Ravens’ Greatest Strength Also Biggest Weakness?

Ravens Pass-Catchers Through Two Games

Sometimes one’s great strength is also a big weakness.  For example, you could value someone in a relationship because they’re calm, slow to anger, don’t fly off the handle over little things – then get frustrated with them because they’re not “passionate.”  Someone can be careful and organized and detail-oriented, an excellent accountant or banker – and annoyingly stiff & “unspontaneous.”  Hall of Fame Maryland men’s basketball coach Gary Williams valued effort and intensity above all else in his players – and often they would be wound so tight and pressing so hard that their offensive skills went to hell; they would hurry and take panic shots.  More often than not it worked out for Gary and his teams; but occasionally the exact thing that made him & his teams good was the thing that bit them in the ass.

The Ravens draft for long-term upside in the early rounds, not for need.  They use some old, tried-&-true maxims, like the one from baseball Hall Of Fame GM Branch Rickey that goes, “It’s better to trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late.” (There’s an in-depth analysis of some historical examples of applying that maxim in a baseball context, here.)  And we’re happy about how the Ravens do business when Trenton Simpson steps in for Patrick Queen and looks terrific.  We’re happy when Nate Wiggins comes out dominant in preseason and you mentally pencil him in for multiple Pro Bowls.  David Ojabo is finally contributing and looks like a menace.  Going back a ways, we’re happy when Rick Wagner steps in after Michael Oher leaves in free agency, and he looks good.  Or when 6th-rd pick Ryan Jensen steps in after a few years of development and becomes a Pro Bowler.  Draft & develop, succession planning, slow & steady: the Ravens Way.

This style has worked for them for a long time.  They’re fourth in the NFL in wins this century.  The other teams in the top 5 have all been anchored by decade+ runs from Hall Of Fame quarterbacks: Brady, Favre + Rodgers, Manning, Roethlisberger.  The Ravens haven’t had that.  Instead they’ve succeeded with drafting and team-building. This long-term approach to player acquisition is the organization’s great strength.

And the first two games this season show how the approach can be their big weakness.  They decided that 33-year-old Morgan Moses was about to decline, and traded him while he still had value, possibly “a year too early.”  They identified an excellent Right Tackle prospect in Roger Rosengarten.  He’s a young player (turned 22 during OTAs) and probably needs a year in an NFL weight room in order to anchor against NFL rushers.  But his mobility & tenacity & technique (and his youth) mark him as a player likely to become very, very good.  They decided that Kevin Zeitler was a little old & expensive, and they could find an effective replacement. And that between Daniel Faalale/Ben Cleveland/Sala Aumavae-Laulu/Josh Jones they could find a pretty good Guard.

I have no doubt that Eric DeCosta & co were “right” in the long view.  The Ravens O-line will almost certainly be better in 2025 and 2026, and beyond, with Rosengarten at RT than with  Moses.  I’m less sure about Faalale; but I can see that he has some unique qualities as an athlete (that size!) that could eventually make him a useful player.

But there are games being played NOW.  The Ravens couldn’t know on draft day what order the games would be played in, but they knew who’d be on the schedule and where.  They knew they’d be playing Chris Long and Micah Parsons and Will Anderson on the road; Maxx Crosby and Leonard Floyd at home.  Let alone two games each vs T.J. Watt and Myles Garrett and Trey Hendrickson.  There’s probably never a good year to be weak against edge rushers; but this seems an especially bad one to have growing pains.

The long-term view also is at odds with the appropriate “stack strength on strength” strategy for a Super Bowl contender.

In his first book, Bill Walsh talked about picking Jerry Rice at #16 in the 1985 draft.  His 1984 team went 15-1 and crushed Dan Marino’s Dolphins in the Super Bowl. They are often listed among the very best NFL teams of all time, along with the 85 Bears and others.  Walsh wrote that, with a team so stacked, it would be tough for a rookie to make an impact; or maybe even make the squad.  It was the right spot to trade UP for a difference-maker.

He wrote about a general plan for drafting.  If you have a crappy team, then trade down and get more picks.  You need multiple bodies to change the talent level of the club.  But if you have a great team, then multiple “pretty good” prospects are not going to move the needle.  Indeed, you may wind up cutting some of them, thereby wasting the draft resources.  Instead it makes sense to trade UP and add a difference-maker.  There were some great, physical, stud Tackle prospects in first round of this draft.  The Ravens could have kept their veteran tackle and worked-in a physical monster slowly over the season.

