Ravens Fast Five: The First Cut is the Deepest

“But when it comes to being lucky he’s cursed”

I like forward thinking and analytics…but…

Being a slave to any metric when applying it to real life is not ideal. This is going to be talked about a lot this week since John Harbaugh talked about analytics in his post-game press conference. It’s also going to be talked about in the wrong context by most, if not all the media. John Harbaugh is right, that analytics tell you your odds of winning by doing certain things go up. But Joe Fan is also right that you should take the easy points and keep the lead you’re chasing within reach.

The situation is the Ravens scored a touchdown to cut into the Chiefs lead, making the score 30-19 Kansas City. Ideally you would kick the extra point and make it 30-20. Anyone who has watched one game football and has all 10 fingers can figure out that your next touchdown and extra point (7), then your next field goal (3) ties the game provided the defense does their job. Given the time on the clock (12:22 in the 4^th), you have a general idea of how many drives you have left. You can estimate you’re going get the ball 2-3 more times. The Ravens got it twice more and were in line for a third but couldn’t stop a 3^rd and long which would have gotten them the ball back with around 1 minute to go. All in all, in a perfect world, you would go to overtime should that play out.

Where analytics come in is that they will tell you that if you trail by 9 instead of 10 your chances of winning goes up. This is obvious considering again, perfect world stuff. When is the world ever perfect by the way? 30-19, you actually convert a two point conversion to cut it to 9, 30-21, score another TD, 30-28, kick a field goal and you lead by 1, 31-30, and hope your defense holds up their end of the bargain the whole entire time so you win by 1 in regulation. That is analytics in the simplest of terms. This is how it was applied.

This seems flawed as hell.

Analytics does not like overtime. Analytics want you to win in regulation. Analytics says trailing by 9, you score 10, you win x amount more than if you trail by 10, score 10, and try your hand in OT. However, in real life, when you are trailing in a football game you need as much time as it takes to try to get the lead. If you can tie it in regulation after trailing by 17, and it takes OT to decide a winner, so be it. If you are trailing by 17, why put a cap on the time you want to play?

Here is the follow up question to Harbaugh’s “analytics say…”. What do the analytics say about your odds of going 50-60 yards in one minute to get into field goal range, or going 80+ yards in one minute to score a touchdown? Cause this is the situation the Ravens are then facing should the defense have gotten that last stop, forced a punt from KC’s own 37-yard line. By not kicking extra points, where statistics say Justin Tucker makes 99.7% of them, you trail by 5 instead of 2, and have limited time to go the length of the field.

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The fine line between aggression and stupidity.

We have seen this act from John Harbaugh before. The going for it on short 4^th downs when you don’t have to. The going for two instead of the extra point when you don’t have to. Granted, there are times he goes for it on 4^th down when I’m screaming “KICK THE FIELD GOAL” and they convert and score a touchdown. Happed today. There have also been times where they do this on say the 30-yard line, convert, then end up in 4^th and 10 in the next set of downs and kick the field goal anyway. There has been plenty of times where they do this and then get stopped and leave points off the board while the other team takes over.

Aggressive is going for it on 4^th and 3 from the 9, setting up 1^st and goal. I get it, a little bit. You are playing a high-power offense, you want to get a touchdown on the board early, you are in your first drive, a scripted play you have worked on all week, feel good about it, fine. If you fail, KC now has to go 90+ yards to score a TD.

Stupidity is everything that followed. Getting cute and trying to go for two. Failing. When KC responded with a TD of their own, they were leading instead of being even. It changes everything. Then going for it on 4^th down in your own territory twice. The second time, failing. Why risk giving the most explosive offense in the game an extremely short field?

What we saw out there isn’t how football is played. It’s how it’s played in video games. And it was played on novice level at best. You wanted to go for two’s, and two out of three times Lamar Jackson was running for his life almost immediately. Did you practice for these situations?

If you want to die on the analytics hill, then draw up some better ****ing plays around the goal line. Lamar back tracking to the 20 then having to make up something on the fly isn’t ideal.

The score doesn’t reflect how poorly the Ravens played.

Analytics aside, the Ravens made far too many mistakes and were helped out by too many miracles. Miracles that the Ravens could have used when it actually mattered. Prayer pop fly to Seth Roberts. Prayer to Willie Snead back across the field. Both would have hardly ever have been converted. 40-17 seems more appropriate. I don’t want to hear, “At least it was a competitive game against a good team.”

It wasn’t. The Ravens beat themselves, and the Chiefs could have done even more.

It’s never as good at its best, nor as bad at its worst.

The way Lamar Jackson and the Ravens played against Miami wasn’t indicative of the Ravens true talents. I feel like the way Jackson and the Ravens played today, wasn’t indicative of their flaws either. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Penalties are going to happen. But not always on 3^rd downs leading to a new set of downs for a prolific offense, pretty much gift wrapping them two touchdowns. Lamar missed a lot of passes today, but we’ve seen him make plenty the last two weeks to know he’ll raise his passing game again. The running backs were very solid today and running should remain their bread and butter. I think the explosive passing in week 1 has led them to try to be too cute in the last two games. They were able to get away with it against the Cardinals. But the Ravens best drive against the Chiefs was coming out of the half. 9 plays, 8 rushes, 1 incomplete pass, touchdown.

The defense though…it’s bad.

It’s not just that the Chiefs are that prolific, even though they are. Their chumps at running back stacked up 124 yards on 21 carries. Mecole Hardman had an uncontested 83-yard touchdown that had to be clear miscommunication. Patrick Mahomes took 8 hits in the game, but they exploited the pass rush with numerous screen passes that the Ravens had no answer for. Earl Thomas again went missing. Jaylon Ferguson was active but unable to set the edge in the run game. Tim Williams and Tyus Bowser have been disappointing, and that is putting it nicely. Curious to see Williams’ snap count because he didn’t even show up on the stat sheet.

It’s also two games in a row now that the defense hasn’t forced a turnover.