Fullblack_RAVEN

Talk is cheap at this point, right?

Rumblings about this team's collective work ethic are believable and understandable to me. When you lose HOF caliber talent (ray/suggs/ed), you lose their leadership as well. All 3 guys were vocal leaders who lead their position groups. Ed reed was a vital part of lardarius webb's development. He showed webb how to properly watch film and work on his craft. Injuries have robbed webb of his effectiveness. However, 2011 webb was amazing. He was one of the best corners in the league, something you would have never said was possible after watching him in his rookie year. Why? He was pushed by one of his leaders to do better. Ray helped suggs become the heady OLB he is. Suggs paid it forward by helping guys like pernell mcphee excel (too bad pernell's gone but it is what it is). Look at the ravens right now. Who are the established leaders they can learn & pull from? These young guys are learning from each other at this point. That's why some of this team's vets may have been concerned w/ their work ethic. @ the end of the day, this is what happens when vet leadership leaves a team. The bears learned this when they got rid of urlacher. The seahawks learned this when they had to play 2 games w/o kam chancellor earlier this season. The steelers sure as heck realized this after they lost so many vet leaders on that defense the past couple of seasons. It's adjustment time. The future leaders of this team need more time to grow into the players they will be for their careers. Until then, this team will continue to have a leadership problem.

This team needs to fire pees. Also, i assume the entire front end of the ravens' 2015 draft (first 4 picks) will be used on defensive players. IMO, the ravens should clearly draft a defender in the first, 3rd and 4th rounds. However, i believe if the BPA in the 2nd round is a WR, the ravens should take him. Yeah, the ravens' selection of perriman has been a meh decision so far because of his injuries. However, i believe he's a good HWS (height/weight/speed) prospect who has a ton of potential. It's time for the ravens to build the skill positions around flacco. Flacco's in his prime right now yet is being wasted. His arm won't be this strong in 5 years. Draft speed options and let him unleash his arm right now before it's too late. That's how this team won the superbowl... the big play. Also, if there's a wily, cheap vet in FA that can run routes & catch the ball in traffic, get him too. It's time to build a receiving core reminiscent of the 2012 sb team but w/ more talent. The defense is going to take a year or 2 to rebuild. I'm particularly concerned with their free safety situation. Kendrick lewis is an ok player but isn't the lead FS this team needs. The ravens miss ed reed more than they do ray lewis, suggs or ngata because his expertise in the back end allowed the corners to play w/ elevated confidence. That crew has looked absolutely lost since reed's departure for a reason. Will hill's a very instinctive player and is really good but benefit the most in his prior stop playing w/ a heady safety in antrel rolle. Teams used to fear throwing deep on this team because of the threat of ed reed having a jump on the route. Will hill's really good but no qb fears him to that extent, especially considering that he's our SS. No qb fears kendrick lewis at all. Cornerback's 2nd on that list but this team 100% needs a FS w/ sideline to sideline speed, instincts and smarts. They basically need someone like eric berry, lol.

