Ravensfan23

I too have been hard on Pees at times but I think he's a really good DC overall. I have questioned some of his decision in games, but I have a personal crusade against the Organizational Philosophy that we've held on to since the 2000 Championship and I think Pees has been a victim of it as well. As good as this defense is or could be, the days of holding offenses to an average of 12 points and less then 150 yards per game are over. The NFL just won't allow it anymore. The Ravens still take the approach the that defense only needs a 10 point lead to win games. Because of that I think Pees actually is given permission to go into those prevent defenses mid way through the 3rd quarter in some cases. But all of this is in the regular season, because just like with the offense, the Defense plays so much different in the playoffs. If you look at the playoffs or even games against teams like the Steelers, the defense comes out aggressive and stays that way in fear of the comeback. However in the regular season, it seems like from the opening drive the Ravens are looking to get up by 10 and "let the defense and strong run game close it". So Pees goes into a "just don't let the deep ball beat you" mode and in most cases it allows the other team to stay in the game because the offense starts to stall out. If the game plan becomes to put your foot on the opponents throat and don't let up until they tap out, I think we'd see Pees stay aggressive much longer in games. Pees has seemed to have his hands tied since becoming the DC. One year (2012) you have a depleted front 7, losing arguably your top 3 defensive players in Suggs, Lewis and Webb. Then seeing Reed, Ngata and Smith held back by injuries. In 2013 the entire team was snake bitten by injuries and you had to deal with the whole "Life without Ray Lewis" thing and last season, injuries ripped through the secondary forcing Pees to try and run those complex coverage schemes with a revolving cast. I'm very interested to seeing what Pees can do with a full deck.

I think it's between he and Vaughn for a roster spot. If i'm not mistaken, Vaughn also has return experience. We also have to remember that Asa Jackson can be placed on PS if he's not performing up to par.

I've been calling for the offense to be more aggressive for years. I think January Joe will start being consistent Joe. I listen to Joe talk all the time and what he says never changes. I want to be the reason we win or lose. Put the game in my hands and allow me to give a strong reason why we either won or lost when the media asks. However the coaches or should i say the organization has been reluctant to fully do that. I think Marc is the guy who puts the offense in Joe's hands and finally move this offense into modern NFL football. Kubes started it. People talk about the rough and tough AFCN, but if you look at the Steelers and Bengals they have high powered offenses, their FOs just haven't been able to draft well enough to keep their defenses up as well. If you look at the Ravens, they are greatly positioned to do exactly what the other teams in the North have tried to do. A dominant oline and front 7, young explosive talent at the skill positions on offense. A shutdowns CB with solid play around him, two play making safeties in Hill and Lewis. Then you have possibly the best kicking duo in the NFL. This team is freaking loaded with potential and i know potential doesn't win games but if it all comes together, watch out. It's time the Ravens start consistently attacking teams from the opening whistle like we do in the playoffs. I don't wanna hear the AFCN referred to as that ground and pound division because it's not any more. It's still a rough and tough division, but the offenses are now good enough to go point for point with any of team. The Ravens are in position to lead the pack, we need to take full advantage.

Yea there is no excuse for the Ravens not to be one of the better scoring teams in the redzone. Even if people know the fade is coming Trestman will still throw it and we know Joe isn't afraid to give his guys a shot. I actually think Trestman and Flacco are a perfect fit. I think the only thing left for Joe to do is tie the mental aspect of the game to his talent. Now don't get me wrong Joe is a sharp guy, but i honestly think some times he gets bored with the QB position. Or moreso lazy in his fundamentals. It seems like times when we takes the just be good enough apporoach, which is usually good enough to win but sometimes leads to 4 int games. I know many will say that isn't the mental side of the game that's more physical, but i think it starts with the mental. I think Trestman will have Joe seeing the field much clearer and thus allowing Joe to attempt certain passes that other QBs marvel at. Joe is already a good decision maker saver a clucker or two each year, but i think Marc will help Flacco improve even more.

That's not far out there, in fact it's right on point because that's exactly what Trestman's offense does. The 2-4 yard pass to the RB is designed to help the offense stay on track and give the QB a few safe throws to get back on track. People in fear of Trestman abandoning the run shouldn't be. The numbers might say he abandoned the run but it's not true. He runs his offense through the QB. So a play action pass to the RB or HB for 4yds is just as productive if not moreso in his offense as a run play that produced 4 yards. The problem is if you throw that quick pass to the RB and pick up those short yards but your QB doesn't make good reads on 2nd and 3rd forcing a punt, fans will just look at it as 3 straight passes that resulted in a unsuccessful drive. If things go the way i think, expect to see Joe have a huge season. Career highs in completion%, TDs and Passer Rating.

