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By Jeff Zrebiec
November 11, 2024
Their lockers are next to each other at the Under Armour Performance
Center. After nearly every practice, they stay on the field together to get
extra work in. They sit next to each other on the bench during games.
By now, there aren’t many unknowns between Baltimore Ravens left guard Patrick Mekari and center Tyler Linderbaum. That includes understanding
when the time is right to get under each other’s skin.
As the Ravens were engaged in a tight road game with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on “Monday Night
Football” last month, Linderbaum was ranting and raving on the sideline. Mekari
saw an opportunity to pounce.
“I said, ‘Bro, you’ve changed. Why are you yelling like that?’” Mekari
said a few days later. “It got him fired up and he kind of needed that. It was
fun. It gets us going again.”
Mekari’s go-to tweak on Linderbaum is to suggest that he’s strayed from
his blue-collar Iowa roots and allowed last year’s Pro Bowl selection and
burgeoning status as one of the league’s top centers to go to his head.
Linderbaum’s retort is to accuse Mekari of locker room
shenanigans, like stealing underwear, and to call out his veteran teammates’
“woe is me” moments.
The Ravens have a loose yet business-like locker room, where the tone is
set in the near right corner. That’s where team leaders Lamar Jackson, Ronnie Stanley, Roquan Smith and Derrick Henry reside. Across the room and
closer to the entrance are the adjacent lockers of Mekari and Linderbaum, the
team’s version of “Tom and Jerry,” the cartoon characters that specialize in
hijinks and torturing each other.
They’re engaged in almost constant banter on myriad topics. If one of
them is locked in an interview, the other typically gets into a position where
he can distract and interrupt by either making comments or facial expressions.
They don’t always keep their hands to themselves, either. As Linderbaum was
speaking to a reporter a few weeks ago, Mekari decided it would be a good time
to repeatedly flick his arm for no reason.
“They are definitely like the cat and the mouse, always running back and
forth after each other,” said guard Ben Cleveland. “You really don’t know who is
instigating what or starting what. But they both are just constantly going at
it, and it sometimes gets more than PG-13. It definitely keeps it interesting.”
It’s an interesting dichotomy. They are two of the Ravens’ most
no-nonsense and edgy players on the field. Ask around the locker room which teammates you’d least
want to mess with, and Linderbaum and Mekari’s names come up frequently.
Yet, they are also two of the biggest characters in the locker room. It just
often takes them bringing the lighter side out of each other.
Linderbaum, a first-round pick out of Iowa in 2022, was mostly quiet and
reserved in his first two seasons, but he’s grown more comfortable in his role
and in front of the media. Mekari has always been cautious around reporters,
but he occasionally lets his guard down, particularly if Linderbaum is there
prodding him.
Interview them separately and you’ll likely get concise and general
responses. Interview them together and an Abbott and Costello routine is primed
to break out.
“He comes off like he’s serious, but he likes to have a good time and
joke around,” Linderbaum said of Mekari. “He’s a guy who likes to say that he
doesn’t love football. He loves the s— out of football. He stays after practice
for 20 minutes every day working on stuff.”
Patrick
Mekari and Tyler Linderbaum are two of the Ravens’ most no-nonsense players on
the field, yet they’re also two of the team’s biggest characters. (Jerry
Jackson / Baltimore Sun / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Indeed, Mekari and Linderbaum stay on the field together after just about
every practice to get a few more reps in. They trade notes, critique one
another and often try different techniques. Many of Baltimore’s offensive
linemen, a group led by Stanley, have joined them in recent weeks
Mekari, 27, likes to joke that he has animosity toward Linderbaum, 24,
for taking his starting center job. An undrafted free agent in 2019 who has
stepped in wherever he’s been needed up front — he’s started games at all five
positions along the offensive line — Mekari spent considerable time at center
early in his Ravens career.
However, it essentially was Bradley Bozeman who Linderbaum replaced
as Baltimore’s starting center. Bozeman left in free agency in March 2022 and
Mekari was a candidate to assume the job. However, the Ravens drafted Linderbaum, the nation’s top
collegiate center, a little more than a month after Bozeman’s departure. He was
a plug-and-play center.
Instead of coming to the 2022 training camp as the starting center,
Mekari was tasked with mentoring Linderbaum, a role he embraced, just as he did
this summer with helping rookie right tackle Roger Rosengarten get up to speed.
