Story By: Erin Zollars
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Canton, OH–
With all of the hype around Canton yesterday leading up to the big game between the Ravens and the Bears, you would think that people at home would have also been excited about the return of NFL football for the 2018 season, or has pre-season just lost all of its value to people who really do not want to see players that will not make rosters in the coming weeks.
Around the stands it seemed to be a solid mix of fans from both teams and we even spotted a few taped over old Ravens jerseys in favor of the Rookie Quarterback LaMar Jackson, who after the performance, may actually give RGIII a run for his money at the second spot behind Flacco. Its pretty early on to say who will have the second spot on the roster, but Griffin, who was booed his way out of D.C after injury, seemed to have quite a bit of rust in his game and lacked the ability to get the ball down field. While there wasn’t a Crabtree on the other end to grab a few receptions, the Bears defensive line isn’t very strong and the experts give them about a 24 percent chance of making the playoffs, while the Ravens are slightly over 50 percent.
With a 4.7/9 in metered market results and a 1.8/7 in fast affiliates, the Ravens 17-16 win over the Chicago Bears in Canton, Ohio took a two-time double digit hit last night from last year. That’s a 13% decline in the early metrics and a harder 18% fall in the first round of 18-49 results from the August 3, 2017 gridiron battle between the always well watched Dallas Cowboys’ 20-18 victory over the Arizona Cardinals
The big event of the weekend comes on Saturday night when the Gold Jackets are awarded to Bobby Bethard, Robert Brazille Jr, Brian Dawkins, Jerry Kramer, Ray Lewis, Randy Moss, and Brian Urlacher.
Most notable is former Redskins GM Bobby Beathard will be walked by the legendary Joe Gibbs to the podium for his enshrinement, which is scheduled from 7 to 9pm Saturday night.