But that action – trading UP – is at odds with the Ravens’ long established “value-based” approach to the draft.  Sometimes your great strength is your big weakness.

I should mention that the criticism I outlined above might be unfair.  Walsh was writing in the era before free agency and the salary cap.  It’s easy for Walsh to talk about keeping everybody and adding a star on top.  These Ravens had decisions to make.  The 2023 Ravens were a great team, but a lot of their key players were not locked up to long-term deals: their sack leader (Jadaveon Clowney), a Pro Bowl ILB (Patrick Queen), their starting RG (Kevin Zeitler), All-Pro DT Nnamdi Madubuike.  They had to make some moves that Walsh wouldn’t have countenanced for a second.  Team-building is a whole lot tougher now: you can’t keep a dynasty together.

But the recent history of Super Bowl winners showcases an “all-in” approach: Rams, Buccaneers, etc.  And coming off a 13-win season, with probably the best team in the league, is the exact right time to build strength on strength and go all in.  Make a big push for the trophy.  Trading away your starting RT, letting your starting RG walk, and fielding cheap replacements in those spots (not even a first-rounder), is the opposite of “all-in.”  It’s the kind of move that keeps you among the top 3 or 4 teams in the conference, rather than shooting for the moon to be the BEST team THIS year, and leaving next year’s problems to next year.

And yet, Maybe it’s Not That Bad

The first two games have gone about as poorly for O-line pass protection as they could have.  And yet, the Ravens offense ranks merely “average” (as opposed to bad) in the efficiency measures I look at.  Through two weeks they are 15th in scoring percentage, 18th in points-per-drive, 14th and 18th in 3rd down conversion and Red Zone touchdown percentages.  They’re also 11th in passing YTS, which is Net Yards per pass play (includes sacks) times Success Rate.

The DVOA guys have them even better: 4th in offensive DVOA!

Let me put all that on a table so it’s easy to read:

Most of those columns are for the whole offense, pass + run.  The last column, YTS, is passing only.  The worst of these has the Ravens middle-of-the-pack (18th in points-per-drive and Red Zone).  For my `money, DVOA is the most reliable & sophisticated of the stats above.  Coincidentally they’re also the highest in that one.

There is a stat called “Post-Game Win Expectancy.”  The idea is that if you gather a team’s statistics in a game – yards per play, penalties, etc – compared to the opponent’s, you can say how often a team wins with that statistical profile.  The (former) Football Outsiders guys, now at FTN, have their version of it using DVOA, total plays along with penalties.  According to this week’s column from Aaron Schatz, the Ravens Post-Game Win Expectancy vs the Raiders was 94.6%!  A fluky loss.

(But not the flukiest loss of the week.  The Lions were 96% vs the Bucs, and lost. By the way, the Bengals were right after the Ravens, 74% vs the Chiefs.)

The DVOA guys also have another column this week, about which 0-2 teams are completely screwed, and they still have the Ravens playoff odds at 63.9%.  That’s the fourth most likely team to make the AFC playoffs, after the Texans, Chiefs and Bills. What I’m saying is, advanced stats still see the Ravens as a good team.  It could still be a good season.

Here’s how that could go:

John Harbaugh & co could be proven right in their evaluations of Faalale & Rosengarten.  After a month or so of growing pains, sometime in October they settle down and start playing solid football.  Rosengarten’s mobility and Faalele’s sheer mass start to assert themselves.  In pass-pro, Faalale gets his hands on guys and they stop dead in their tracks, while Rosengarten scrappily stays in front of his assignment.  In run blocking, Faalale bulldozes guys and Rosengarten walls them off (positional blocking).  With the O-line sorted, the offense takes off, and the Ravens go on a hot streak to finish the season.  That would justify the early season “investment” in Faalale & Rosengarten’s growth.

That’s one way it could go.  You know the other way; I don’t want to invest words in describing it, or even thinking too much about it, because it could be disastrous.

Stats

Well, they started using Derrick Henry in the passing game.  He’s a very dangerous receiving back: career 7.2 yards-per-target and 50% Success Rate.  That may not sound like much; but last year the averages for Running Backs were 5.5 and 44%.  Henry’s pass-catching efficiency numbers are closer to Wide Receiver numbers.  He’s always been lethal on screens.

That last column “QS” is my effort at importing Baseball’s “Quality Start” to receiving stats.  It’s a game with 3+ catches and yards-per-target of 7 or more.  (When I was making up QS, I mis-remembered the thresholds from baseball: the key numbers are 3 and 6, not 7.  Oh well.)  It’s not meant to represent a Pro Bowl performance.  The point is to capture how often the receiver “shows up” with a workman-like contribution to keeping the offense moving.  Last year Mark Andrews and Zay Flowers led the team (go figure) with 6 each.

