Ravens: Hauschka Cut
Pretty sure this one isn’t catching anybody by surprise: the Ravens have severed ties with kicker Steve Hauschka.
As anyone who knows me knows, I have a soft spot in my heart for troubled kickers. Not sure Hauschka qualifies, though. I don’t think he’s interesting enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm9Onr4wIjY
@dan the man – Laces out, Dan!
Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Cundiff.
I agree that Hauschka is – in addition to being hard to spell – not an interesting enough player to really get behind, but it’s hard not to feel something with the Colts and Matt Stover coming to town. I’m not sure what that something is, exactly, but I want to say this broadly:
The greatest strength the Ravens possess, which had been missing from the Orioles for a long, long time (and is still missing from a lot of badly run organizations across all of sports) is that they were making decisions with their heads.
Everyone in Maryland (and some of us in New York) want Stover back, want the Ravens to have never gotten rid of him in the first place. Now with Hauschka gone, the mistake is full circle (one hopes) and it seems all the more glaringly wrong that Matt Stover isn’t just gone, but he’s a Colt. Of all things…
But I really want to applaud the Ravens even now, after the mistake is clear, that they knew that Matt Stover can’t be your number one kicker anymore and that it was – and is – time to move on. In their hearts they wanted Stover back. We all did. He defined the Ravens in a weird way that only a long-time kicker can do. But in their heads they knew it was time to move on.
And the Ravens did what is probably the very hardest thing to do in sports – they ignored their hearts and went with the level-headed and right decision to let Stover go, even in the face of this week’s coming PR nightmare. It makes me love them all the more for it, too.