The 1-5 Baltimore Ravens may need to win more games before team members can resume playing anything but football.
The Baltimore Sun’s Brian Wacker, Josh Tolentino, Sam Cohn and Sam Jane reported Tuesday that the Ravens removed a basketball hoop, ping pong table, cornhole boards and video game consoles from the locker room after Lamar Jackson was injured in a Week 4 loss at the Kansas City Chiefs.
Two days before that defeat, Jordan Stout had posted an Instagram story of Jackson sitting at one of the video game consoles captioned “Hard at work,” according to Wacker, Tolentino, Cohn and Jane.
Jackson then suffered a hamstring in the third quarter of the defeat by the Chiefs and has not played since.
Subsequent changes to the locker room haven’t helped Baltimore find a way to win without their star quarterback. The Ravens are 0-2 since Jackson’s injury.
According to Wacker, Tolentino, Cohn and Jane, this is not the first time the Ravens’ coaching staff has cut down on locker room recreation after the team has struggled early in a season.
That doesn’t mean players like the change. Wacker, Tolentino, Cohn and Jane wrote that players see the games as “recreational activities helped break up long days and allowed the locker room to breathe and relax, even for a moment, from an atmosphere that demands intense daily focus.”
The Ravens aren’t the first team to try to spark changes by cutting down on locker-room ping pong, the same strategy infamously once employed by Tom Coughlin with both the New York Jets and Jacksonville Jaguars.
Mike Tomlin reportedly banned ping pong, shuffleboard and pool from the Pittsburgh Steelers locker room after his team’s 0-4 start to the 2013 season. Miami Dolphins team captains removed their own ping pong table from the locker room after losing two straight games early in the 2022 campaign.
The 2013 Steelers went on to miss the playoffs, while the 2022 Dolphins lost in the Wild Card round.
The 2025 Ravens will now be challenged to launch an even more difficult comeback, potentially with their star quarterback still on the sideline. Jackson has not yet practiced for the Ravens following their Week 7 bye, and there are only five days remaining until Sunday’s Week 8 matchup against the visiting Chicago Bears.