Ravens coach John Harbaugh generally doesn’t like overarching themes or big-picture evaluations, but he has used one this week.

The Ravens appear to have gotten the message, even though the answer won’t come until Sunday when they travel to play the Arizona Cardinals.

The Cardinals (1-6) are in the mix for the No. 1 overall draft pick in April while consistency is the theme for the Ravens (5-2) coming off a 38-6 win against the highly regarded Detroit Lions last weekend.

“I believe we’re going in the right direction right now, if anything,” quarterback Lamar Jackson said. “We just need to keep going. Like I said, keep being consistent.”

That hasn’t been the case in recent years, and certainly not in 2023. The Ravens beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 27-24, on Sept. 17 and lost a week later, 22-19, in overtime to the struggling Indianapolis Colts.

They beat up the Cleveland Browns, 28-3, then lost seven days later to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10, in another game they easily should have won but collapsed late.

So, which Ravens team will show up in Arizona?

“That feeling was incredible, but we know the type of league that this is,” tight end Mark Andrews said about Sunday’s lopsided win. “It’s any given Sunday, so every game is different. It’s not going to feel the same as it did last week, but if we go out there and do our job and continue to get better, we’re going to become the team that we need to be.”

At least verbally, the Ravens have gotten the message. When a coach has a strong command of the locker room, the players repeat the same things, complete with the buzz phrases.

They become parrots.

The Ravens aren’t buying into the Cardinals game being a “trap.” That’s media jargon. They know that this is the NFL and if they aren’t prepared, they’ll lose.

“You come out and treat them the way you treat all the other games,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. “The thing about a one-win team is they’re hungry for that second win, so they’re going to come out, play hard and we just have to play a little bit harder.”

The Cardinals are likely to be without three of their top offensive players because of injuries to quarterback Kyler Murray, running back James Conner and tight end Zach Ertz. The Cardinals rank 19th in total offense, averaging 319.9 yards, while the pass offense ranks 28th, averaging 180.9.

Their 28th-ranked defense allows 368.3 yards per game. They also rank 25th against the rush and 23rd against the pass. Arizona is so unorganized and concerned about money that they don’t even regularly play their best outside linebacker, Victor Dimukeje (Boys’ Latin), who is tied for second on the team with 3 1/2 sacks.

So, to help get his message across, there is the standard Harbaugh buildup of a team that’s really a mess.

“I see a really tough team,” Harbaugh said of the Cardinals. “They have a lot of great players, and they’re building in their new offensive and defensive systems. They play super hard — both sides of the ball are very physical. It’s a young team. You have guys like [safety] Budda Baker over there, that’s one of the best players in the National Football League. They’re impressive with what they try to get done. They’ve been in a lot of close games.

“They’ve been in games in the fourth quarter, they were one-score-or-less games where they had the lead and then didn’t finish, so I’m sure that’s what they’re talking about — play hard, get the game in the fourth quarter and find a way to finish the game.”

It’s two teams on the opposite end of the spectrum. The Ravens defense, ranked No. 2 in the league, has proved they can succeed against any offense in the NFL.

Offensively, the Ravens have to prove that last week’s total of 503 yards wasn’t an aberration, but the sign of a unit getting better. Arizona has had a week to analyze coordinator Todd Monken’s offense. The Cardinals know the Ravens are built more around college concepts than those in the NFL. Baltimore will play with more patience than it did against Detroit.

Regardless, the Ravens need to get better. It all starts with consistency. Last week, they showed they could do it from quarter to quarter. Now they have to prove it from game to game.

“We played well against Detroit and we’d like to continue that pace and build,” center Tyler Linderbaum said. “Arizona is a good team that plays a lot of multiple fronts, they give you a lot of different looks, but we have to be prepared to play. It’s like that every week in this league.”

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As she kneels in front of her plot in Woodbury’s Community Garden, Ying Liang says that she always wanted to have her own vegetable garden.

“I would flip through catalogs and, you know, daydream about it. I would think about what I could plan but never be able to do it.”

Lack of space in her backyard and neighborhood association rules prevented Liang from growing vegetables at home. The IT professional of over 25 years said she had been asking the city for several years for some sort of community gardening space, and was excited to receive an email about one in 2022.

Liang wasn’t alone in desiring a garden space. A city survey of residents found that a community garden was one of the things most wanted by its population of just over 80,000. Until then, Woodbury had been the largest city in Minnesota without one, according to Simi Patnaik, director of the Woodbury Community Foundation’s Woodbury Thrives program.

