Expectations were high for the Baltimore Ravens heading into the 2019 season. We expected the offense to look … different in Year 2 of the Lamar Jackson era, but “different” doesn’t always mean better and you would have been totally justified in wondering if this new-fangled offense, which John Harbaugh said would “revolutionize” the NFL, was good enough to help the team get back to the Super Bowl.
Eleven weeks into the season, we can safely say Harbaugh’s hype was warranted. The Jackson-led offense, which is in fact unlike anything we’ve seen in the NFL, ranks third in offensive DVOA and, along with its quarterback, seems to be getting better every week. The Texans were the latest in Jackson’s destruction tour of the NFL. The MVP candidate tossed four touchdowns, averaged 9.3 yards per attempt and added another 87 yards on the ground in a 41-7 romp over the Texans.
While those 41 points jump off the screen, don’t overlook the seven spot. That was no fluke. Baltimore’s defense was just as impressive as its offense, and that’s been the case for the last month or so. In fact, since the trade for Marcus Peters before Week 7, the Ravens have had the NFL’s best defense, per Football Outsiders’ DVOA.
The Ravens having one of the NFL’s best defenses is not necessarily a surprise. That was the preseason expectation. But after a rough start to the season and a few key injuries, those expectations were tempered as excitement for the offense grew. After four weeks, the Ravens had plummeted to 29th in defensive DVOA and were coming off a 40-25 loss to a struggling Browns team. This was one week after a lifeless defensive display in Kansas City. I’ll let defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale explain how bad that performance was…
“I lost four pounds this week,” Martindale said, via Penn Live, “because I watched it three times and threw up all three times.”
Those two losses — Baltimore’s only losses of the season — were a low point for the defense but they can also be considered a turning point. The losses forced Martinadale to make changes in order to address the unit’s two biggest issues: (1) A glaring lack of pass rush, and (2) poor communication in the secondary.
After the seven-sack performance against the Texans, we can say those issues have been ironed out. Baltimore didn’t give up any huge plays and the pass rush put Deshaun Watson under duress all afternoon. Harbaugh was asked about the improved pass rush and what had changed since the slow start to the season. He wasn’t entirely forthcoming…
Sorry, Harbs, but that’s not really true. Changes were made after that Cleveland made. Changes had to be made after that game because the Ravens pressured Baker Mayfield on only three of his 32 dropbacks.
Baltimore wasn’t getting home with a traditional four-man rush and that was exacerbating issues in the secondary. So Martindale did the sensible thing and start calling more blitzes. A lot more blitzes, in fact. In that Week 4 loss to Cleveland, the Ravens had blitzed only 10 times. The following week, that number jumped to 16. In the game after that, Baltimore blitzed 30 times! Since Week 4, the team’s blitz rate has not been below 40.5% in any game.
Martindale is unafraid as a play-caller. He will send a blitz in any situation and he isn’t afraid to crowd the line of scrimmage against spread sets, either. He’s also not dumb. A lot of the pre-snap looks he throws at a quarterback are more daunting than what follows after the snap. The aim is to maintain a numbers advantage in coverage while getting the offensive line to slide one way so the Ravens can send a blitz from the opposite direction.
This is how every blitz would play out in Martindale’s ideal world…
The Ravens have seven potential blitzers near the line of scrimmage. Brady makes a miscalculation, thinking the two defensive backs, Chuck Clark and Earl Thomas, will drop into coverage. He calls for a half-slide protection to his right (yellow in the diagram below), which leaves the left guard and tackle, plus the back, to protect his blindside.
But Martindale has Matt Judon (99) and Tyus Bowser (54) dropping into coverage leaving three Pats linemen responsible for one pass rusher to the left side. On the other side, the Ravens are sending four against only three blockers, creating a free rusher. So, Martindale has created a two-on-one in coverage to the top of the screen, a four-on-three to the bottom of it and a four-on-three in the rush.
It’s as if there are 13 defenders out there.
In order to accommodate the more aggressive approach upfront, Martindale has had to make changes on the backend. That started with the season-ending injury to strong safety Tony Jefferson. Since Jefferson went down, Earl Thomas has been playing closer to the line of scrimmage. At the beginning of the season, he was lining up where he’d typically line up in Seattle’s defense — about 15 yards from the line of scrimmage.
