Now that the Ravens season is over, it’s time to look back and take stock of what the team did well, and what the team did poorly. To this end, we’ll be reviewing each of the positional units. I reviewed the front seven last week, which you can find here. The second unit we’ll be reviewing is the Ravens secondary.
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It’s hard to get a good read on the Ravens secondary. The stats say they were about average: they ended up 15th in passing DVOA by the end of the season. However, there are two reasons why that stat is misleading. First, the Ravens pass rush was fantastic, which compensated for a lot of the poor play of the defensive backs. Second, the Ravens defensive backs were riddled with injuries as the year progressed. By the end of the year, the Ravens secondary was not only its worst unit on the entire team, but also the biggest reason why they lost to they eventually lost to the Patriots in the playoffs.
Let’s start with the positive. There were two standouts in the Ravens secondary: Jimmy Smith and Will Hill. When Smith played, the Ravens pass coverage was passible. That might seem like damning him with faint praise, but it’s not: one player elevating a secondary that was this bad to average levels is a huge accomplishment. When healthy, Smith was a lockdown corner, one of the best in football. Good corners need the physical prowess to not get outmuscled by strong pass catchers, the speed to keep up with speedy wide receivers, the lateral mobility to keep up with a receiver when they unexpectedly turn on a dime, and the smarts to read where a pass is going to be thrown. And Smith had all of those attributes in spades. Look at Smith deviate from his assignment to undercut a pass from Mike Glennon for the interception.
Smith improvises by leaving his man and undercutting a different receiver, and is rewarded with the interception. While Smith isn’t a ball hawk by any means, his ability to intuit where the ball is going to be thrown and make a play was huge for the Ravens.
Will Hill was also fantastic all year. Hill has always a talented player, but got in a lot of trouble off the field, including a six game suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. The Ravens signed him to a one-year deal, in a low-risk high-reward move that paid off wonderfully. Hill has great field awareness, knowing exactly when and where to help out the Ravens overmatched cornerbacks. He had the physical ability to stop the run, but the range to help out all over the field. Look how Hill undercuts Jimmy Graham for the interception.
But Smith didn’t stay healthy for the whole year, and relying on just Hill to keep the secondary afloat was akin to trying to jumpstart a car using a double A battery. The Ravens started the year thin in the secondary, and it only got worse. The Ravens suffered a litany of injuries, and by the end of the season they were left starting an injured Lardarius Webb and inexperienced corners Anthony Levine and Rashaan Melvin.
The way the Ravens dealt with this was to have the defensive backs play way off the wide receivers at the line of scrimmage. This made some degree of sense: the Ravens were 31st in the NFL at defending passes thrown for 16 yards or more. By playing off receivers at the line of scrimmage, the Ravens could just wait for their phenomenal pass rush to hit home while allowing small yardage gains. Unfortunately, this strategy is a big reason the Ravens season came to a premature end. While that strategy might work against subpar passers, top tier quarterbacks like Tom Brady will just slowly and meticulously rip you apart. The picture below is an illustration of how the Patriots picked apart the Ravens.
Concluding thoughts:
This offseason, the Ravens top priority should be investing in their secondary. While Jimmy Smith played like a lockdown corner when he was healthy, but he has had injury problems in the past and can’t be counted on to stay healthy. The team should look to resign Will Hill, invest a high draft pick in a cornerback, and sign a veteran cornerback in free agency. With this team’s front seven, it should be inexcusable they don’t have a top five defense in football. But with significant investments in the secondary, the Ravens can get there next year.
Will is a Ravens fan born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. He has previously written for Baltimore Beatdown at SB Nation. He is currently a senior at St. Mary’s of Maryland.