Why the Ravens’ defense presents unusual challenges for Patrick Mahomes

Patrick Mahomes can beat just about any defense, but Mike Macdonald’s Ravens squad ties pressure to coverage better than any other.

The Kansas City Chiefs’ offense has dipped in efficiency and consistency this season, but Patrick Mahomes is still a Big Problem when everyone else is firing on even half their cylinders. This was proven out in the Chiefs’ 34-10 divisional-round win over the Houston Texans, who had little to counter Mahomes and his weapons in that game.

But now, Mahomes and his team must travel to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore and face a Ravens defense under Mike Macdonald that ties pressure to coverage better than any other defense in the NFL.

“They do a great job,” head coach Andy Reid said Wednesday of that defense. “Mike [Macdonald], his scheme in which he’s added his touch, too, with the group there. They’ve got multiple fronts, multiple coverages, they execute them well. Other teams that try to do a lot, don’t do it as well as this group does. Not only are the players listening, but they’re being taught the right things and they’re able to go out and perform at a high level.”

The results have been clear.

Why is this defense so good, and what does it really mean to tie pressure to coverage? In Baltimore’s case, it’s all about aligning the fronts and coverages, with linebackers Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen as the linchpins in the middle… and elsewhere.

Not that you’re going to fool Mahomes a ton with coverage switches, but the ways in which the Ravens put C.J. Stroud in a bag with his preferred coverages to throw against was a real marvel. Stroud had ripped single-high coverage to shreds all season long, and he did that in the wild-card win over the Cleveland Browns. Jim Schwartz’s Browns defense had played among the most single-high coverage in the NFL, and they played that way against the Texans, with very little disguise and late movement.

That’s not how the Ravens chose to go about it. They played single-high on 18 of Stroud’s 33 attempts, and on 16 of those 18 attempts, Baltimore showed some sort of two-deep look before flipping to their preferred coverages. Against single-high in that game, Stroud completed 10 of 18 passes for 100 yards, and a passer rating of 69.7. He got the Ravens for two big pass plays, but other than that, between the coverage and the pressure, he didn’t have a lot to work with.

This happened right from the start. Stroud’s first attempt against Cover-1 came with 14:25 left in the first quarter, and Baltimore moved from a short two-deep look. Stroud tried to hit receiver Nico Collins on a quick out route — something the Texans had been great with all season long — and cornerback Ronald Darby just shut it down.

That’s something Mahomes will have to deal with — the Ravens are also among the best defenses in the league at plastering receivers all the way through the play. It wasn’t the last time Macdonald showed that hand, and this is where the tying of pressure to coverage comes in.

Stroud had an incompletion with 40 seconds left in the first half where the Ravens sent a six-man blitz, and Stroud looked to the front-side hot routes  But slot defender Kyle Hamilton shut down the quick out to Robert Woods.

Another problem for Mahomes is that the Ravens don’t have a definitive coverage type. They played a bit more single-high against the Texans (57.1% overall, and 42.9% Cover-3), but in the regular season, they played single-high on 46.4% of their snaps, and 53.3% two-high. Add in all the pre-snap disguises, and you never really know what you’re going to get.

Not that this will put Mahomes out of the game — he’s too advanced as a quarterback for that to happen — but if you get enough of that going, you can force any quarterback, no matter how great, to at least delay his process.

And that’s where the pressure comes in.

The Ravens blitzed Stroud on six of his attempts in the first half, and just once in the second half. And this was with the score 10-10 at halftime. Head John Harbaugh said after the game that the idea was to get clearer rushing lanes in the second half, but this also allowed both Queen and Smith to drop and take away Stroud’s underneath options. They would run a few more five-man fronts, though they’re really kind of a four-man base nickel team, and stunts with defensive lineman Justin Madubuike, who was absolutely amazing in that game with eight pressures. As the Chiefs are operating at a deficit with offensive tackles Donovan Smith and Jawaan Taylor, plus the fact that left guard Joe Thuney might miss this game with a pectoral injury, and this element does not favor the Chiefs. At all. 

This overload rush with 5:14 left in the first quarter that forced a Stroud incompletion was but one example of how the Ravens can get pressure with four, allowing their hyper-athletic linebackers to roam. Here, edge=risher Jadeveon Clowney, Madubuike at the 3-tech alignment, and Michael Pierce at nose shade wrecked the right side of Houston’s offensive line, and right guard Shaq Mason didn’t stand much of a chance against Madubuike.

“I like the duality of it,” Kyle Hamilton said this week, when asked about what works so well about Macdonald’s defense. “First off, we have guys upfront who allow us to do a bunch of stuff on the backend, in terms of doing their job correctly. Moving around, everybody doing different things, it doesn’t make us one-dimensional. We have a bunch of guys who can do a lot of different stuff, and it makes it hard on the offense not to know who is doing what on each snap. I feel like everybody has done a good job of buying into that.”

It’s as simple as that, when you can do it. Not many defenses can.

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get deeper into how the Ravens can put Mahomes and the Chiefs in some very uncomfortable places.

You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” previewing both conference championship games in detail, right here:

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