[News] Steve Smith Sr. Takes Over, But It's Not Enough

[BR News]

Steve Smith Sr. was targeted a whopping 16 times Sunday, more than double anybody else.

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[Crusader]

I still would have kept Brown over Aiken just from the look in Brown eyes. He had the Ravens look.

[bluehen]

We had better hope nothing happens to Steve, or we will be in deep goo! Also, need to acquire another top flight wide receiver to replace him, by draft or trade!

[EdTheMythicalOne]

Steve Smith, Crockett Gilmore, and Kamar Aiken all had pretty good days. I give credit to the O-Line keeping Flacco upright and giving him time to find his receivers. Forsett; when the team did run, also had a pretty good day. It just goes to show you how good the offense can be even without our #1 pick on the field as long as the line can protect Flacco.

[Ravensfansince03]

On that second to last offensive drive, when we had the lead. idk why trestman didn't just run the ball and the clock down. Even coach harb looked at trestman like "??" after the incomplete pass stopped the clock. If i was Flacco i would of just took the charge and called a run. Either way the worst which could of happened was us ending up in the same spot except with the Raiders offense on the field with less time to work with.

[Ravensfansince03]

I still would have kept Brown over Aiken just from the look in Brown eyes. He had the Ravens look.

 

Bro I've been saying this since we first saw D. Brown. I constantly got negged for it. D.Brown had a big body frame and caught the passes with ease and confidence. 

Edited September 21, 2015 by Ravensfansince03

[Ravensfansince03]

Can we resign Daniel Brown

[n#7]

The talking heads said Jimmy Smith and some others got up a 4 AM and that may have caused the meltdown of the defense. Maybe it was more like them getting in at 4 AM?

[BleedingPurple&Black]

i was at this game, smith was the only one open ALL DAY, even when the ball went somewhr else he was still open, these other wrs better take notes and learn before hes gone... so this was the real problem, the coverage was lining up 10yds off the raiders wrs and just lettin em run anywhr they wanted to, why blitz denver then go soft on oakland, shoulda pressed oakland hard at the line and blitzed carr frm all angles, offense lost the first one and sad to say defense lost this one, cant expect to be a playoff team when ya flipflop every week, cmom COACHES lets keep the same RAVENS game plan the same no matter who we play, lets keep both sides of the ball aggressive and attacking

[Barry S]

Maybe they ought to start looking for basketball type receivers with long arms and good hands for the end zone that can catch overthrows, short throws, and jumpballs from Joe, these lob throws are getting ridiculous!!!

[Purple Dawg 96]

What's up with Triple " S " and Justin Tucker?! GOOD GAME Triple " S " should have gotten a game ball for that performance and the Youngsters stood up as well! KEEP SLINGING THAT ROCK! Running will only give the other team a chance to win put them AWAY! Then run the rock!

[Ravensfansince03]

Daniel Brown would have been a perfect red zone receiver for us. Big body, sure handed. Im still scratching my head.

[Ravensfansince03]

i was at this game, smith was the only one open ALL DAY, even when the ball went somewhr else he was still open, these other wrs better take notes and learn before hes gone... so this was the real problem, the coverage was lining up 10yds off the raiders wrs and just lettin em run anywhr they wanted to, why blitz denver then go soft on oakland, shoulda pressed oakland hard at the line and blitzed carr frm all angles, offense lost the first one and sad to say defense lost this one, cant expect to be a playoff team when ya flipflop every week, cmom COACHES lets keep the same RAVENS game plan the same no matter who we play, lets keep both sides of the ball aggressive and attacking

 

Without Suggs our guys couldn't get any pressure. Our D-line was getting stood straight up and pushed back nearly the entire game.

[outkast1]

Maybe they ought to start looking for basketball type receivers with long arms and good hands for the end zone that can catch overthrows, short throws, and jumpballs from Joe, these lob throws are getting ridiculous!!!

I told Raven's nation that he will always be Sloppy Joe, but it was that sad Dean Peas defense that killed us.They have been dead and dull since Rex Ryan left us.

[OzzieBisciotti]

Torrey was always clutch, especially against the Squeelers.. and the Pats for that matter...