Which brings us to Rashod Bateman.  He posted a “QS” vs the Raiders.  He only had two all of last season: the opener vs the Texans, and Lamar’s last start vs the Dolphins (the “real” season finale, since they rested starters vs Pittsburgh in week 17).  This season he has multiple catches with over 10 yards-per-target in both games.  He’s contributing.

You might wonder why I am so obsessed with Bateman, to the point of talking about him every week.  Three reasons.  First, every offense needs a second WR in order to function.  That’s how you stretch out the defense and create openings.  Second, you MUST extract value from your first-round Wide Receivers.  It’s a crippling blow to an organization when you don’t.  And thirdly, the player Bateman looked like in 2021 and the beginning of ‘22 was special: over 8 yards-per-target, with clutch plays for first downs and with explosives.  Back then he was a revelation: the best WR the Ravens had ever drafted, by far.  Maybe injuries have robbed Bateman of those qualities, and that player no longer exists.  But it’s irresponsible not to check and see.

I have the nagging thought that the Ravens are using Bateman and Zay Flowers backwards. They see Flowers’ small frame and use him as a gadget jitterbug, while Bateman is tasked with running off coverage and winning deep.  They might be more consistently successful if they switched roles.  Send Flowers to win downfield like Steve Smith, and have Bateman use his short-area quickness to spring open like Keenan Allen. It’s counter-intuitive from their body types, but that usage might play more to their strengths.

By the way, if you read this column last year, you might remember that I had one nagging concern about the “QS” stat, as a concept. As written, if a receiver catches a 90-yd bomb for a score, then sat out the rest of the game – he would NOT be credited with a “Quality Start”.  That’s ridiculous.  Last year I wrung my hands over it.  This year I decided to track “explosive plays” (20+ yards) separately, to round out the picture.  So there’s an additional column on the table in the next section.

Season stats & leaderboard

Here are your full-season stats to date:

Remember the column YTS is Yards-per-target Times Success Rate.  It’s the product of the two columns before it.  League average is about 4 for WRs and TEs, and about 2½ for RBs.  The last column, “Expl,” is Explosive Plays: receptions for 20 yards or more.

Why is Zay Flowers’ SuccessRate so low this week?

Well, it was actually lower last week, but I posted the wrong data in the table.  Last week’s column showed Zay’s SuccessRate as 60%, but that was actually his catch%.  His SuccessRate vs the Chiefs was very low, only 20%.  He had four “unsuccessful” receptions in that game, in addition to the incompletes:

• 3-yard gain on 2nd-&-9
• 1-yd gain on 4th-&-3
• 9-yd gain on 2nd-&-17 (that one’s borderline)
• loss of 2 on 3rd-&-2

Remember the Ravens threw a lot of tunnel-screens to Flowers in the flat, and the Chiefs swarmed him.  Zay’s SuccessRate was much higher vs the Raiders, 64%.  So his SuccessRate shown here is not down from 60%, it’s actually up from 20%.

Likely & Flowers are both on pace for thousand-yard seasons.  That’s through 16 games.  I haven’t yet accepted this newfangled idea of 17-game seasons.  Sixteen is easier for me to grasp; it also makes for apples-to-apples comparisons with historical seasons (imagine the trouble I’ll have if/when they move to an 18-game season!)  Likely and Flowers are 21st and 25th in receiving yards. Bateman’s on pace for 40 catches and about 750 yards.  That would’ve been the #40 WR last year; solidly in “#2 WR” territory.  (There were also 8 Tight Ends over 750 last year.)  Andrews & Justice Hill are both on pace for about 500 yards.

Lamar is 5th in passing yards, 12th in Net Yards Per Attempt (includes sacks), 9th in Success Rate, and right at league average in passer rating.  I suspect he’s higher in DVOA, due to opponent adjustments, but FTN hasn’t made player DVOA numbers available yet.

Next Up: The Ravens visit Jerry World in Arlington, Texas!   Micah Parsons must be drooling.

By the way, I am out of town this weekend (Vermont!), and won’t get the chance to watch the game in real time.  This column may be delayed (or even interrupted) next week.

The post Ravens’ Greatest Strength Also Biggest Weakness? appeared first on Russell Street Report.

Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2024/09/19/street-talk/greatest-strength/