reed20fence

Absolutely great news on Pitta. And it's the kind of news that's welcomed at this point honestly.

Now then, has anyone noticed that Joe's drop backs, playaction execution, and pocket presence in general has gotten considerably sloppier this year relative to last year under Kubiak? It's almost as if Kubiak prided himself on the precision with which his QBs execute every step. Every route broke in precise Bill Walsh-ian timing with the drop back of the QB. Now it seems like Joe is making a lot of sloppy back-footed throws, jump throws, and really pushing forward in the pocket as well. And we're not really doing as neat a job of shadowing run plays before breaking off in play action or setting up TE screens.

Perhaps Trestman needs to stress emphasis on some basic West Coast principles and polish off the sloppiness.

Can we do an MRI on our safeties to make sure their egos aren't bruised?

Cuz those have been some horrendous assignment failures in coverage this year.

Sadly it seems SSS is the only player on the active roster right now that plays like we played when the watchful eye of Ray, Eddie, Sizzle and Ngata were on the team. Leadership isn't just a few empty words in some pregame huddle or on the sidelines. Ravens leadership is about demanding that every member of the team play with a severe chip on their shoulder. The opponent is here to challenge your competence. They're here to challenge your manhood. They're here to debase you and make you fail in the pursuit of your livlihood. They're in the way of your glory. So play like they're in the way.

I don't think Bisciotti cares what other fans think, but it does matter to him what Rvaens Nation and its PSL holders think.

So it's up to all of us to grow up and decide... do you want a team of soft, 'clean' guys who'll ensure we have a dull offseason and stay out of the headlines? Or do we want to go back to the days where we risk a little risky business off the field, because we have guys on our squad that unleash the inner hulk n hoodlum when the whistle blows?

Lemme see if I got this right. You signed a practice squad guy off of a below average team that also has one of the bottom dwelling secondaries this year. Then not only did you activate him 4 days later, but you MADE HIM A STARTER against the first team receivers on his old team that have been burning him in practice since training camp.

But if that wasn't enough of a set up, you called press man coverage without any safety help over the top against one of the fastest receivers in the NFL?

And then you proceed to not only chew him out during the game but throw him inder the bus in the presser afterwards?

Harbs can deny that he's 'frustrated' and play senantics all he wants, but the reality is he's upset that a terrible decision to move on from Torrey was exposed

One lesson Ozzie and Decosta can take away from the last few seasons, "right player, right price" is all good in theory, but we've learned the hard way that it may be worth a little premium to retain veteran playmakers who can be relied on to stay healthy and are tough enough to play through injuries.

Sure, Torrey got 5 million more from San Fran, but the kid has also never missed a game played while being dinged up. Heck his family even powered through amd supported him playing through the painful period when he lost a sibling.

5 million over 5 years seems like a drop in the bucket now, doesn't it? Instead we get softies like Perriman, Canty and Munroe who seem to miss a game for every one played, and Webby who's been like a china doll since sigining. And why did we guarantee money to a guy coming off a devestating hip injury?

We need to start assessing physical and mental toughness when deciding who to draft and which veteran free agents to sign.

Just IR all our guys under contract that we intend on keeping. No use risking their health this season.

We knew that our depth, especially on the defensive side of the football, was abysmal. We saw this repeatedly during the preseason but brushed it off. So not for nothing, but when your depth matters the most, in the 4th quarter when starters are starting to get gassed and fatigued and you need to rely on your depth, guess what happens? Everything collapses. Talent-wise we're an extremly top-heavy team, and that top has experienced injuries to playmakers that are at the very core of our offensive and defensive schemes. Not every team is built to have a complimentary 4.25s-40 WR take tops off while SSS and the TEs do their damage underneath or we stretch with the running game. There aren't Sizzles on each team demanding double coverage and calling out plays prior to the snap to help their guys.

Our troubles aren't just remedied by "playing better." We're missing absolutely essential cogs in our machine that we won't be getting back early enough to salvage this season.

So if you take a deep breath and calmly see the big picture, it's a credit to our coaches and Joe that we're even competing late into every game and putting up 30 points. They're trying their best but at the end of the day you can only work with the cards fate has dealt you.

