The Good, The OL and The Tavon

[Simba]

My "bads" for the game:
1. Offensive line. Not going to beat on a dead horse. Everybody knows they sucked. Was more concerning to watch our Tackles get beat on the outside frequently also, which isn't normal.
Like most, I'm hoping its a product of just needing to play together longer and gel. The cavalry isn't coming to save us (i.e. we're not going to magically trade for some stud mid-season), so this unit (and its depth) is what it is. They either play better, or they don't, and it'll be likely the thing that stops us in January.
Will point out that we played two pretty good fronts through two weeks. Chiefs are pretty good up front, but I don't think they're as good as Houston or Cleveland. Pittsburgh's front concerns me a lot more than the Chiefs do.
2. Tough blow for Tavon, but its not a death blow. We'll learn over time to play without him, just like we did every year Jimmy went down. Everybody is pointing back to 2014 as a barometer, and that's accurate. We lost Jimmy mid-season (the only good Corner on our team), and Ben lit us up for like 5-6 TDs in Pittsburgh the next week. We played them two months later in January, and beat them (largely dominated them) in their own building, with one of the worst secondaries this team has ever seen. He's a good player, but if he's our downfall, then we weren't that good to begin with.
3. I think we've had an "interesting" two weeks on offense. The first half yesterday had me scratching my head, because I couldn't figure out what we were doing. It seemed like Roman is doing one (or both) of two things:
a) just assuming that every team is going to stack the box, so come out throwing or
b) assuming that because Cleveland did that, Houston would also.

I saw some heavy fronts, but nothing close to what I saw from Cleveland. I don't know why we didn't run the ball more in the 1st half, especially when it was clear that our Oline was getting pushed around. If we literally have a strategy of "throw early, get a big lead, run late", that's not going to work against actual good teams. And we better be able to adapt.

I came out of week 1 thinking we were now the most difficult team in the league to defense on offense, because you didn't know when we would run or when we would throw. And that may be true, but we're getting a lot more 3rd and long situations than we had last year, and that's not good for an Oline struggling with pass protection.

For me, its actually kind of comical. We've largely had the game in the bag by mid-to-late 3rd quarter through two weeks, and I don't even think we're playing like SB-level great.

Defense gave up more points, and yet I thought they were significantly improved from week 1. Forcing turnovers, creating a ton of pressure, did a great job stopping the run.

The bolded is one of the interesting points for me. I don't think yesterday was a clean game by any stretch - we did a lot of nice things but still a whole bunch to clean up. Yet, it still wasn't a nail biter at the end of the game. It's good to know that even in our bad moments, we're still a really good team that's going to be hard to stop. A far cry from 2 years ago when Baltimore was heart attack central. I know it's not always going to be that way and games are going to come down to the wire, but it's a real testament to this team and how it's been built that we can play just alright and still walk away without much stress.

 

[rossihunter2]

lol

 

[rossihunter2]

The bolded is one of the interesting points for me. I don't think yesterday was a clean game by any stretch - we did a lot of nice things but still a whole bunch to clean up. Yet, it still wasn't a nail biter at the end of the game. It's good to know that even in our bad moments, we're still a really good team that's going to be hard to stop. A far cry from 2 years ago when Baltimore was heart attack central. I know it's not always going to be that way and games are going to come down to the wire, but it's a real testament to this team and how it's been built that we can play just alright and still walk away without much stress.

it does make me really excited to see what it looks like when the offence is actually firing on all cylinders

 

[rossihunter2]

Front 7 doing a really effective job yesterday - we’ll see them challenged by a zone scheme again on Monday night but absolutely dispatched houston’s rushing attack that looked pretty good vs the chiefs

 

[rmcjacket23]

at the time part of the issue (again sort of OL related) is that we werent moving the ball on the ground at all - we werent getting chunks and we were frequently getting behind the chains when running the football which naturally leads to you wanting to throw the ball more

ill be interested to see what changed late - was it JJ Watt being off the field, was it the Texans getting gassed up front or did the OL just play better once they got in rhythm with the running game because those sorts of plays were not available to us or effective in the first half

i think part of what's been less impressive than last year so far is that we haven't really got something to hang our hat on yet - we've been more versatile and looked much better passing than last year already but we haven't put up that dominating element to an aspect of our offence yet - now that might come - the running dominance we had last year didn't really fully realise itself until week 6 last year so it might just be that the "identity" of our offence is still being discovered which makes a lot of sense given the lack of preseason and no joint practices