Now he’s playing at a 10-yard depth, where he’s closer to the ball and better able to disrupt intermediate route concepts, as he does here before looking to stop a scrambling Watson.
That positional shift has helped Thomas immensely. He was perfectly suited for the role of centerfield safety in Seattle’s defense but that deep positioning did limit his play-making opportunities. That’s no longer the case, and Thomas is now a more disruptive force, and I’d even go as far as to say he’s a more valuable player now than he ever was in Seattle because of it.
Even when Thomas isn’t line up in centerfield, he still has the range to defend that area of the field, as Brady found out in the Ravens’ 37-20 win over the previously undefeated Patriots.
With Thomas playing closer to the line of scrimmage, the Ravens have called more two-deep safety coverages in to give him more help deep. Per Sports Info Solutions, Baltimore’s usage of those coverage has nearly tripled since Week 4, jumping from about 10% in September to 28% over the rest of the season. That strategic shift has coincided with a vastly improved pass defense. After Kyler Murray, Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield averaged 0.33 Expected Points Added per attempt against the Ravens in Weeks 2 through 4, opponents are averaging -0.31 per attempt since, and that includes games against Brady, Watson and Russell Wilson.
Good X’s and O’s are important but not nearly as important as having the right players to execute them. After losing Tavon Young and Jimmy Smith to injury, the Ravens did not have those players early on in the season. Outside of Marlon Humphrey, the young cornerback group was not playing well and, worse, was not communicating well either, which led to an infuriating number of coverage busts. This one against the Chiefs was particularly ugly and came after a banged-up Humphrey had to leave the game.
A few weeks later, the Ravens swung a trade for Marcus Peters. Then Smith returned in time for the Patriots game. All of a sudden, the cornerback position became a strength for the Ravens and Martindale was tasked with getting all four of his corners — Humphrey, Peters, Smith and Brandon Carr — on the field at once. His solution was a bit unorthodox and, ironically, similar to the strategy the Chargers used to beat the Ravens in last year’s playoffs. Martindale moved Carr to safety and asked safety Chuck Clark to play dime linebacker. Peters and Smith would play outside corner (for the most part) and Humphrey would take the biggest threat in the slot. Add in Thomas, and that’s six good coverage players the Ravens can throw at you in this dime package.
Since the Peters acquisition, the Ravens’ dime defense has defended 74 passing attempts. Opponents are averaging -0.38 expected points added per attempt. Some context: The Jets passing game is averaging -0.26 EPA per attempt, which ranks 32nd in the NFL.
As the numbers show, it hasn’t taken long for this rejiggered secondary to gel, which has also helped the pass rush. This snap from the Houston game shows how cohesive this unit has become from front to back.
You can see players working in tandem all over the field. First, let me direct your attention to the bottom of the screen, where Clark and Humphrey seamlessly switch responsibilities when DeAndre Hopkins runs a slant and the back heads directly for the flat. You can even see Clark pointing it out…
In the middle of the field, you have Bowser and LB Josh Bynes — another midseason pickup — bracketing the tight end…
To the top of the screen, Peters has the outside receiver until he sees the slot receiver run a quick out. Peters is responsible for that so he passes the vertical route off to Carr deep…
Thomas also plays this smartly. When Watson’s movement pulls Clark off Hopkins, he recognizes it and tails the Texans star. But he doesn’t over pursue him and stays on top of the route because he knows he has Peters lurking on the sideline, ready to undercut the over route should Watson target it…
There’s nowhere for Watson to go and he’s forced to eat a sack. A defensive coordinator could not ask for more. I’m sure this is the vision Martindale had for his defense when the season began. It just took a couple months, a handful of schematic adjustments and some smart midseason acquisitions to make it happen.
Lamar Jackson and Ravens offense have received a lot of the love this season, and rightfully so, but all of a sudden, Baltimore also has one of the league’s best defenses. It might be the best defense outside of New England. But with the Patriots offense sputtering and Baltimore’s offense doing whatever the opposite of sputtering is, it’s getting harder to deny: The Ravens are the best team in the NFL.
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