The AFC Championship Game Trash Talk Is Already Underway
 

If the Patriots win the Super Bowl, they will still have a losing record in Super Bowls.

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A return to the AFC Championship Game and the pending retirement of Ray Lewis appears to have turned back the clock for the Baltimore Ravens. After a slump to end the regular season, the playoff version of the Ravens has been chippy and aggressive, much like their teams of the last decade.

Enter Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo. Even before the clock hit triple zeros in New England, Ayanadejo began chirping at next week’s opponent.

“In a sport that is predicated on mano y mano, ‘let’s hurry-up n snap it’ = *****assness,” Ayanbadejo tweeted. (Via Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports).

Ayandabejo continued, ”New England does some suspect stuff on offense,” Ayanbadejo, a three-time Pro Bowler, said on Twitter. “Can’t really respect it. Comparable to a cheap shot [before] a fight.” ”… the hurry snap offense catch [them before] they set up,” Ayanbadejo continued. “It’s a gimmick … Their offense is good enough to be successful without that.”

Of course, no Twitter rant against the Patriots is complete without a Spygate reference:

“You know the same organization that did spygate and cut a guy the day [before] the Super Bowl.”

It appears that the “suspect stuff” that Ayanbadejo is referring to is the fact that Patriots run the most up-tempo offense in the NFL and will capitalize on any opportunity to snap the ball when the defense isn’t ready. New England ran more plays than any other team in the NFL this season. While we don’t know Ayanbadejo’s motives to call out his future opponent at a time where less than half of the game was over, perhaps the linebacker’s comments were out of fear more than anything knowing that his aging Ravens defense must face that “suspect stuff on offense” in 7 short days.

It should also be noted that Ayanbadejo is almost exclusively a special teams player and didn’t play a single snap on Saturday against the Broncos.

The AFC Championship Game Trash Talk Is Already Underway | Third Down Conversion