I'm in next year mode. This is what i'd like to see for the rest of this lost season. - I want to see how good perriman is. If he's good, the ravens need to double down and take another good WR prospect early in the draft. I'm thinking about using a 2nd rounder since the 1st rounder will surely be a defensive selection. I also want to see waller out there more. Aiken and brown have had ample opportunity to show their worth and have failed at doing so, especially as of late. It's time to build a talented receiving core around joe because this defense will not be a quick fix at all. The offense will have to lead this team. Give flacco the big play weapons to achieve that. I also wouldn't be adverse to paying a vet WR in FA to play for the ravens, either. It's time to rebuild that whole unit. I don't think marlon brown, aiken & even campagnaro will be on this team for the long haul. The coaching staff clearly doesn't believe in campagnaro. He gets a few snaps a game while his wr competition save for steve smith play badly week in, week out. - I'd like to see pees' scheme lose the ravens 1 or 2 more games in epic fashion (on the lines of the raiders & bengals collapses). This dude CANNOT be the DC for this team next season. Another loss or 2 in that fashion and this team will be guaranteed a new DC who can help form this young defense into a really good one. I hope jim schwartz is hired. He won't be sought after for HC positions after his failed gig w/ the lions so he could be a long-term DC here. He's aggressive in his playcalling as well. The only bad thing is he runs a 4-3 base defense... maybe it's time for the ravens to make that switch. They run 4-3 packages a lot to begin with... if you think about it, the ravens' personnel is more suited for a 4-3 scheme anyways. We have speedy linebackers and fast,undersized defensive linemen... a 4-3 base would suit this personnel well. - I'd like to see flacco stop throwing lob passes. Yet another week went by w/ flacco throwing lobs off of his back foot. This time, it ended up in an adam jones pick as well as a number of incompletions. Flacco has been erratic w/ his fundamentals all season. What's up w/ that? He's playing like he's hurt or his arm talent fell off. Hopefully it isn't the latter. Let's face it, guys. This team isn't good. I was one of those people saying this team had a chance at the SB in the preseason... i was wrong. This team more than likely won't make the playoffs so it's time to focus on the future. Lost seasons happen, i guess. There better be plenty of turnover, especially on the coaching side though. IMO, trestman and pees both need to be shown the door at season's end. The secondary needs a total revamp. The d-line needs more beef and depth. The OLB position needs a playmaker. This team has so many holes... obliterating the 2016 draft will be a MUST. All of this is happening because the ravens whiffed on some recent prior drafts (2013 especially) so we'll see if they can nail the 2016 draft.

The ravens are a freaking disaster. They suck. It is what it is. At least we'll get a nice draft pick (which will undoubtedly be used on a defensive player)...

When monroe went out w/ a concussion, i thought he'd be back by the raiders game. Usually, nfl'ers need 1 week to get back from a concussion. There's exceptions to that, though (jordan cameron). Monroe probably won't be back until the browns game at the earliest. The steelers game is on a short week... Maybe the ravens will get monroe and perriman back at the same time. Get well soon, fellas!

Thanks. Hopefully you're right. It seems like we have all had it w/ his soft as silly putty scheme. It's time for the ravens to get back to their roots and play aggressive football again.

Pees sounded super combative in his presser yesterday. I assume he didn't like harbaugh calling out the coaching staff in combination w/ the players for last wk's performance. He decided to put the blame on the players instead. He said they didn't tackle well enough (which is true) and didn't play w/ energy (which is NOT true). I'm not a coach. I'm just a fan like the rest of you. However, what i saw were a bunch of confused players who weren't put in the best position to succeed. How can you expect any corner to effectively tackle when he's lined up 10 yards away from his assignment every play? Think about it... the raiders threw a bunch of short passes and screens last sunday. The corners were lined up as deep as & in some cases deeper than the safeties for the majority of the game. The coaching staff expected them to close on the ball in vast space and tackle. Corners aren't usually good at that since they are groomed to play bump & run coverage from the beginning of their development. Webb and smith were basically all purpose safeties versus the raiders w/o safety skills. I don't see how putting them in that position put them in the best position to succeed at all. Allowing carr's receiving targets to be open instantly w/ the possibility of very good YAC allowed carr to consistently get the ball out quickly. That affected the defensive line. How could the line put pressure on a qb when said qb was able to get the ball out lightning fast w/ positive gains after the catch? It also affected the linebackers because calling up blitzes left the ravens weak in the tackling department. Thus, they were needed in the middle to tackle. Playing the corners 10 yards off the wr's cascaded into a bunch of problems across the entire defense. There are only 2 ways this scheme gets fixed. Either pees abandons his bend but don't break scheme & goes w/ a more aggressive take it to em scheme or the ravens find someone else to coach a more aggressive one. Pees is too old and stuck in his ways to abandon this scheme. Thus, harbaugh will have to fire him. IDK what it'll take to get him out but it's the only recourse at this point. I expect pees to bring a more aggressive scheme to cincy (which he usually does after the defense lays an egg). I also expect him to go back to his bend but don't break prevent D ways when the defense settles down, continuing this cycle.