This is a professional football team. Professionals don't publicly lament the unfairness of their perdicaments. It's our responsibility as fans to be fair judges. When La'veon Bell went down last year and we beat those guys, it was understood that the game would have been different if he was healthy. The same with Big Ben now, or Jamaal Charles, or Tyrod Taylor or Dez Bryant or Tony Romo etc etc. When injuries are routinely used by other clubs, pundits, fans or any third party observers to explain away a team's poor performance, why should the Ravens, an organization run by human beings just like them, be held to any higher or more unreasonable a standard?

By its own fans to boot!

It's strange how last night Phil Simms, Jim Nantz, Bill Cowher, and Deion Sanders all talked about the 1-4 Saints going against the 5-0 Falcons as "still in it." It's almost as if every single week up until a team has lost all chance of going at least 8-8, the pundits like to make it seem as if the game that's about to played is the one that'll 'determine their season.' Just an interesting observation.

Knowing Harbs and how loyal he likes to be to his coaches, I think the odds are better that the little coaches meeting was more about telling everyone to stick together during the barrage of negativity that was sure to come to them after being 1-4 and power through it. He doesn't seem like the kind of professional and we don't seem like the kind of franchise that wants to be in the business of publicly berating players or coaches and acrimoniously parting ways with them. I think the most we'll ever get out of Ozzie or Harbs when a coach or player is released "it didn't work out."

Yeah, I wish he felt like goinz on. Could really use him out there right now.

Yall realize that Harbaugh has heard every single defensive playcall since 2012 that Pees has made in his headset, right? You realize he's standing there watching every day in practice when the defensive position coaches are training their guys? He views the same tape, the same mistakes, the same blown coverages that everyone else sees. Furthermore, you all realize that on critical plays where our secondary has gotten burned, it wasn't because they were 10 yards off, it was because they lost their guy in press man coverage? Oftentimes this was during blitz calls in the front seven.

I get the feeling that a lot of fans (and I love you all cuz there are few greater joys in life than seeing a fellow Ravens fan when you live thousands of miles away from home) often vent their frustration with oversimplified criticisms and do so with such anger that they convince themselves and can't possibly fathom why career football coaches that get paid to routinely put in 14 hour days watching every footstep their guys take on a play don't understand that Dean Pees is simply "soft."

This isn't Cam Cameron, who frankly had HR type issues with his attitude and had to be let go because it was getting toxic. There are too many things going on right now for it to be that simplistic.

A good thought exercise is to take any decent team in the NFL and apply all the injuries, guys playing hurt, or guys returning from significant injuries like fractures or tears similar to what we have to significant starters - and imagine how well those teams would be playing with the baggage that we're carrying.

People forget Pitta has a franchise Tightend's contract and has basically been out for 2 seasons now. That's your TE1. He's not dominating force like Gronk, but still a reliable target like say, a Witten of Heath Miller. We lost Jimmy last year to a foot fracture... something that may have caused him to lose a step. He's no Revis or Sherman, but maybe closer to a Joe Haden type. We lost Perriman. Easiest comparison since neither have played any snaps is Kevin White of Chicago. We lost Suggs. Since he is a dominating force and with him, Dumervil a dominating duo, imagine if Denver were to lose Von Miller or Demarcus Ware. Would they be as effective with one guy drawing double teams? And how much more pressure do you think their secondary would take on as a result?

You kinda see where I'm going with this? The problem is, we don't have one or two playmakers or game changers out. We've got all those guys out at the same time. In spite of that we keep losing games by 3 points here, 6 points there... which is definitely frustrating. But we have to acknowledge that these coaches are muddling through the last two seasons with one hand tied behind their back constantly.

It's not about the quantity of players on IR the last two years. Everybody suffers through injuries. It's about the substantive quality of key playmakers and puzzle pieces that are either camped on our PUP and IR lists, or are returning from IR after suffering injuries that impact their performance going forward.

