OTL: What’s #RavensFlock Talking About During Bye?

Greetings and a very happy much-needed bye week Purple Friday, Flock.

Let’s do something a little different for today’s Out to Lunch…open up some discussions on a variety of topics at the top of our minds. For inspiration, let’s head over to the RSR forums and see what’s poppin’…

Faalele & Mekari

Well, that didn’t take long at all! One of the topics I had in mind is right there at the top of the forum, generating plenty of conversation. Ravens guards Daniel Faalele & Patrick Mekari have been weak links all season, but were *just good enough* for the most part up until they ran into the Philadelphia Eagles’ buzzsaw defensive line. The former regularly gets ran around by athletic linemen and linebackers, and the latter is a penalty waiting to happen on every play. Here’s what the board is buzzin about.

User Bhcforlife

Mekari had a 35 PFF grade which is one of the lowest I can recall a OL of ours having in recent years, if ever. It’s O’Niel Cousins, Tyre Phillips, Alejandro Villanueva bad, and I’m not even sure any of them had games as low as a … 35.

The Excellector:

Coach Evans has been posting clips to Twitter all day. It’s embarrassing.

PFF OL grades should be suspended. So tired of people using those things to try and argue that the OL is fine, when our own two eyes tell us otherwise, both live and in any reviewing of tape.

Ravens4Real:

Not sure if it’s been brought up… Just a heads up, and I will duck for cover after brining it up.

PFF has Zeitler graded at a 92 and is on their all pro O line list.

What a … blunder by this FO.

xiao_ke

DeCosta has spent millions on secondary players who can’t play and couldn’t find $6M for Kevin Zeitler this season. So Mekari and Faalele have both been forced into the starting lineup when they aren’t starting caliber players.

How much better would the OL be with Zeitler and Cleveland starting? And maybe Lamar wouldn’t be under constant assault by every team with a quality pass rush.

ravensfan7716

We all want and “expect” these worthless idiot coaches to put the best players on the field.

In reality Harbaugh does not do that. Just this year Mekari starting at RT over Rosengarten is prime exameple.

They must be madly in love with Fallelle like they are with Mekari, and in past years James Hurst because they are losing games because of favoritism vs playing the best talent.

Henry stats have fallen off the last 3 games, in part because he has been tackled for a loss numerous times because of how lousy the OLINE has played.

I mean even Lamar is taking like 10 step drops in order to not get killed.

Yet our idiot coaches wont fix it.

The Ravens OL coach just said today how amazing fallelle is. What does that tell you?

WE HAVE THE WRONG PEOPLE RUNNING THIS TEAM

Some strong opinions in there for sure. Join up and tell them why they’re right or wrong!

Next up, we have…

Bye Week Priorities (If I was HC)

Started by Corvus Corax:

1. Tucker needs to be proactive in holding himself accountable. Do whatever it takes to regain his confidence.

2. The entire team needs a new ATTITUDE. Every player, every coach absolutely must hold themselves accountable for the last three pathetic losses. That includes Harbaugh.

3. LEADERSHIP needs to re-emerge on the offense (Lamar), defense (Roquan) and special teams (Tucker, Stout). Get in the face of your teammates who aren’t doing their jobs.

Ravensblitzkreig:

Monken needs to work on stop excessively calling these stupid long developing pass plays. For some reason every few games he does this. When this offense is rolling, it’s running, quick passes, play action over the middle, screens.

Then he will have a game where we do almost none of that. We see drop backs where Lamar his holding the ball waiting for someone to get open way downfield with no checkdowns.

NCRavensFan:

If they aren’t going to do anything at kicker, try out a bunch of punters and punt return guys. All three of these positions are killing us.

Figure out ways to incorporate Mitchell back into the offense.

