Roquan Smith Pressure? 'Busting Pipes & Making Diamonds for Ravens in Playoffs vs. Texans
When the divisional round of the NFL playoffs kicks off, there's usually a clear difference between the teams ready to make a run at a championship, and those that are just happy to be where they are.
For the Baltimore Ravens, they will hope to be the former on Saturday when they take on the upstart Houston Texans.
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As the AFC's top seed, Baltimore understands that the pressure of upholding home-field advantage can sometimes be too overwhelming for some teams. That kind of pressure isn't bothering some of their more dominant players, though.
"I don’t feel pressure at all, but some [people] do say pressure bursts pipes and makes diamonds," Ravens linebacker Roquan Smith said. "I know a lot of guys in [the locker room] like diamonds, so I would say we’re in a diamond-making business. At the end of the day, we just have to come out there and be who we are."
The Ravens are a dominant overall unit with one of the best defenses in all of football. Led by Smith, Baltimore was the first team in NFL history to lead the league in points allowed (16.5 per game), sacks (60), and takeaways (31).
That level of dominance saw John Harbaugh's unit dominate top offenses in the San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys, and Philadelphia Eagles.
It makes them a hard team to gameplan against - even against a red-hot Texans offense being led by a rookie phenom at quarterback.
"The offense (in Houston) is definitely clicking, but we wouldn’t want it any other way," Smith explained. "We’re prepared for it, and we’re ready to go to war regardless of who it’s against, and they're the team that’s coming in here. Business is is business handled.”
There aren't a lot of things that worry Smith heading into his second playoff game since being traded to the Ravens last year. As a captain of the defense, though, it's up to him to make sure the focus on the task at hand is being met by everyone else in the locker room.
And that's just what's happening in Baltimore.
"[We want to] send a message of exactly who we are and who we’ve been all year," Smith concluded. "This is a new year right here. Everybody is 0-0 going into each and every game. It’s about winning the game at hand, and that’s our focus. I know if we do everything to the standard that we know, everything else will work out for us.”