Just next to Andy’s Bark Park, near Manning Avenue and Dale Road, Woodbury’s first community garden was farmland in 2021. In 2022, supported by Woodbury Thrives, the community garden was piloted with 16 plots, then fully implemented this year with 48 9-by-14 garden plots for community members to use. The garden was funded through grants offered by the state, according to Patnaik.

Patnaik said the community garden helps build on the organization’s three pillars of healthy lifestyle, mental well-being and social connectedness: It gets residents outside, learning about growing their own vegetables and interacting with other members of the community.

Patnaik and Woodbury Thrives chair Jodi Ritacca conducted a survey of garden users through email. Roughly two-thirds of the gardeners responded and revealed that 50 percent of them are immigrants and people of color. Additionally, 60 percent earned below $100,000 per year and live in multifamily housing.

“It’s about forming connections with the community,” Patnaik said. “And helping people meet the neighbors they might not normally see every day.”

200 pounds of tomatoes

On Saturday morning, Liang deftly clipped a handful of orange cherry tomatoes and gently rinsed them under one of the faucets in the garden. It’s the end of the harvesting season, and her yield has included squash, eggplant, red russian kale, lettuce, and a whopping 200 pounds of tomatoes. She says the tomatoes make her nostalgic.

“I am from China, so when I was little the tomatoes were marketed to us as both a vegetable and a fruit. We eat them like fruits.”

Liang emigrated to America in her high school years, and had always been disappointed in flavorless grocery store tomatoes.

“I’m at the grocery store and I’m looking at the tomatoes, and there’s just no way you can eat it. So bland, and it just doesn’t have that tomato taste. So when I grew my own, I thought, ‘Oh, that tastes like tomato.’”

A basket of produce Ying Liang harvested from Woodbury’s new Community Garden on Oct. 21, 2023. (Gabrielle Erenstein / Pioneer Press)

The roma and cherry tomatoes Liang grew are indeed far more sweet and flavorful than standard grocery store tomatoes. They make for a whole lot of sandwich toppings and soup she drinks cold out of bottles, too. Liang’s tomato surplus wasn’t just for her. She gave much of it away to family, friends, neighbors and even a piano teacher.

Liang has a similar childhood nostalgia for some of the other vegetables she grows and eats fresh, such as winter melons and purple starchy corn, which she can’t find at regular grocery stores.

“But I think I have it in my blood, wanting to grow something. You know, you look at a seed and you watch it grow and nurture it, and they reward you with this abundance. It’s just amazing.”

Liang has also enjoyed the garden as a way to connect with Woodbury’s community. She said she made new friends through meeting her fellow gardeners. She would water other gardeners’ plots when they were away, and they did the same for her. She connected with other gardeners via a Facebook group, which she hopes will take off more as a way for other gardeners to communicate.

Having previously worked only with flowers, she was able to learn more about vegetable gardening from other more experienced gardeners. Liang said she learned about how to properly support her plants, fertilizing, extending harvests and sustainability techniques.

“I met people from different cultures, who grow vegetables I’ve never seen or heard of before.”

Sharing expertise

Ed Myatt, one of the brains behind the Woodbury Community Garden, echoed the sentiment. Despite being a Master Gardener, one of nearly 200 in the state who undergo 80 hours of training by the University of Minnesota to contribute gardening knowledge to communities, he too had seen some vegetables for the first time during this year’s harvest.

“It was a real broad cross section of people, from places like Somalia, China and India.”

Myatt, a retired Exxon Mobile executive, is required by the Master Gardeners program to volunteer for 25 hours per year.  He said that on average, he volunteers 350 to 400 hours per year. When the garden first started up, because most of the gardeners were completely new, he helped them get started by lending tools and advice. The Master Gardeners also donated funds used to buy more tools for residents. After a few weeks though, he said he wasn’t as needed anymore.

“It became a community of gardeners because they started helping each other,” Myatt said. “I was amazed at how they came together.”

Even an 8th grade Girl Scout, Audrey Srefken, provided some expertise when it came to interacting with a very important denizen of the gardening world: Srefken taught gardeners about pollination and how to interact properly with bees, Ritacca said. Srefken gave a presentation about the gardeners and the bees to Woodbury’s City Council on Monday.

Ying Liang harvests produce she grew in Woodbury’s Community Garden. (Gabrielle Erenstein / Pioneer Press)

Liang worked Saturday on cleaning up her plot. The city has asked gardeners to clean up the plants and structures left after the harvest so the garden can be ready for next year. In April, Liang starts growing again.

