The Lamar Jackson led Baltimore Ravens have two monkeys on their back they need to remove. The biggest one is that elusive playoff win. But considering he's only 23, this one hasn't been as bad as many make it seem (Peyton was 27 when he got his first). That 2nd monkey is Patrick Mahomes and his Kansas City Chiefs. Let's see if the Ravens can conquer this demon later tonight.
By far, this is the season's prime time game I'm looking forward to. I may even record it. I think it will come down to the defenses. Advantage: Ravens.
cant wait for tonight. I agree on these points above and I expect to see a really tight back and forth game. I see the Ravens with the defensive advantage, as Lyman mentioned above. I think the Ravens will need to run the ball to control the game pace but also look for the big chunk plays as KC presents them to us. I think as the KC defense tries hard to shut down the run, they will leave themselves vulnerable from time to time over the top and Lamar needs to see that, recognize and attack. As far as the KC offense, I am happy the Ravens have speed all over the field defensively. They will need every bit of it to stop Mahomes and his entourage. If we can cover for just a few seconds and make him hold the ball a tick longer than normal, maybe we can frustrate him into rushing and making mistakes. I see the game tight and potentially a few lead changes but I will say the Ravens prevail 33 to 27. That is 3 TD's for the Ravens and 4 field goals or something like that.
Despite the close score (for now), the Ravens are almost unwatchable tonight they are playing so bad. The defense is petrified of the Chiefs, and the receivers don't feel like catching anything. And KC scored again. They just have no ability to play with the Chiefs.
There's just so much to discuss with this dumpster fire. The offensive game plan is abysmal again in a big game. So many dink and dunk attempts, and even those are being dropped by receivers. The defense is no better than last year. For all the hoopla about the DL additions, they still can't get pressure with 4. Even with Mr 16M, they can't even get pressure with 5. Peters is being abused, but Averett is a tentative liability out there. Passing holes exposed everywhere. Again, the Chiefs are a great team and will make plenty of teams look foolish. If you're a real contender though, you shouldn't be one of them.
Please forfeit the game now and immediately send all receivers to the jugs machine from now until the next game. This is absurd.
Ok, game officially over. My observations: - Roman has an issue with trying new shit out when he shouldn't. Why so many passing plays with routes behind the LoS, even on 3rd and 2? Why are we dinking and dunking the whole first half after the first drive? Why abandon the run when we went down 4 when thw run got down the field to start the game? - Wink. Wow, blitz again. It only failed EVERY SINGLE TIME. I can't think of one completion Mahomes had into tight coverage, because there was ALWAYS a wide open receiver, mainly because of the blitzing (Well, the TD to Hill was tight coverage). At least play coverage to stop the yards after catch and hope it causes errant passes. - Harbaugh. Reign in your coaches!!! Don't just watch them continue to try to put square pegs in round holes. - Andrews has questionable hands. I miss Hurst. - Lamar has another off game from trying to do too much. - Defense tried to force a strip on damn near every play instead of actually tackling. Imagine not giving up an extra 5-15 yards on every catch. - DeCosta, you've been great but please find a pass rusher. Trade a 3rd for Kerrigan or something. Baltimore needs desperate help with the pass rush
I'm with you on most of that RR. I think Lamar had a bad game and he wasn't helped at all by his receivers. They dropped absolutely everything tonight. What an embarrassment. I know this isn't a playoff game, and we beat a ton of incredible teams last year on that epic run. Still, this felt like the same stakes as a playoff game, and the team was as woefully unprepared as each of the previous losses. I don't know how you fix that defense. I mean I know what the problem is. Somehow their defensive line and OLB have gone from a team strength to an absolute liability over the years. They cannot win 1-1 battles, and they can't even get home when blitzing. I don't think many wanted to pay Judon, but we also knew we didn't have anything in the cupboard either. They need to throw out their script for evaluating the front 7 and get with the times. Honestly from until I stopped watching, Special Teams is the only area we could have hung our hat tonight. Duvernay had a spectacular return, and Tucker kicked it through the uprights. Other than that, Dobbins and Edwards seemed like they wanted to play. Peters was completely out of it all night. Averett is terrible. You only know Judon is on the field due to penalties or trying to take cheap shots at QBs (saw his attempted elbow to Patrick's head). In typing this, 10 more passes hit Brown and Andrews in the hands, and they dropped them. There's probably not many teams (if any) aside from the Chiefs that can turn you inside out like that. The personnel problems are what they are. The bigger issue is why in the biggest games are the coaching and gameplans so terrible?
