The Minnesota Vikings came into M&T Bank stadium on Sunday to face a Ravens team who is 10-3 under John Harbaugh coming off of bye weeks. The Vikings came out fast, quickly building a 14-point advantage. But as we have seen this season, the Ravens are adept at playing from behind. Mainly because they have Lamar Jackson. The Vikings actually held two 14-point leads in this game, one in the first half, then another in the second half. The Ravens are now 3-1 this season when trailing by double digits in the 2nd half. The rest of the NFL is 8-93 in those games. A tough day for the “Lamar can’t play from behind” crowd. The Ravens ultimately ended up winning the game 34-31 to improve to 6-2 on the season. Like every week so far, I will highlight the 3 highest and 3 lowest graded players of the week via Pro Football Focus (PFF).
Highest Graded Player of the Week: Pat Ricard
Pat Ricard comes in as the highest graded Raven with a PFF grade of 82.5; his highest so far this season. The fullback is a dying position in the NFL, there are only 7 remaining fullbacks in the NFL, but Pat Ricard is the highest graded fullback in the NFL. A fan favorite, every time “Project Pat” catches the ball, the crowd is always ready for him to completely run over the poor cornerback tasked to tackle him. In the Vikings game, Ricard had 3 catches (all on one drive) and the third reception led to TD on fourth and short from the goal line. Ricard is sparingly used in the passing game, but when he is used, he tends to be efficient. It’s good to see him get rewarded with a TD since he does all of the dirty work in the running game as a blocker. It’s also worth noting that C.J. Ham was the highest graded Vikings offensive player. I doubt we will ever see two fullbacks grade out as the highest players on offense in the same game ever again, but it’s nice to see 2 hard working, gritty players get some recognition.
Second Highest Graded player of the Week: Ben Powers
Ben Powers comes in as the second highest graded player with a PFF grade of 82.1. This is Powers’ second time making this list. Powers did not have a great game as a pass blocker as he allowed 3 pressures on the day and allowed 2 sacks, but he was a force in the running game as he helped the team rush for 247 yards. Powers has had an up and down season thus far but he has graded out well all things considered. He is a better pass blocker than run blocker (71 pass block grade, 61 run block grade) but it is good to see him have a good game in the run block department. Hopefully he continues his solid play and continues to improve in both areas.
Third Highest Graded Player of the Week: Tyus Bowser
Bowser rounds off the list this week registering a PFF grade of 78.3; his highest of the year. Bowser had a very good all-around game in this contest. He had 2 pressures, one QB hit, one hurry, 4 tackles and only one missed tackle. It may not seem overly impressive but Bowser only had 12 pass rushing snaps and he made the most of them. Wink likes to deploy Bowser all over the field essentially, Bowser had 13 coverage snaps and only allowed 1 reception on 2 targets. He is filling the void left by Matt Judon, though he isn’t the pass rusher Judon is, he helps the Ravens in a multitude of ways that the coaching staff values. Bowser will look to keep up the solid play as the Ravens will face one of the worst offensive lines in the league this week, the Miami Dolphins, on Thursday Night Football.
Lowest Graded Player of the Week: Chuck Clark
Chuck Clark comes in as the lowest graded player of the week with a PFF grade of 43.4; his lowest of the year. Clark has now been on this list for 3 straight weeks. Clark actually had a good game in terms of tackling, he registered a 79.2 tackling grade and had 2 QB pressures. The reason for the low grade is because he was the responsible man on the long Justin Jefferson TD grab; which netted him a 45.3 coverage grade. Clark will look to right the ship this week as he will face checkdown king, Jacoby Brissett or Tua who is also prone to checking it down.
Second Lowest Graded Player of the Week: Justin Ellis
Justin Ellis makes his first appearance on this list after filling in for injured Brandon Williams, registering a PFF grade of 46.6. Ellis, known as “jelly” made his first start of the season and wasn’t completely awful, he had a fine tackling grade but just was a nonfactor in the pass rush department and did not make an impactful play in the running game either. Ellis is a good complimentary piece and has been a Raven for multiple years now, so the coaches obviously trust him to fill in. Like Clark, he’ll look to improve on his grade as they will face one of the worst interior lines in the NFL.
Third Lowest Graded Player of the Week: Patrick Queen
Queen comes in as the third lowest graded player of the week with a PFF grade of 46.9. After having an abysmal start to the year, Queen has been quite good over the last few games since moving to weakside linebacker. Though the grade was low, it wasn’t all bad for Queen. He is steadily improving his tackling, he yet again did not have a missed tackle, which marks 3 straight weeks of zero missed tackles. This is noteworthy because he led the league in missed tackles over the first 5 five weeks. Queen also had a good coverage grade, only allowing 2 catches for 8 yards which netted him a 76-coverage grade. The reason for the low grade was his run defense grade, which was 29.4. Though he did have a huge tackle for loss in the second half, he was mostly a nonfactor in run defense as he was just simply swallowed up by linemen on most rushing attempts. Even with the low grade, it’s nice to see queen steadily improve week to week since his disastrous start to the season.
The Ravens will travel to Miami this Thursday to play the Dolphins on a short week. Harbaugh has simply owned the Dolphins during his tenure as head coach. Wins of 59-10, 40-0 and 38-6 just to name a few. The Ravens need to take care of business against an outmatched Dolphins team to keep pace in a tight AFC. The Ravens will only have one home game in the next 5 games so it is important to steal a road game before traveling to Chicago in ten days. They’ll look improve to 7-2 and hopefully separate themselves from the rest of the AFC North.
Mirzet was born in Bosnia and raised in upstate NY. Mirzet became a huge fan of the ravens when he first moved to the country and has never looked back. Mirzet is also a former base data analyst at Pro Football Focus. Using advanced metrics and stats has always been a passion of his when discussing anything football-related. Salihovic also lived in Baltimore shortly after he went to college at SUNY Cortland, he currently resides in Utica, NY.