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Michael Crawford joins Ken McKusick to break down the Ravens Week 5 Offense
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Offensive Notes: Week 5 Bengals @ Ravens
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Michael Crawford joins Ken McKusick to break down the Ravens Week 5 Offense
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Ken,
Great discussion on a perplexing offensive performance by the Ravens. I agree they are not “passing too much” but I do think they are concentrating the passing attack to two receivers (Andrews and Brown) and the center and right side of the field. If you let an NFL DC scheme against only two receivers and two thirds of the field you will lose to good teams. The root of the problem is in the decision to abandon the pistol formation. The pistol was designed to create a viable balanced attack formation from the shotgun. The deeper set of the RB creates added momentum into the line of scrimmage and the mesh point becomes partially obscured and forces the second and third level defenders to play a beat slower on coverage. The net result is that receivers benefit from the mesh point changes and passing becomes easier for the QB because of the added separation. If the ravens don’t want to use the pistol for some reason, their other choice is the add more scheme to the passing routes. Right now they are too simplistic and too vertically oriented to succeed against better defenses. Consider that through five weeks 64% of Lamar’s passes have been to the short middle or short right side of the field. Only 12% of his passes have been to the short left side of the field. No top ten offense has that much imbalance to one side of the field. IN fact, few top ten offenses throw only 16% of their passes to RB’s which is where the Ravens are after five weeks in the 2020 season.
Beating the Bengals with this offense is possible because the Bengals Offense is easy for the Ravens D to solve. Beating any of the potential playoff teams out there with this offense is not likely to go well. The most concerning aspect to this situation is Greg Roman’s history of poorly ranked passing offenses (23rd being is best ranked passing attack) Perhaps the plan all along was to use the early season to get Lamar experience playing from the shotgun only time will tell.