After being traded twice in his relatively young career, Ravens cornerback Marcus Peters doesn't need an additional source of motivation.
In fact, the trades themselves don't even motivate him. All Peters needs is an opportunity to make another play. If it happens to come against one of those teams that sent him packing, so be it.
Fortunately for him, Peters will receive such a chance Monday when his 8-2 Ravens face the 6-4 Los Angeles Rams. But again, as Peters made clear this week, his past in blue and gold doesn't matter to him anymore.
"That's done for me," Peters said of his time with the Rams this week, via the Los Angeles Times' Sam Farmer. "I've been here for four [now five] weeks. Just trying to play football."
When it comes to playing football, Peters is doing a bang-up job of it in 2019 after enduring an offseason in which he had to hear about how he'd become a liability in man coverage while with the Rams. Instead of serving as the lockdown defender Los Angeles thought it was getting when it acquired Peters from Kansas City in 2018, Peters became the target of opposing quarterbacks, especially down the stretch of Los Angeles' 2018 run to the Super Bowl. His presence shifted from a defensive strength to an uncertainty at the very least, and the Rams promptly dispatched of such perceived unreliability near the deadline, moving Peters and eventually acquiring Jalen Ramsey to replace him.
That reputation has since evaporated, though, thanks to Peters' use in Baltimore, where he's thriving primarily as a zone corner who will occasionally play man. Peters announced his arrival to the Charm City in his first game following the trade, intercepting Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and returning it for a touchdown in an upset road win over Seattle. He did it again three weeks later against Cincinnati, returning a Ryan Finley pass 89 yards for a score.
"He's really accommodated himself to playing the style of defense that we want to play in the back end," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said, again via the Times' Farmer. "The way we play our techniques and our coverages, the way we relate to routes in both man and zone coverages, he's really smart. He picks it up just like that. He understands the value of working hard at the fundamentals and technique and working together back there, and he's just been seamless. That's probably the part I appreciate the most."
For those thinking Baltimore had found Peters' secret sauce, consider this rebuttal: He'd done something similar in Week 4 when he was still with the Rams, taking an ill-advised Jameis Winston pass 32 yards the other way for a score.
He has a knack for that, it seems, and for getting used to a new uniform rather quickly. He hasn't missed a beat since trading the horns for black and purple, recording 18 tackles, four passes defended and two interceptions in four games (three starts).
We'll see how long it takes for him to remember he's not on the side of those wearing gold horns on Monday night.
