Previewing Week 3: Chiefs at Ravens

There are two weeks of NFL games in the books and the Ravens have picked up right where they left off at the end of the regular season last year, utterly dominating their opponents. Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric rates the Ravens as the best team in the NFL by a wide margin and the Ravens +49 point differential is also well ahead of the rest of the league. Baltimore is dominating on both sides of the ball right now, and they are going to have to keep playing at the same level if they hope to win Monday Night against the Super Bowl Champion Chiefs. Its only week 3, but this game may be one of the best games of the year as the Ravens and Chiefs are widely considered to be the best two teams in the NFL.

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This will be the third straight year the Ravens play the Chiefs with Kansas City earning the win in the previous two match-ups. A lot has changed since the teams met last, the Ravens are riding a 14-game regular season winning streak and the Chiefs won a Super Bowl. Perhaps more importantly for the Ravens, they have turned over 7 defensive starters since week 3 of 2019 with Brandon Williams, Matt Judon, Pernell McPhee and Marlon Humphrey being the only remaining starters. The Chiefs team remains largely unchanged although they have added rookie RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire and former Raven Kelechi Osemele was added to replace Laurent Duvernay-Tardif who opted out of the season to help treat COVID-19 patients. The Chiefs will also have dynamic WR Tyreek Hill in this game who missed the match-up in 2019 due to injury.

Through two games in the 2020 season, the Ravens have been the more impressive team. As previously mentioned the Ravens DVOA is a whopping 60.6% and they rank in the top 5 on offense, defense and special teams. Kansas City is at 10.4%, buoyed mostly by their offense and special teams, while their defense has struggled at times this season. The Chiefs run defense has been particularly suspect, ranking 26^th in DVOA while letting up 150.5 yards per game on the ground and 4.6 YPC. At this point of the season DVOA does not factor in strength of opponent, but these numbers clearly point to a weakness that the Ravens may be able to exploit.

The Ravens did not get off to a great start rushing the ball in week 1, but they got back into a groove in the second half against the Texans where they made heavy use of FB Patrick Ricard and salted the game away without much resistance. They rushed for 230 yards and 6.2 YPC in the game and showed they are capable of moving the ball however they want to against opposing defenses. Even in a game where Lamar Jackson did not have his A game rushing or passing the ball, he was still able to make enough plays to extend drives and put points on the board.

Looking ahead to the week 3 match-up, here are some things I will be watching for:

Ravens Offensive Line vs. Chiefs Defensive Front

If the Ravens offense has had one weakness through the first two games it would be their pass-protection. Lamar Jackson was sacked 4 times in Houston, and while part of that blame goes on Jackson there have been far too many instances through two weeks in Lamar has been forced to navigate the pocket and evade pass-rushers. Kansas City poses a real threat here as Chris Jones is one of the better interior defensive lineman in the NFL and is capable of single-handedly causing havoc to an offensive game plan. Ravens rookie OG Tyre Phillips has probably been the biggest culprit along the offensive line and he is going to be challenged in a major way if Jones is lined up over him. Greg Roman and the Ravens offensive coaches are going to need a strong game-plan to counter Jones pass-rush prowess and give Phillips some help in pass-protection.

Wink Martindale vs Andy Reid

Martindale is one of the best defensive play-callers in the NFL and Andy Reid is widely considered to be one of the best offensive play-callers. This game is going to be a chess match at the game-plan and play-calling level, and it there is a good chance whoever wins this match will win the game. In the teams’ previous two meetings one could argue that they both play-callers came away with a win. In 2018, Martindale’s scheme did a good job to stymie Patrick Mahomes in his MVP season. He still ended up throwing for over 300 yards, but his under pressure all game and his efficiency plummeted. Last year, Reid got the better of Martindale and the Ravens defense, but as previously mentioned the Ravens have added a huge amount of talent on defense since then. How Wink dials up pressure and how Reid and Mahomes handle the pass-rush is going to go a long way in deciding the outcome here.

Ravens pass-rush vs Patrick Mahomes

In a lot of ways this is an extension of the coaching head to head, but Mahomes is such a good player that he can make plays outside of what is normally capable of QBs who are under duress. Mahomes has proven to be very successful against the blitz as his arm has the rare ability to find receivers downfield if the pass-rush is not able to get home. As we are well aware, the Ravens blitz the QB at a rate that far exceeds the average NFL defense. We saw last week that Deshaun Watson was able to avoid sacks and make some plays, but as the game wore on he started to succumb to the pressure. If the Ravens can sack Mahomes 4+ times, I find it hard to believe that the Chiefs will be able to win, but if Mahomes can avoid sacks and even make some plays with his feet like he did against the Chargers the Chiefs offense will be hard to slow down.

Lamar Jackson in Primetime

If we look back to the 2019 season, Lamar Jackson had some of his best performances in primetime games: Sunday night vs. the Patriots, Monday night vs. the Rams and Thursday night vs. the Jets. He certainly seemed able to rise to the moment and play his best football when the spotlight was on him. This upcoming game might just be the biggest regular season game of his career, and I am looking forward to seeing Primetime Lamar Jackson on full display. There are a lot of people who think this could be a preview of the AFC Championship game, and while the stakes are certainly not that high in week 3, this could be a game the determines who ends up with the #1 seed in the AFC.

Final Thoughts

One of the interesting things I noted when I started looking at this game is that both the Ravens and Chiefs have played one common opponent, the Texans. They have also both played divisional opponents – the Browns and the Chargers respectively who have both played the same common opponent – the Bengals. I don’t know if it matters at all when prognosticating the outcome of this game, but both the Ravens and the Chiefs handled the Texans fairly easily. However, the Ravens destroyed the Browns while the Chiefs struggled a bit against the Chargers. I know lots of things can change week to week in this league, but it was something that stood out to me.

This game could go in a lot of different directions. I could see it easily turning into a shootout, and I can also see some scenarios in which it is a fairly low-scoring, tight match-up. I think the most likely outcome will be the Ravens grabbing a lead early while the Chiefs try to keep up, especially if the Ravens can keep their run game rolling.

I’d like to see the Ravens use a lot of play-action and RPOs in this game. Lamar Jackson has been excellent using PA, and it should help slow down the Chiefs pass-rush. Hollywood Brown has the speed to burn the Chiefs deep similar to how he beat the Browns in week 1. I’d love to see some early deep shots to Brown or Boykin in this one.

My final prediction for this game is going to be another Ravens win. The Chiefs are a great team with an incredible QB, but the Ravens are the better all-around team and I think that will prove itself out in this game. I do think it will be fairly close with a final score of Ravens 34 – Chiefs 30.