The Ravens are reaching the point where the conversation around their defense has to get more specific, and a lot more urgent. Not because one bad game sent everything off the rails, but because the first month has exposed a problem at the line of scrimmage that keeps showing up in different forms.
Baltimore’s approach under rookie head coach Jesse Minter has been built around a simple idea: use as little manpower as possible up front to handle the run, then flood the field with defensive backs to take away the deep ball. That worked better with the Chargers.
It is not working nearly as cleanly in Baltimore, and the next three weeks could force a change. Sunday against Tennessee is the first chance to clean some of it up before Joe Burrow and the Bengals, then Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars, arrive on the schedule.
The numbers are starting to pile up against the current setup. The Ravens have faced 61 dime looks, the most in the NFL, while the average team has faced 13 dropbacks by a quarterback against dime coverage.
That much extra coverage has not solved the back end, and it has not exactly helped the front either. Marlon Humphrey, Baltimore’s top corner in terms of compensation, is struggling.
Kyle Hamilton is drifting 10 or 15 or 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage more often to help Malaki Starks, who has not delivered the immediate transformation many expected.
The bigger issue is that Baltimore is getting hit on the ground. The Titans are not threatening defenses vertically - Cam Ward is averaging just about the lowest yards per attempt in the NFL at 5.7 yards per pass - but they are running the ball with Tony Pollard out of under-center looks, and that has been productive over the last two weeks at 5.4 yards per carry. That matters because the Ravens are 30th in Run Defense Expected Points Added against under-center runs and 26th in success rate.
Baltimore is leaning heavily into nickel and dime, using those packages 90% of the time. Only the Rams are in dime more often.
But that strategy has already come back around on them. Dallas, a team that couldn’t run on anybody, gashed Baltimore for 25 carries and 139 yards at 5.6 per carry with a touchdown when the Ravens had at least five defensive backs on the field.
Former NFL defensive back and personnel executive Bucky Brooks said on “The Daily Flock” this week that the league is changing around this kind of defense.
“We're seeing more under center play, more old school tactics,” Brooks pointed out. “And so you now have a defense that is not quite built for what the league is doing as people are going back to running the football and doing three yards in a cloud of dust. And so the great thing about the league, I believe every team changes every quarter after three or four games.
“You’ve got to kind of switch up what you're doing because the league will quickly catch up to what you're doing. You’ve got to stay one step ahead of the curve.
And so the great coaches, the great teams, they have the ability to adapt and adjust to what they have or what they're facing. And so how soon will it be before we see Jesse Minter make some changes and tweaks to best position themselves to be able to win games?”
Minter has already made one major adjustment by ramping up his blitz rate by about 50% from what he did with the Chargers in order to generate pressure. Even that hasn’t solved everything.
Baltimore’s pass defense is 16th in the NFL in opponent passer rating allowed, so the back end has been ordinary rather than dominant. And the pressure has not always been there anyway, especially with top edge rusher Trey Hendrickson, the $30M-man, out with a finger injury.
The run defense numbers are even uglier. Baltimore has an overall Rush D EPA of -2.12, which ranks 30th, and it has already allowed five rushing touchdowns.
The Ravens are also 25th in success rate at 56.5%. That is not the kind of profile a team wants to carry into a stretch that soon includes Bijan Robinson, who may be the best back in the NFL, in Week 5.
Defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver tried to keep the focus on execution and detail this week.
“I thought we started slowly,” Weaver said. “A couple of times, I thought our guys had more of a pass mentality up front, and they were able to get some push off the ball.
One of the things particularly, and again, this is not an excuse, we do not live in that world. But when you have a couple of walkthrough practices, particularly up front, you have to make sure, early - really in warm-ups - that you're setting your pads and you're playing with low pad level.
“It's like human nature to play a little bit higher, and I thought early in that game in particular they came out and they were lower than us, and they were knocking us off the ball, which can't happen. We adjusted - there was about a four- or five-series stretch that we played better. We're just chasing consistency throughout, making sure we start fast, and we finish stronger.”
There is still time for this to settle down, and getting Nnamdi Madubuike back into heavy rotation could change the picture. But the Ravens may not be able to wait around much longer before rethinking the way they line up at the line of scrimmage.
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