callahan09

Well by my count, he ran in 1 TD and threw a great pass that should have been caught for a TD (but was dropped by Wallace). INTs, well, one of them he threw the ball in 2.3 seconds from the snap (quick release) but Wagner failed on his block and the defender hit his arm as he threw (and he couldn't step up into the pocket because Zuttah got pushed back into him). The other one was a miscommunication on the route with Pitta. There were a couple other dropped passes in the first half as well, and the yards per attempt is low for the same reason the running game is failing, because our playmakers aren't getting the blocking they need, and they don't seem to have either speed, evasiveness, or vision, to make a play once the ball is in their hands. Flacco played a fine game, the offense overall was really, really sloppy. The big problem is the O line. They are committing way too many drive-killing mistakes (penalties and bad blocking).

I'd rather be aggressive and turn the ball over deep in our own territory occasionally, but put up 25 points, then to be conservative and put up 13 points. Deep in your own territory turnovers aren't always that bad of a thing, actually. They can be the equivalent of a punt or turnover on downs going for it on 4th down in your own territory. The kind of plays where you are going for the throat, and instead of succeeding all the time, at least you're often only giving the opponent bad field position. I'd rather be aggressive and move the ball 50 years, then turn it over deep in our own territory, than to be conservative and go three-and-out and punt. And more often than that aggressiveness results in a turnover, hopefully it results in points instead! I'm all for that kind of playcalling. It really did pay off yesterday. We moved the ball a lot and made up 25 points unanswered. I'm happy with how the offense performed in the 2nd quarter through to the end, even though there was a second turnover in there. It was a GREAT team performance all-around after the 1st quarter came to a close.

It was an ugly start, but from the beginning of the 2nd quarter to the end of the game Flacco had a 93 QB Rating, and we got the job done on both offense and pitched a shutout on defense. GREAT JOB coming back from an ugly first quarter, one of the ugliest in the history of this team, and playing great and getting a divisional road win.

The Ravens won! I'm happy with that. The defense was lights out after the first quarter. The offense was humming pretty good after that as well. Gutty effort to come from down 20-0 and end up going on a 25-0 run to win the game.

I have always been a McNabb fan, and I think he had a fantastic and very underappreciated career. If he'd won a Super Bowl, I think he'd be a first-round HOFer. Without it, I feel like he won't get in for a while (if ever) and that's a shame. I'd vote for him! And Tomlinson, this year too.

Does he have to take up a roster spot during those 2 years? Also, I thought it was 5 years obligation, but that some players in the past have been given exceptions to serve only 2, such as David Robinson, but that even that isn't a guarantee, it is considered a special exception that he may not necessarily be given?

First, Keenan Reynolds has the potential to be a lot more than a kick returner. Second, he might be able to play this year, nobody knows yet, it's not unprecedented though. And finally, and most importantly, there's a huge difference between a 1st or 2nd round pick and a 6th round pick!

This guy is good in all the ways that Torrey Smith was lacking. He doesn't have ridiculous speed, but what he brings to the table is an innate ability to track the ball in the air, find it, and make a play on it. He will fight for it. And he runs great routes and has good hands. I think his measureables hurt his draft stock, but he has the potential to be a great player with his skill and attitude towards the game.

What happens if he can't play? Is he sill under the Ravens' control when he returns from active duty, even if it's in, say, 5 years?

Hiring Frazier to the staff is a HUGE get! I think he will be Dean Pees' successor.

Can't believe people are still angry at anyone for the team's supposedly lackadaisical approach to that one "2 minute drill" drive where we had the one play where we got to the line of scrimmage slowly and it looked like people were "sauntering" up to the LOS. It's a farce, it's not reality. It's all based on a knee-jerk reaction that the announcer had live, in real-time, based on a lack of information because he didn't NOTICE that Marshall Yanda had been held up back at the line of scrimmage of the previous play and was SPRINTING to get to the LOS for the next play. The rest of the guys were waiting on him. Can't snap the ball while one of the linemen is still sprinting up the field to get to the LOS. The other guys didn't look like they had urgency, because there was nothing to be urgent about while they waited for their teammate to get there as fast as he could.