Right now anyone who the Ravens will rely on at any point in the offense will be running with the first team right now. Not to take anything away from Perriman or Maxx because i love what I'm hearing as well. We are at the point where Trestman wants to see what he's got. So Sr, Brown, Aiken and Perriman will all run with the first team at some point. Maxx, Gilmore and Boyle will all get first team reps at some point. Forsett ,LT and Buck will all get first team reps simply because you wanna see what you have with the best possible guys playing together. Hard to ask a guy like Buck to show what he can bring to the offense if he's only playing behind a 3rd string unit. The the thing i love about the way Harbs run practices he gives as many guys first team reps as possible so they can truly compete. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Waller, Butler, Carter and Worthy getting 1st team reps at some point.

I think Maxx has ROY potential but it'll all come down to how quickly he develops. We hear so much about how a young guy has such a high ceiling but unfortunately most 20 year old guys just don't pan out in the NFL because their bodies aren't developed enough. I know Maxx is 21 but it remains the same. He's still learning the TE position on top of learning what Flacco and the offense expects from him. I think the best case scenario for Maxx will be to have Pitta and Gilmore as the top guys while he's able to just ease his way in. Much like both Heap and Pitta were able to do their first years.

Ok guys, funs over. Lets get back to talking about Perriman in this thread. Any post about anything other then Perriman will be hidden, so there's no need to post it.

I don't think anyone doubts that, even Schuab which is probably why he came to a stable team with a chance to win a ring instead of a young team with a ? at QB and he could possibly start. I think his best hope is that he proves to the Ravens that he can be a quality backup and hope he can get a solid 3yr deal. That'll put him at 37 and allow him to close out his career in a great place and help mentor what young QBs the Ravens have. Might have a coaching future, which Harbs kind of encourages with older players.

We gotta also remember be it good or bad reports, these reporters are only reporting on what they see in 1 practice per session. So that's like a total of 3 practices so far. It's easy to say oh it's the same ol Schuab, because that's what reports see. However we don't know what coaches see. Schuab isn't Flacco and wasn't close to the caliber of QB Flacco is even when Schuab made the pro bowl. I say that because Flacco has a natural trust with his WRs. He seems to have the mindset of I'll trust you until you prove that i shouldn't trust you. That's rare for most QBs, which is why most QBs want to host passing camps before OTA and such. Most QBs only develop that trust or faith in their WRs once they've made a few plays for them. So i say that because, when we hear how Flacco looks sharp, but in the same practice you can tell Schuab is a backup, we have to remember that Flacco is great at tight window throws and actually throwing his targets open with the anticipation and trust that they'll be were they're supposed to be. That's never been Schuab's game. He's always been a guy who worked best being protected by a strong run game and Kubes moving defenses with play action. This is the part of the offseason where a new coach is basically seeing how each player can handle his offense before tailoring the offense around that player. So if Trestman is just throwing everything at his players right now, he's basically seeing what Schuab does well and what isn't his strengths. That 5 week period before TC starts is when the coaches will start to develop game plans on how each player fits into the offense. Right now Schuab and Flacco are being given the same plays to run to see what they do well. I'm willing to bet that in TC and the preseason, Matt Schuab will be given more of a scaled down offense to run, simply because you can't expect him to do what Flacco does. I'm not worried yet.

Yea i hold off on NFL comparisons because i didn't know much about him in college and even now it's not real football as we say, but I'm really excited about the prospects of this guy being a complete WR. With his speed DBs will most likely respect him with off coverage, especially if he uses his strength to beat press. That means that 7-12 yard area is basically there for the taking every time for he and Flacco. One of my biggest concerns with Torrey was that Flacco just couldn't trust him enough on those routes. If Perriman becomes a threat at every level we could have the combination of the physicality of Boldin, the speed of Torrey and the overall reliability of Mason. Hopefully he adopts that take no prisoners approach of Smitty. Now obviously those are some HUGE shoes for that young man to fill, so I'm either foolish or just extremely excited for the new season, but if Perriman can even come close to filling those shoes, he and Flacco will create magic together.

I'm hearing the biggest difference between Perriman and Torrey is that Perriman is showing to be a much better possession WR and has stronger hands. As a person who didn't see much of Perriman in college this goes against everything i was led to believe about him. In terms of SR, I'm hearing the plan for him is to have him work more out of the slot this year which is sick for defenses. I've said plenty of times how just basing everything about Trestman on what happened in Chicago was a mistake on my end, but i definitely think Perriman will be used as close to Alshon Jeffery as possible.

