NFL Beast

The Best Damn NFL News Site Ever!


A Master Class in Opponent-Specific Game-Planning

7 min read
   

#NFLBeast #NFL #NFLTwitter #NFLUpdate #NFLNews #NFLBlogs

#Baltimore #Ravens #BaltimoreRavens #AFC

By: Jim Zipcode

Ravens Pass-Catchers Through 8 Weeks

The trade deadline has passed! The excitement and controversy are reverberating. Is there any appetite left for talk about the Tampa game?

What impressed me about the Tampa game was that it was such OBVIOUS evidence for opponent-specific game planning. The team you’re playing is missing six of their top eight players in the secondary. Come out throwing! That’s what they did: they opened with two straight passes to Mark Andrews, and went to him a third time on the fourth play.  (Remember Andrews was held without a catch in the previous game.)

This was exactly the opposite approach from what they did against the Brownies. Cleveland had a suspect run defense: the Ravens opened with four Gus Edwards runs and finished the half with 17 rush attempts vs seven pass attempts. Opponent-specific game planning.

I could wish it worked a little better. Lamar Jackson completed 63% of his passes in the first half, but for only 4.8 yards-per-attempt.

Part of the problem was that key starters left the game: Andrews played only ten snaps; Rashod Bateman only 13. Both players were gone before the second quarter was over.

Part of the problem was protection: Lamar was sacked twice in the first half, also took an intentional grounding, and had to throw another one away (Q2 2:33, incomplete pass deep right).

One thing that’s interesting is that some pass-catchers had a decent first half. Demarcus Robinson led the Ravens with 49 yards on five-of-seven receiving. Andrews caught three of five for 34; Isaiah Likely caught three of four for 34 yards; James Proche also caught three of four, for 24. On passes to that quartet, Lamar went 14 of 20 for 140 yards; a decent 7.0 per attempt.

The problems were on passes to other players. Bateman, Devin Duvernay, Josh Oliver and Kenyan Drake gained only four yards on six attempts to them.

As you know, things got untracked in the second half. One thing you might not realize is that the Ravens continued to challenge the Tampa secondary, but they did it in the run game.

Greg Roman called a lot of Outside Zone running plays; more than is usual for him (he tends to like Power and Counter plays, along with the option runs and sweeps). The godfather of the Outside Zone running scheme in the NFL is Alex Gibbs, who was OL coach for the Denver Broncos when they won Super Bowls in the 1990s. That was the era when Denver seemingly churned out a thousand-yard rusher every season; the same scheme that Gary Kubiak brought to the Ravens in 2014 with Justin Forsett. Gibbs left a wealth of lecture and clinic footage for college coaches, which you can find on YouTube. Absolutely worth some of your time to watch; maybe in the offseason when you’re suffering from football withdrawal. One of the tenets of the Outside Zone (aka Wide Zone) run scheme is to force the corners to tackle. The famous Gibbs quote is, “I promise you the Corners at our level are just as bad tacklers as they are at your level.”  (Gibbs never coached against Marlon Humphrey, incidentally.)

Six of the top eight Tampa defensive backs were out for this game. The Outside Zone run-scheme challenges defensive backs to tackle. Roman called a ton of Outside Zone runs in the second half against Tampa. The Tampa defenders had a lot of trouble with it.

Opponent-specific game planning. Both in the pass game and in the run game.


Thoughts on the trade deadline

The Ravens should have upgraded their WR group. And Roquan Smith is awesome. ‘Nuff said.

What, you want more?

Of course the Ravens should have upgraded their WR group. But. The trade deadline was not the right time.

The Ravens have made a mid-season trade in three of four seasons under Eric DeCosta. And their template for that trade has been very specific: an impact player in his mid-twenties that could be part of the team for years going forward. Marcus Peters (age 26). Yannick Ngakoue (25, and I would still like to know why he didn’t work out in Baltimore).  Roquan Smith (25).

Other teams are not trading away their 25-year-old WRs. D.J. Moore & Jerry Jeudy (or K.J. Hamler) were not available. Ultimately it’s not good for the team to pay premium prices for lesser players. The right time to upgrade the WR group would have been in the offseason.

Smith is awesome. He is exactly what this Ravens defense needed (other than say Aaron Donald or Myles Garrett) to ascend to the next level.

I have a friend who says that for a defense to be great, it needs to have Pro Bowl-caliber defenders at each “level”.  Think of the last really great Ravens defenses: Terrell Suggs and/or Haloti Ngata at the first level, Ray Lewis (sometimes with Bart Scott) at the mid-level, Ed Reed deep (often with Chris McAllister and/or Samari Rolle). Great play embedded at every level.

The recent editions of Ravens defenses have not had that great play in the mid-level, since C.J. Mosley left in free agency after the 2018 season. We’ve seen symptoms of it: think of all the opposing receivers running through big gains in the middle of the defense in losses this season and last. Remember, the Ravens were in talks for Bobby Wagner. So they’ve been trying to get the All-Pro-caliber ILB for a while now. Patrick Queen has been really coming on of late, but Smith was second-team All-Pro the last two seasons. That’s a different level of established consistency.

Was WR a greater need for the Ravens than defense, at the trade deadline?

A glance at Football Outsiders’ DVOA ratings shows they have the Ravens with the #2 Offense in the league, the #1 spec-teams – and the #17 Defense.  PFR’s “Simple Rating System” agrees, having the Ravens #2 on Offense and #17 on Defense. A look at EPA Tiers shows – well, it’s a picture not a table, so I’m not sure I’m counting it right, but it looks like the Ravens are 5th on Offense and somewhere around 25th on Defense. ESPN’s Football Power Index has the Ravens 7th on offense and 14th on defense. They’re 4th in the league in points-per-drive on offense, but 25th in points-allowed-per-drive on defense. All the “analytics” are consistent that defense was more of a short-term need than offense.

The trade for Roquan Smith is a bid to reestablish the kind of Ravens defense we saw from 2008-11; or at least in 2018.  It’s bold and ambitious. We should be excited about it. Even if he’s not a Wide Receiver.


Here are your receiving stats for Thursday’s game:

One of Lamar’s most diverse days as a passer: six different players with 4+ targets.

Someone had to step up when Andrews hurt his shoulder, and someone did. Here is why you invest a lot of targets early in a young player who you think is promising, but isn’t fully polished & yet:

Likely was not quite ready to be a productive receiver at the beginning of the season. But the Ravens kept involving him.  Developing a quality young receiving weapon: great to see.

Robinson’s best game as a Raven. His first time over 30 yards as a Raven, and double the catches of any previous game this season. Robinson has mostly been a complementary player over his career. This is one of his higher-usage games ever: his third-most targets in a game (tied) and the 5th-highest yardage total of his career.

Only Proche’s second game this year with a target, and his first game with multiple catches. He missed a couple games with a groin, and hasn’t really got untracked this season.

Lamar’s first multi-touchdown day in five games! He was “held” to only one TD in each game vs Buffalo, Cincy & the Giants; then didn’t throw one last week vs the Browns. He’s got 15 TDs, on pace for about 31-32 TDs on the season.

Andrews is still in striking distance of Travis Kelce, only about 70 yards behind him in receiving yardage for Tight Ends.

Bateman (#16) and Duvernay (#22) are still in/near the NFL top 20 in yards-per-target. However, at the moment I’m a lot more preoccupied with Bateman’s health than this stat.

Kenyan Drake’s TD catch means that now eight different players have caught a touchdown from Lamar this season. That’s one more than last year, when seven different Ravens caught touchdown passes all season. Is that important? I don’t know for sure, but I kind of think it is.  I think having diverse threats in the red zone makes things tougher for defenses.

Lamar is still 4th in the league in TD passes, 4th in TD% and 5th in QBR.

So where does this team stand?

If they get & stay healthy, I think the Ravens can compete with and potentially beat any team in the league. And we’ve also seen how every game with this group is a tough fight. I think this month is their opportunity to pick up some gains in the standings and get healthy.  Keep slogging.

Next Up: The Ravens go marching into New Orleans to face the Saints on Monday Night Football!

The post A Master Class in Opponent-Specific Game-Planning appeared first on Russell Street Report.

Originally posted on Russell Street Report