ATLANTA - Give the Ravens credit. The Atlanta Falcons beat them, but Michael Vick didn't. You'd like to think that counts for something, even if Ravens coach Brian Billick said no.
You know what they say about Vick, who averaged 9 yards per carry before the Ravens came to town yesterday: You can't stop him; you can only hope to contain him.
According to that time-honored NFL principle, the Ravens were hardly utter failures, despite the 20-17 loss, not when they made Vick look rushed and reckless on his pass attempts and not when the Ravens stopped him in his tracks.
After all, wasn't stopping Vick the No. 1 assignment for the Ravens in this nonconference junket to the Georgia Dome? Mission accomplished. Vick's rushing total against the Ravens was the average temperature in Duluth this month: minus 5.
That's truly amazing. The man who is being called the greatest thing to happen to the NFL since the end of the "Dirty Bird Dance" ended with minus 5 yards rushing. On that impressive note, the defense rests.
Or, in the case of the Ravens' defense, they run to the sideline to tie their shoes, because stopping the uniquely talented Vick yesterday meant the Ravens broke a rare and never-discussed NFL record for the number of turf shoes sent flying during a single game.
Sure, Vick can twist and moonwalk away from a pass rush like a latter-day Michael Jackson. But the Ravens' defense was right there with Vick, step for step - except the Ravens usually had no shoes, because Vick juked defenders right out of them.
On one play, Ravens safety Chad Williams took so long to find his missing shoe - it flew 20 yards off Williams' foot while he pursued Vick - that Williams had to take himself out for the next down. It's not that Vick kept the Ravens off their feet, just out of their cleats.
It didn't matter, though, which is too bad. No amount of Vick-timizing Vick (12-for-24 passing, 136 yards) made up for what the Ravens didn't do, at least according to Billick.
He's the coach, after all, who said this was going to be a season of tough love for the youngest squad in the league. And yesterday, as the youthful, cap-cleansing Ravens produced mistake after "entertaining" mistake, Billick found it easy to be more tough than loving. His youngsters said they understood what Billick was talking about.
"We need to step up. We're making mistakes we shouldn't be making," wide receiver Ron Johnson said.
The Ravens let the Falcons amass a 14-point lead midway through the second quarter, and, by then, Billick's mounting exasperation started to produce a string of Silly Putty-esque facial contortions to rival those of Jon Gruden.
You don't get points in this league for sideline histrionics, but a game in which Vick was supposed to be the ticket - the one and only source of entertainment for our viewing pleasure - it was something to see Billick produce tics so compelling that television cameras wanted to stick on him, not Vick.
Who needs Vick to bust a game-breaking run? Who needs Vick to scramble out of the Georgia Dome toward Macon? Not us. Not when the Ravens and Billick were holding up their end of the entertainment bargain.
Yes, that was Billick in the fourth quarter rolling his eyes at the sight of Ravens cornerback Chris McAlister, who - for some unknown reason - decided to catch a punt on the Ravens' 3-yard line and attempt a wildly ill-advised return, only to be driven off the sideline and to the locker room for films of his sprained ankle.
What was McAlister thinking?
And, yes, that was Billick in the second quarter blistering the tender ears of Johnson after the wide receiver let a slightly high but "catchable" ball slip through his fingertips - after the coach had the guts to call for punter Dave Zastudil to throw on fourth-and-two.
Any game in which the punter gets a chance for a first down on a tricky pass play is a game we want to watch - unless you're Billick and you don't like the sight of a ball sailing off into space. It was another mistake that turned a potential big play into a setback. With good field position (their own 46), the Falcons turned around and drove 54 yards on five plays to take a 17-3 lead.
"We liked the configuration on that call," Billick said. "He threw the ball well. It was a good throw, [Johnson] just didn't make the catch."
There were other headache plays. That was Billick in the second quarter cradling his aching cranium after tackle Jonathan Ogden tried to pick up Jeff Blake's fumble and run with it instead of falling on the ball, as he should have, because the Ravens were on their own 1.
What was Ogden thinking? That he was going to pluck the skittering ball up in his big, taped mitts and rumble 99 yards to the house like he's the second coming of Jamal Lewis?
"I knew I just should have fallen on the ball. I was just telling myself, 'Why didn't I just fall on the ball?' " Ogden said.
No wonder Ogden stayed flat on the Georgia Dome carpet, pounding his fists over and over into the sides of his helmet. Better for Ogden to self-flagellate himself into a concussion than to wait for the coach to ream him out.
"We had too many mistakes and too many turnovers," Billick said. "When you come down on the road and give them a touchdown when you're backed up, that equals a Michael Vick 80-yard run."
Well, yes and no. The Ravens did accomplish their main task of shutting down one of the NFL's fastest, most explosive offensive players. They did a good job making Vick look far less poised and polished than he'll need to be to rank as one of the NFL's great quarterbacks.
Unfortunately, these young Ravens would have settled for looking that unpolished.