Battle Plans: Keys to a Playoff Win In The Jungle

The pretenders are no longer pretending. The Cincinnati Bengals won their second straight AFC North divisional title. They enter the playoffs as the proverbial team nobody wants to play.

The Ravens return to Ohio a week after their last visit, as a team that has failed to live up to its expectations but may well be saving their best for last in a postseason run. Something tells me this Ravens team won’t go quietly into the Cincinnati night next Sunday.

Here’s how they go about the seemingly impossible task and keep their faltering season alive one more week…

Defensive Keys

Stop the surgeon

There is no other place to start this week than on the defensive side of the ball. The Ravens defense and the Cincinnati offense are both top 5 units since Week 9 of the regular season, when both teams settled into their identity.

The Bengals present a unique challenge for any defense, and that remains true for the Ravens. The balance of this offense with two outstanding outside receivers in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, as well as veteran secondary pieces the caliber of Tyler Boyd and Hayden Hurst, leave little room for error on the part of the defense facing them down.

These weapons are combined with a Quarterback at the absolute height of his powers to devastating effect. It is said that a surgeon is able to understand the smallest signs from the body while operating on a patient and know immediately how to act in the operating room. They act swiftly and decisively, with poise and precision. This is how Joe Burrow acts in the face of NFL defenses.

As soon as defenses abandon a disciplined two-high MOFO, drop at least 7 defenders into zone coverage structure, he will find the weakness they have created by abandoning that approach and ruthlessly exploit it. If you change to a Cover 1 look with man coverage and bring the blitz, he will check into a concept that isolates Chase 1-on-1 and throw deep to one of the most dangerous receivers against single coverage in the league.

The Ravens must build their approach to stopping the Bengals around the way they re-made this defense over the off-season. The hiring of Mike Macdonald and the big free agent contract doled out to Marcus Williams was with exactly this kind of postseason matchup in mind.

The Ravens did prepare themselves for this game defensively a long time ago. In fact, there will be some predictability to Battle Plans over the next three weeks if the Ravens progress and face down the Chiefs and the Bills on the road to the Super Bowl.

But Burrow is the challenge this week and he is the master of his craft right now, playing at a level that, for me, is equal to the possibly incomparable Patrick Mahomes. The only way to combat this, is the disciplined MOFO structure that the Ravens have cultivated for this exact game.

Wink Martindale was very reluctant to play that way, sticking to a two-gap structure at the line of scrimmage and a heavy blitz approach that took defenders out of coverage, and necessitated many MOFC coverages that left the Ravens exposed against offenses like the Bengals. I’m convinced the Macdonald hire was with an eye towards making a shift to a more disciplined defense for encounters of this kind.

Even the Ravens’ more complex split-field coverages under Martindale were seemingly easy for Burrow to pick apart. Under Macdonald, the Ravens have this year held Burrow to his two lowest Quarterback ratings of the season, last week sticking to a personnel package in the back seven that was almost exclusively dime using Roquan Smith, Patrick Queen, Kyle Hamilton, Marlon Humphrey, Daryl Worley, Chuck Clark and Marcus Williams. They didn’t stick exclusively to a rush-four/drop-seven mantra, but they did stick with this personnel through most of the game.

This has been their approach since the Smith trade, and it was their approach through most of the first game between these two teams as well, albeit that was before Hamilton took over Nickel defender duties almost exclusively.

The reason this personnel package and the MOFO coverage with two-high works best, is that it defends both sides of the field equally. Higgins and Chase require an equal amount of attention, and the Bengals most often keep them on opposite sides of the field, so keeping a safety over both threats is the best way to neutralize them. This, of course, creates other potential areas to exploit but the Ravens are happy if Boyd and Hurst catch more balls than Chase and Higgins.

Williams’ range on the back end allows them to play this coverage at a higher level than most teams and while the Bengals will wait for and pounce on any mistakes your defense makes, Burrow must account for one of the best deep safeties in the league and be wary of a mistake giving him an opportunity to make a big play.

There will be those who say the Bengals know this approach is coming, so the Ravens need to do something different to win this weekend. That Burrow and the Bengals didn’t over-exert themselves last Sunday and will have a lot more to pull out of their vault for the playoff encounter. But there isn’t much you can do against this defense except keep taking what they give you. You must defeat this defense with multiple paper cuts and boring matriculation.