At first, i thought will hill was just salty. However, after looking at it again, he has a solid case. Go back to wk 1 and look at the lead up to aqib talib's pick6 on flacco. It was almost identical to what happened here. Both guys had receiving targets run at them and initiate contact. Instead of letting the wr''s pass, they shot inside instead and got the pick w/ both qb's anticipating that their receiving options would be there. If will hill's pick is PI, so is talib's (or talib's could be deemed as holding before the throw). What distinguishes this play from the talib one? I dunno. I'm not hung up on it, though. I'm more angry at dean pees still getting a pass from the ravens despite his insanely soft defensive scheme. Will hill is one of the best safeties in the entire league yet is being limited by one of his own coaches. Pees is out here drawing up 3 man rushes on 3rd down combined with having his corners play 10 yards off their assignments. How about letting the wr's press w/ over the top safety help & a blitz to boot on obvious passing downs? Oh yeah, the ravens did that once and will hill got a pick! Miracle, right?

Yeah, most teams would vy for a FG in that situation at the half unless they are down big. If the ravens were down big at that point, i bet they would have gone for the TD because they were getting the ball back in the 2nd half. Also, teams especially don't want to do that in a close game in the 4th because giving another team a chance to beat you is never ideal.

I can help you here. Quarters can't end w/ defensive penalties. Thus, if a defender fouls with the clock at 0 & the refs call it, the offense gets one more, untimed down. The offense would have been able to kick a field goal or go for a td if they wanted to. The clock remains at 0 but the offense would be granted w/ one more play. Conversely, offensive players who commit fouls in that scenario end up costing their team a 10 second runoff. Thus, if the offense had been called for a penalty, the half would have ended right there. I believe that rule applies w/ either under a minute left in a quarter.

The offense had a decent day but was far from great. The defense they just faced will probably end up being on the level of last yr's bucs D when this season is all said and done. Thus, it's imperative that they work as if they didn't have a good week bc the ravens will face much better defenses going forward. I had some issues w/ how that unit played yesterday. - Joe flacco's lob passes suck. Period. Look... before, we had guys like boldin and torrey who were either fast or strong enough to reel those in. Torrey used to just burn down the field coverage, leap and catch those. Boldin used to body up db's, go up and snatch those out of the air w/ no problem. The guys we have right now don't have those attributes. SSS is too old to be consistently catching those lobs. Couple in the fact that he's getting targeted like crazy and you can understand why he wouldn't have the energy late in games to snag those. Aiken and brown aren't strong, fast, athletic or technical enough to catch those. Waller's a raw rookie who is still learning how to run routes. Throw them darts and they'll have a much better chance at catching the ball. Throw them lobs where their receiving & co-ordination skills are heavily tested and they'll most likely drop them. Joe has to throw more accurate darts going forward. Eliminate that stupid lob pass until the receives display that they can consistently catch the easy ones. This receiving core is not the one he had in years past. He's making it tough on these guys to make plays. Seriously... what the heck was w/ those 2 lob passes to waller in the endzone? Throw him darts where he can focus on ball placement & trajectory better and he probably catches one of those. Floating marlon that inaccurate ball on 3rd down in the red zone was also ridiculous. Throw a dart there. The lob allowed the coverage to catch up. Underthrowing that floater to kamar deep was awful as well. If flacco hits him in stride, that's a freaking touchdown. That wasn't the first time i've seen flacco do that. He routinely did that to jacoby jones and torrey. Since they were experienced deep route runners, they were able to either catch those or draw pass interference penalties. Aiken IS NOT manuevering a crappy throw like that into a PI. Don't even get me started on flacco inaccurately floating that potential go ahead TD pass to a WIDE OPEN SSS... Seriously. The pocket was clean all game. Step up and throw darts for crying out loud. Also, that pass he floated to crockett in the endzone in the denver game not only allowed the safety to recover but allowed the LB who was defending crockett to close in. Throw it farther or faster & crockett has a better chance at catching that w/o some defender storming in and snatching it from him. Flacco isn't making it easy on his targets at all. How about we as fans point that out instead of negging flacco criticism posts to death? - Flacco targeting SSS 16x tells me his other wr's either couldn't get open or he didn't trust them enough. I'm 100% certain that SSS will attract insanely tight coverage going forward for that reason. Are the other WR's going to step up when that happens? Will joe even trust them at that point? This offense as a unit still hasn't proven to me that they will. - I'm liking what i'm seeing from crockett gillmore. He's a good weapon to have. Maxx will take a while. Remember, guys. Young tight ends have the biggest adjustment of any offensive position not named qb because they have a crapload of protection, assignment, blocking & route running adjustments at the next level. It usually takes them a year or 2 to adjust. That's what happened w/ crockett& pitta and is happening to maxx. Thus, i don't think he deserves much blame for this offense's inconsistencies. - Back to the WR's. This crew clearly isn't as talented as we thought. Aiken is a 4th WR at best. Marlon's average at this point. Waller is a developmental piece. I'm not even sure mike campagnaro gets playing time because whenever he does, he's invisible out there. SSS is the only guy that stands out in that unit. That's a problem. Aiken, marlon & waller don't stand out for those reasons. Teams don't respect them. Campagnaro would be a revelation if he played for a team like the pats. He's basically a stronger welker w/ bigger hands. This team can't utilize him though because our short game sucks & flacco tends to be inaccurate w/ short balls, leading to interceptions. Perriman would stand out from an athletic standpoint but has been injured since the first day of training camp so... yeah. I'm tired of some people here acting like flacco is untouchable. He isn't bad but is far from perfect. His WR's may be inexperienced and less talented but he deserves his fair share of criticism as well. He has been wildly inaccurate w/ his lob passes these past 2 games and his ball placement has been less than ideal. Yeah, he had a good game but some of the passes he threw were unacceptable & lacked fundamentals. I'm tired of seeing that week in, week out and then seeing people on these threads just disregard it because of problems around him.

