This time last offseason, no one was talking about the Ravens as a favorite to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl. There were a lot of question marks about a defense that lost several veteran starters and an offense that just gave the keys of the castle to Lamar Jackson, who had struggled passing the ball as a rookie. John Harbaugh had made some comments about how the Ravens were going to revolutionize offense, but most people took that with a grain of salt. Then week 1 happened, when Jackson passed for 5 TDs and the Ravens dropped 59 on the seemingly helpless Miami Dolphins.
The 2019 Ravens season was one of the most dominant we have seen in recent memory, but it sadly ended in a second straight home playoff loss and a lot of disappointment. Fast forward to August 2020 and we see a Ravens team that has brought back most of its championship-caliber roster along with two highly regarded coaches in Defensive Coordinator Wink Martindale and Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman. I’ve previously written about some of the changes the Ravens made to their defensive front, but in this article, I wanted to focus on how the Ravens offense may look different in 2020 compared to 2019.
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As I mentioned above, the offensive personnel is relatively unchanged from 2019, but there are a few departures that may impact the team to varying degrees. The first obvious change is the retirement of Marshal Yanda who has been a fixture at OG for the Ravens for the more than a decade. The future Hall of Famer has been one of the best offensive lineman in the NFL and his loss will surely be felt. The Ravens also traded away former first round TE Hayden Hurst who played a fairly significant role in the team’s TE heavy offense. Finally, the Ravens let WR Seth Roberts walk in free agency. He had a somewhat similar role to Hurst, in that he saw a lot of snaps on offense, but he was not a primary target for QB Lamar Jackson. (I should also mention swing tackle/back-up OG James Hurst’s release, but I see it as a very minor loss).
The Ravens have taken what I would call a “numbers approach” in their effort to replace Yanda; they have drafted several interior offensive lineman, and also signed veteran D.J. Fluker in the hopes that one of them will be able to take over as a starter. I have reasonably high hopes that the Ravens, who have a very good offensive line coach in Joe D’Alessandris, will be able to plug in one of these players without a huge drop off in quality of play. Roberts’ departure is probably the least impactful as the Ravens have also drafted a number of WRs over the past two seasons, and it is time to see them in a more significant role. Miles Boykin, last year’s 3rd round selection, will likely see the biggest uptick in snaps and targets from 2019, and I expect 2020 3rd round pick Devin Duvernay to also be a factor here.
The biggest departure in terms of how it impacts the Ravens offensive approach may in fact by Hayden Hurst. I’m not inferring that he is a better player than Yanda, but the Ravens led the NFL in how often they targeted their TEs and Hurst was part of that equation. They also haven’t made any real attempt to replace Hurst. There could be any number of reasons why the Ravens haven’t tried to add a viable 3rd TE to the roster; it could be related to cost, draft value, OR they may be making a concerted effort to once again evolve as an offense.
In 2019, the Ravens utilized a minimum of two TEs on about 40% of their offensive snaps – one of the highest numbers in the NFL. They also used three TEs on 7% of snaps which was 4th highest in the league. Nick Boyle led the TE group in snaps with 795, he was followed by Mark Andrews with 503 snaps and then Hurst with 500. That’s right, Hurst and Andrews essentially had the same number of offensive snaps in 2019. Now, part of that is due to Andrews sitting out a game and dealing with some injuries, but Hurst still played a big role in the offense. Also consider that Lamar Jackson targeted his TEs 180 times last year – 45% of his passes were targeting TEs which led the NFL. Now clearly this TE-centric offense was extremely effective, and this has been described ad-nauseum so I will not go into detail here, but it does raise the question – how will the Ravens offense adjust in 2020?
We can start with asking where will Hayden Hurst’s 39 targets (about 10% of Lamar’s total targets) go? It’s unlikely that they all go to Boyle and Andrews, although both may see a slight uptick. The (fairly) obvious answer is that the Ravens will target their WRs and RBs more frequently in 2020. This agrees with the Ravens draft day approach where they drafted two WRs and a running back while ignoring the TE position until UDFA even though they received a 2nd round pick in return for Hurst. That 2nd round pick turned into J.K. Dobbins who happens to be a pretty good option receiving the ball. I also previously mentioned the addition of 3rd round WR Devin Duvernay who has 4.4 speed and vice grips for hands.
All of these personnel changes also make sense given John Harbaugh’s comments about how he wants to see the Ravens, and Lamar Jackson specifically, stretch the field more vertically. Having a threat like Marquise Brown obviously makes the deep passing game a very viable option, and now there can be two other WRs on the field with 4.4 speed in Boykin and Duvernay. All of this leads me to believe that the Ravens are going to see a big uptick in the usage of 11 personnel (3 WRs, 1 TE, and 1 RB) compared to 2019 when they used 3 or more WRs the fourth lowest rate in the NFL.
How else may these personnel changes affect the offense? We will probably see fewer rush attempts and more pass attempts. This is a natural regression to the mean, and also a good way to manage the number of rush attempts specifically for Lamar Jackson who ran the ball at a record rate in 2019. If the Ravens do this intelligently and mix in a higher percentage of play action and RPOs it could actually lead to a less predictable and more dynamic offense than we saw in 2019. The Ravens were first in the league in rush % on 1st down. Yes, the Ravens were very successful using this approach, but it also puts a lot of strain and responsibility on Lamar Jackson. If the Ravens can move closer to a 50/50 run pass split, it could once again make the offense almost impossible to stop.
Ravens Analyst
Gabe is an avid fan of the NFL and Ravens football. He grew up in Westminster, MD, and attended college at Johns Hopkins University majoring in Biology. He earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and now works as a R&D Scientist developing Transplant Diagnostics assays. Gabe has appeared as a guest on 105.7 The Fan.