That is precisely why this approach is the right way to go about defending this team for a high-stakes game. If the Ravens can force the Bengals into this game of consistency, where they must be perfect on offense to score enough points to win the game, they might be able to bait Burrow into a rare mistake as he presses to try and win a playoff game emphatically that everyone expects Cincinnati to win at a canter.

As with most high-powered offenses, the approach to defending them hinges on picking your poison, making your bets on which way the opposing unit is least likely to beat you. The Ravens defense is very good, but it will take some licks on Sunday night.

They just need to be non-fatal blows – the way to ensure that is by staying disciplined with their coverage and forcing Burrow to play mundane football to win.

Exploit the Bengals botched-job O-line fix

Helpfully, there is one glaring weakness on this Cincinnati offense that can be exploited: the Offensive Line. The Bengals invested heavily in their line for this season and while they did throw resources at their biggest problem child from last season’s remarkable run, they didn’t really fix the issue.

The bare facts don’t tell you the whole story. You would struggle to find a statistic based on pressure percentage or sacks that tell you the Bengals Offensive Line has been less than league average in protecting Burrow this season. That kind of improvement on last year, at least statistically, is exactly what the Bengals ordered this offseason and would point towards them having fixed a glaring issue in their quest for a ring.

Context is important though. Burrow has one of the lower intended air yards per completion in the league, averaging under seven yards, meaning he is getting the ball out quickly to help the OL. He is also, by far and away, the least blitzed Quarterback in the league because of how effective he is at carving open a defense that sacrifices defenders in coverage. So, this line isn’t facing particularly difficult sledding with complex pressure packages to break down. Burrow is also an effective runner and Sunday showed how adept he can be at avoiding the rush.

Burrow is helping this Offensive Line look better, when it isn’t actually that much better. The Bengals do then need to compromise from a play-calling perspective and cannot unleash their QB’s full potential.

This means the road to getting pressure on Burrow is clear. The Ravens do have an intriguing stable of pass-rushers to deploy, and they should build in a rotation that keeps athleticism on the field while taking advantage of making Cincy deal with different flavors of pass rush given their personnel (two injured starters on the right side).

They must refrain from a heavy blitz approach, especially the Fire Zone. While it has been effective for the Ravens against other opponents, Burrow is adept at identifying this and finding the weak spot behind it. The coverage, as already mentioned, is crucial in this game. Forcing Burrow to hold the ball a little longer than normal can give you the opportunity to get pressure on him because of the weakness in this OL.

Justin Houston has slowed some since the early going but David Ojabo gave him a rest last week, so the veteran only logged ten snaps. He should be unleashed fresh this week ready to get after Burrow. Joe is able to break contain remarkably well though, and so Houston combined with athleticism from Odafe Oweh or Tyus Bowser to clean up will be necessary.

I’d also keep Ojabo active given the importance of this particular key to victory.

Some more things about the coverage

In a league increasingly obsessed with its efficiency, the Bengals have one of the lowest play action rates in the NFL. What that does allow the Ravens to do though, is use Smith and Hamilton in coverage with reckless abandon and have their excellent run support safeties quickly trigger against the run. That and the presence of Hamilton and Smith as equally effective when defending the run or the pass is why stopping Joe Mixon is a conspicuously absent key to the game this week.

(I’ll say one thing about the run game here: with so much Duo and Inside Zone being run by the Bengals, the Ravens do need to ensure they can keep Smith, Patrick Queen and Hamilton clean to make plays on Mixon and Samaje Perine. That means occupying the occasional double team is crucial to prevent vertical movement. It’s something the Ravens haven’t done as much this year, but they still have that club in their bag.)

The way the Ravens play with that two-high shell and evenly distributed coverage against Higgins and Chase has a few more keys that are important to its success. The Bengals won’t sit still and aimlessly try the same things over and over again, although they’re less reactively creative on offense than I suspect most people realize. When they try some different things, the Ravens need to respond, not schematically, but with certain players stepping up.

I’ll talk about Marlon Humphrey in the matchup of the week section, but there are others who are key to this game plan. I’ve already talked about Williams’ range, but his ball skills are also excellent, even when in man coverage – occasionally the Bengals will move Chase inside to the slot and Williams will need to come down and cover him man-to-man. He did it, on occasion, effectively in the Week 18 matchup; he’ll need to again.