Folks need to do some research and look up the precise words and sentiments that Joe and Harbs and Bisciotti used when recalling what actually happened with Cam Cameron. His ultimate and final sin was going against the gameplan the week of that Washington R-word game in 2012. The plan that the coaches devised and Harbs signed off on was to tilt more heavily towards putting the ball in Joe's hands and aiming for the intermediary and deep passing game. Come game day Cameron kept pounding the ball. If you rewatch you can see near halftime of that game that Harbs even got into Cameron's face about the clear Shanghai-ing of the playcalling. Multiple people have gone on the record to say that Cameron was really combative, hard headed and territorial when it came to his playcalling.

So what do we derive from this in the case of 'bend but don't break' spanning over multiple seasons filled with injuries? Pees isn't going rogue here. He's executing a gameplan and soft coverage strategy that Harbaugh has repeatedly blessed.

If it goes awry, which it has, Harbaugh has the luxury of pinning the weakhearted playcalling on Pees and dismissing him. Pees is just following orders here. It's not like he's gone soft in one game. It's happening repeatedly and Harbs hasn't ordered it to change because it's really his choice to play it safe in clutch situations.

This is the genius of having a non-specialist Head Coach whose job is largely big picture stuff and being the PR guy.

Pees is not the problem. Not until he starts to kidnap the playcalling and directly defies Harbaugh's gameplan. Then he'll get fired.

I think it's starting to dawn on people just how TITANIC the loss of Suggs really was. And not in some nebulous 'leadership' way that kinda gets overblown sometimes. Losing him put a huge dent in our ability to create pressure. It drew more attention to Doom and neutralized him. Slowing the pressure not only adds more time that QBs have to pick apart our secondary but would put strain on any secondary. It also means devoting more bodies up front to manufacture pressure, which further detracts from coverage.

It's becoming evident that yes, we may follow the formula of bringing in a proven vet once SSS leaves, but the bulk of that huge boon we're about to get in cap dollars next year will be spent on building a nightmarish edge on the defensive front.

I missed the game (was out of the state). Did Chris Givens even play? Is he injured?

He ran a couple of go routes and had his guy beaten. Joe threw one but it was under thrown. The other one Joe never even made the read to see that he was open and beat his guy.

There's a possibility that if any of the reporters have the cojones to ask Harbs about Pees' culpability in all these late game collapses, they get a buncha attitude in response and a 'what the heck are you talking about' kind of attitude.

With Cam Cameron we got confirmation about a year later that the issue was his attitude and his lack of flexibility when hearing other peoples opinions. He always thought he was the smartest guy in the film room. I'm not sure that Dean Pees has the same issue.

In fact, trying to extract ourselves from the particulars of this season and seeing the big picture, there is a somewhat legitimate argument to consider:

- we finally had continuity on defense, which is a plus considering that a wave of Hall of Famers was leaving and younger guys are being on-boarded;

- but the reason we had continuity is because no one thinks Pees is Head Coaching material and tried to poach him;

- if we do get rid of Pees and hypothetically say, a Monachino steps in and does great (which is the point), then we've just re-ignited that constant revolving door of our DCs being poached away and expanding the Ray Lewis coaching tree;

- Pees has called defenses that have been *good enough* to establish an impressive record of playoff appearances, why should a couple of years missed due to key injuries result in his sacking?;

- Yeah, we see timid play calling, but we also see guys playing in their proper zones or covering their proper assignments that are just getting beat or making errors in execution even though they were coached not to make those errors.

So if Pees attitude isn't the problem, and our record of playoff contention isn't the problem, and if witnessing players just getting beat or making mistakes isn't Pees' fault, and if losing Jimmy and a host of other guys last year, and Sizzle this year aren't Pees' fault, then why should Harbs scapegoat this guy?

People can argue to their heart’s content that the season “isn’t statistically over til it’s over,” but the reality is that through all the variables involved, it’s just not coming together for us this year. Be it terrible execution during crucial phases of the game; terrible and timid play calling, injuries, mental lapses, bad luck or whatever else, it’s just not panning out.

We’ve been so concerned with receiving targets for Joe yet not realizing that he and his group of no-names are still finding ways to put up some points to compete late into games. Sure, they’re not going to score every single possession, nobody does.

