callahan09

OK, not that ESPN's made-up QBR stat needs anymore evidence to tear it down and prove it useless, but how in the ever-loving hell did they give Aaron Rodgers and Joe Flacco the exact same score this week? Joe led 7 total scoring drives including 5 (or was it 6?) different drives to take the lead or tie the game because our defense kept giving up scoring drives to the opponent, and did it in the 4th quarter to win the game despite losing his top receiver and his center (dealing with awful snaps) and having the worst rated offensive linemen in the NFL protecting his blind side... I understand that there is a big difference between the Chargers defense and the Denver defense... but there is also a big difference between succeeding all game long, leading drive after drive to take the lead back multiple times, and winning the game VS doing absolutely NOTHING for an entire game (including garbage time) and getting blown out by 3+ scores. Their ratings just don't make any sense.

The opponents the Ravens have faced over this 5 game stretch without a takeaway, they've had a combined 59 drives and 0 turnovers. Outside of their games against us, they have a combined 54 turnovers on 397 drives, which is a 13.6% rate of turnovers per drive. The NFL average is 12.1%, so we've faced competition that turns the ball over more frequently than an average team against all their other opponents, but have had NO turnovers against us. Basically, we really REALLY stink at generating turnovers!

Exactly right.

The Ravens just finished their 5th straight game without a takeaway, only the 5th time in NFL history that this has happened, tying the NFL record. If they don't get a takeaway vs the Jags then it will be the first time in NFL history that a team goes 6 straight without one.

Joe does lead the NFL in pass completions where the receiver gets tackled within 1 yard of the end zone, taking a TD off his stat sheet. Following none of those 5 passes did he wind up getting a passing touchdown to help out that stat sheet, they were all run in on subsequent plays. He has also had another 5 or so (off the top of my head) dropped passes that would have been touchdowns, and once again, none of the ones I'm thinking of actually resulted in a touchdown for him on a subsequent play on the drive. That's a whole lot of "game of inches" unfavorable fortunes that have been the difference between his stat sheet having up to around 20 passing touchdowns on it instead of the 10 he's got. Our playmakers need to do a better job of getting that last foot, or getting those feet in bounds, or catching the ball that hits them in the hands in the end zone. Nobody else in the NFL has thrown as many potential TD passes that weren't completed for TDs as Flacco. In general, I tend to think the stats aren't a good way to talk about how a QB is performing. I prefer to look at how the offense in general is doing on a per drive basis, on third down, in the red zone. If they're doing well or struggling in any of those areas, that's where you know where you're good and where you need to improve as a team. But looking at how many passing touchdowns a quarterback has isn't very telling of anything, to be honest. There are too many variables involved.

"46 receptions for 670 yards and three touchdowns" And that's with missing nearly half a game twice, and a full game. So he's basically only played 6 games. That's just incredible. Not seeing him play anymore is very sad, he was a joy to watch.

I honestly think this offense is designed for the first read to be the most chance for success, when the first read isn't open, the play falls apart. So whoever is our first read is going to get a lot of yards in this offense.

I think it was his achilles. Either way, he is confirmed done for the season. heartbreaking

Offense was nice today. Excluding the kneel-down to end the half, we had 9 drives today, with the following results: 40.7 yards per drive 7.1 plays per drive 2.6 first downs per drive 3 minutes 18 seconds per drive off the clock 78% of drives resulted in a score!!! NO 3 and Outs! NO Turnovers! 3.2 points scored per drive Every single one of those stats would rank #1 in the NFL if it were our season average, so there is essentially nothing to complain about today. If we did that every game, we'd be the best offense in the league. The only thing I really want to see us get better at is the red-zone TD percentage, where 50% is just not good enough.

To be fair, we lost a few important guys today as well! Zuttah and Senior, two of our most important players I might add.

Might have got you confused with someone else today who has a similar name, apologies.

Do you ever say anything besides criticsm of Joe? His top receiver goes down, and you know as well as we all do that we don't have any WR besides SSR who would even be a started on any other team in the NFL, and you're going to harp about one throw when he's had a great game and he's working with garbage out there?

