The Baltimore Ravens appear to be taking up some real estate in the mind of Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster. Though Thanksgiving is still about six months away, Smith-Schuster told Peter Schrager of “Good Morning Football” he was hungry for the Steelers-Ravens holiday matchup.
While I’m sure both teams are excited about that prime time matchup, Smith-Schuster is skipping a Week 7 contest at M&T Bank Stadium. Then again, the Pittsburgh wide receiver has to make up for helping lose his team the game in the first matchup last season, something he admitted in the interview.
The Ravens swept the Steelers last season, beating them in overtime in Week 5 as well as dominating them in spite of using backups in Week 17. Smith-Schuster was largely responsible for Baltimore winning the first matchup as cornerback Marlon Humphrey stripped the ball in overtime, giving the Ravens a short field and a practically automatic field goal with Justin Tucker.
Smith-Schuster also let his confidence get ahead of him, saying the Steelers were going to walk away with the win on Thanksgiving. While no player is going to publicly say they expect to lose, normally they know better than to provide bulletin-board material by predicting a win, especially months ahead of time.
“Thanksgiving is going to be fun for y’all. It’s going to be fun for us, too, because we’re going to come out for the W.”
Take a look at what Smith-Schuster fully said to Schrager in the interview:
