Baltimore has made its bones over these past two years with Don “Wink” Martindale on blitzing. They blitzed more than any team in the NFL in 2019 per SportsRadar data, and this year the Ravens are in second place behind only the Steelers. So what happened over and over again on Monday Night Football is the Ravens did what they’ve always done: they blitzed. Patrick Mahomes didn’t care. He read the blitz, he knew what he wanted to do, and he got off some hellacious throws that, if we’re being honest, only one quarterback in the league can make.
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NFL Next Gen Stats had it as 15-of-19 for 191 yards three touchdowns against the blitz. PFF had it as 19-of-23 for 250 yards and three touchdowns. No matter which stats site you use, it’s hard to not see with your eyes that this is a problem.
The Ravens have a problem: Their identity works very well against a number of other great quarterbacks. It wrecked Deshaun Watson this year. In 2019, they whipped Sean McVay’s Rams, they walloped Tom Brady’s Patriots. They even thumped Russell Wilson. But the biggest speed bump in the way of winning the AFC is the Kansas City Chiefs, and Mahomes has laughed at Ravens blitzers in both of their meetings over the last two seasons. He took one sack in the first meeting, and zero in Monday’s disastrous loss. The Ravens blitzed 20 times per SportsRadar data and got just seven pressures out of it.
The chief culprit to me appeared to be fire zone blitzes. Mecole Hardman’s touchdown throw came on one of those. The general idea of a fire zone is that you’re rushing with five, other defenders are dropping into zone coverage to try to take away hot reads, and usually you’re overloading a side. In this case, the Raven bring Marlon Humphrey (44) off the edge and replace him with Pernell McPhee (90) to the other side of the field looking for a hot route.
Humphrey succeeds in getting a clear rush lane and has a shot at Mahomes:
But rather than throwing hot to Tyreek Hill (10), or a block-and-release guy (87, Travis Kelce). Mahomes held the ball, drifted to his left to buy time, waited for Hardman to get open deep and that was all she wrote:
Baltimore is playing to win the down quickly, and I think that’s harder to do in the 2020 NFL for a couple of reasons. One is that teams are getting more comfortable letting routes develop late in the down. Another is that offensive holding has all but disappeared in the NFL in 2020, so one of the ways they could win the down is gone unless it is egregious:
I really don’t know that the defensive identity that Baltimore has is compatible with beating Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid as currently situated. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen — game scripts matter and obviously the offense can play a lot better. But while there are many quarterbacks in this league that can be beaten up for their lunch money on pressure, Kansas City isn’t allowing that to happen. That’s a humongous problem for a team that relies on pressure to win games defensively.
Ravens Analyst
Rivers McCown is a writer and editor who has written for ESPN.com, Bleacher Report, USA Today, and Deadspin, among other places. He’s edited for Football Outsiders, Rookie Scouting Portfolio, and Pre-Snap Reads Quarterback Catalogue.