Ehh. I mean if I look at the play-by-play, I'm not really seeing this:
Drive 1: 3 and out, zero designed runs. Lamar gained 5 yards on a designed pass play on 3rd and 7. I believe 2nd down was like a pop pass to Hollywood Brown in the backfield, but resulted in a 3 yard loss. Not really a designed run.
Drive 2: 12 play drive. I see 4 designed runs, 3 for 13 yards by Lamar (on what I assume were zone-reads), and one handoff to Edwards for 3 yards.
Drive 3: 4 plays (off a turnover), one designed run by Ingram for 4 yards.
Drive 4: 9 plays, 3 designed runs for 9 yards (all by Ingram)
Ignoring drive 5, since that's basically two minute drill and would largely be pass heavy

So I see 28 offensive plays, with 8 designed run plays. That's a very low ratio.
Furthermore, ALL 8 of the designed runs were on 1st down. We had zero designed runs on 2nd-4th downs in the entire first half.
Now, the question becomes... what do you consider a "damaging" run play to be in terms of down/distance. I think if you can gain 3-4 yards on first down running the ball, you're fine. Obviously prefer more, but 2nd and 6 or 2nd and 7 doesn't put you behind on down/distance in my eyes.
I only see 3 of those 8 runs that went for less than 3 yards, and two of them were by Lamar. So basically, if we handed the ball off, we were getting at least 3-4 yards on first down running the ball, which is still generally OK, considering first down is a running down most of the time.

I guess I can't say that we didn't utilize first down to run the ball, but we certainly didn't utilize second down to do it.
Designed pass plays on 2nd down:
2nd and 4
2nd and 7
2nd and 6
2nd and 7

I would consider those "playbook wide open" kind of down/distance, where you can do both. We should an extreme lack of desire to run the ball on anything but first down in the 1st half.

Maybe 4 snaps on 2nd down in those spots isn't a big sample, but in a more balanced offense, I'd like to see us run the ball more often there also, so that the defense legitimately doesn't know what we're doing. We've shown we're not afraid to run it on like 3rd and 2, 3rd and 3 before, so I certainly wouldn't be afraid in these spots either.

The times where we actually fell behind on down and distance were mostly passing or weird designed run plays. The shovel to Brown lost 3 yards on the first drive, Lamar was sacked on a 1st down pass play, and the rest were on what I assume were zone-reads by Lamar where he gained practically nothing.

 

[organizedchaos21]

Most of that was in garbage time where the game was over

16 carries for 156 yards in Q4 (kneels exlucded).

chykie brown was horrifying

Hey, that's Super Bowl Champion Chykie Brown! Put some respect on my man's name! (in case it's unclear, this is a joke)

I’d love to know why jk dobbins wasn’t getting touches this week. He got such little attention from the coaches that I’m suspecting he had a fatal mistake in practice this week, because he went from lead back last week to I believe 1 carry this week, and imagine that he fucking broke it with that one carry, on an outside zone run.

2 carries (Q3, 08:01; Q4, 02:23), 1 reception (Q3, 08:44). I don't think it's fair to expect a rookie to be getting a ton of carries, especially in a close game. The Ravens have 3 good RBs, and they want to get them all snaps. Dobbins is clearly the D3 RB, so I'd expect Ingram/Edwards to get more carries. Might also have something to do with how they wanted to attack the Texans (I'd expect Dobbins to get sweeps and other outside runs).

i mean he didnt get touches but he got just as many snaps as Gus and only 7 fewer than Ingram - i think he was in a lot on passing downs which means going out on routes and pass pro (i know he got beaten on a jailbreak)

i think there might have been a concerted effort this week to get ingram in rhythm because he was missing reads etc. in week 1

14 dropbacks, 6 called runs for Dobbins. Lamar kept it on the 4 other runs (although Ingram was also on the field for the first).

 

[rmcjacket23]

16 carries for 156 yards in Q4 (kneels exlucded).


Hey, that's Super Bowl Champion Chykie Brown! Put some respect on my man's name! (in case it's unclear, this is a joke)

2 carries (Q3, 08:01; Q4, 02:23), 1 reception (Q3, 08:44). I don't think it's fair to expect a rookie to be getting a ton of carries, especially in a close game. The Ravens have 3 good RBs, and they want to get them all snaps. Dobbins is clearly the D3 RB, so I'd expect Ingram/Edwards to get more carries. Might also have something to do with how they wanted to attack the Texans (I'd expect Dobbins to get sweeps and other outside runs).


