FanHouse John Harbaugh

On the eve of a Sunday night NFC East showdown in Philadelphia, the Cowboys have gotten some bulletin board material via a comparison of their franchise and the Eagles. Strangely enough, the inflammatory statements weren't made by anyone with current ties to the Eagles, but by Ravens head coach John Harbaugh.

Harbaugh, a former Eagles assistant, was asked for a new book what made the Eagles more successful than the Cowboys over the last 10 years. Matt Mosley of ESPN.com shares the answer.

NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

Consider this hypothetical: what if two coaches met in a dark alley and threw down in a no-holds-barred brawl? Who would emerge victorious?

First, some background: back when I was in high school, when my friends and I were pretty creative in finding ways to avoid actually paying attention in class, we'd create brackets (think NCAA Tournament) where we'd pit our teachers against each other**. Whoever we thought would win in a fight advanced to the next round. It always ended with our offensive line coach against our wrestling coach in the finals and a huge argument as to who would come out on top.

Anyway, last week, the Back Porch staff somehow ended up discussing whether Rex Ryan or Tom Cable would win in a old school playground scrap. I passed along the above information, and shortly after that, an idea was born -- NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament.

SAN DIEGO -- Ray Lewis waited 59 1/2 minutes Sunday to make a spectacular play he had created in his mind's eye, a scene crafted through hours of film study dissecting the Chargers' prolific offense. But the play was no fluke: That same game film all but promised the Ravens linebacker that San Diego would give the ball to spark-plug running back Darren Sproles in a short-yardage situation.

And with the ballgame on the line.

Baltimore Ravens cornerback Samari Rolle will be on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list for at least the opening six weeks of the 2009 NFL season. He'll also undergo his second surgery in under a year after a neck specialist indicated that another procedure could help Rolle get back onto the field.

Rolle missed six games last season and hasn't practiced with the team at all this fall. The Ravens released Rolle in March, then resigned him to a four-year deal in April, but he has spent most of his time since trying to heal up.

When L.J. Smith signed a one-year deal with Baltimore in the offseason, he did so determined to prove that the "injury-prone" label affixed to him in Philadelphia was a misnomer.

Keep trying, L.J.

Smith, who missed six games with a sports hernia in 2007 and four games plus a postseason contest with injuries in 2008, has barely been able to stay on the field during Baltimore's training camp. What's wrong? Try everything -- the latest being a hamstring pull suffered on Monday night against the Jets. But as head coach John Harbaugh explains it, this is hardly a one-time problem.

"He had the hip flexor, the groin, the sports hernia, the upper hamstring," Harbaugh said after practice Wednesday. "It's like these things, you compensate and they tie into one another"

The NFL season is less than five weeks away, and today FanHouse is at Ravens training camp -- Stop 2 and mile 270 of Dan Graziano's five-camp, 1,100-mile road trip.

WESTMINSTER, Md. -- Pressure? Nerves? Just because Tavares Gooden is expected to take over free-agent defector Bart Scott's spot at Ravens inside linebacker next to Ray Lewis? No way, says Gooden. Running with the first team in practice isn't about pressure or nerves. It's about great big holes to run through.

"You hear noises that make you think you're watching an army movie -- Haloti Ngata crashing into guys and stuff like that," Gooden said Sunday after the Ravens wrapped up their afternoon practice at McDaniel College. "And then you've got those holes and those openings, and you just fill them as a linebacker. I think that's the biggest part of being with the 'ones.' Everybody knows their assignments, and all you have to do is play off that D-line."

While Tony Dungy was popularizing the Tampa 2 defense, Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson was proving that there was another way to succeed.

Dungy's Tampa 2 was all about preventing the big play. Put two safeties deep, run a middle linebacker in between them and have the cornerbacks play zone. Dungy figured that if he made teams move slowly down the field, eventually they would make a mistake. Johnson's style was much more aggressive. He figured that he could force those mistakes on any play by confusing teams with pressure from every angle and every level of the defense.

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