Evans still holding out hope for Sunday

Despite being unable to practice because of his injured left ankle, Lee Evans maintained Friday that he could still line up at his starting wide receiver position when the Ravens visit the St. Louis Rams on Sunday.

"We'll just have to see," Evans said after sitting out his third consecutive practice. "Right now, we've gotten as much rest on it as we possibly can. So we'll have to see how it reacts and let the coaches make the decision."

Evans has been bothered by the ankle injury, which began to trouble him in the preseason. The inability to practice even on a limited basis would seem to indicate the long odds of Evans playing Sunday, but he insisted that making that assumption would be a mistake.

"It's all about rest, and we'll see how it reacts," he said. "We've been trying a lot of different things. The only thing we hadn't tried was rest the whole time. We're trying that right now, and we'll just make a decision on Sunday."

Evans said the ankle is improving and feels much better since Sunday when he conducted post-game interviews with his left foot in a bucket of ice. But Evans said he, the coaches and trainers would be prudent about exposing the ankle to even worse damage.

"The reality of it is you have to be able to rest, play and still recover," he said. "You don't want to play and be back to square one and try to do that the whole year because that's counterproductive. So you've got to take that all into account when you're making that decision."