The word is out: Don’t mess with Bart Scott

By Darrell Laurant  |   Friday, October 13, 2006  |  Comments( 1 )

Baltimore Ravens
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Baltimore Ravens linebacker Bart Scott grew up in a tough neighborhood and graduated from an old school. And this year, he and old-school teammate Ray Lewis have turned the Ravens' defense into an even tougher neighborhood.

After all, strangers venturing into Scott's part of Detroit had only a good chance of being attacked. For those who brave the area patrolled by Scott and Lewis, it's a certainty.

Last year, after earning a starting job when Lewis went down with an injury, Scott rose to the occasion with 119 tackles and four sacks. Now, he has Lewis playing beside him, but his numbers are even better after five games -- 40 tackles, 28 of them solo, five passes defensed and five sacks.

They don't call him "The Mad Backer" for nothing.

"I'm sure there might be someone out there tougher than me," Scott told Aaron Wilson of the Ravens' Insider, "but I've yet to meet him."

Instead, he's been meeting a lot of ball carriers, quarterbacks and wide receivers -- head on. The 6-foot-2, 240-pounder is robust enough to snuff the run, agile enough to venture out into the passing lanes. His teammates say, however, that his true virtue is his unbridled ferocity.

Which is interesting, because the fifth-year pro from Southern Illinois is also said to be almost mellow off the field, an economics major in college who loves to discuss politics in a civil manner.

"You can't act like he does on the field all the time," said Ravens DE Trevor Pryce of his tightly wound teammate, "so there has to be a balance."

Society can only be thankful that Scott chooses to unleash his personal "monster" between the white lines. Just as a good actor will draw on some painful experience in his past to help him express that emotion on camera, Scott stores away slights and disrespect to fester until they're needed to further motivate him.

"Who the hell are you?" Tampa Bay (now Oakland) DT Warren Sapp once asked him.

"I'm Bart Scott, (bleep)," Scott replied. "Deal with it."

Actually, it was a reasonable question. Undrafted out of college, Scott signed with Baltimore as a free agent (for a signing bonus of $500) and spent four years in relative obscurity on special teams.

"It was four years of hard work, dedication and emotion," he recalled on the Ravens' Web site. "It was training by yourselves in those dark hours for a chance at a dream you don't know if you can ever achieve."

Mission accomplished. For his part in making the Baltimore defense perhaps the best in the NFL thus far in 2006, Scott was named AFC Defensive Player of the Month for September. In a 16-13 victory over San Diego, he had 15 tackles and a sack of Philip Rivers.

Toughness comes naturally to Scott, who spent his youth in a place where disagreements were often handled with firearms and rival gang members noisily bet on the Southeastern High School games in which he played.

"I went to one of the worst schools in Detroit," he said, "where you had to be a dog to survive."

Kind of like the NFL. And Bart Scott can still bite.

Get more Baltimore Ravens player profiles at RealFootball365.com
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