I've seen comments since last night talking about the ravens' lack of a pass rush getting to the qb. I think i have some answers for that. - The loss of suggs meant our OLB on that side wasn't being game planned the way this team is used to. The raiders didn't double our OLB on that side much if at all. That allowed for the raiders to release a TE for passing situations w/ regularity. Carr had a safety valve tight end on virtualy every play, allowing him to get the ball out fast. - When jimmy smith got beat on that td (btw, amari cooper is an amazing player and will be an all pro one day. His route running is crazy & he's very fast), the ravens got scared. The ravens went super conservative and played 5-10 yards off of the wr's after that. Carr had the underneath throw all game. Amari cooper's speciality is YAC because of his elusiveness. Michael crabtree probably has the best hands of any WR in the league. They were made for the short game. Derek carr was able to get the ball out lightning fast because his wr's were open instantly. That bend but don't break coverage is stupid, especially versus a team w/ weapons built to beat such a scheme. That's the exact same reason why brady torched the ravens in the AFCCG (along w/ those cheater formations and trick plays but you get my drift). - When the ravens rushed 3 on a few third downs, they thought they had an advantage. The problem is this. Who were they dropping in coverage? From what i saw, upshaw, mclellan and the rook (za'darius) dropped in coverage. Upshaw sucks at everything except for setting the edge. He can't pass rush or cover. Dropping him in coverage is foolish. Heck, having him in on passing downs is foolish. Z was an edge rusher his entire college career. He hardly dropped back. Dropping him in coverage in his first NFL game clearly wasn't going to work. Mclellan's average at every facet of the game from what i've seen. I'm not sure if doom dropped back but that was never his forte to begin with, no matter how much he said he worked on it in the offseason. My conclusion is that rushing 3 only works when the dropper is good in coverage. This team DOES NOT have that anymore so why even bother? Rush 4+ every down. Dean pees is clearly under-utilizing & mismanaging the talent on this defense. The only guy i saw that got beat consistently yesterday was lardarius webb. Heck, pees even called up zone on goal line situations... lmao. Now, i'm no DC but playing off coverage on the goal line versus tight ends, very good underneath wr's and a strong, fast RB that can run after the contact is dumb, right? Their personnel called for tight coverage. Unbelievable. Maybe this team needed this loss. This is even worse than that redskins loss in the superbowl season, tbh. Dean pees is lucky he isn't fired right now. The ravens had one 3 and out the entire game because of that stupid scheme. Nice. SMH.

I agree w/ this 100%. Pees is a garbage co-ordinator.

