Week 9 was a horrible week for Purple Nightmare predictions. Not only did I overestimate the Ravens coaching staff's ability to make obvious corrections, but I also incorrectly predicted 8 of the total 13 games. A member of the Browns said last week that these are not the "Ravens of old" and he was totally correct. It's not that these Ravens can't play defense, because they absolutely can. The Ravens currently rank 8th in run defense and 14th in pass defense. It's also not because Joe Flacco can't put up enough yards in the passing game, because Joe is on pace to FAR exceed his best regular season total. It's because this Ravens offensive line can't run-block. There have been years where the Ravens have struggled in one capacity or another, but they've simply never struggled this hard at this particular task.
Is the reason that the Ravens struggle because they simply don't have good enough lineman? No, of course not. The reason is because the Ravens simply refuse to abandon Juan Castillo's blocking schemes and running plays. I found out recently that Jim Caldwell is no longer the sole play caller of this team. John Harbaugh explained to a member of the press that play calling is a collaborative effort between Castillo, Caldwell and himself....and it's simply not working. Harbaugh can come out after every game and talk about how the defense has to put up a stop and get off the field late in games to give the offense a chance to win, but the offense has had ALL GAME to win and hasn't done so because of poor coaching. The players even complained about the blocking schemes after the loss to Green Bay, and the Ravens coaching staff responded by switching at times away from a zone blocking scheme to a man blocking scheme with a reasonable amount of success.
The Ravens, however, lost to the Steelers going into the bye week and I believe that gave Harbaugh the impression that switching away from Castillo's blocking schemes wasn't the answer to winning football games. I firmly believe that Juan Castillo came to Harbaugh and insisted that if he was given the bye week to correct mistakes in the way the players were executing his system then the Ravens would find success on the ground and beat the Browns in Week 9. No such luck. The Ravens running backs actually performed WORSE after the bye week as there are clear fundamental flaws in Castillo's run offense. This first flaw is that Castillo likes to run the ball up the middle of the offensive line. Unfortunately for the Ravens, their weakest lineman, Gino Gradkowski, is the center and this means Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce find little success running in the 1 or the 2 hole on either side of Gradkowski. The other major flaw we witnessed on Sunday was the Ravens attempting to run the ball when Flacco was in the shotgun. This meant that Flacco handed the ball of to Ray deep in the backfield. Castillo may have thought this would give Ray more space to make defenders miss, but his blocking scheme allowed defenders to get into the backfield so quickly that Ray often was tackled before he could even approach the line of scrimmage.
Contrary to some speculation, the Ravens rushing struggles have little do with the health of their running backs. I entertained that idea briefly, but even Ray Rice at 75-80% should normally gain far more yards than 259 through 8 games. Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce haven't both magically become bad at the same time, they simply have nowhere to run because of poor scheming. I have waited months for the Ravens to totally abandon Juan Castillo's run-coordination, and it happened briefly in Pittsburgh, but that didn't last long. I now see Harbaugh for what he truly is: a coach that inherited an extremely talented team just a it drafted its franchise quarterback.
Harbaugh doesn't know enough about offense or defense to step in when the likes of Juan Castillo, Cam Cameron, or Greg Mattison have put the Ravens players in poor schemes and positions to win football games. When people speak about Bill Belichick, they always regard him as one of the best if not the best coach in the NFL. Why? Because assistant coaches and coordinators come and they go, but the Patriots stay consistently strong under Belichick's guidance. Even when Brady was out for most of the season in 2008 the Patriots went 11-5 with Matt Cassel as their starting quarterback. Harbaugh simply isn't nearly involved, skilled, or in control of his own team to have that kind of consistent success despite major personnel losses and coaching turnover. Sure, the Ravens were great for the first five years of Harbaugh's head coaching career, but did he really have much to do with that success? I'm starting to realize that the answer is no.
I'll never stop being a Ravens fan, but I've lost faith in John Harbaugh's ability to coach his team and make tough decisions at the correct times to fix flaws that lead to losses. I gave Harbaugh credit for ousting Cam Cameron after the Ravens lost 3 straight games last season. That decision proved to be the one that ultimately led to the Ravens winning a Super Bowl, but the more I think about it, the more apparent it becomes that Harbaugh took entirely too long to replace Cameron, and the Ravens could have taken the next step towards winning a Super Bowl much earlier if Harbaugh had sooner made that move.
If John Harbaugh truly wants to take command of his team and stop the metaphorical bleeding, he will make the executive decision that his team's offense will revert to last year's blocking schemes. The ravens need to be able to have at least a moderate amount of success running the football to set up 2nd and manageable and 3rd and short situations for Joe Flacco and company. The Ravens need to be able to establish the run to consistently score in the redzone, and Joe Flacco needs Ray Rice to run well in order to set up deep play action passes to the speedy Ravens wideouts. I've totally given up hope that any of this will happen, and my hopes will not be renewed unless the Ravens find a way to put up a decisive win this week at home against a Bengals team that will be playing without three integral defensive cogs. I will not be predicting a Ravens win, but I'll be glued to my T.V. in case they decide to surprise us all. There's still a possibility the Ravens could turn things around, but I'm not holding my breath. This is all just too depressing to continue to discuss, so let's move on to the the Thursday night game.
THURSDAY NIGHT PREDICTION
REDSKINS AT VIKINGS- It's difficult to know which Vikings team the Redskins will face this Thursday night. The Vikings have at times appeared to be the second worst team in football right behind the Jaguars. The return of Christian Ponder, however, appeared to have flipped a switch that transformed the Vikings into a tougher team to beat last week against the Cowboys. Sure the Vikings ultimately lost the game, but they did so just barely and on the road against a formidable Cowboys offense. The Redskins had a good home victory against the Chargers, but the Chargers have been absolutely horrendous on the road this season. This game will be close, but the Vikings defense will show up at home, and Adrian Peterson should give the Redskins enough trouble to tip this one in favor of the the Vikings. VIKINGS 28-24.
There is little I can say to my fellow Ravens fans at this point to give them much realistic hope for the remainder of the season. The Ravens last 4 losses have been close ones, so it wouldn't take much to change any one of those losses into wins, but the fact that they lose close games so consistently only further points to a lack of coaching to correct these minor mistakes that lead to major disappointment. In the NFL, a loss is a loss no matter the score. Don't give up your fanhood, Baltimore, but let's just be happy the Ravens won the Super Bowl last year and be hopeful that they can get back on track in 2014.
AS ALWAYS (BUT NOW WITH LESS OPTIMISM)
GO RAVENS!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment