Once again, Tom Brady looms on the Ravens' horizon in all his resplendent glory. There are the three Super Bowl trophies, the Most Valuable Player award from 2007, the 29 career fourth-quarter comebacks. Impeccable record. Untouchable quarterback?
The Ravens have their own history with the New England Patriots quarterback and until last January's playoff win, it wasn't good. Sacking Brady has often caused more harm than good for the Ravens.
On Oct. 4, 2009, when Haloti Ngata and then Terrell Suggs brushed against Brady in the pocket and drew roughing the passer penalties in a 27-21 loss in Foxborough, Mass., linebacker Ray Lewis barely constrained himself.
"Without totally going off the wall here, it is embarrassing to the game," Lewis said of the Ngata call, on which Ngata's left arm grazed the side of Brady's helmet. "Brady is good enough to make his own plays; let him make the play."
This may be the season that borderline calls no longer haunt the Ravens, though. When they visit Gillette Stadium on Sunday, they carry a five-game track record for cleaning up those messy and untimely personal foul penalties.
Through five weeks, the Ravens have been penalized 30 times for 261 yards. A year ago after five games, they had 39 penalties for 342 yards, en route to 115 penalties and an NFL-high 1,094 yards on the season.
More significantly, they have only two unnecessary roughness penalties (from the same game) and one roughing- the-passer penalty, a dubious call against Suggs in Cincinnati against the Bengals' Carson Palmer.
Suggs was flagged last October in New England when he dove at Brady and his right shoulder barely touched Brady's right leg. The eight-year veteran linebacker says the perception of a distinct and different rule on hitting Brady will not deter him on Sunday.
"Not at all," Suggs said. "If that's the only way I'm going to get him down, then I'm going to tackle him. This is football. In my eyes, one man is not more important than the other. I got hit in my knee last year, but they went on to the next game.
"I'm not saying I'm going to deliberately tackle Tom Brady in the knee. But if I'm falling and the only way to get him down is grab him and that just happens to be his foot, his shoestring, his ankle, thigh, hip, stomach — anywhere — I'm going to get him down. … Like I said, I'm a football player and I'm going to play football."
This week, the Ravens resisted the temptation to acknowledge a "Brady Rule," and said they had to use proper technique in all circumstances. In an attempt to better protect quarterbacks, the league instituted a "strike zone" for hitting quarterbacks — the area from chest to knee. Even though the Ravens hardly touched Brady a year ago, they did, in theory, violate the rule.
Will Lewis ask officials before the game where they can hit Brady?
"You know we don't even think about that," he responded. "Whatever happens is going to happen, though. You know what I'm saying? Because if you do that, you're thinking and you can't think playing this game. You've got to react, and whatever comes with it, comes with you.
"You just hope the game is always called fair."
Linebacker Jarret Johnson said the Ravens are cognizant of their history against New England, but don't dwell on it.
"You can't worry about it — we're not going to worry about it," he said. "It hurt us in the past. You've just got to be more aware of your surroundings and you can't be careless out there because they're going to call it."
Ravens coach John Harbaugh said the best way to avoid any penalty is with good technique. Asked what role poise played in the penalty equation, he said: "I think decision-making is a big part of it. Poise goes with confidence. [But] it goes back to fundamentals. … [If] you play good technique, you tend to get confidence in your technique and you know in the most critical situation, you can rely on your technique."
So far this season, the Ravens have been flagged for 13 penalties on offense (with five false starts), 12 on defense and five on special teams. To cut down on false starts on the road, the Ravens blare loud music during practices, a tactic that seems to help.
"It's kind of a pain in the butt to deal with when we're practicing, but I think it's beneficial," right tackle Marshal Yanda said. "It's a good thing because we have to communicate for crowd noise."
The Ravens will need to be strong in defensive technique to deal with the league's No. 1 scoring offense Sunday. The Patriots are averaging 32.8 points a game through four games. The Ravens are giving up 14.4 points.
Dean Pees, the Ravens' linebackers coach who was the Patriots' defensive coordinator the past four years, said the reduction in penalties can be traced to reducing mental mistakes.
"When you have mental mistakes, that's usually when you get a penalty because a guy's grabbing because he's not in the right position or something like that," Pees said. "You'd have to talk to Chuck [Pagano, secondary coach] about the secondary, but I just think what I see overall defensively, I don't see a lot of mental errors. So if you're not making mental errors, that means you're in the right position, doing the right thing. And if you're in the right position, that's half the battle."
The secondary has drawn just two pass interference calls, one illegal contact and one holding penalty. Cornerback Chris Carr thinks familiarity with the system and with each other has helped reduce penalties in the back end after a penalty-riddled start to the 2009 season.
"I think if you look at the second half of last season and up to now, you can see progressive improvement," Carr said. "It's our communication and knowing how to play certain coverages, everybody talking things out and improving their own technique and their own football IQ's. I think that all plays hand in hand."
Not only have the Ravens reduced their penalty count, they have drawn 52 penalties on their opponent this year, a fact that Patriots coach Bill Belichick did not miss.
"I think a lot of those penalties that have been called against their opponents have been just because the Ravens are in better position on that particular play and the other team had to do something to try to compensate or make up for it, and they got flagged for it," Belichick said.
Jamison Hensley and Edward Lee contributed to this article.