Agree 100%

I say stop all the positive reports on Trestman and hype up one of our young coaches. lol I say that only because I don't won't another one and done situation. One of the reasons I really supported the Trestman selection was because I thought his HC opportunities would be dried up and he'd be a long term solution for us. However, people love to pick over Ravens coaches so we'll see. I've been saying for years, put Flacco in a offense that can grow around him for at least 3 years and watch him dominate the NFL. Well now, you have two young impressive RBs in LT and Buck, 3 young TEs in Maxx, Crocket and Boyle, some good young talent on the oline and a host of young WRs who seem to love playing "for" Flacco. The most important thing is the offensive system. I would hope Trestman can stay around for a while and build that same relationship with Flacco that Moore had with Peyton or that Belicheck has with Brady. Baltimore talks about it often, but I don't think the NFL has taken notice to how much change Flacco has had to deal with in his career and how much continuity means to the QB position.

Yea. And when I say Cam's offense, i have to be clear that even with Cam he was kind of pigeon holed as well, because we've always had that philosophy here of, this is what we did to win a championship, don't fix what isn't broken. So we've always had the run first, establish the run game no matter what, you better make sure your RB gets x amount of touches per game, even though starting in 2010 you have a bonafide franchise QB who could carry this or any offense imo. There were times that Cam wanted to just open up the offense and run it through Flacco but was met with resistance, mainly by big brother(the defense) when things didn't workout in one game. That's why i personally felt that Flacco outgrew Cam's offense in 2010, because Cam didn't know how to do what he wanted, while appeasing the 'Raven Way" I personally think the best thing that every happened to this offense was firing Cam and seeing in the AFC Championship that is wasn't just about firing Cam, but the offense just had to have a different philosophy. As Harbs all but admitted in the sideline audio of America's Game, there was no way we win the game without opening up the offense and putting the ball into Flacco's hands. The next season Caldwell tried to unleash January Joe in the regular season but injuries derailed everything. I thought Kubes just brought everything together and allowed the offense to be more consistent, even though we had some walking dead moments. Overall I think the whole, we gotta be a run first team has hampered the offense for years imo. Despite the fact that once we get to the playoffs, we have more of a balanced offense, but it's runs through Flacco getting into his grove first and then the rest of the offense falling in line. I'm not saying Cam was great, even though he was credited as the best OC in the NFL at the time we hired him, but I think the overall philosophy of the organization held him back from doing all he wanted to do with the offense imo.

I don't think it's so much of Kubes stuff, as it is the general style of the offense, which is WCO. Trestman is gonna implement, his offense and do things his way, but the Harbs wants the foundation to remain the same. It's similar to the defense over the year. After Marvin Lewis left the Ravens switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4 under Mike Nolan. Even though Nolan was a primary 3-4 guy, the defense still kept a lot of the same principles installed by Lewis. Thus the hybrid type defense was born and it didn't matter if Rex, Chuck, Mattison or Pees ran the defense it stayed the same but each coach was able to run it there way. I believe Ozzie and Harbs wants the same from the offense. They tried it with Cam Cameron's offense but it just wasn't a relate-able offense to today's NFL imo or maybe we just didn't have the right pieces, but it didn't work for us. However bring in Kubes allow us to highlight everything we wanted to do offensively. Flacco became a 1st round pick because of his success in a spread WCO type offense at Delaware, we had been trying to run the ZBS as our primary running style, and every WR we drafted was more of a catch and run type guy, who plays better in space, rather then the polished route runner it seemed we always needed but never had in Cam's system. Kubes brought all that together. Now Harbs has an "offensive system" that will be the foundation of everything we wanna do going forward on offense. Regardless of who the coach will be in the future, they'll have to conform to the Ravens Offense, and implement their philosophies in it. So I definitely agree it'll be a hybrid type offense, but I don't think it'll be a situation where Harbs would say hey, Marc this is the way Kubes did this and you have to do it the same way. Like Trestman said, it's about identifying what the offense did so well last year, and finding ways to build upon it and taking the offense to the next level.

Oh i'm not giving Schuab any type of pass. It's not a new offense but it is new terminology and new concepts. Imo you can't say, oh the offense is basicially the same, but then turn around and say, "Trestman is throwing as much of his offense at us as possible right now" that's what Flacco said. So while i'm sure the principles of the offense is the same, there are still new things to be learned, and for a guy playing around all new teammates, it's expected to see some struggles imo. Also remember all the reports on how the DLine has been destroying the backup oline in OTAs, so now we're talking about Schuab having a comfort level. So i think we'll have a better understanding of Schuab during the preseason. I honestly don't think we can expect much from him anyway. I think he'll be good enough to help develop those young WRs that won't get to catch passes from Flacco, but as far as game play, if you have to count on Schaub for more then 2-3 games, I think we're in trouble.

I think it speaks more to how good Flacco is then how bad Schaub is. I think you should expect a QB in a new offense to have some struggles, especially against a defense that basically knows what they wanna do. We hear how good and sharp Flacco looks, even last year this time, despite being in a new offense, but i don't think that's common. Now i'll agree that it doesn't sound good in regards to Schuab, especially because of his reputation, but I'll hold off until the preseason on my judgment of him.