Ravenswarrior19:

Top priority to me is to get the running game going. Self scout. Whatever. But get that o line blocking better and get Henry back to the line of scrimmage untouched and with a clear lane or crease to run through. Beg Faalele to stop whiffing or whatever. If we can get the run game back to the dominant level we were at a month ago, that will get the whole offense going. If we have tough sledding through January, we aren’t going far. If we can control the games with Henry, there isn’t a team we can’t beat.

On defense, I’d love to see us start forcing some turnovers. We seem to have stopped a lot of the bleeding in the pass game. We aren’t giving up explosives on every drive anymore. Best way to force turnovers is usually through QB pressure. Not sure how we can increase our pressure on QBs, shy of giving Oweh and Van Noy some PEDs. But those are the keys areas to me.

As for Tucker, obviously you gotta study all the kicks and the practice kicks and try to figure out what the problem is. But also during the games, you’ve gotta be more cognizant of what the limitations are. Try to get some of those 50 yd fgs down to 43 yd fgs through play calling, etc.

And finally today, a look at what the Flock is saying about the team suspending WR Diontae Johnson for conduct detrimental to the team.

Raveninwoodlawn:

Incredibly bizarre situation there. I’m baffled that a player would be so upset a couple weeks in that he’d refuse to enter the game. Even this guy. Brought in a locker room cancer…Steeler Trojan Horse lol.

Should be cut once the deadline to play in the postseason passes.

ravensfan1776:

You could tell by Harbaughs response that something was going on

Player is playing for the best QB in the NFL, a play off team and refuses to take the field during a game.

Billick got fired for much less

Ravens4Real:

Make this clown inactive the rest of the season and torpedo his value for FA. That’s about the only thing that should happen.

I agree with others. You can’t release him and have him go to a Buffalo/KC/Houston (Steelers aren’t dumb enough to take him back

Ravensforce83:

I defended Diontae the player earlier in this thread but I have to say after this development [expletive] him. He needs to remain suspended for the rest of the season if they are afraid to release him and have him play for a rival. Or perhaps he goes to a rival and messes up their locker room. Either way I don’t want to see him on the field. What he pulled was selfish and disrespectful to his teammates.

I believe that Harbaugh probably could have given him more of an opportunity over the course of what 5 games and I find it odd that they didn’t at least try him at punt returner (although Diontae probably refused to do that). He was a problem here since he set foot because without the first two weeks he tweeted out that there are two sides to a story (we don’t even know what that was in response to). The guy is a good receiver when he’s not being a selfish prick but let’s move on. Let Wallace play more, he’s earned it. And can we please see Walker dressed and in the game some now too.

boller4president:

Nelson seems like a great teammate; he always says the right thing in regards to fans; he just hasn’t been very productive and is long in the tooth.

I think EDC envisioned Johnson as the number 3, not insurance, when he was brought in. I think Johnson likely thought the same thing as a starting point. I don’t think 5 targets in 4 games really equates to him being given a good look here. I blame Habraugh for two things: A) not playing Johnson and giving this experiment a chance of ever working, and B) benching him instead of kicking him off the team. Johnson is to blame for the rest; he should have simply entered the game and could have done more with the incredibly limited opportunities available.

For me it’s hard to see anything ending but badly. If Harbaugh gives him more playing time, it will look like he is only doing it because he acted out, but if he doesn’t, the problem isn’t going to go away. So for me the only solution is he should have been released. I believe Lamar has good intentions; he probably realizes what most here know: Johnson has not been given many opportunities and is, at worst, the third-best receiver on the team, but letting this problem fester is only going to make it reappear in a couple of weeks or create other problems because if you think Johnson is the only person unhappy with their role and wants more I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you so being seen as rewarding what he did will be completely corrosive to the rest of the lockerroom.

There’s a lot more in that thread, which is now up to 35 pages!

If you’re sick of the toxicity of social media, and just want to talk Ravens without the porn bots, political crap, and bot/troll armies, join the RSR Forum, home of the smartest Ravens fans on the web!

The post OTL: What’s #RavensFlock Talking About During Bye? appeared first on Russell Street Report.

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