Kyle Goon: The Ravens and a coach-turned-rival are pretending to make nice. Don’t buy it.

There is sometimes a fine line between “facts” and the truth.

It is, for example, a fact that the Ravens offense — including its biggest stars — enjoyed career seasons when Todd Monken was calling plays in Baltimore. It’s a fact that many — maybe most — of the Ravens offensive players texted Monken when he was picked to lead the Cleveland Browns.

The facts might suggest there is plenty of warmth between Monken and his former players. But that’s probably not the truth.

Coming in with rock-bottom expectations from the wider football world, the Browns have ambushed solid teams such as the Carolina Panthers and the Pittsburgh Steelers for a respectable 3-2 start. After the first win of the season in Week 2, Monken memorably signed off his postgame presser by firing back on an oft-repeated critique of the franchise’s perennial foibles: “The Browns are gonna Browns? F--- that.”

It’s the competitive side of the coach the Ravens knew well from the last three years.

“He’s the same guy as he was here over there in Cleveland, so he’s still very animated,” right tackle Roger Rosengarten said. “He’s not afraid to speak his mind. So he’s done a really good job, I think, with Cleveland over there and just commanding ship.”

But, when they’re talking about what led to the split between the Ravens and Monken, who was dismissed along with John Harbaugh in January, the players’ accounts smack of revisionist history.

“A lot of guys broke a lot of records under Todd, so it’s just part of the game,” receiver Rashod Bateman said. “People grow to get better opportunities to go elsewhere, and he definitely earned that job.”

Would the Ravens have pegged Monken as a future NFL head coach a year ago, when they were mired in a 1-5 start?

The bubbling tension between players and Monken last October has been brushed over this week, but as the Ravens head to Cleveland on Sunday, there’s no way it has been forgotten. Not by either party, despite an insistence to largely keep the discourse in the present.

The Banner reported then that players were frustrated by a number of Monken’s play-calling decisions, including going outside scripted game plans and getting too predictable in certain sets and game situations.

It’s true Monken presided over some of the best offensive performances and seasons ever in Baltimore. Despite all of that, a fractious relationship between him and the offensive players last year threatened to upend the season.

After multiple outlets reported player frustration with Monken, the Ravens followed with a 30-16 shellacking of Chicago with backup quarterback Tyler Huntley. Afterward, Monken was caught on camera saying “I’ve taken a lot of f--ing flak — f-- them motherf--ers.” While Monken was indeed taking flak from many corners at the time, the most high-profile criticism was coming from inside the Castle itself.

Factors outside Monken’s control certainly aggravated the relationship, with Lamar Jackson’s injuries looming over everything. But at the time there was little love lost between the coordinator and his players — a truth that the Ravens and Monken seem eager to skate past in the public eye.

The team’s effusive praise of offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, who has led the unit to rank No. 5 in yardage and No. 6 in scoring, at times feels like an indirect shot against Monken. Quarterback Lamar Jackson has called Doyle a “wizard,” and on the “Sunday Night Football” set after the Ravens’ win over the Falcons, wide receiver Zay Flowers credited Doyle for believing in him and putting him in great matchup positions: “[Doyle] has been allowing me to do that.”

But players insisted there are no hard feelings — that they’re happy to see him take another career step with the Browns.

“If I’m being honest, I’m glad [Monken]’s having success,” Flowers told me. “I appreciate everything he did here.”

In the last year, the dynamic has shifted. It’s worth wondering if the Ravens and Monken are merely politely avoiding acknowledgment of the shaky parts of his tenure or if both parties have gained respect for the good parts of those three seasons with distance and time. The answer might involve a bit of both.

Monken was extremely milquetoast this week when talking about facing the Ravens, sidestepping a question about if he was preparing for Jackson to start with an answer so generic as to be meaningless: “I think you prepare for the Ravens.” It’s the kind of thing a coach says when a quote about his true feelings might qualify as bulletin board material.

Still, players can envision what’s lying under the surface as Monken prepares to show his former team his play-calling prowess is still top-tier.

“He might not say it in the media,” running back Derrick Henry said, “but to the team, he definitely talks a lot of trash and lets them know he wants to beat us.”

That determination goes both ways. The Ravens want to beat Monken at least as much as he wants to beat them.

Even though no one is saying the quiet part out loud, you can bet, when the teams take the field, that truth will be so apparent no one will need to speak it at all.