I'm very interested in watching Melvin this year. It's amazing how much better guys are when they able to play with confidence. Melvin now knows he can play in the NFL at a high level and he also knows he'll get opportunities with this defense. He has that natural confidence that he plays with. I remember being at the Jags game and Melvin entered the game, then proceeded to make 4 straight plays. Every in my section was like who's that guy. He'll definitely be one of those little-known guys to come from the Ravens defense to make a name for himself.

Not true. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Arrington and Vaughn guys who came from other teams with starting experience? Did Will Hill not start every game he played last year and was rated the 2nd best FS in the NFL during 2013? Isn't Lewis projected to be our starting FS this year? Regardless of your opinion of how he played, Melvin saw an considerable amount of game action last year. My point is 2 things.1. Jimmy and Webb are the only starters out right now but the WRs are still competing against NFL caliber DBs. Every team won't have a Jimmy Smith on it. Also when Jimmy Smith did practice in the first OTA, there were reports that Aiken had a couple nice grabs against him. 2. If this part of the offseason was pointless, coaches wouldn't put so much emphasis on it. Right now Flacco and the WRs are developing timing with each other, it's not just about who they are competing against. Right now Flacco is starting to build trust in his WRs in "this" offense. Judging by the way you are viewing things the entire TC will mean nothing because the offense will never game plan to beat the defense and they certainly won't show the Eagles anything. If you're talking about a WR competition, all 10 young guys won't be lining against Jimmy or the best CBs during this time.

I know there is no Jimmy and no Webb, bit for the WRs to look strong right now is encouraging to me. I have my questions about each guy, but right now it seems that they have really been pros in terms of not resting on the little success they had last year. Meaning Brown and Aiken. In terms of Butler i love how he's not conceding his opportunities. Last year i though his camp was better then both Brown and Aiken but the injury shut him down. I remember hin putting in a show at the M&T Bank practice. This year he's come back and sounds like he's even stronger. I think many hace written him off, myself included but i think he has a real shot. I would hate to be the one to have the final decision on who stays and who goes. Should all the guys play well.

Yea i love the youth of this team overall and not just youth but very talented youth. I can careless if Flacco is viewed as a elite guy or whatever, he's good enough to win Super Bowls and i thought that was the point. Now the FO is focusing on getting him great protection and great weapons. I can see this team start to consistently play like they play in the playoffs and if that happens not many can beat the Ravens. Then as you say the defense is young and talented as well. If the offense can consistently start fast in games, this youth, fast defense will wreck havoc. If you can have Suggs, Doom, Timmy and Upshaw/ZDS focused on just hunting while Buck and CJ can mix and match coverage with blitzing, i think Pees will be able to come up with some serious schemes with the secondary. I really want Elam around the LOS blitzing like Webb and Ed did years back. I think he'll be at his best in that role. But if given a lead this defense will kill.

I would pay to sit in on Ozzie and Eric Decosta having their per draft meeting. I mean pay like if i was offered seasons tickets or the opportunity to sit in that meeting i would lean heavily towards choosing to sit in on that meeting.Oh and if our options are open to more then just players and coaches then my answer is Mr. B. He's the coolest owner in sports imo and his honesty with the fans is both refreshing and appreciated. Not a huge Terps fan, being a FSU fan, but i'd definitely take in a Terps hoops game with him.

That's a great point but i disagree. It's not the division we play in that spots us from winning that extra game or 2 to be a #1 or #2 seed. I think it's more of a deep rooted philosophical issue. I personally feel that as long as the Ravens take the great defense and the offense just has to be good enough mentality, we'll loss bad games. No way we should have lost to the Texans last year or the Bills a couple years ago and others. Now some could say that because this division beats each other up so much that we lay eggs in outta division games. But i think it's more about having a offense that is consistent imo. Those games that the offense just comes out dead kills us imo. I agree with what you say about the division being tough but i think the offense being a consistent threat will allow us to finally have the AFC run through the Bank.

I think it's an interesting topic. Mines would be Harbs. As an entrepreneur building a business that's responsible for leading a multitude of people, I'd love to sit and talk to him about his ability to lead as the head man but also trust his people he surrounds himself with enough to delegate responsibilities and trust that those guys will get the job done without micromanaging. Also as a business owner i know and understand the need to recruit new and hungry people into your organization, but how does he go about the process of selecting the right type of players, knowing that all talented players aren't necessarily good players. Most importantly, without bring much religion into the Flock, Harbs seems to believe in God, Family Business/Profession. That's something that's very important to me and I'd love to converse with him to see how he balances that, especially as a HC that spends tons of time away from his family. Overall i just think Harbs is a great guy and he adds value to anything he chooses to be apart of from what i can tell. He has a great servanthood mentality but is definitely passionate enough about what he cares and believes to fight. I think it would be a cool experience.