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Ravens Didn’t Miss a Beat Without Zay? Not So Fast…

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It should matter when a team is missing their Pro Bowl 1,000-yard receiver. But Zay Flowers’ absence seemed to have little effect on the Baltimore Ravens’ offense in their dominating 28-14 Wild Card win over the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers. They ran the ball 50 times for 299 yards (49 for 300 excluding kneel-downs), while Lamar Jackson put up another hyper-efficient passing performance. Overall, the Ravens offense posted the highest Expected Points Added (EPA) per play among all 12 Wild Card Weekend participants.

It is a sign of the dominance and versatility of this Ravens offense that Flowers’ absence seemingly mattered so little. It is worth mentioning again: it should not be this easy without your WR1. But with Head Coach John Harbaugh saying the team remains in “we’ll see mode” regarding Flowers’ status, it is worth examining exactly how the Ravens navigated around his absence in the wild card round. While it may not have affected the outcome, it would be wrong to say they did not miss him. The way in which his absence, or even his playing at less than 100%, could hurt the offense in the future was apparent.

In order to understand how missing Flowers affects the Ravens offense, it is first important to understand what he provides. While most WR1s are most valuable in high-leverage situations, Flowers is actually at his most dangerous on early downs. Flowers is the type of explosive player who is incredibly effective on plays specifically designed to get him the ball in space, and Offensive Coordinator Todd Monken has been a master at finding different creative ways to do just that. He is of course the one who gets the ball on Wide Receiver screens, but where he separates himself from the rest of the Ravens pass catchers is in the play-action game. Flowers leads the team in play-action targets and has over twice the EPA and almost 200 more yards than anyone else on the team on such plays. This makes him the lynchpin of the early-down passing offense. While it may seem counterintuitive for a WR1, his absence actually affects the passing offense less on high-leverage downs and in the Red Zone, as Jackson has typically looked the way of Rashod Bateman and the Tight Ends in those situations. And when looking at the Ravens’ offense against the Steelers through that prism, it becomes clear exactly where they missed Flowers.

The Ravens basically threw play-action out of the playbook on Saturday. Only two of Jackson’s 21 pass attempts came off play-action, a season-low in both volume and percentage. Baltimore did not even present much of a schemed-up early down passing game, and as good as their offense was as a whole, they actually had the lowest first-down success rate and faced the most Second Downs with seven or more yards to go of any team this weekend. This remarkably had little effect on the Ravens’ offense- they ran the ball on 13 out of 17 second and longs, averaging 7.1 yards per carry. And of course, the Ravens have one of the best passers from the pocket in the NFL and leaned on that against Pittsburgh. Jackson was 15-19 for 166 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions on straight dropbacks, good for 0.58 EPA/Play, which tied Josh Allen for the highest of Wild Card Weekend. This helped the Ravens convert 10 of 15 third downs.

Perhaps the most important stat I just listed is that the Ravens attempted 15 third downs on Saturday. While some of them were third and short (Mark Andrews tush push for the win), that is still a lot. Relying on so many one-play sample sizes reduces an offense’s margin for error, something which could particularly matter for a group that has been known to commit a backbreaking penalty. It is a sign of Jackson’s greatness and Derrick Henry’s ability to break the will of a defense and generate explosive runs that the Ravens still had such a successful offensive against Pittsburgh, but the reality is that it would be ideal to pair that running game with a more potent early down passing offense to consistently stay ahead of the chains.

Of course, none of it may matter. When forced to do so, the Ravens are the most equipped out of any team left to play the way they did on Saturday Night. The fact that I get to write an article where the Ravens’ overall offensive production suffering from missing Flowers is just a hypothetical shows how good Jackson and Henry are. Having two of the most rare and unique talents in the history of the sport is the ultimate trump card. But the Ravens spent all of Saturday night playing from ahead, and while the improvement of the Ravens’ defense has been remarkable, it is unrealistic to expect them to hold down Buffalo’s offense the way they did in Week 4. Matching blows with the Bills is a different task than staying ahead of the Steelers, and if the Ravens cannot find answers in the early down passing game on Sunday, the consequences may loom larger.

The post Ravens Didn’t Miss a Beat Without Zay? Not So Fast… appeared first on Russell Street Report.


Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2025/01/15/street-talk/zay-flowers-play-action/


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