Maybe what we should be concentrating our trade for picks on is to re-establish the edge pressure we lost with Sizzle. Babin isn’t the answer I’m afraid. Suggs and Doom were one of the most prolific duos just last year. We all know that every aspect and level of defense is interconnected with the next. Look at Denver’s top ranked D. Talib and Harris Jr. do get beat. They aren’t shut down guys 100% of the time. But they sure do look good not ‘allowing’ anything when they’ve got a front 4 that includes the duo of Ware and Miller. It’s a completely different ballgame when you can press the No. 1 and 2 receivers at the line and know that the opposing QB will only get about 2.5 to 3 seconds to make a decision with a couple reads at best. We don’t have that complimentary football right now with Sizzle gone.

Is it even worth trying to get the edge address this year?

Pardon me for saying this, and maybe it's just me, but isn't the job of coaching supposed to show when you don't have your starting playmakers in the roster? We keep making excuses for Pees - injuries here injuries there. But if all your top playmakers are healthy wouldn't a braindead monkey seem like Buddy Ryan from 1985? It's when a guy here or there start to go down that the coaches prowess starts to come forth, no? And I'm sorry, bending but not breaking by sitting your backs 10 yards off the ball when the chips are down and you're paralyzed in fear is something anyone can do, it doesn't take a genius to call plays out of fear.

Inconsistency is the issue. The defense will play great in small patches of games and then look abysmal later in the same games. We'll play sound, smart, complimentary coverages with the pressure up front, and then we'll fall for the most routine offensive schemes and movements. We'll bring pressure, but then go limp and sit back for portions of the game.

That's why Pees is still here. The defense has failed and succeeded in fits and starts with both the coaching and the players execution.

Our secondary was retooled and had millions invested in shoring it up this offseason. Up until this game the guys back there have been relatively healthy. So perhaps the ghost in the machine needs to change?

Or perhaps we need to watch more film not just of our opponents and ourselves, but also of what successful defenses look like and where we're lacking what they have. I can tell you that an undeniable part of that formula is consistent pressure and need for double teams by the front 4. We just do not have that.

I'm done defending Pees. You can't sit there and say "oh well, he was our coordinator for all those teams that went to the playoffs." Our defenses have been abysmal season over season in crucial games whether we've had injuries or not. Way too much inconsistency against even mediocre competition.

Let's be honest here folks, we're one unfortunate landing on Ben's knee and even then, one strange end zone drop by Antonio Brown away from being an 0-5 club.

You gotta give Monachino a chance. We don't know what he's capable of unless we let h8m play with live bullets.

Unacceptable. Just not a good football team right now.

If offense was completely flat it would be one thing, but we had a long week off on defense and basically sat at home and watched McCown against SD last week scouting how to attack and bait him. Instead what we got was a QB with a buncha tiny kick returner WRs and a journeyman TE march up and down the field setting records that have stood in Browns lore since Otto flippin Graham when the average Ravens fans' grandparents were still in diapers.

This is about the time of the week you gotta get your mind right. Yeah we won last week, but it's in our best interests to remember we're 1-3, coming off a game that Pittsburg tried to hand to us on a platter several times before we caved and just accepted victory. Given the way Cincy is playing, the probabilities that we're playing for a Wild Card spot are pretty high. So another loss within the division and conference could have serious ramifications come December and January.

The Browns aint coming here to just let us cruise.

imagine what our ofense will be like with givens and peeriman stretching the filed!#1 and unstoppable

So far we haven't had a choice BUT to imagine when it comes to Perriman. SMH.

He looks SCARY in that 13

May #13 be a curse upon our enemies!

Can I get an Amen?

You know, nothing can assuage the anguish of what happened in '83, but Jim Irsay could, with a few strokes of a pen, ask the league as the owner of the Colts to formally transfer all the records of the organization prior to '83 back to Baltimore and have them tied to the Ravens.

If the Browns could do it, I don't see why we couldn't. These are all made up rules anyway. Just numbers. But the history and experiences they represent mean a lot to Baltimore.

The NFL will never allow this but we as a cadre of Baltimore Fans and natives should try to organize and have as many fans sport the Colts blue for this game as possible.