SSR is such an animal, I love watching him play. If his career is over (potential torn achilles), it's a sad, sad day for the NFL

Yeah, this is really making me frustrated. Hurst is the worst offensive linemen in the entire NFL according to PFF (not that I believe them religiously or anything, but in this case, it isn't hard to see why they grade him so badly). He is awful. We need to stop letting that turnstile be the difference of a successful play and a failed one. Mitigate the impact that he has on the chances for a play to work. PLEASE.

Unbelievable catch, to go along with atrocious and soft defense with no discipline and poor tackling technique. This defense is a disgrace. We have had the ball 3 times and scored all 3 times, but we're losing at home. That shouldn't happen.

Great play design to get the ball to Crockett Gillmore for the TD. Where has that been in this offense!?

A 5'9" receiver who is 36 year old and dealing with injuries to his back & knee. And that second year tight end is raw as hell as a receiver. He's proving his case in the receiving game through sheer toughness and tenacity, but he was never a receiving threat coming out of the draft, he is very raw as a route runner. So yeah, we're EXTREMELY limited in the red zone threats department.

Flacco absolutely DOES recognize the blitz. But his passing numbers against the blitz are bad because we don't have good weapons for beating the blitz. There are two pieces to the puzzle, the guy throwing the ball and the guy catching it. Joe isn't the league's best at quick release short field accurate passing, but he's not bad at it, the bigger issue is that he doesn't have great receivers to get the ball to. Outside of one injured 36-year old (and even he is not good with some of these things right now), our receivers aren't good at hot reads, they aren't good route runners, they aren't fast, they aren't physical, they don't have good hands, and they lack focus. Marlon Brown looks lost out there, he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. Aiken isn't much better, he doesn't have a focus issue but he isn't fast, doesn't run routes well, and has bad hands. Crockett is physical, but he isn't a good route runner, isn't fast, and doesn't always have the best awareness. It's really difficult to beat a blitz when you don't have all your pieces working in sync and making plays when they need to be made, and running the routes so they've got some separation and they wind up where they're EXPECTED to be, and playing the ball and going and getting it, and completing difficult catches. Those things are the hallmark of a good blitz-beating playmaker, and we don't have them, and without them, we are failing to beat the blitz, which is totally unsurprising. But Flacco is trying! He saw the blitz, he knows it's there, he knows what needs to be done to beat it... but it's not always that easy because you're not the only guy on the field, you rely on 10 other players to be in sync with you. What we really need is not a QB, but a serious investment in playmakers.

We don't have the weapons to make teams pay for blitzing. It's that simple. Need receivers who will get open quickly, run the right route EVERY TIME, including hot reads, has good hands and makes plays after the catch. If you can't do those things, then you're going to be a liability rather than an asset and mistakes will be made when the QB tries to get the ball to you. The fact is, other than SSR, we just don't have the horses to make those teams pay for blitzing. And one injured 36 year old isn't enough, because he's too easy to shut down underneath and at the front end of routes. He's effective when we get Joe 3+ seconds to throw to him, and we don't really have anybody right now who is effective inside of that, which what we need to make teams pay for blitzing.

I don't think Flacco could have thrown a "dart" because of the unblocked pass rusher. Had he thrown the dart at the time he threw his lofted pass, Gillmore wouldn't have been able to turn around and find the ball by the time it got to him. Had Flacco waited another second to when it would have been the right time to throw that dart, he would have already been sacked (and the game over). It was a single-cover by the safety with a HUGE size mismatch in favor of Gillmore, the throw was the right decision, and at this point we're just nitpicking. The real problem seems to be that for some reason after Gillmore turned around to look for the ball he didn't know where it was. You can see him looking at Joe, and he has no clue that the ball is already in the air (pretty high up in the air, so I guess he'd have to be looking upwards to see it). By the time he spots the ball in the air he has already ran too far to the left side of the field rather than up the field and towards the ball's trajectory. Just a missed opportunity, he didn't see the ball and therefore got off track for where he should have gone to go get it. The push in his back certainly didn't help.

