About Baltimore Ravens
National Football League
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore. The Ravens compete in the National Football League as a member of the American Football Conference North division. The team plays its home games at M&T Bank Stadium and is headquartered in Owings Mills, Maryland.
The Baltimore Ravens were established in 1996 after Art Modell, then owner of the Cleveland Browns, announced plans in 1995 to relocate the franchise from Cleveland to Baltimore. As part of a settlement between the league and the city of Cleveland, Modell was required to leave the Browns' history, team colors, and records in Cleveland for a replacement team and replacement personnel that would resume play in 1999. In return, he was allowed to take his own personnel and team to Baltimore, where such personnel would form an expansion team. The team is owned by Steve Bisciotti and was valued at $4.63 billion in 2023, making them the 28th-most valuable sports franchise globally.
The Ravens have been one of the most successful NFL franchises since their inception, compiling a regular season record of 256–194–1 , the third-highest among active franchises. They also own the fourth-highest playoff winning percentage at 17–13 . The team has qualified for the NFL playoffs 15 times since 2000 with two Super Bowl titles , two AFC Championship titles , five AFC Championship game appearances , and seven AFC North division titles . They are one of two teams to be undefeated in multiple Super Bowl appearances, along with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Ravens organization was led by general manager Ozzie Newsome from 1996 until his retirement following the 2018 season, and has had three head coaches: Ted Marchibroda, Brian Billick, and since 2008, John Harbaugh. Starting with a record-breaking defensive performance in their 2000 season, the Ravens have established a reputation for strong defensive play throughout team history. Former players such as middle linebacker Ray Lewis, safety Ed Reed, and offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden have been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The name "Ravens" was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven. Chosen in a fan contest that drew 33,288 voters, the allusion honors Poe who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore and is buried there. Other names polled included "Marauders", "Americans", and "Bombers", among others. As The Baltimore Sun reported at the time, fans also "liked the tie-in with the other birds in town, the Orioles, and found it easy to visualize a tough, menacing black bird". Edgar Allan Poe also had distant relatives who played football for the Princeton Tigers in the 1880s through the early 1900s. These brothers were famous players in the early days of American football.
Before the football team, there was the Baltimore Ravens wheelchair basketball team — the original Baltimore Ravens. In 1972, the Ravens wheelchair basketball team was founded by Ralph Smith, long-term resident of Baltimore, second Vice President of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and Member of the NWBA Hall of Fame. The name "Ravens" was inspired by Bob Ardinger, a member of the Ravens wheelchair basketball team. In the 1990s, the naming rights were later sold to the football team when they came to the city and the wheelchair basketball team became known as the Maryland Ravens.
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