Hamilton as the nickel defender is also crucial. He is explosive enough in short areas to cover Boyd in underneath zones and so is Smith, although you don’t want him doing it consistently. The Ravens normally protect both with a Safety over top, being mindful of Boyd running an intermediate or deep route.

I suspect a counter punch the Bengals may favor, is trying to bait the Ravens with both Boyd and Hurst targeting the intermediate and deep middle, while also running deeper routes with Higgins and/or Chase to make the Ravens safeties make a difficult choice in coverage, Williams and Clark must stay disciplined and be mindful of the greater threats in these circumstance but also trigger quickly on anything underneath to Hurst or Boyd when they’ve been isolated on Queen.

These types of concepts that the Bengals might try are predicated on their protection holding up long enough, which is when that Ravens pass rush already mentioned must come into its own.

Offensive Keys

Facing the cuttlefish again

Before I write about fish again, first things first: I’m going to assume Lamar Jackson is playing this week. I know that’s a dangerous assumption and that, to quote the movie Under Siege 2, assumption is the mother of all ****-ups, but I do think it’s the only way to think about this game that remotely considers victory a possibility. Even if Lamar isn’t all Lamar, he’s by far and away the best pocket passer the Ravens have and so even amidst the context of limited mobility, I would be inclined to start him.

I do not believe that his not playing in recent weeks has been a business decision. He is one of the most competitive players Baltimore has ever seen. This is the guy whose first words after being drafted were: “They’re going to get a Supe Bowl out of me. Believe that.” He has an opportunity to make good on that promise, however remote the Ravens chances are of successfully running a Bengals-Chiefs-Bills gauntlet to get to the big game. I cannot believe he is forsaking that opportunity unless there is real risk of further damage to his knee.

Onto this Bengals defense. I used a strange, but I thought apt, analogy to describe Lou Anarumo for Battle Plans in the first game between these two teams. I said his defense was like a cuttlefish, able to adapt and change seamlessly to protect itself against predator offenses. They’ve caused the Ravens issues over the years Anarumo has been in charge and especially since he has been able to stock his secondary with veterans who know exactly what is expected of them and how to communicate with each other and reduce coverage mistakes.

This approach allows them to rotate in and out of looks both immediately pre-snap and post-snap to confuse opposing Quarterbacks.

Every offense has tendencies, idiosyncrasies that give away what they might be planning to do on each play. This isn’t a tendency per se but it’s probably one of the first things Ravens fans would mention, probably cynically, if asked to describe this offense: the Ravens cannot run a play quickly. They are perennially playing with the fire of the play clock, always allowing it to run close to zero, almost beckoning delay of game flags from the officials.

So, I’d like to see the Ravens prepare to sporadically run some Air Raid style quick game at various points throughout the game. I’m not asking this for a whole drive, just a few plays throughout the game based on certain conditions – drive length, down/distance, area of the field – and rehearsed, where the Ravens run up to the line immediately after completing a play to run the next one.

This isn’t with the express purpose of stopping the Bengals from changing personnel; it’s more aimed to give the Bengals less time to prepare their coverage approach. However, I’d also do this after a successful running play where the Bengals still have their key run-stuffers on the field, like D.J. Reader and others who might be less suitable to stop the pass.

They should also plan for two or three of these quick game plays to be run out of a sugar huddle where they motion towards a huddle but only stay for a split second and then sprint into position on the line to run the play. The Bengals expect a long huddle from the Ravens, so changing this up is something to try.

This is a strange key to start with as it’s a small detail, but it could be responsible for some big, chunk gains, especially against a defense as complex as the Bengals. Before the last couple of seasons, this secondary was prone to mistakes that led to huge plays – coverage busts because they couldn’t get organized either immediately pre- or post-snap based on what Anarumo was asking. Only after they added Eli Apple and Mike Hilton and got a consistent starting defensive backfield five did this go away. This is the inspiration for this tactic, and it would be intended to get a big play downfield.

The Ravens must take the game to them and put them in a bind. Do something unexpected. They are assuming they will have plenty of time to adjust to motion, and to play all the games they like in the secondary to mess with the Ravens passing attack. They are assuming they will always be able to substitute and match personnel.

Springing a surprise like this is something the Ravens should consider.

