Battle Plans: Dean Pees, We Meet Again

Before I dive into Battle Plans this week, I wanted to share my thoughts on the game last week and the state of the Ravens going into the final three weeks of the season. While I’m sure this writer’s words can be dismissed as simply the ramblings of a guy at the end of the bar, given how much film I watch on this team and others for this column, I wanted to comment.

This team’s offense, as it was constructed for the early weeks of the season, was a potential juggernaut. They were number one in DVOA in that stretch and the passing offense was by far and away the most efficient in the league. The defense, while frustrating, was showing some green shoots of potential under Mike Macdonald. Despite some criticism from many Ravens fans, I felt the unit they have become today was on the horizon. It boded so well for this crucial season.

A LOT has happened since then. Over the last five weeks, the offense is amongst the worst units in the league, only marginally outpacing the likes of Carolina, Denver, and Arizona.

The struggles have a lot to do with the health of key players. Missing JK Dobbins and Gus Edwards for such a large portion of the season was not baked into our expectations for this team. Lamar Jackson missing more games this year is hard to overcome for a team that is so reliant on his playmaking ability. And of course, losing Rashod Bateman, the best receiver to wear Baltimore purple since Steve Smith Sr., and who threatens defenses in a way that no other Raven can, was the biggest setback.

In that way, we can draw some parallels to last season, but on the other side of the ball, when the defense was ravaged by injuries. Despite the injuries, keen observers of that defense – John Harbaugh included – could find themselves frustrated with the play-calling from Wink Martindale. Sticking dogmatically to a philosophy that was not producing results with the personnel available was, in the end, a fireable offense. We even heard Harbaugh drop his normal party-line and show frustration with Martindale in post-game comments.

The injuries that the defense faced last year were far more severe and longer lasting than those faced by this offense this season. But last week’s performance in Cleveland by the offense, was far more abject and embarrassing than anything served up by Martindale’s charges last year. The Ravens moved the ball, but had major issues with execution at critical junctures in the game.

I have not been a vehement Greg Roman critic over the years. I think he has built an offense that has been wildly successful at times and generally far more potent than Baltimore is used to out of their Ravens. And while I expected to see the Ravens run the ball more against a porous Browns run defense through the first three quarters, the balance was not so far off what could realistically be expected given the symbiosis between the run and the pass in NFL offenses.

What cannot be forgiven is the play-calling in the fourth quarter, which far too quickly and far too absolutely went away from the thing that Browns had no answer for.

I add this failure to the feeling I get watching this team through the middle portion of the season, one of frustration that this offense is no longer getting the best out of the Ravens best player: Lamar Jackson. I have watched his progress since the early days at Louisville, and he improves each year. As a passer, he is a completely different player, capable of far more than he ever has been from the pocket. And while he trusts his teammates, he seems to distrust this offense.

It leaves me in agreement with those who feel a change should be made. But Jackson is the franchise; trading him cannot be the way forward.

Roman and Marty Mornhinweg before him, were the perfect offensive coaches for Jackson to begin his career. They crafted an offense that maximized his strengths and made him the runaway MVP of the league in his second year. It was the perfect example of something the Ravens pride themselves on – the connection and coherence between their coaching staff and personnel.

That connection is wayward this season, at least on the offensive side of the ball. The Ravens’ depth in their pass-catchers, needed to run the offense of the first three weeks of the season, has been found wanting.

The Ravens must genuinely transform this offense and it needs a change of leadership to get it done.

Having said that, I’m not sure doing that now would have the effect people want. This offense now needs Roman’s potent rush offense and it’ll be better the devil you know until this season has run its course.

With that, the Ravens face the Falcons this week and yet another defense that struggles to stop the run, especially up the gut.

Here’s how the Ravens get to 10-5 this Christmas: (spoiler alert) run the ball.

Defensive Keys

Arthur Smith – Master of Disguise

I’m starting on the defensive side of the ball because this Atlanta offense, led by Arthur Smith, intrigues me. Like the Ravens, they started the season on a hot streak, with a new breed of offense that seemed to assimilate some of the better concepts from across the league into one system, expertly called by Smith.

This is where I normally write about the play-caller’s connections as a coach and what formed him and his system over time. Smith is an interesting study in this. He was never a wunderkind like Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVay, never the hottest name in the Head Coaching searches. Perhaps this was because of his actual name – Arthur Smith – the name doesn’t fill you with thoughts of an inspiring leader of men.

