OK fellas, this one was ugly again. I feel like it was the death by 1000 cuts. Slow and sure they just moved the ball little at a time down the field. The good was very little. Alex Collins runs hard like he has something to prove. I don't care for the fumbles but he is pretty violent with his run during contact (spinning and try to break tackles) so I get the reason for them. Ben Watson is a pretty tough customer and has good hands The bad was a lot: The offense is poor in that the plays calling is not helping the offense move the ball. Wouldn't we employ a quick slant style of offense to take advantage of fast plays and shorter gains since our O line can't prtect for very long? Also, we had several 3rd and short situations where we ran stretch and sweep plays. Why are we not running up the gut runs to take advantage of our larger better run blocking O linemen? Those stretches and sweeps call for athletic and quick O lineman which we don't have. There was a 2nd quarter play where we had 3rd and 2 and we ran a sweep to the right, yet on the 2pt conversion play (same distance) we run West up the gut (granted it was short but you see my point) I don't think the defense is very creative either. I don't think we applied much pressure to Ben. I feel like when we got pressure it was effective but we hardly applied much pressure and he slowly and methodically moved the chains all day. I thought if our defensive backfield was the best we have had we could afford to put them on some man to man or island coverage to allow us to bring more pressure. I don't know much about the nuts and bolts of defense, or can't diagnose a defensive scheme, but it seemed we allowed Ben to get comfortable aside from Z Smith wrecking his guy time and time again. I am not sure what they do from here but we have to change the philosophy because what we are doing is not working.
Changing philosophy means changing coaches. From Harbs on down. Been saying for a while that the Ravens need to hire younger, more 21st century coaches, but Harbs insists on going the recycling route. Recycling old coaches who keep getting fired for their ineptitude. The best hire Harbs has had was Gary Kubiak. Maybe that's the reason he hires the older rejects. He knows they are so bad that nobody else would want to hire them as a HC. it's time for Bisciotti to put his foot down. Ultimatum time for both Harbs and Ozzie.
Sigh, as a long time Harbaugh and Flacco apologist, I have a hard time defending them now. Flacco has just been bad. Harbaugh may be a bigger reason for this offense than I'd have originally thought. Whether he's only hiring OCs that run a specific scheme. From Cam Cameron to Marty Mornhinweg, every new OC seems to run less and less deep passes, or rather seem to have Joe focused on the short passes. Down two scores in the second half and we're still only attempting 4 yard passes is frustrating. Watching the offense themselves slowly kill the clock in the 4th was maddening. I will still factor in injuries though. Jensen was originally expected to be a backup who competes for a starting job. Hurst was expected to be no more than a backup. Skura wasn't supposed to be anywhere but the practice squad. All three started. I can't blame talent, or even talent scouts when a handful of o-linemen go to IR and another retires out of nowhere, eventually forcing a practice squad guy to start. That said, I blame Harbaugh, Marty, Joe, Breshad, and Mike for this offense. Between the bad play calls, bad passes, and bad catch attempts, this offense is garbage at best. Camp and Chris Matthews should get more time. Hell, Chris Moore even. I don't believe in Mallett, but Flacco being a 20M+ QB playing like this will cause me to pull out what little hair I have on my head.
He deserves blame for ignoring offense for so long the last few drafts. I read that the Ravens have had 17 day 1 and day 2 picks over the last 4 drafts and 13 of them went to the defense. That's ridiculous, especially when you include all the free agency attention. Ignoring the offense this much is definitely blame worthy. I won't put blame on him for the current t execution as I doubt he could have predicted these o-line injuries, Dixon's injury and suspension, Perriman's regression (which is saying something since he was never a star) and Flacco's horrid play (plus Joe won't be going anywhere before 2019 anyway).
Well, we asked how many injuries can the tram sustain before it starts losing. It was the loss of Yanda and Williams last week. We're losing the battle in the trenches. However, even when Flacco got the ball to Wallace, Perriman, and Maclin they dropped it. Collins got the start over West and looked like a bright spot until he coughed up the pill giving the Steelers great field position. For the second week we saw Skura starting over Bergstrom. Stanley got his ankle rolled up on as well. The defense made som great stands, killed some drives, but is looking spent and abused. They're on the field way too long and it shows. Harbs and Ozzie looked like they put a great team together. It seems to me that Ozzie didn't pay attention to the O-line and Harbs was too comfortable this offseason after his extension. Flacco too is looking a little Cutler-esque, too comfortable behind a bloated contract. However, I'm not sure how much of it is his back and how much of a cover up the team is doing on that matter. In any case Kaepernick should've been called upon and Mallet released if they think a hurt Joe is still that much better than a healthy Mallet. If Joe needed a few extra weeks, then that's what they should have done and deplorable fans be damned. Lastly the fans that were there were horrendous and should just stayed home. They booed the Steelers as one would expect, but they booed their own players one by one as they came out of the tunnel during intros for their kneels the previous week. They booed even louder at them than the Steelers. You have to think that the that had an effect. What player would want to play harder for a fan base that just booed their right to free speech on an issue that means the world to them? This has had me twisted in knots since.
Want to see something frustrating? As always I'll say this is determined by how you feel about PFF, but Jimmy and Carr are basically rated as the best CB tandem in the league as of right now. This is why I tell people that having a bad unit doesn't mean every player was bad. The Jaguars have the #1 pass defense, by yards allowed. The Ravens defense is 16th. Clearly others are getting abused badly out there (Webb and Weddle from what I've seen in 4 games along with a few LBs). We really need Jaylin Hill back to take over the slot
Welp, I jinxed him. Jimmy Smith is now on the "did not practice" list for an achilles injury. The hits just keep on coming. Thankfully, Humphrey is playing well and it looks like Jaylin Hill is practicing again
No word on how serious it is, but I doubt it's very serious since we'd have heard something by now. Apparently he hurt it during the Steelers game.
I don't know about that. We haven't heard much on B.Williams and it doesn't look like he'll be back any time soon