I will jump on the bandwagon (mostly to make myself feel better to get a few shots in) and pile on here. Can I say I am so tired of the coaching staff tryin to push this ridiculous narrative that "Lamar is a great pocket passer"? I am tired of them coming out in big games and simply trying to recreate the run and shoot for Lamar to show off his arm. No one is as good as Mahomes. Lamar is a good passer, not a great one at this point. The thing that accentuates his passing is the run game which they seem to abandon after 1 possession. We ran the ball down their throats on 2 different possessions and seemingly said "well that worked, let's try something different." We should have been controlling the clock and holding the ball and keeping Mahomes off the field. I hope someone in the media calls out Roman and his terrible plan and as mentioned above I hope someone also links Harbaugh to that and mentions how he is still the head coach. The defensive plan was equally putrid. Wink had a terrible plan, poor personnel to execute that plan and yet he kept beating his head against the wall by doing it all game. I agree, Judon is not very good and I am glad we did not (yet) give him a boatload of money. I also agree as RR pointed out that we do not know how to stick a tackle. We gave an extra 3 to 5 yards every tackle. How is it that Edwards-Helaire is 5' 7" and yet drove our pile of 290 pounders back 3 more yards every time. On the TD to Hardman, we saw the overhead view. Check it out, we had 5 defensive backs and they were in a jumbo package with just 2 WR in the pattern. All 5 of our DB's were swarming 1 guy and Hardman was free 15 yards beyond our deepest guy. They clearly do not know the coverages and were blowing them all night long. Their communication is terrible and they are not recognizing the offense at all. Also agree Wink's plan was terrible and he needs to be called out for it. What happened to halftime adjustments and changing plans when our original was not working? We had our second half possession and it looked promising in that we got back to pounding the rock and running it down their throats only to abandon it and go back to the greatest show on turf. I will never understand why we do not go back (when our plan is not working) to the RPO offense and why on earth would we not utilize Lamar's biggest asset in his legs. Those sprint outs and roll outs should be our best weapon as Lamar can just survey and if no one is open, pull it down and run. We barely do any of that. We keep him in the pocket and try to prove that he is better than Mahomes. This is not the end of the world, we lost week 3 last year to this same team and then even the following week to the Browns so we are still in good shape and hopefully this is the slap in the face we need to recognize where our shortcomings are and to really work on utilizing our strengths and talents and stop trying to be something we are not.
I hope someone at a press conference asks them why they dislike Gus Edwards so much also. I really want to hear the answer to that. In 2018, the 4-5 Ravens switch QBs to Lamar Jackson. They also switched RBs and Gus became the feature back. He responded by only having, I think, 1 run for negative yards as he ran to a 5.2ypc average. How do you reward that great play? Sign Ingram and draft Hill. Okay, cool. His touches drop, but he still averages 5.3ypc and is part of the greatest rushing attack in NFL history. Cool, let's draft another RB in the 2nd round. No hate to Dobbins, but I wonder if we could have used an o-lineman or pass rusher there.........nahhhhh. 2020, Gus has seen an 8+ man stacked box 33% of his carriers. How has he responded so far? 7.1ypc. All this man does is play well. We'll probably draft another RB next year and only use Edwards sparingly. He certainly didn't need more than 4 carriers yesterday, even with over a 9ypc average. Square peg, round hole
Ingram has not been impressive this year at all. I know I've mentioned Edwards being a bit of a liability with the ball handling and fakes, but as BSF mentioned, we are barely utilizing that offense this season. Dobbins and Edwards pass the eye test for running better than Ingram this year so far. It may be worth looking into shaking that up. I also saw a lot of people mention the 150 rushing yards last night. Jackson had 80 of those though if I'm not mistaken.
