So Cole's post is a great take.
It's hard for me to have many takeaways from this game. The offense still struggled to move the ball consistently, but that's also not a one game problem, so its mostly status quo.
1. Offensive line was terrible. They were pedestrian in protection, and the penalties were terrible. 8 offensive penalties called on the Oline alone, with 6 being accepted. To further illustrate that...
Ravens ran 65 offensive plays (67, minus two kneels). 21 of those plays involved 10+ yards on distance to a first down, excluding 1st and down. That means that 1 out of every 3 offensive plays, ignoring 1st and 10s, involved us needing 10+ yards to get a first down. That means we were in second and third and long frequently, or 1st and long after a penalty. You REALLY hamstring your playbooks when its 2nd and 10+ a lot.
2. Want to see a stark contract from last season:
Break down of rushing plays by our RBs (not Lamar):
0, 2, 9, 4, -2, 2, 3, 2, 5, -2, 0, 16, 5, 6, 2, 1, -2, -1, 4, 6, 1, 0, 5, -4, 3, 1, 5, -3
Can't argue its a volume issue, since there's 28 RB carries in there, which is more than plenty.
A grand total of one carry over 10 yards (Dobbins 16 yard run)
28.5% of runs were 5+ yards
Roughly 2/3 of our RB carries were for 3 yards or less
Roughly 1/3 of our RB carries were for negative or zero yardage
THIS is the problem. It may seem obvious, but we're sucking running the ball. The box score will show you 5 YPC and 182 rushing yards, but its a mirage. It's all Lamar. He's got 9 for 108, the rest of the team has 28 for 74. That ain't good.
Its pretty clear now... if you can slow down the Ravens rushing attack, you can keep this offense in check. The ONLY way I see to fix that, outside of much better play from our Oline, is to let Lamar run more. I'm not even sure that will yield productivity, because Lamar isn't going to average 12 YPC if he gets more carries. Much of his effectiveness at running yesterday was due to lower frequency, with improvised runs yielding much bigger chunks.
Team needs to get back to more rushing volume (did better yesterday, just not effective). We've got some tough teams on our schedule against the run coming up (namely Pittsburgh), and if our backs are only going to get 3 YPC, we're going to continue to struggle to score points.
3. I honestly don't really read much into the defense's "collapse" yesterday. If we look at the breakdown:
a) shut them out in the first half. They had ONE total yard in their first 5 drives. They had one long drive towards end of half, but we clamped down on short yardage and made the stop. Missed FG drive was largely a product of a ticky tack, should have been non-called, roughing penalty on Campbell after the Sanders run. Ball was intercepted and would have ended the drive.
b) We give up the one big long run to Sanders in the middle of the 3rd. Definitely one big breakdown, but something that can be corrected.
c) Blown coverage on late 3rd quarter TD drive leads to big play, Ravens almost force stoppage on 3rd and goal at the 5, but Jihad Ward had a stupid roughing penalty to keep drive alive.
d) I basically write off the final TD drive for the Eagles entirely, because its a bogus DPI call on Peters. Pretty standard no flag on that play.
So I'm seeing the defense on the hook for somewhere around 14-17 points, primarily from 2-3 big plays given up. That's a pretty comfortable win. One bad penalty call leads to a TD, and another was a stupid penalty that would have stalled the drive.
Obviously not happy with the big runs from Sanders and Wentz, but I also think our expectations were a bit too high after a dominant first half.