You’d even be forgiven for thinking Smith is a chiselled old veteran coach that’s been around the block. But reading about him, I was compelled to look up his age when I read a comment that he grew up in the Madden video game generation. He is only 40 years old. The innovation in his offensive scheme betrays this. He is clearly a dynamic offensive mind who can construct a formidable offense, proven by his time in Tennessee.

Unfortunately, in Atlanta, he has run into a deep rebuild with significant personnel challenges this season for running the kind of offense he wants to. But it has still been dangerous in spurts, and you can see the makings of what this offense could be. He has had an interesting journey as a coach and has taken in much of what he has learned from other influential coaches along the way.

In fact, one of the most distinctive features of this offense – deception – has its roots in an old Ravens nemesis – Mike Mularkey. Many won’t remember this, but Mularkey ran a Steelers offense pre-Ben Roethlisberger, with Tommy Maddox at Quarterback, and Plaxico Burress and Hines Ward at Wide Receiver, that plagued the Ravens in the early 2000s. They regularly put up 30 points on a proud defense and won plenty of games against through that period against Baltimore.

With the likes of Antwan Randle El and others, the trickery of that Steelers offense was a forerunner to the Titans offense that Smith ran just a year after Mularkey had left the Titans himself, to be replaced by Matt LaFleur. But even one year of LaFleur had an influence on Smith, who still uses some Shanahan offensive principles in Atlanta.

While the Falcons struggles in recent weeks are plain to see, they are still able to run the ball. They are 3^rd in the league in Rush Offense DVOA, according to Football Outsiders. Any gameplan for stopping this Falcons offense must start with the run.

Rookie QB Desmond Ridder was not good in his first start last week, but the more the Falcons can take pressure off him by running the ball, the better.

There are two things to focus on when stopping the running game – one is schematic, and one is personnel-based. Starting on the personnel side, Chris Lindstrom and Kaleb McGary are arguably the best RG-RT combination in the league right now, with Lindstrom in particular, playing the best football of his life.

The Ravens must match this with their best personnel for defending the run. Calais Campbell being healthy for this game is crucial and he must play on that side of the line more often that not. He is their best run defender in the trenches. The Ravens should also consider playing with Justin Houston on more running downs this week. He has been mostly a situational pass rusher, but has set the edge well when asked to. Broderick Washington has improved in recent weeks too and could also be a feature of the Ravens’ attempts to stop runs to the right in this game.

Use Marcus Williams to neutralize the RPO game

The other key for stopping the Falcons’ rushing attack is their heavy use of RPOs. Only the Philadelphia Eagles run more RPOs and only the Ravens have gained more rushing yards on RPOs over the course of the season.

I’d like to see the Ravens utilizing their safeties to defend the RPO game, which I’ve written about before in this column.

The signing of Marcus Williams has allowed the Ravens to play a different style of defense against the more challenging passing offenses in the NFL. The two-high shell that the Ravens can roll in and out of at will with Williams patrolling the back end has been a crucial change to the way they play defense.

But defending the run and the pass are inextricably interconnected, and playing a two-high defense changes the structure of the gap responsibilities up front. Against opponents who are far better running the football, the Ravens have reverted to more of their MOFC (Middle of the Field Closed) coverages like Cover 1 or Cover 3, to allow for different gap responsibilities up front, more akin to what we are used to seeing over the years from the Ravens run defense.

This will likely need to be the case this week as the Ravens should show little respect to Atlanta’s passing game and should load the box to stop the run. One thing to be wary of when doing this, is the Falcons’ use of RPOs.

The Ravens haven’t faced many of the heavier RPO teams in the league this season, and if they do utilize more coverages that call for a Post Safety, they have an expert operator in Williams. When studying him during free agency I noticed that while his role in the Saints defense allowed him to do some of the things that make him one of the best in the league at his position, he could do much more.

He played a long way off the line of scrimmage as a deep, deep center-fielder. And while this worked within the structure of the Saints defense, another scheme might unlock even more play-making ability if he was able to trigger to the line of scrimmage more often. He is at his best when playing deep, but the Ravens have unleashed him in different ways when he has been healthy, and it’s shown in the plays he has made.

His technical ability as a Safety, as well as his elite mental processing speed, puts him in a unique position to be able to use the Cheat technique to read the Mesh point and effectively defend the pass from the RPO from a single high position. It also has the added benefit of allowing him to insert quickly against the run as another defender in the box.

Things are not what they seem

The final thing to be wary of with this Falcons offense are the unusual route combinations you see in their passing game. With Ridder at the helm, the passing offense seemed out of sync last week, and Smith may be looking to utilize his more successful concepts this week to try and get his QB into a rhythm.