14 dropbacks, 6 called runs for Dobbins. Lamar kept it on the 4 other runs (although Ingram was also on the field for the first).

On Dobbins, I don't see many scenarios where Edwards gets more carries than him. If you're taking a RB in the 2nd round and expecting him to be a "role player", its a wasted draft pick. He doesn't need to be a 20 carry per game bellcow, but I'd expect his usage to be a lot closer to week 1 most weeks than week 2. He'll have weeks where he's used heavily and weeks where he's not used much at all.

Edwards had 133 carries last season. He won't be coming anywhere close to that this year, barring an injury to either Ingram or Dobbins. I wouldn't read too much into his usage at this point. I only expect it to grow.

 

[organizedchaos21]

Ehh. I mean if I look at the play-by-play, I'm not really seeing this:
Drive 1: 3 and out, zero designed runs. Lamar gained 5 yards on a designed pass play on 3rd and 7. I believe 2nd down was like a pop pass to Hollywood Brown in the backfield, but resulted in a 3 yard loss. Not really a designed run.
Drive 2: 12 play drive. I see 4 designed runs, 3 for 13 yards by Lamar (on what I assume were zone-reads), and one handoff to Edwards for 3 yards.
Drive 3: 4 plays (off a turnover), one designed run by Ingram for 4 yards.
Drive 4: 9 plays, 3 designed runs for 9 yards (all by Ingram)
Ignoring drive 5, since that's basically two minute drill and would largely be pass heavy

So I see 28 offensive plays, with 8 designed run plays. That's a very low ratio.
Furthermore, ALL 8 of the designed runs were on 1st down. We had zero designed runs on 2nd-4th downs in the entire first half.
(snipped for brevity)

I get the feeling they saw something in the Houston D that they wanted to exploit. They went heavy with playaction on those early down passes. I counted 8 fakes on 13 non-third down dropbacks. The pop pass you mention was one of the 5 without, as was the play with Duvernay in orbit motion into a swing route (I'd consider both to be substitutes for PA).

Then, they clearly made adjustments at halftime. Whether that was due to game state or ineffectiveness is unknown, but they came out with 6 dropbacks and 7 called runs on the opening drive of Q3, then pounded the rock all through Q4 (14 straight runs, 16 of 19 plays, kneels excluded)

(Sorry for the attachment, couldn't get the image inserter to work with either of imgur or imgbb!)

 

[RavensMania]

Looks like a bad call to me...

 

[JoeyFlex5]

at the time part of the issue (again sort of OL related) is that we werent moving the ball on the ground at all - we werent getting chunks and we were frequently getting behind the chains when running the football which naturally leads to you wanting to throw the ball more

ill be interested to see what changed late - was it JJ Watt being off the field, was it the Texans getting gassed up front or did the OL just play better once they got in rhythm with the running game because those sorts of plays were not available to us or effective in the first half

i think part of what's been less impressive than last year so far is that we haven't really got something to hang our hat on yet - we've been more versatile and looked much better passing than last year already but we haven't put up that dominating element to an aspect of our offence yet - now that might come - the running dominance we had last year didn't really fully realise itself until week 6 last year so it might just be that the "identity" of our offence is still being discovered which makes a lot of sense given the lack of preseason and no joint practices

I’ve seen you say a few times that the run game was going nowhere but that didn’t seem to be the case, we weren’t committing at all and we ran so infrequently that we couldn’t come to a conclusion

 

[JoeyFlex5]

Looks like a bad call to me...

That was bullshit af and I said it at the time, that was all stills and idk what the hell that ref was doing

 

[rmcjacket23]

I get the feeling they saw something in the Houston D that they wanted to exploit. They went heavy with playaction on those early down passes. I counted 8 fakes on 13 non-third down dropbacks. The pop pass you mention was one of the 5 without, as was the play with Duvernay in orbit motion into a swing route (I'd consider both to be substitutes for PA).

Then, they clearly made adjustments at halftime. Whether that was due to game state or ineffectiveness is unknown, but they came out with 6 dropbacks and 7 called runs on the opening drive of Q3, then pounded the rock all through Q4 (14 straight runs, 16 of 19 plays, kneels excluded)

View attachment 2489

(Sorry for the attachment, couldn't get the image inserter to work with either of imgur or imgbb!)

