Ravens

UPDATE: Check out a photo gallery of images from Joe Flacco's wedding here. The photos can also be found on the website of photographer Jason Prezant , but the site has been inaccessible due to the high interest in the Flacco pictures. . Joe Flacco's wedding photos have been posted out in the blogosphere, and simply put, they are amazing. The photos, which were published to the blog of wedding photographer Jason Prezant, shed a little light onto what the Ravens quarterback is like away from the television cameras and our microphones.

Maryland football is losing one game scheduled for M&T Bank Stadium. According to multiple officials, the Virginia Tech-Maryland game - which had been planned for 2014 - is now officially off the books since the Terps are departing the Atlantic Coast Conference after the 2013 season. But look for Maryland to return to the Ravens' stadium as soon as 2015. The Terps have done well there - they drew 69,348 to the stadium for a season-opening win over Navy in 2010 - and Maryland's future schedules will obviously include some big-name, Big Ten teams that could fill an NFL stadium.

You take your good news where you get it and here's mine: the Preakness sent Kegasus packing. You remember Kegasus. Sleaze-ball centaur with the biker haircut and beer gut? Budweiser-swilling centerpiece of the Infield Fest ad campaign the past two years? Gone. Got the proverbial pink-slip. You won't see him Saturday for the 138th Preakness Stakes. "He went back to the islands and I haven't seen him since," Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas joked the other day. Good thing.

The Ravens have bolstered the talent and depth on their defensive line this offseason with the additions of Chris Canty and Marcus Spears and the selection of big nose tackle Brandon Williams in last month's NFL draft. But with all that shuffling on the defensive line, what role will fourth-year defensive end Arthur Jones have? Among Ravens, only defensive tackle Haloti Ngata played more snaps on the defensive line last season than Jones, who played at least 32 snaps in 14 of the team's final 15 games, including playoffs.

Within a couple of hours of picking up his first ring, Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco was back on a football field, a champagne bottle in his right hand and his bride and his groomsmen crouched down in front of him like hulking offensive linemen. Flacco barked out commands to his tuxedo-clad teammates as he waited for his new wife to toss him the bouquet from underneath her lacy white dress. The steel bleachers at Audubon High School were empty, save for a few friends and family members.

Most Ravens fans will tell you that inside linebacker Ray Lewis was the greatest draft pick in franchise history. But the fine stat heads over at ESPN have calculated that Lewis was the NFL's most valuable pick since 1994. In this week's ESPN the Magazine, they put together a chart of the best draft picks from each franchise based on Surplus Approximate Value (AV), which essentially measures the difference between what each player produced during his career compared to what he was expected to produce based on where he was drafted.

It's semifinals week on “Dancing with the Stars,” and Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff had two dances this week: Argentine Tango and Lindy Hop (chosen by Twitter users). First up was the Argentine Tango. Karina and Jacoby are losing their patience with each other in rehearsal this week. During rehearsal on the ballroom stage for camera blocking, Karina had a flip over Jacoby that ended with her landing on her jaw, and it sounds like she might have had a slight concussion. She goes to the hospital, but we don't follow her there.

Orioles center fielder Adam Jones has purchased a five-bedroom home along Falls Road in Lutherville for the price of $1.75 million. The seller is one Malcolm Cameron according to state records. He's better known as Cam Cameron, the offensive coordinator fired by the Ravens toward the end the most recent season, which ended in a Super Bowl victory. He bought the home for $1.5 million in July 2011, three years after joining the Ravens following a one-year stint as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.

Troubled inside linebacker Rolando McClain informed Ravens officials Wednesday that he will retire from the NFL, a decision he reached before participating in one practice with his new team. McClain signed with the Ravens on April 12, was arrested just nine days later and then made the surprising decision Wednesday to call it quits on his playing career at the age of 23. Taken eighth overall by the Oakland Raiders in the 2010 draft, McClain played just three seasons, his career marred by on-field inconsistency and off-the-field legal issues.

Two months after winning the Super Bowl , the Ravens are in position to have a good draft and make another serious run at a championship. Even though there was a mass exodus of players in free agency, which began last month, the Ravens have made solid acquisitions by adding outside linebacker Elvis Dumervil and defensive linemen Chris Canty and Marcus Spears. With 12 picks in the NFL draft later this month, the Ravens have plenty of ammunition to sign several quality players in a draft that most experts consider very deep.

Two guns and cash were stolen in a weekend burglary at the Reisterstown home of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, Baltimore County police confirmed. Police said surveillance video showed that a man entered through a rear window at Rice's home in the northwestern Baltimore suburbs and made off with two guns and $2,000 in cash after ransacking the home. Cpl. Cathleen Batton, a police spokeswoman, said the break-in occurred some time between 8:30 p.m. Friday and 12:50 a.m. Saturday, and was reported to police about 1:20 a.m. Rice was not home at the time, Batton said.