Torrey where are you? Why'd you have to go? Oh yeah, Ozzie didn't want to keep you because he thought a 36 year old receiver and some no name receivers would be fine. We all know Flacco needs a deep threat to perform better. Wait till we match up with better secondaries down the road, we will have no game whatsoever...

[outkast1]

Daniel Brown would have been a perfect red zone receiver for us. Big body, sure handed. Im still scratching my head.

The used little Steve Smith instead of  Darren Waller in the Red Zone also.

[stixfix69]

Flacco tried to hit Waller twice, and under threw him once, and over threw him the 2nd time in the redzone...Flacco's pass to SSS in the endzone would have been the perfect ball for Waller...

[gametyme]

Question here I hope someone can shed light on. The play at the end of the second half where the Oakland defender interfered or held SSS so he couldn't make the catch for the TD, and the clock ran down to 3 seconds left forcing us to kick the field goal. My question is if the clock would have ran to zero would they put time back on the clock because a half cannot end on a defensive penalty? Or is that not the case at all. That situation presents some interesting senerios, and the defensive penalty actually works in the defenses favor the way it happened yesterday.

[North1900]

I think on the Ravens final drive Flacco did put to much air on it but Steve has to drag those feet. But scoring a touchdown wouldn't have been enough Sunday. The defense couldn't cover a magazine!!!! They made Derek Carr look like the next thing to Jesus himself. But had Payton Manning looking like Derek Carr. We just gotta play rounded football on both sides of the ball to be successful. We got away with it for so long now we're really being exposed. Get it together Ravens.

[BmoreB]

Steve Smith is awesome, and was awesome yesterday, no doubt. Here's the thing though, Trestman needs to stop with this fade route bull you know what with a 5'9" WR ! They did this during the pre season and I thought it was obvious then, I hope it's obvious now. It's a dumb idea. Put Waller on one side and Brown on the other. That's it !

[HuginnJaMuninn]

But now Gillmore is being regarded as a reliable, borderline unstoppable, TE by defensive CO when not double teamed and even then a chance. It should help ease some pressure off smith until Breshad is back

[purpledown]

Smith is not the answer by himself.

[Flamengo1265]

Flacco seems to have a bad habit of throwing off his back foot when in the red zone. He throws those soft high passes that either get defended or intercepted....and throwing jump balls to Steve Smith makes no sense, do that with Waller, Brown or Gillmore.

[CQ1]

Its a fine line between innovation (simple innovation, here) and desperation. Hats off to the Raiders for winning- especially when Carr pulled a fake hand off and kept it, thus running down the sideline for a MAJOR, critical gain. We have the capabilities to do this- and then some ! (I AM getting tired of beating a dead horse, again and again)but for whatever reason (for the most part) we opt not to. Again, if you have the QB RUN THE BALL a few times a game (at strategic junctures, of course- when the best possibility of injury will not occur). This helps freeze the deep defenders, thus possibly opening up a better deep passing game. Hats off to the Raiders. Its a fine line between innovation and desperation.

[Fullblack_RAVEN]

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. 

[Grapple Raven]

I would love to see what Flacco could do with Daniel Brown or Tom Nelson in a game.

[Fullblack_RAVEN]

Question here I hope someone can shed light on. The play at the end of the second half where the Oakland defender interfered or held SSS so he couldn't make the catch for the TD, and the clock ran down to 3 seconds left forcing us to kick the field goal. My question is if the clock would have ran to zero would they put time back on the clock because a half cannot end on a defensive penalty? Or is that not the case at all. That situation presents some interesting senerios, and the defensive penalty actually works in the defenses favor the way it happened yesterday.

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.

Edited September 21, 2015 by Fullblack_RAVEN

[CQ1]

IF we had a deep threat- would it matter. Flacco appears to be in a rut underthrowing, i.e., the blown pass to a wide open Aiken. THAT was another major, OUCH.

[gametyme]

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.

Thank you! I thought that was the case. It seems then that the defense should commit whatever penalty that keeps the pass from being complete in that situation, saves them 4 points and the penalty is really moot. Edited September 21, 2015 by gametyme

[Fullblack_RAVEN]

Thank you! I thought that was the case. It seems then that the defense should commit whatever penalty that keeps the pass from being complete in that situation, saves them 4 points and the penalty is really moot.

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.