The Baltimore Ravens were able to come out of Week 1 with a 24-9 win over the New York Jets. They overcame a slow start on their way to a dominant victory, showing positives on all three sides of the ball.
Despite how impressive the win was, there were a few areas that the team needs to clean up moving forward. One is being able to get to the line with more urgency on offense, and when Baltimore offensive coordinator Greg Roman was asked about how his team can pick up the pace, he mentioned a few factors.
“Yes, we can do a lot of different things. You can shorten play calls; you can simplify certain things; you can do one-word things. And then sometimes, it’s good to drain the clock. People don’t realize that, sometimes, but it’s really good at times. You can really drain a clock in the course of a game. I think we set the all-time NFL record for time of possession a couple years ago, and a lot of it was because of that process, really. And there are times when that’s not the way to go. So, the bottom line is we want to be efficient with how we operate, and we’d like to be at the line of scrimmage, most of the time, to where we can operate, [and] we’re in front of the clock.”
More times than not in Week 1, the Ravens’ offense was seen getting to the line with less than 10 seconds to go on the play clock, with the snap often coming within three seconds of the play clock expiring. This was also a theme in 2021, and can cause delay of game penalties or even unnecessary timeouts to be used. It will be important for the offense to get up to snap the ball faster this year, and hopefully they can be more efficient moving forward.