Oh, by the way, the Ravens have a football game to play in two days.
While their loss to the Bengals Sunday was quickly overshadowed by video of Ray Rice punching his wife in the face, followed by his firing, the Ravens have to gather themselves in a hurry to play the Steelers, lest they get off to an 0-2 start.
“It was a tough loss,” defensive end Chris Canty said, via Aaron Wilson of the Baltimore Sun. “Certainly, when you get this type of news [Rice’s contract terminated], it doesn’t make things any easier, but we have a job to do. We have to gather ourselves. We’ve got to move forward.
“The Pittsburgh Steelers are coming in here Thursday. From a professional standpoint, they could care less about what we’re going through as a football team. We have to focus on what we need to do as a team to give us the best chance to be successful on Thursday night.”
Among the challenges will be figuring out who is going to run the ball. That wasn’t going to be Rice this week anyway, but Bernard Pierce found himself in the doghouse after a fumble, with Justin Forsett taking over. But there are plenty of other concerns for a team that looked disorganized and sloppy in many areas that had nothing to do with Rice.
“We’re going to play ball,” wide receiver Torrey Smith said. ” We knew we were going to be without him anyway for the first two games, so our focus is on the Steelers and nothing else. More so than anything is getting this stuff out of the way early, because at the end of the day, we’re focusing on our game plan and going out there to play ball.
“That’s just a product of it. We lost one of our best players here, and he was a great Raven, and it feels weird to even say that. That’s the punishment, and he has to deal with it. It’s way worse for him than it is for us. We just have to get ready for the next one.”
That kind of compartmentalization is easy to talk about, but tougher to achieve, especially during a short week.