Greg needs to go deep in the vault

Running the ball successfully is a huge key to the game this week. The Ravens must find a way to run successfully on the Bengals. They are unlikely to be able to turn to the pass with any great consistency given Anarumo’s time to prepare his secondary for the task ahead of them. It’s why the Ravens will likely need to resort to some gimmicks like the one mentioned above.

The Bengals largely managed to shut down the Ravens running game last week, but Greg Roman actually did leave plenty in his vault for the third meeting between these teams. I know “the vault” is a long-running joke for Ravens fans (and you can find my opinion on what should happen next for the Ravens offense in one of my Battle Plans from a few weeks ago) but for the running game, Roman does have one of the biggest vaults of any Offensive Coordinator in football, and this is the game to unleash anything he was saving.

Specifically, the way to run on this Cincinnati defense is to run left. I’ll talk in the matchup of the week about how Jimmies and Joes are the most important factor in a game between two teams playing each other for the third time, but targeting the Bengals’ weakness from a personnel standpoint in the running game is a potential road to success. It’s a simple equation but Reader, B.J. Hill and Sam Hubbard are good run defenders. Trey Hendrickson is not as good. The Ravens need to run at him and overwhelm him.

On the other side of the coin, if they want to run into more of the Bengals’ strength to give some variety, it would be worth optioning Hubbard rather than getting him to take on blocks, which he is very good at in the running game. And getting Reader blocked hinges on not asking Tyler Linderbaum to do this too often one-on-one.

The Ravens must check in and out of plays, depending on the Bengals’ alignment on the Defensive Line, that allow Kevin Zeitler or Ben Powers to down block Reader, rather than asking Linderbaum to work a double team or down-block him himself. Getting Linderbaum up to the second level on Logan Wilson and Germaine Pratt is where the Ravens want to be. You can bet the Bengals will look to replicate some of the ways that the Steelers isolated Linderbaum, and the Ravens cannot let this happen.

Spacing

(no, not a commentary on Roman’s route combinations)

I’m talking about spacing the passing concept, not the tiresome debate about the space between receivers in the Ravens offense when running routes. It’s a concept that spaces out the defense to attack underneath zones. The Ravens used it to pretty good effect against the Bengals in Week 18. It a simple concept, easily repeatable and difficult to defend when run well with good timing. The Ravens should look to use it again.

They will also be able to build off the concept using Mark Andrews as a more threatening part of the passing attack. He should be used as a decoy regularly in the game. The Bengals were aggressive when coming down to defend against Tight Ends and had little respect for the Ravens Wide Receivers. They may divert even more attention to Andrews and the Ravens QB, whoever that may be, will need to be mindful of that attention and target others when the Bengals do this. Some Ravens Wide Receiver will need to make some plays for them to win this game: think James Proche not stepping out of bounds in the second half on a downfield target, or Sammy Watkins not fumbling after a huge gain.

That Proche target came off the Bengals focusing too much on the Tight End underneath with a post-wheel combination from the receivers run to the same side. The Ravens should dial this one up again, but how about an old favorite from the Ravens last Super Bowl win to Mark Andrews if they can establish him as an underneath threat? And one they can use in the Red Zone where they’ve had so much trouble?

The first touchdown to Anquan Boldin in Superbowl XLVII was a masterful sluggo route from the Ravens great, run from the slot against a MOFO coverage – the Ravens could look to repeat the old favorite when the Bengals run their own MOFO coverage this week, especially if the Bengals are fearful of Andrews coming over the middle of the field underneath.

Matchup of the Week

Marlon Humphrey vs Tee Higgins

No point beating around the bush this week or looking for interesting matchups to watch. This is easily the most important matchup to decide the outcome of this game. For two teams that already know each other well, facing each other for the third time in a season, and the second time in consecutive weeks, makes this game much more about the players than about the scheme.

Higgins was held to one catch in the game last week and Humphrey did a masterful job, as he has done most of the season, more than living up to his cap hit and his reputation as one of the best cover Corners in the league. The Ravens can’t always run with a two-high shell and protect against the threat of Higgins and Chase so when they do move to an MOFC coverage and Humphrey needs to contain Higgins, or even Chase who he will likely face too, he will need to be at his best.

He will need to win once again this week, as Higgins can take over a game. The more that Humphrey can handle on his own against Higgins, the more the Ravens can do to take Chase out of the game.

If Higgins catches eight or more balls this weekend, the Ravens have most likely lost the game.

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