According to Cleveland wide receiver Jerry Jeudy, the Baltimore Ravens secondary presents “no challenges” for the Browns passing game in Sunday’s NFL meeting.
That’s coming from a player whose team is a 11.5-point underdog, a betting spread that Jeudy termed “disrespectful at the end of the day. If they think Baltimore could beat us like that, we going to have to prove them another thing. You know, we got to do our job and do our best to win the game.”
Jeudy had five receptions for 66 yards as Cleveland opened its season with a 17-16 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
In his first season with the Browns, Jeudy had 11 receptions for 142 yards as Cleveland and Baltimore split their two AFC North meetings in 2024.
Safety Kyle Hamilton provided the Ravens’ response on Thursday to Jeudy’s Wednesday remark.
“Guys say whatever they’re going to say,” Hamilton said. “I really don’t care. That’s the thing with bulletin-board material that I never understood. Was I not going to play hard before he said that? I’m going to play the same way I was going to play. If you need bulletin-board material to go play, then that’s a problem on you.
“I guess he’s trying to get himself hype for the game, and we’re doing the same thing. We’ll see you on Sunday, but, yes, we’re excited to go out there.”
This is the second see-you-on-Sunday moment for the Browns-Ravens game this week, after Cleveland safety Grant Delpit said Baltimore running back Derrick Henry was “not hard” to tackle.
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But Jeudy might not get much pushback from another former Alabama All-American. Baltimore cornerback Marlon Humphrey wasn’t happy with his defensive unit after the Ravens lost their season-opening game 41-40 on Sunday night.
Baltimore had a 40-25 lead with four minutes remaining in the loss to Buffalo.
“I like to sit next to (linebacker) Roquan (Smith) on the bench because I know he’s going to be pretty locked in throughout the entire game, and I want to be kind of at that same mental level,” Humphrey said. “And I just remember being up 15 and I looked over at Ro, I was like, ‘You know, let’s go win the game.’ And I think as a collective, when you watch the tape, we all want to do that. But I think it goes to what (coach John Harbaugh) addressed in the team meeting. He said we’re just not mature enough as a team yet.
“I think it’s very clear we got great players on both sides of the ball. But defensively we have to work on our maturity. Doesn’t matter what our offense is doing. Doesn’t matter what (quarterback) Lamar (Jackson) – like, we have to go out there and win the game. And right now our maturity level is sadly -- I mean, when we get in those situations, it’s just not good enough.”
The Ravens defense has one rookie among its starters – first-round safety Malaki Starks. Humphrey is in his ninth NFL season and is one of the five Baltimore defensive starters who has been a Pro Bowler.
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How does a veteran unit find the winning maturity during the season?
“I’m more of a negative than a positive guy,” Humphrey said, “thinking, ‘I don’t want to lose this game, so I’m going to do my job. So then, it’s not my fault.’ And I think that’s the biggest thing. You do your job, and if a play comes to you, it comes to you. You don’t go out, ‘I’m trying to make a play, and then do my job.’ And I think that’s the biggest thing. …
“And I think working on that maturity, it comes in practice. We do a lot of scenarios. It’s crazy how we did the exact scenarios that we lost on multiple times all throughout camp. We were in the perfect calls for a lot of the things that happened. We did not execute the calls properly. And that’s kind of why the loss hurt so bad. It was because we knew exactly what they were going to do in a couple different situations, and all 11 guys couldn’t get together. And so that maturity, we’re still working on it, and we’re looking to build on that maturity Sunday.”
The Browns and Ravens square off at noon CDT Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
The Ravens will celebrate their 30th season in Baltimore at Sunday’s game against the expansion team that assumed their identity as Cleveland’s NFL club after the franchise moved from Ohio to Maryland.
Cleveland’s quarterback will be Joe Flacco, who played 11 seasons for Baltimore and was the most valuable player of the Ravens’ 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, 2013.
Humphrey and Flacco were teammates for two seasons.
“I enjoyed my years with Joe,” Humphrey said. “I remember one of the first meals I ever had, Joe joined me at the lunch table, and it surprised me because I just thought that, you know, a quarterback, a Super Bowl MVP would not just join a rookie at the lunch table. So I thought that was cool. I guess I was young, coming in, like, quarterbacks are probably, you know, these arrogant guys. So that’s my first memory of Joe.
“And then, obviously, watching him on tape, he’s kind of the same Joe. Looks at all his reads. To me, it’s almost a lost art of quarterbacks. You know, three-step drop, five-step drop, go through all their progressions the way Joe does. So, obviously, it’s a familiar face coming back to Baltimore. It is a weird thing being in that Browns jersey, but we’re excited to go against him, and, hopefully, we come out on top.”
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