Also, flacco needs to cut it out w/ those freaking lob passes off his back foot. I mean... we don't have boldin or torrey anymore. Throw strikes for crying out loud. I know he had a good game but could've had a GREAT game if not for that stuff. The pocket was clean all game. Step in and throw ...

Well... We have a co-ordinator problem. This time, it's the DC. Dean pees' bend but don't break defense sucks. After jimmy smith got beat like a drum by amari cooper on that 68yd TD, pees got super scared. He decided at that moment to have the db's play 5-10 yards off the WR's which led to carr having the best game of his damn career. Nice. The ravens allowed 2 wr's to go over 100 yards. lol. Lardarius webb is no longer a starting-caliber corner. His athleticism is gone. I guess we should've expected that after he tore his ACL. It's time to find someone else to play that spot. The d-line was getting pushed back all game. Remember the 4th q vs. denver that we thought was an anomaly? Well, it wasn't. That's what the ravens are. The ravens are SOFT and SMALL up front now. Upshaw can't rush the passer worth jack & the rook (za'darius) played like a rook. This team lost to the raiders... rofl. Boy. Panic time. Now they have to face a bengal team that they haven't been able to crack as of late. 0-3 is a real possibility.

I don't even know what to say right now... i'll report back on the game thread.

I hope he can hang in there too because the ravens will have this problem at LT again this season. It's imperative that they have a good LT behind monroe. IDK what it is w/ monroe but the injury bug has struck him. I just hope he can come back from that concussion & not incur a lower body injury like he did last season. If not, the ravens need a contingency plan. That's all i'm trying to outline. Hopefully it doesn't get to that but... we'll see.

I remember a game where he had to play one of the tackles. I believe it was LT. I might be mistaken, though.

Osemele played his entire college career at LT. I'm not saying he'd be awesome as a spot LT but i'm sure he'd be better than hurst. In fact, osemele played one or two games for the ravens at spot LT duty in the past. He wasn't great but wasn't horrible. He was about average. Hurst is pretty awful. He's just lucky that he played well in the playoffs (mind you versus teams that weren't great at rushing the passer on his side). That gave him some good exposure. If you take the whole season into account, hurst was pretty bad. My concern w/ hurst is he's slow footed. It's easy for speed rushers to get by him. The raiders have 2 guys w/ pretty good speed not to mention pro bowl/all pro ability which is why i believe he'll be overwhelmed. I'm optimistic w/ ricky wagner getting back to what he did last season. He was really good last season. Hurst, though? he has had multiple bad games. His game vs. the broncos wasn't an anomaly.

I believe the ravens have a couple of options if hurst isn't getting the job done. They could kick one of their guards out to LT, let a guy like urschel play guard and go from there. They could also activate jensen and try him out there w/ TE chip help. Either way, i believe the ravens will pull hurst if his bad play continues.

Hurst is going to get dominated on sunday. Mack & Aldon smith will be pissed off going into game 2 after that game 1 blowout by cincy. It's going to get ugly... until the ravens replace him in the 2nd half (which i predict will happen if not sooner). Other than that, i'm excited about jernigan, taliaferro & melvin (possibly) getting back on the field.

The sorry, ragtag jaguars led by blaine gabbert beat the ravens a few years ago. Jack del rio was their coach. Jack is now coaching the raiders so... yeah. They shouldn't take these raiders lightly. Take care of business in advance of the home opener. If not, the ravens will be 0-2 going into their home opener against cincy, a team they struggle with (especially on the offensive end... their defense seems to get a magical pass rush against the ravens that they don't display against any other team).

I don't like it. If steve gets hurt or worn out by spec teams, this team is screwed. I say that partly bc of this: @AaronWilson_NFL 6h6 hours ago Ravens wide receiver Breshad Perriman progressing with knee injury, expected back by October, according to sources So... yeah. Call someone up... do something. Smith shouldn't be playing on special teams, period.

To tally: Hurst, flacco, smith, gillmore and flacco all blame themselves for the loss. It's good that they are hard on themselves. That should motivate them to practice & get better at said things. Remember, trestman said the offense was hit or miss in training camp partly because of all the youth on that side of the ball. They'll take time but surely have the tools to improve.