Yeah this is what I was referencing earier.

So that raises two questions to me:
1. Is that something that Roman saw on film, presumably from the KC game or from last season, that he thought he could exploit early.
2. Or is this, as I said, where Roman thinks that, like the Browns, the Texans are taking the "load the box and make Lamar beat us down field".

It just, to me, didn't seem like either really worked. Credit to him for adapting, but I'm just sort of questioning how the gameplan was put together to begin with. If anything, it looked like the Texans were committed to not allowing LAMAR to be them on the ground, because I think they held him pretty well in check (54 yards on 16 carries).

I'm not going to have time to review the film, but perhaps its the idea that Lamar's reads on the zone-reads ended up being wrong. He had the bulk of the carries early in the game, and so its possible he's reading to keep and maybe should have handed off? Not sure, but a QB averaging less than 4 yards/carry is hard to do, especially on that many carries.

 

[rmcjacket23]

I’ve seen you say a few times that the run game was going nowhere but that didn’t seem to be the case, we weren’t committing at all and we ran so infrequently that we couldn’t come to a conclusion

Its the same sentiment as the Titans loss, except they're backwards.
We didn't run the ball well in the first half here because we didn't try, despite ample opportunities to do so.
In the Titans game, we ran the ball plenty early. We just weren't good at it.

 

[RavensMania]

positive is that it's ONLY a torn ACL.

 

[JoeyFlex5]

Its the same sentiment as the Titans loss, except they're backwards.
We didn't run the ball well in the first half here because we didn't try, despite ample opportunities to do so.
In the Titans game, we ran the ball plenty early. We just weren't good at it.

Ingram was hurt and they were keyed in on Lamar vs the titans, I think a solid dose of gus would’ve helped in that game

 

[JoeyFlex5]

did anyone here feel like mark andrews may have gotten hurt on his catch? he hurdled, caught himself with his hand but his elbow looked like it definitely bent the wrong way, he hopped up and that same arm was hanging very oddly and he looked like he was trying to play it off, then he took off the next 2 snaps and was never targeted again as far as i know.

 

[SepticeyePoe]

There's still hope for my 2018 forum mock draft pick. I was very excited when the Ravens drafted one of my picks.

 

[organizedchaos21]

did anyone here feel like mark andrews may have gotten hurt on his catch? he hurdled, caught himself with his hand but his elbow looked like it definitely bent the wrong way, he hopped up and that same arm was hanging very oddly and he looked like he was trying to play it off, then he took off the next 2 snaps and was never targeted again as far as i know.

Targeted twice after: Q2, 05:45 and Q3, 07:20. Both fell incomplete. The first was knocked away by Hargreaves (~10 yard out on right hash). The second was "knocked away" by McKinney (throw to the EZ, LB runs through Andrews without looking back, looked a lot more like a penalty to me than the play they flagged Averett on).

He also played a good amount in the 2nd half when they were running, meaning he needed to block. I'm going to say his arm is probably fine, but it's worth keeping an eye on. That fall looked very unpleasant.

 

[cdp]

positive is that it's ONLY a torn ACL.

Good to hear. Meniscus could've been a lot worse. Did he re-tear his ACL or is it the other knee?

 

[rossihunter2]

I get the feeling they saw something in the Houston D that they wanted to exploit. They went heavy with playaction on those early down passes. I counted 8 fakes on 13 non-third down dropbacks. The pop pass you mention was one of the 5 without, as was the play with Duvernay in orbit motion into a swing route (I'd consider both to be substitutes for PA).

Then, they clearly made adjustments at halftime. Whether that was due to game state or ineffectiveness is unknown, but they came out with 6 dropbacks and 7 called runs on the opening drive of Q3, then pounded the rock all through Q4 (14 straight runs, 16 of 19 plays, kneels excluded)

View attachment 2489

(Sorry for the attachment, couldn't get the image inserter to work with either of imgur or imgbb!)

the other thing i noticed (and to be clear i havent watched the game back (because replay hasnt been available in my country yet because of blackout rules) - but it felt like we moved towards more option-type calls in the running game in the 2nd half which are obviously designed to freeze the defence - obviously that's different to play action but its still a playcall that's designed around creating hesitation in the defece