Flowers is worthless in this comparison because he is a rookie. To say he is better is to compare him to empty air in this comparison because he did not exist in the NFL last year.
On the other players it does not matter whether Edwards or Hill are "special", because the comparison is between who they are and who they have been. Who they have been played better last year and every other year they have played. The same is true of the OLine. Either they all got worse or are somehow all playing worse. I will grant Aghalor is having his best year since 2020 but that still leaves us with one problem. We have one player looking better and somehow every single other player in the entire offense looks the same or worse than last year regardless of whether they were on the Ravens last year or not.
Lets flip this comparison just to demonstrate how weird it is. Lets look at the defense. Queen looks better and looks like he will be getting paid (hopefully by the Ravens). Hamilton has taken a 2nd year jump. All of the free agent corners signed looked better than they did last year. Madubuike has taken a step forward. Meanwhile the only player I can say who definitively looks worse than last year is Marlon but that might be due to him coming back from his injury.
Still when you do the comparison one player looks worse on defense and only one player looks better on offense. That is a striking indictment of something not working in the scheme.
Well or the fact that there was a scheme change. The defense didn't change DC's since last year... they're working in the same scheme they've been in for the second season in a row.
I don't think its a surprise our running game is less effective, because pretty much any running game transitioning from Roman to basically any other OC on the planet will get worse. Because he's one of the best running game OC's to ever coach in the league. The better question is... who would have expected the running game to improve or even stay the same? Especially with no personnel upgrades?
I think the WRs, overall, are doing significantly better. That's a product of better passing schemes and concepts and an obvious talent infusion. The only guy who literally looks worse is Bateman. If I can't say Flowers is a comparison, then neither is OBJ. Because he'd never played for the Ravens before and essentially hadn't played football at all in two years.
So the WR room is better, and the running game got worse. Or, basically, exactly what everybody thought all offseason.
Now for the Oline, its potentially more complicated. Obviously in run blocking I'd expect them to be worse, because a) again, its Roman, and b) last years running game used a lot more 12 personnel and utilized Ricard more than they're utilizing him now, which is by design, since those alignments aren't exactly ideal for the talent we have on offense.
John Simpson isn't as good as Ben Powers, and we've literally played one game all year I believe with the starting five Oline in tact. Stanley is playing worse because he's likely still recovering from an injury, and the only other player I can say is considerably worse is Zeitler, who's probably just at the point where he should be retiring soon. Moses is playing at a high level, as is Linderbaum.
One other person we kind of glanced over... is Lamar better or worse than he was a year ago?