Here's where we stand on defensive rankings through 7 weeks of football: POINTS PER GAME: 26th (26.9) YARDS PER GAME: 25th (385.4) YARDS PER RUSH ATTEMPT: 9th (3.9) RUSHING YARDS PER GAME: 10th (102.4) PASSING YARDS PER GAME: 28th (283.0) QB RATING: 29th (104.1) THIRD DOWN %: 32nd (47.1%) DRIVES AGAINST - SCORING %: 29th (44.0%) DRIVES AGAINST - TAKEAWAY %: 31st (4.8%) DRIVES AGAINST - SCORING/TAKEAWAY RATIO: 32nd (9.2 : 1) Last night, we allowed the following (and where that would rank in the NFL if it was our season average) POINTS: 26 (23rd) YARDS: 414 (32nd) YARDS PER RUSH ATTEMPT: 5.4 (32nd) RUSHING YARDS: 150 (31st) PASSING YARDS: 275 (26th) QB RATING: 122.1 (32nd) THIRD DOWN %: 41.7% (25th) DRIVES AGAINST - SCORING %: 45.5% (5 out of 11 scoring drives) (32nd) DRIVES AGAINST - TAKEAWAY %: 0% (0 takeaways) (32nd) DRIVES AGAINST - SCORING/TAKEAWAY RATIO: 5 : 0 (5 scoring drives, 0 takeaways) (32nd) I'm not seeing a single number from this game that is reflective of a good defensive performance. Almost every category is near the bottom, or the absolutely bottom, of the league if it were how we performed every single game. This performance is only slightly better than our season averages in a couple of categories, and worse in a lot of them.

I think the biggest issue with this offense last night was Monroe and Aiken. Aiken led the team in snaps at WR and couldn't get open worth a damn, he was a total waste of space on the field. He also did a horrible job picking up blocks and didn't pick up hot reads, either. He is just a bad receiver, that he is our #1 receiver in snaps this year is absolutely pathetic. And Monroe was ATROCIOUS. He couldn't block to save his life. How often was Flacco running for his life or getting sacked because Monroe was just a turnstile (if he was even that effective at slowing down the pass rusher)? There were plays where Monroe might as well not even have been on the field. In fact, Flacco's blind side was protected better on the final drive of the game when Monroe was out due to injury. When your blind side tackle is playing that bad and your #1 receiver in snaps is that useless, and your running game is only getting like 3 yards per carry, and your punt returner coughs up the ball costing you a drive and making you play from behind in the 2nd half, then it becomes a perfect storm of *really difficult* to get anything going on offense, so I don't personally really think Trestman is too much to blame for the stalled drives we had in the 2nd half when Monroe was useless, Aiken was useless, the run game was useless, and we were playing from behind. That's tough to overcome.

It's just a misunderstanding of what he meant by the words he used, it's not a big deal, it happens. We got it cleared up.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, my fault.

Exactly. He has NO INCENTIVE to take less money. It's not his contract's fault that we have been a middling to bad team the past 3 years. In fact, his contract is evidence that taking less money might be of no benefit to him at all. For 3 years he's had one of the most favorable non-rookie contracts in the league on a cap hit to talent scale, and yet the front office has completely mismanaged the cap, made bad signings to other players, opted to trade decent to good players for peanuts and still be bogged down by their contracts with dead money, bad luck (Rice) and bad injuries (Pitta, and this year Suggs and to some degree Monroe, and of course Perriman, among many others, previous years Jimmy Smith, Lardarius Webb), etc. So 3 years of playing on a cheap cap hit and he has nothing to show for it because the front office and our circumstances with injury and luck have meant we didn't field a good defense or surround him with a good offense. Of course, having to deal with a new offensive coordinator every year of his deal has been a pain in the butt too, I'm sure (to be fair, that isn't really the front office's fault that our coaches got poached). If he's already seen two things: A: That he can play for a low cap and still not be given a good team, and B: that other QBs can play for more money and still have a good team around them, then what incentive is there to play for less money?