Whenever the conversations about the leading candidates for the No. 2 receiver come up, Ravens officials like to mention several names including Deonte Thompson, David Reed, LaQuan Williams and Tandon Doss. But if you listen carefully, the Ravens think Thompson, in his second year, has the inside track. He has good size, soft hands and can fly. Opposite starter Torrey Smith, the Ravens would have two vertical threats on both sides of the field. "[Thompson] could sneak in there, he looks different, is fast and catches everything," Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said.

At 1,992 pounds, the projected front seven of the Baltimore defense will weigh just under a ton, which is about the same as a tiny smart car, a large walrus or the Johnny Unitas statue outside M&T Bank Stadium. It could also be the heaviest front seven in the NFL next season. The folks over at Blogging the Beast recently took the projected depth charts from Ourlads, a reliable source, and totaled the weights of all the front sevens . I'm not sure why they did this, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Cut by the Ravens in early April, linebacker and special teams standout Brendon Ayanbadejo still hasn't ruled out playing in the NFL during the 2013 season. He works out daily and keeps himself ready in case a team calls and the situation is right. But right now, the 36-year-old is far too busy with other endeavors to be consumed with whether his 10-year NFL career is over.   “There's not anything that I have to do right now so If the football angle has exhausted itself because there's no more options in football, then that will come to a close on its own and then there will be a point where I have to announce my retirement.

So far, all is good as far as left offensive tackle Bryant McKinnie and the Ravens. The word from The Castle is that the often-troubled McKinnie has been attending conditioning sessions and working hard. His weight is down and reasonable, and the expectations are high that he will be ready when the team opens training camp in late July. That would be perfect for the Ravens because they wouldn't have to move other players around, like guard Kelechi Osemele or right tackle Michael Oher, to fill in for McKinnie.

Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome was having a great offseason as far as acquisitions and building the team, but the Ravens are embarrassed by linebacker Rolando McClain's announced retirement. The old mantra about "In Ozzie We Trust" should be changed to "In Ozzie We Trust, Most Of The Time. " The Ravens blew it on this one. They went out and signed a knucklehead who remained a knucklehead. At this point, we don't know why McClain retired at age 23, and to be honest, I'm afraid to ask. I really don't want to know, and I'm just glad he is out of here.

In NFL circles, Marvin Demoff is the power broker you never see and only occasionally hear about, often after the fact, like some sort of twister that levels the local trailer park.Oh, you mean he was the attorney who backed Bob Irsay into a dark corner in 1983 and forced the Baltimore Colts' infamous trade of No. 1 draft pick John Elway to the Denver Broncos?Yes, he is that attorney -- a man so esteemed in those NFL circles he sometimes is referred to as the "Monsignor"; a man so trustworthy it is said he is a confidant of Al Davis, the inscrutable owner of the Oakland Raiders; a man so powerful he is the contractual voice for Dan Marino and Jeff Hostetler, Rick Mirer and Jim Everett, Rod Woodson and Leslie O'Neal, to name a few of the league's elite.

For so long, they had been the two faces of one of the league's most dominant defenses, Ray Lewis the punishing tackler and Ed Reed the unrelenting ball hawk. Now, they are both gone and the mass exodus from the Ravens defense continues. About six weeks after Lewis retired following his last game as a Raven, Reed moved closer to signing a two-year deal with the Houston Texans, who aggressively pursued the 34-year-old safety over the last week. Terms of the deal aren't known and there are still a few things that have to be worked out, but it's clear that Reed and the organization that he had played with for the last 11 years have parted ways.

Troubled inside linebacker Rolando McClain informed Ravens officials Wednesday that he will retire from the NFL, a decision he reached before participating in one practice with his new team. McClain signed with the Ravens on April 12, was arrested just nine days later and then made the surprising decision Wednesday to call it quits on his playing career at the age of 23. Taken eighth overall by the Oakland Raiders in the 2010 draft, McClain played just three seasons, his career marred by on-field inconsistency and off-the-field legal issues.

The Ravens could have as many as seven or eight new starters on defense when the 2013 season begins. You can produce a number of statistics that suggest why they may have felt compelled to overhaul their defense. Here is a good one: The Ravens whiffed on 87 tackles during the 2012 season, according to Football Outsiders. Aaron Schatz, who wrote about broken tackles in this recent post , explained that Football Outsiders define a broken tackle as one of two events: “either the ball-carrier escapes from the grasp of the defender, or the defender is in good position for a tackle but the ball-carrier jukes him out of his shoes.” Schatz added that “if the ball-carrier sped by a slow defender who dived and missed, that didn't count as a broken tackle.” Based on Football Outsiders' charting, done by more than two dozen people, only three NFL teams missed more tackles during the regular season.