Garden plot registration for 2024 begins Nov. 29 for Woodbury residents. Registration can be found on the “Recreation” section on Woodbury’s website: woodburymn.gov.

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FOXBORO — The Patriots are unlikely to see the full potential of their cornerback group this season, but thanks to an early-season trade they can at least get close.

The Patriots are expected to be without cornerbacks Christian Gonzalez and Marcus Jones for the rest of the season, but they put a very strong group on the field Sunday. And the unit should be getting even better in time for Sunday’s game against the Dolphins.

J.C. Jackson, reacquired in a trade with the Chargers earlier this month, is back to playing close to 100% of defensive snaps in his return to the Patriots. Jack Jones, in his first game back from injured reserve, and Jonathan Jones, who was nursing a knee injury suffered in Week 7, split snaps at the other outside cornerback spot. And Myles Bryant manned the slot. Jackson, Jack Jones and Jonathan Jones all played in Sunday’s win over the Bills but never all shared the field at the same time.

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But Jackson, Jack Jones and Jonathan Jones have all been full-gos in practice this week. And the potential of a position group with Jackson and Jack Jones on the outside and Jonathan Jones back manning the slot seems high.

“Through the roof,” is where Jack Jones sets it. “I don’t want to put a cap on it. I feel like if I was to say anything, it would be putting a cap on it. Just let us go out there each Sunday and play to our potential and see where we land, but I think we’ve got a really good group.”

Jackson concurs.

“I feel like we have the potential to be one of the best secondaries in the league with this defense,” Jackson said. “We just got to play up to that.”

Jack Jones, who was one of the league’s top rookie cornerbacks last season, was frustrated by a hamstring injury he suffered prior to Week 1 that kept him out for the first six weeks of the season. The ailment occurred after gun charges, stemming from an arrest in June when police allegedly found two handguns and ammunition in his carry-on bag at Logan Airport, had been dropped against him.

“That was tough, bro,” Jack Jones said of his injury. “That’s the worst, especially first week. I mean, we go through all fall camp and the summer and you’re good. And then the first week is just a bummer. You don’t want that to happen at all. But you’d rather it have it earlier than later. It’s God’s timing, not mine. It was an unfortunate situation, but I’m blessed to come out of the situation and be able to play football.”

Jonathan Jones, who has primarily played outside over the last two seasons after serving as one of the NFL’s best slot cornerbacks for the first six years of his NFL career, said he’d be comfortable moving back inside.

“That’s my thing about my career,” Jonathan Jones said. “I’ve kind of done everything here. Whatever I’ve ever been asked to do has always been an option.”

And Jackson, who was one of the NFL’s top cornerbacks in his previous tenure in New England, has been praised by Patriots cornerbacks coach Mike Pellegrino for the effort he brings back to the team.

“I love J.C.,” Pellegrino told reporters on Tuesday. “I missed him when he was gone. … J.C.’s bringing a different energy to the room on working hard and getting ready to go for practice and stuff like that. That’s been really good. I’ve been really impressed with his new attitude, pushing himself, pushing everybody to play better. …

“He’s always been a guy who loves to work. I’m out there at practice, I’ve got two seconds to myself, he’s like, ‘Mike, let’s go do something. Let’s go do some long balls.’ He always wants to do extra work. He’s out there 10 minutes before practice starts, working on his footwork. He does a great job trying to stay on top of his craft.”

Jack Jones said Jackson gets the whole group going “being himself really, just being J.C.”

Jonathan Jones sees Jackson motivating younger players like Jack Jones.

“I mean, he doesn’t say too much, but just his presence,” Jonathan Jones said. “He’s one of those playmakers and has been here for a while. Just the energy he brings to the room is different, different energy, and a lot of those younger guys can kind of gravitate to that, as well.”

If Jackson and both Joneses start, that would allow Bryant to go back to his strength of being a versatile chess piece in the Patriots’ defense, capable of playing in the slot, outside and at safety.

The Patriots could catch a break this week with Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill missing Wednesday’s practice with a hip injury. Jonathan Jones has been adept at limiting Hill, who returned Thursday, in the past if the speedy wideout can power through the ailment.

The Hall of Failed Presidential Candidates, Incumbent Challengers’ Wing, overspills its velvet-roped boundaries with polystyrene statues of politicians who fantasized that they could convince their party to nominate them in place of their party’s current president.

