Wallace: ‘Now
I love purple'
Former Steelers WR signs two-year deal with Ravens, excited to team with Flacco
Wearing a purple polo shirt, seated before a screen of Ravens logos and alongside a coach whose team he used to badly want to beat, wide receiver Mike Wallace acknowledged the awkwardness of it all.
He was ready to embrace it, too.
“I just have to switch my whole mentality,” Wallace said Tuesday during an afternoon news conference at the Under Armour Performance Center. “I used to hate purple. Now I love purple.”
It was only about 21/2 years ago that Wallace, then a newly minted Miami Dolphin after four seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, declared that the Ravens were his least favorite team. But on Tuesday, not long after signing a two-year deal with the Ravens worth a reported $11.5 million, Wallace was all smiles.
“It's a really stable, really well-rounded organization,” Wallace said. “I kind of knew that, though, before, just from the outside and friends that I already had here. … It felt right from the moment I walked in. Just happy to be here.”
That Wallace and the Ravens gravitated toward each other makes sense. The Ravens badly need to add speed and playmaking ability on the outside, something the team lacked last year as rookie first-round pick Breshad Perriman missed the entire season with a knee injury. Wallace, 29, was looking for an offense that better suits his skill set and a quarterback who loves throwing deep.
The signing caps a productive couple of days for the Ravens, who agreed on Monday to a four-year deal with longtime San Diego Chargers safety Eric Weddle, who will officially sign his contract today. Stabilizing the secondary and adding more playmakers for quarterback Joe Flacco were among general manager Ozzie Newsome's biggest priorities.
With two moves in about a 24-hour span, the Ravens accomplished both. Now, they'll be looking to solidify the roster at left tackle, outside linebacker, inside linebacker and cornerback.
“The basic structure of improving our football team has come together in one of the ways that we visualized,” Harbaugh said. “There were different options, and I don't know that we're done yet, so we'll just kind of see how it plays out. This one really happened fast.”
So fast that Wallace had to pull on a polo shirt rather than put on his preferred three-piece suit. He said he had other teams interested and other potential visits lined up, but felt that the Ravens provided the best opportunity.
He was flattered by how hard the Ravens recruited him. Harbaugh, Newsome and wide receiver Steve Smith Sr. were among the members of the organization who called after the Minnesota Vikings released him last week. Harbaugh even chased Wallace down in the team parking lot Tuesday to have the wide receiver come back in the building to meet the media and finalize the deal.
Wallace also said the opportunity to play with Flacco was a huge draw, especially after the deep passing game wasn't featured prominently in his stops with the Vikings and Dolphins. He joked that when he was with the Steelers, he watched Flacco target Torrey Smith (Maryland) on so many deep balls, it prompted him to campaign to his quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, to target him more.
“When this process started, I knew I wasn't going back to Minnesota,” Wallace said. “I was like, ‘I need a good quarterback. I need a quarterback who I know is proven, who can get things done,' and Flacco, he's always been that guy. I always loved his deep ball, always, ever since, like I said, I was in Pittsburgh watching Torrey catching them. I was like, ‘Man, this guy gets, like, eight of them in a row.' I need some of that. …
“This is going to be fun. It's going to be a great opportunity just to revive and get back to where I want to be at and the type of player I know I can be. I feel like I can maximize my potential here.”
Wallace had 235 catches for 4,042 yards and 32 touchdowns in 63 regular-season games with the Steelers from 2009 to 2012, and he made the Pro Bowl in 2011. Averaging 17.2 yards per reception, he was one of the NFL's top deep threats.
He signed a five-year, $60 million deal with the Dolphins in March 2013, and caught 140 passes for 1,792 yards and 15 touchdowns over two seasons with them. He didn't play poorly for Miami by any stretch. He just struggled to live up to the expectations of his megadeal, and the Dolphins traded him to the Vikings last March.
But Wallace never fully clicked with Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater and seemed miscast in Minnesota's run-oriented offense.
“I'll show everybody,” Wallace said. “I've been taking a lot of heat for about three years in a row. So we'll see about that. I promise, I'll get the last laugh. Hopefully, we can get where we want to go, and that's to the championship.
“I wanted to get back to what I do, and that's stretching the field and making some plays. I just wanted to be with a good quarterback, and [we have] a Super Bowl-winning quarterback right here. So you can't beat that. I feel like we go hand-in-hand. The things he does well, I think I do well.”
Wallace joins a suddenly crowded wide receiver group that includes Smith Sr., Perriman, Kamar Aiken and Michael Campanaro (River Hill). The Ravens also liked what they saw at times last season from Jeremy Butler, Daniel Brown and Chris Matthews.
“It's going to cause people some problems,” Harbaugh said. “You have some considerations back there on defense. If you're going to put your defense over one guy or another guy and leave some pretty talented guys open on the other side, that's going to create some problems for defenses.”
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
