This was not a stellar week for Baltimore if you look at the isolated results. The final product looked great and I thought a big part of that was ultimately Roman getting back to basics. I think the Ravens might have thought their offense was more advanced than it was and ready to handle deeper reads and wrinkles and they just weren’t there.
Above the fold though, 33 points, overall efficiency, great goal line and 4th down packages, battled through to get by their mistakes. All signs of a winning team. This was the type of game that I think we should have been worried about losing. It’s on the road, the Texans aren’t a joke and were coming off a loss, and the offense was just kind of sluggish, this win makes me think the Ravens could be a 14+ win team again this year.
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
So who were the culprits in this game, I think the offensive line and blocking assignments in the first half were just a mess. But there were a lot of missed blocks and free blockers in this game. A good simple example is this jet sweep to Hollywood Brown, this should be a 30-yard gain. But it doesn’t seem like Ricard knows who to block and he’s just looking to get to outside of the numbers. This was one of a number of missed blocks for the Ravens. The Ravens have a few games in the first 6 weeks of last year where it felt the same way, the offense was just missing one assignment and it was a different player each snap. And it was just disrupting every drive. This is a good example. Though this missed block is Ricard, there were misses by a lot of players or at times it seems runners going to the wrong hole and a free blocker in a different part of the play, too.
The coaching staff also gets dinged here is it seems like there was a concerted effort by the team to get to the sideline. Maybe they saw something on tape that made them think the Texans were trying to force the Ravens to the middle of the field and thought they could beat them to the edge, but frankly they just couldn’t. Jackson was constantly trying to beat defenders to the edge and if he just cut inside first and then outside, there would have been something there. I think this is partially an adjustment, Lamar ran a lot to the boundary last year, so the Ravens need to learn to take advantage of teams assuming that’s what he’ll do this year. But back to the coaching, they ran a snap where the ball was at the 18-yard line and Hollywood was on the 28-yard line. It just felt a little too cute at times. Luckily the second half was back to basics.
The last was Lamar Jackson. And I’m as big of a fan as they come, but he just didn’t have it in his reads and pocket awareness in this game. Lamar ran into 4 sacks according to PFF and frankly just missed a number of plays that could have gone for huge gains. On this play below, there is about 4-5 yards of space between Jackson and Ingram. Ingram is running away from the defender, he’s looking at Jackson as though he’s the hot read, and Jackson for whatever reason keeps the ball. Ingram has two blockers in front of him and this is a 20+ yard gain all over it. Instead, Lamar keeps it, runs right into the teeth of the defense and takes a 1-yard gain. I thought his awareness in the pocket just seemed a moment off this game, too. There were moments he could have slide and didn’t have extra rushers coming, too. There will be better games for Lamar and if you can get 75% completion and a 9+ YPA in a game like this, with both of those missed plays being the difference in getting to a 12+ YPA, there are things to get better at but tons of opportunity.
Ravens Analyst
Jordan Kough is a graduate of University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He’s a long standing Ravens and Orioles fan of many years. He grew up just north of Baltimore and likes the statistical analysis of games as much as watching games themselves.