[News] The Breakdown: Eisenberg's Five Thoughts vs. Cardinals

[RavenManiac#7]

This team has so many needs that have been talked about a lot. But, I think that it's time we express the idea that there's another need that hasn't really been talked about nearly as much as some of the others and that's the fact that we have to have an upgrade at LT. Eugene Monroe, in my opinion, has been a Huge disappointment. LT's, good ones, are extremely hard to come by, so I think Ozzie better start giving it a Lot of thought. If we ever needed him to pull off one of his patented miracles, it would be to find us a Good LT. Monroe, when he's not hurt, looks pretty bad out there. He's weak.

[RavensFanMania]

Many fans here have said it and I've said it, and I'm hoping now that it was re-affirmed over and over by the national commentators on a national broadcast more and more of us get comfortable admitting the God's-honest reality of the situation.

1. When massive chunks of your salary cap (your playmakers) are either on IR (Suggs 4mm 2.8% , Pitta 6.2mm 4.4%) or are chronically injured and missing games (Canty 1.7mm 1.25%, Webby 9.2mm 6.6%, Perriman 1.58mm 1.15%) it's hard to compete.

2. Then you add in those three massive chunks of dead money we're suffering because of Rice 9.5mm 6.8% (really it should be 12mm cuz it costs us 3mm in Forsett to replace Rice) and the unavoidable parting with Ngata 7.5mm 5.35% and Jacoby 2.6mm 1.9%, and you've got another hand tied behind your back.

That's more than 30% of our cap that won't suit up for us this year or struggles to suit up consistently for us this year. That's before you dive into the strategic importance of those guys in our gameplans on either side of the ball. Go ahead and take away 30% of any other team's salary cap and see how they perform.

3. Then you add to that the phenomenon that we went literally 3 years ago from being one of the oldest rosters in the league to one of the youngest now, and it's another incredible challenge for teams to overcome immediately. As Gruden pointed out, we have the youngest TE corp in the entire league and a starting WR corps consisting of career journeyman Aiken and an undrafted player in Marlon. Credit Joe Flacco for keeping us relevant.

Any one of those things in isolation would be sufficient as an explanation (dare I say 'excuse') to explain why a team isn't winning.

But consider that we, unlike any other team in the league, are cursed with all 3 of those things simultaneously. And yet these coaches (yes, Dean Pees included) keep trying to make the best with what they have and compete game in and game out in close contests.

Not a single coach or player on this team will state these things during the season. Self-pity is not in the Raven organization's DNA.

It's our job as fans to be fair and honest though. In 2015 we were dealt a crappy hand and we're trying to make the best of it we can.

This may be the best 1-6 team in NFL history.

This may be one of the best comments in history as well.  Nice research.

[ravensohyea]

In every game, we were one touchdown away from winning. That's one Boldin catch in the endzone and one Torrey pretending to be the target. Flacco is known for targeting ONE GUY, but always having two or more options. He has one option in the end zone with Steve Smith. He's tried Justin and Gillmore, but come on - if we had one receiver in addition to Smith who was a threat, we would have won at least 4/6 of the games we lost this year.