“It’s very meaningful,” Mekari
said. “Being a first-round draft pick is a big deal. A first-round draft pick
that comes in as an offensive lineman is a really big deal. The way he came in,
he didn’t want anything handed to him. His work ethic was there. Watching him
play his first couple of games, I was like, ‘This is going to be a guy. This
guy’s potential is through the roof.’ He works hard, he cares. He’s not a me
guy. Since then, we just became friends. I learn a lot from him. I hope he
learns something from me.”
Mekari immediately sought out Linderbaum to make sure the rookie was
feeling comfortable and to encourage him to ask any questions. Linderbaum
wasn’t bashful. If late Ravens offensive line coach Joe D’Alessandris was
saying something that Linderbaum didn’t understand, he’d approach Mekari for
clarification.
“We hit it off right away,” Linderbaum said. “He was the first guy I’d go
to learn the center position here since he’s been in the offense so long. Just
asking him about certain calls and he’d explain in a half-serious,
half-not-serious way. He’s someone who really understands the game and likes to
critique his craft. You just kind of naturally gravitate to that, especially
guys who love football.”
The two have taken dramatically different paths to get to this
point. Mekari, whose parents immigrated to Los Angeles from the Middle East,
wasn’t a full-time starter until his junior year of high school. He attracted
scant Division I recruiting interest, receiving a scholarship from the
University of California only after another offensive line prospect
de-committed on signing day.
Forty offensive linemen were selected in the 2019 draft, but Mekari was
forced to go the undrafted free-agent route. He had to wait his turn in
Baltimore, too. While he’s started 46 games over parts of six years, this
season marked the first time in his career that he was a Week 1 starter.
Linderbaum was a multi-sport
star athlete at Solon High in Iowa, earning acclaim in football, baseball,
wrestling and track and field. He was recruited to the University of Iowa as a
defensive tackle but ultimately moved to center. He was a finalist for the
Rimington Trophy, given to the nation’s top center, in 2020, and he won the
award the following year. He was considered one of the better center prospects
to come out in several years when the Ravens made him the 25th overall pick. He
hasn’t disappointed.
“I think we do things a little bit differently, but overall, the
objective and the mindset is similar,” Mekari said. “I don’t know about him,
but when I watch the way he does things, I’m like, ‘Oh, I like the way you did
that. I’m going to try and do that.’ Maybe he feels the same way about me. When
you see a great player do great things, you’re going to try it.”
Linderbaum raves about how Mekari can play all five positions up front
and says he’s a guy who the younger offensive linemen on the team try to
emulate. When the two are together, though, the compliments do not fly. It’s
actually quite the opposite.
They are part of a small group of Ravens who spend some evenings playing
the Rocket League video game. Linderbaum tells Mekari he sucks at it. Mekari
responds by calling him trash. The back and forth continues into the offensive
line meeting room the next day, adding levity to otherwise serious preparation.
“When you have personalities like that, it just really helps loosen up
the room a little bit,” said reserve guard Andrew Vorhees. “It’s a bunch of chill guys
together. I’ve been in rooms in the past where it was not like that. Sometimes
it was a little too serious. Having the balance with these guys, who know how
to turn it on and off, when it’s appropriate, it really takes the edge off
everybody and allows us to be authentic.”
Vorhees describes Linderbaum as “quick-witted” and always ready with a
series of one-liners. Mekari, meanwhile, is the “silent assassin,” content to
quietly observe before jumping in with something clever at the opportune time.
The two are great foils.
“A lot of what he does bothers me,” Mekari said. “Just his overall
demeanor. His fingers bother the s— out of me. They are tough to look at.”
And what bothers Linderbaum?
“He’s notorious,” Linderbaum said. “I’ll have two or three pairs of
underwear on my loop and sometimes they’ll go missing. He’s notorious for
stealing underwear. Everybody knows that.”
Mekari is incredulous when he learns of Linderbaum’s accusation before
conceding that he’s guilty as charged.
“I absolutely do. I steal his underwear and that gets him pissed off,”
Mekari said. “And when he gets angry at me for any reason on the field or for
stealing his underwear, I say, ‘Bro, you’ve changed. You’re grumpy today. You
need to get more sleep.’ He gets angry at that, too.
“He really is just like a brother to me.”
(Top photo: Terrance Williams / Associated
Press)
