otherwise on Sunday.
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“I don’t harbor any resentment. Clearly, I’m the toughest guy in the room. So that was a mis-association. I’m very confident in our locker room’s style of play.
“These eyes, which is subjective, [don’t] see it that way at all. But great news is you get to prove it every Sunday.”
This coming Sunday, the Dolphins can clinch the AFC East and move within a win of the AFC’s No. 1 seed by beating the Ravens. The Dolphins are three-point road underdogs in Baltimore.
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