Over the last few years, the Baltimore Ravens have started to become known as an offensive team with quarterback Lamar Jackson at the helm. However, over the past month of the 2021 season Baltimore’s offensive unit has struggled immensely for a multitude of reasons.
There are many ways to potentially fix their offense, and on Thursday Ravens’ offensive coordinator Greg Roman was asked about the possibility of going more up-tempo and using no-huddle more often. The coach weighed in on the idea, saying that it’s something that’s “definitely an option”.
“I mean, no-huddle is definitely an option for us. We’ve been really good in ‘got-to-have-it situations,’ which we call two-minute. That’s where your back is against the wall, you’re fighting the clock. We’ve had some really solid success there in that situation. In game, hurry up is a lot different dynamic. [It’s] completely different. The upside, the downside, the team, the big picture to it all, involving the defense and everything, is very different. So, it’s definitely on our plate. We work on it all the time, and it’s definitely something that you kind of want to get into at the right time. I’ve gotten into it, sometimes, early in the games this year, and it hasn’t worked out so well. So, I got right out of it. There are pluses and minuses. The one thing about our hurry-up operation [and] our two-minute operation is, with Lamar [Jackson] and ‘Snoop’ [Tyler Huntley], it’s been really productive for us. So, that’s definitely something that’s another club in our bag that we can use from time to time. Like anything else, if you try to do it all the time, it dries up in this league. You have to have different approaches at different times. I’m glad that we have that tool at our disposal down the stretch and, hopefully, in the playoffs.”
Baltimore has had success when they go up-tempo on offense, as it gives the opposing defense less time to make substitutions and forces them to stay with the same package on the field while tiring them out. The Ravens have taken some criticism for seemingly getting their play calls in late and running the play clock down to almost zero on a lot of their plays, so using some tempo on offense could go a long way.