Firstly, they run Drift routes off play action, in behind the Linebackers. This worked well at the start of the season and should be something they insert early for Ridder to help out the young Quarterback. The Falcons are one of the heaviest Shotgun teams in the league, but they have one of the most effective offenses when they run play action from under Center – Drift routes are a staple of this component of their system.

The other routes that the Ravens Defensive Backs need to be wary of are the Stop 7s or Blaze Outs that stick to Smith’s theme of deception in his offense. A Stop 7 will look for all the world like a standard Corner route, except that after the Wide Receiver breaks for the pylon, they will break off their route against Zone coverage and sit in the soft spot. Similarly, the Blaze Out looks like a standard slant before the receiver breaks hard back to the outside just after making their break inside.

Offensive Keys

Run. The. Ball.

It really isn’t complicated. Both the data and the film tell you exactly where the weakness of this Falcons defense lies – running the ball up the middle.

An old friend returns to Baltimore this week, with Dean Pees coming back once again to face the Ravens. The one-time Ravens Defensive Coordinator, who helped Baltimore to win its second Lombardi in 2012, should bring back some fond memories for Ravens fans. However, he is the guy who “retired” from coaching only to turn up as the Titans Defensive Coordinator less than a month later.

He “retired” again two years later before then taking the Falcons Defensive Coordinator gig with Smith’s appointment after they’d coached together in Tennessee. He maybe should have let the retirement stick this time. He’s short on playmakers but this defense is one of the worst in the league. While they do some things against the run well, they struggle mightily in the middle of their defensive front.

The Falcons should be in for a heavy dose of the Ravens interior running game. They can do this through the usual staples of this running game with Power and certainly the Inverted Veer, both of which I’ve written about before at length. But as they need to pound the middle of this defense with the run, they should also insert some variety to this running game and use some more Inside Zone.

I know Atlanta isn’t the most fearsome opponent on the schedule, but this offense, without Jackson, has a lot to fear. They should do their utmost to perfect the plays that are most likely to work this week. Inside Zone is not something the Ravens run a lot, but it does allow them to weaponize Tyler Linderbaum by getting him into space at the second level using his athleticism, which is by far his best attribute.

The added wrinkle I would throw in if they do use Inside Zone would be running Power out of the Shotgun to the side that the back is aligned to. This makes the Power run look initially like Inside Zone.

This layering of concepts in the running game is something Roman is good at as a play-caller, and he needs to get right this week, with a far heavier balance of run to pass than he managed in Cleveland.

Do something different in the passing game

While the Falcons are like the Browns in their inability to stop the run, they are not like the Browns in their pass defense. The Falcons struggle against good passing offenses and so the Ravens cannot completely abandon the passing game this week.

The Offensive Line has been a bright spot this season. When healthy they are a formidable force both in pass protection and in grading the road for the better backs in the Ravens Running Back stable.

They do not need to be ready for a heavy dose of the blitz this week as the Falcons are one of the least blitz-happy teams in the league. They are also dead last in pressure percentage, so the Ravens QB, whoever that ends up being, should have plenty of time to find his targets.

Without Devin Duvernay the Ravens really do face a shocking shortage in their receiving corps. The crack that Sammy Watkins is papering over, can only now be charitably described as a crack. It feels more like a gaping chasm that will open wider as the season progresses.

One thing I’d like to see the Ravens try in this game that they’ve dabbled with at times is playing Mark Andrews at the X position and bringing Isaiah Likely in at Tight End. A.J. Terrell is a promising young Corner who has taken something of a step back this year and the Falcons are most vulnerable outside the numbers. I’d like to see the Ravens try something a little different and get their best pass-catchers on the field at the same time, even if that means some square pegs in round holes.

This week is the best time to experiment with this given that getting Andrews outside more often gets him into the areas of the field where the opponent is weakest. It may not work, but the Ravens have little to lose in their passing game and need to find some way to find a complementary piece to Andrews more potent than Demarcus Robinson.

Matchup of the week

Drake London vs Marlon Humphrey

The absence of Kyle Pitts has left Drake London as the biggest receiving threat on this Falcons team. Ridder was determined to feed him last week in his first start and he will look his way early and often again when they face the Ravens. The problem for Ridder and London, is that they come up against Marlon Humphrey playing some of the best football of his life.

Humphrey should be able to shut down London this week and it will be crucial to the Ravens getting the win, as the defense does need to keep the score low this week to escape with a much-needed victory. If the Falcons become even slightly less one-dimensional, and manage to depend on something other than their running game, they have a chance to get into double figures in points and force the Ravens to find more from their offense than they have in recent weeks.

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