Viewing the reverse chronologically designed exhibit, we see the contenders from 2020, Bill Weld, Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh, who staged their futile campaigns against President Donald Trump. In the 1992 space, we find Pat Buchanan, who unsuccessfully challenged President George H.W. Bush, and in the 1980 section, we meet Edward Kennedy, who took on President Jimmy Carter. The most historically significant of the displays belongs to 1968 challenger Eugene McCarthy, who, like his other hallmates, didn’t win the nomination but was elemental in hounding the incumbent out of the race.

As varied as each of these candidacies were, every one of them was more about ideology than a lust for regicide. The sitting president from our party is wrong, the challengers said, and their candidacies would set politics and policy right, and they used the primary system to force the president to state his case to voters for reelection rather than giving him a rubber stamp victory.

But breaking harder than a Clayton Kershaw curveball from this distinguished pattern of presidential challengers is Dean Phillips, a three-term representative to Congress from Minnesota with name recognition near zero, who has staked out no distinguishing political position, who counts no actual congressional accomplishments, and who is about to run against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.

What makes Phillips so unique, and maybe deserving of his own sub-wing of the Incumbent Challengers’ Wing, is that he has no real policy or political bones to pick with Biden.

Even Robert Kennedy Jr., who was running against Biden until recently decamping for an independent campaign, and Marianne Williamson take defining anti-Biden positions on major issues. Phillips adores Biden, whom he still calls a “wonderful and remarkable man” and the holder of an “extraordinary legacy.” Phillips has voted the Biden line in Congress roughly 100 percent of the time. In April 2021, after Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, Phillips gushed on X, formerly Twitter, “I’m so grateful America elected Joe Biden to be our president.”

So what, you have every right to ask, motivates Phillips’ attempted Biden takedown? Speaking to “Meet the Press” in August, when Phillips was saying some Democrat should challenge Biden in 2024 but that he was not that Democrat, he said it was time for the country to “turn the page” on Biden, who should “pass the torch.” Interviewer Chuck Todd tried to help Phillips formulate his thinking by asking him if the real issue was age, a valid disqualifier for a candidacy in many instances. But Phillips categorically denied that as a reason. “This is all about how people feel,” he said, referring to the president’s “historically low approval numbers.”

That’s it, as far as the public record goes: Phillips wants Biden replaced because of his low approval numbers. But because no other Biden-worshipper with presidential ambitions — such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — is currently willing to enter the contest and pursue the same policies that have earned Biden such low approval numbers, Phillips thinks he should campaign for the job.

“A Vote For Me Is a Vote For Joe Biden, Only You Get Me, Not Joe,” is an unsatisfying Phillips’ campaign slogan, too long to fit on most bumpers and too retrograde to reach most voters, but it might be all he’s got.

That’s not the only backward aspect of the Phillips crusade. The most elemental point of primary challenges has been to get the incumbent to defend his policies to the party faithful. This is laudable in all cases. But Phillips attacks Biden on his low approval numbers, something the president is hard-pressed to easily turn around. If Phillips thinks Biden’s approval numbers portend his defeat at the hand of Donald Trump next year, which could very well be the case, Phillips must have plans to improve those numbers if he’s so lucky to take Biden’s place on the ballot but continue those policies. But if that were such a doable task, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply give his secret plan to Biden for execution?

If Phillips would simply level with voters and say what many think he’s saying — that we should turn the page on Biden because in the 30 months since he tweeted his unalloyed praise of him, the president has lost a step or two — then Biden could at least respond directly. Perhaps he could perform a set of mental gymnastics and clear a cognitive minefield to prove his readiness for another four years. Such a statement by Phillips would place the age issue at the center of the campaign, where it belongs. But Phillips, who has yet to make his mark in politics, lacks the presidential fortitude to go there. Replace somebody who isn’t popular with somebody who is unknown is his basic response. By constantly pointing to Biden’s low approval numbers, he can’t be said to be improving them. If anything, he’s helping Trump beat Biden.

It has always been something of a kamikaze mission to run against your party’s incumbent president. But most of these kamikaze candidates do so with the knowledge that while their candidacy might end their political careers, at least they’ll have the satisfaction of having moved their party to the left or right or having sunk their target.

In Phillips’ case, it’s hard to imagine a Democratic Party future for him. But it’s equally hard to imagine him sinking — or even dinging — Biden. So beyond the few weeks of campaign glory and television interviews, what’s in it for Phillips? Just about nothing beyond his asterisk wing in the Hall of Failed Presidential Candidates.

Most politicians have either family or friends to keep them from running for president. Send advice for the Phillips campaign to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My X feed and Bluesky account will not run this season. My RSS feed is dead, so it will run in Chicago only.