Here's a metric I just sort of made up on the spot... Since there are a lot of facets to defensive points than just how many actual points were given up, I wanted to take a look at some of those other factors. Basically, we've got defenses that score points themselves on fumble/interception return TDs, so if a defense gives up 7 points, but scores an INT return TD, it's a wash, the net scoring impact from the defense in that game is essentially the same as allowing 0 points, looking at this from a simplistic perspective. And likewise when opponents score on special teams returns or defensively themselves, it shouldn't count against the defense for "allowing" points that they really didn't allow because they weren't even on the field. As far as FGs, I think we should only count them against the defense when the drive the FG was kicked after had begun on the opponent's own side of the field. That way the defense is sure to have allowed the opponent to drive a decent amount of territory to get into FG range. I picked mid-field as a simple, relatively logical (to my mind at least) neutral point to use so if the opponent started on their own side of the field and crossed midfield, got into FG range, and kicked it, we can hold the defense accountable for allowing that, but if they started on the other side of the 50 yard line, the defense isn't quite as accountable for allowing them to drive potentially not even as far as to earn a first down before being in FG range in some stadiums for some kickers. Anyway, onto the numbers then (it's simpler than I probably made it sound with the above paragraph, haha): First of all, for TDs, I'm using an average number of points scored equal to the actual average number of points that were earned on TDs across the NFL this season: There were 1318 TDs, with 45 successful 2PT Conversions + 1318 PAT Kicks Made = 9144 Points off TDs = 6.9377845220030349013657056145675 Points Scored Per TD. OK. So, in 2015 all NFL defenses combined to allow 667 FG Drives 365 Rush TD + 842 Pass TD, but also shrank point differentials with 33 Fumble Return TD, 53 INT Return TD, and 16 Safeties. That comes out to about 9746 Points allowed by defenses in the NFL. Therefore an average NFL defense in 2015 allowed about 305 points by this metric. The Ravens defense had the following allowed: 24 FG Drives + 10 Rush TD + 30 Pass TD - 1 Fumble Return TD - 4 INT Return TD - 0 Safeties = 315 Points Allowed Defensively. So we net allowed about 10 points more defensively than an NFL average defense in 2015. That's a below average defense. I did this math manually using numbers from PFREF.com. I'd have to export the stats to a CSV and write a script to parse and calculate them if I wanted to generate an actual rankings list of all 32 teams, which I don't have time to do now, but hopefully I'll get around to that if you all want to see it.

I really like that Superman tattoo on SSR's arm. It really stands out. It's pretty cool. Most guys who are all tatted up just look like they're full of a jumble of ink and I can't make out what any of their tattoos are unless I really look carefully and try to figure it out, and even then sometimes I can't figure it out. But that one is really clear, which is pretty cool. Sorry for the sidetrack. Excited to see him in purple for a third year!

If the Colts try to nab Monachino, I say we need to fire Pees and promote him here. No way should we let Monachino go to a different team while Pees stays in his position and his potential successor is now gone. That would be a travesty in my opinion.

Thanks for the analysis! Greatly appreciate seeing your report here.

Wouldn't surprise me. I am 31 years old and never had an injury in my life despite playing various sports and being a pretty active person and taking some risks climbing & jumping around, on/off, and between things. I'd always considered myself pretty good genetically and not prone to injury. Unfortunately about 3 weeks ago I tried upping the weight on my lifting routine and went a little above my head and tore an abdominal muscle as well as a pectoral. The pain was excruciating for about a week, but it's 3 weeks later and I'm at about 90% on the ab and probably 60% on the pec, and feeling pretty good in general. I should be back to where I was a month ago within another week or two I'm hoping. My grandfather broke multiple ribs and punctured a lung in an accident when he was nearly 80 years old and healed good as new! Flacco is on another level in terms of his physical gifts from me or anyone in my family, he's a big dude and has stayed healthy and healed pretty damn quickly from other more minor knee and hip injuries in the past, so I think he's got the genes to make a quick and strong comeback from this.

If you include defensive penalty yards allowed for every team, we drop from 10th to 18th in defense, because we are the 3rd most penalized defense in terms of yardage. So the penalties that we've given up go a long way to explaining why our "official yardage" allowed appears to be that of a pretty good defense but our eyeballs and experience all year have showed us something very different. Also, during the 10 games we had Flacco at QB, we ranked 18th officially, while we've ranked 7th officially since then in terms of yards. If we'd been a top 10 defense when we had Flacco in there we probably would have had a winning record before Joe went down.

Flacco could have been a Pro Bowler twice as a reserve, but elected not to go. One of those went to Matt Cassel and the other to Andy Dalton. Reserves don't get credit for being Pro Bowlers unless they actually go to Hawaii for the game.

Aiken is playing really well right now. Unfortunately it's been a slow build for him. On the most positive of notes, he has improved every week out there. But he wasn't playing this good for the first half of the season. When he was our #1 receiver (and he actually has been all year long in snap count, and was at worst our #2 receiver in read progression, even before Steve Smith went on IR) for the first half of the season he wasn't cutting it, but since Steve went down, he has been stepping up his game every week and it's a damn good thing, but this team and Flacco might have enjoyed some more success when we still had a chance to have a good season earlier in the year if Aiken had been this good back then. Hopefully now that he's learning to be the best player he can be, it continues into next season. I'd love to see Flacco with THIS Aiken, rather than the very pedestrian one that probably wouldn't have been on most team's roster at all from the first half of the season.

So is there actually any news on whether he's done for the year or not? I can't seem to find anything definitive.

Joe working out with the team trainers at the facility both the day before and the day after his surgery? That's pretty awesome, wouldn't have expected any player to do that.

Sam Koch was snubbed really bad. He is the best punter in the NFL.

Well he's not a great route runner and he's not fast, so all he offers is toughness and out-muscling the defender. He's just going to have to get in better shape and absorb those hits better so he doesn't injured, otherwise he might as well just be a blocking TE. I dunno. Gronk (everybody here seems to get upset when Gronk's name comes up in the same conversation as Gillmore, but I have a good reason here) also gets injured a lot, but he plays through it, he recovers quickly, and he makes it worth the while because of what he can do when he is out there playing. Hopefully Gillmore can get somewhere in the same universe as that kind of player, we'll see!

Oh cool, this gives me a reason to watch tonight and root hard for the Dolphins! I was going to root for them anyway because I want them to draft after us. but I'd really like the Ravens in primetime one more time this year.

Summed it up perfectly!