The Ravens doomsday’ clock inches towards midnight. Will their season survive?
The Ravens’ season is on the brink. Coming out of a bye week, Baltimore are 1-5 after a miserable start partly because their roster has been ripped apart by injuries. Next up are the Chicago Bears, who have come into some form. Beat the Bears, and the Ravens could turn the year around. If they lose, and they fall to 1–6, their season is effectively over, a huge disappointment for a team with genuine Super Bowl aspirations a few months ago. Below, we look at the factors that have hurt the Ravens – and the chances of those factors changing for the better.
Injuries
It’s been a Season From Hell for the Ravens. Injuries have been everywhere and constant. At various points this season they have been without Lamar Jackson (QB), Patrick Ricard (FB), Ronnie Stanley (OT), Emery Jones Jr (OT), Chidobe Awuzie (CB), Tavius Robinson (LB), Robert Longerbeam (CB), Bilhal Kone (CB), Ar’Darius Washington (S), Roquan Smith (LB) and Nnamdi Madubuike (DL). Some have missed weeks; others months. Their injury report has looked like an All-Pro ballot, and there have been weeks when they have fielded a practice-squad defense.
Awuzie and Smith are expected back this week. Jackson’s status is up in the air. But the linchpin of the defense, Madubuike, won’t be returning. He is out for the season with a neck injury. Madubuieke is not a one-on-one game-wrecker, but he’s essential to Baltimore’s blitzing style. Without him, the Ravens cannot manufacture pressure the same way and have to rely on an aging Kyle Van Noy and a crop of rookies to score hits on quarterbacks. Even as others return, losing Madubuieke could prove to be the Jenga piece that topples everything.
Chances of improvement: 6/10 – some players will return but losing Madubuieke is a huge blow.
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Quarterback
There’s no mystery here. With Jackson, the Ravens’ offense is a machine. Without him, they are impotent. Jackson has missed the last two games with a hamstring injury, and it’s unclear if he will return in time to face the Bears.
With Jackson in the lineup this year, Baltimore’s offense has a 46% success rate, 11th in the league. That’s not MVP-level Lamar, but it’s good enough to win any game and compete in this year’s middling AFC. Without Jackson, the Ravens’ offense has collapsed. Since his injury, the Ravens have the third-worst offense in the league by efficiency. Backup quarterback Cooper Rush led the team to 13 total pointsin his two starts before being replaced by third-stringer Snoop Huntley against the Rams.
Jackson returned to practice on Wednesday and is expected to return on Sunday, barring a setback. At minimum, his return will give the Ravens an upper-tier offense. But there are still underlying flaws with the unit. The offensive line has glaring deficiencies, leaving Jackson to do much of the heavy lifting. Jackson’s mobility and smarts have helped mask pass protection problems that were exposed with Rush at quarterback. Jackson’s threat as a runner will help raise the floor of the rushing game, but the line has struggled to push people off the ball all season.
The run game fuels everything the Ravens want to do on offense. Given Jackson’s threat, the Ravens have nestled into the top half of the league in rushing efficiency every year that he’s been a starter. This year, it has been too boom-or-bust. Derrick Henry has coughed up multiple fumbles, and the offensive line has gifted too many free shots at running backs. After totaling just 23 carries for 75 yards across weeks four and five, Henry went for 24 carries and 122 yards in Week 6 against the Rams – his first 100-yard game since Week 1 against the hapless Bills defense. That’s encouraging. But with or without Jackson, the Ravens running backs have still been hit at or behind the line of scrimmage at a 20% clip, one of the highest rates in the league.
Jackson should be a cure-all. He’s a one-man offense who can raise the level of everyone around him. At worst, he should vault the Ravens into a 25 points per game unit. And that should be enough to give the Ravens a chance to win every game moving forward. If they are forced to crack the 30-point threshold, though, they will need the offensive line to coalesce and Henry to hold on to the ball.
Chances of improvement: 9/10 – Jackson will almost certainly be back and is one of the best players in the league when healthy. Whether that makes up for deficiencies elsewhere remains to be seen.
Defense
30 points a week could be necessary. While the Ravens’ offense has been inconsistent, the defense has been unambiguously bad. They cannot stop the run, rush the passer or cover. Injuries have played a significant role, but they’re not the only reason the group has slipped to the foot of the league.
Seven weeks in, the Ravens have the NFL’s lowest-ranked defense. They have the weakest run defense in the league. They rank 28th in pressure rate and 31st in sack rate, according to Next Gen Stats. Only the Commanders have had more coverage busts this season, per PFF. Taken together, those three amount to the 31st pass defense in the league, ahead of only the Dolphins. The Dolphins!
Fingers can be pointed at the injury report, but a chunk of the blame should also fall on the coaching staff. Last season, the Ravens faced similar issues. They struggled to get lined up or to execute basic plays. But their offense kept them in enough games that they could turn things around by the midpoint of the season, evolving into one of the better defenses in the league over the second half of the year. Those same early-season failures have returned: an allergy to tackling and defenders failing to understand their assignments.
Offseason pickups haven’t moved the needle, either. Rookies Malaki Starks, Mike Green and Teddye Buchanan have looked lost. Jaire Alexander, an All-Pro in Green Bay, looks cooked.
Despite the mess, Harbaugh has stuck by defensive coordinator Zach Orr, refusing to strip him of play-calling duties. Last year, the Ravens brought in former coordinator Dean Pees to help advise Orr. The group made significant changes that helped spark the midseason about-face. Pees is no longer on staff, and the same problems that plagued Orr’s unit last season have returned, with a crop of injuries on top of the structural flaws.
The Ravens have made an in-season move to try to level up the group, acquiring safety Alohi Gilman in a trade with the Chargers for pass-rusher Odafe Oweh. It’s a savvy deal. On paper, letting Oweh go looks like a ding to an already banal pass-rush. But swapping Oweh for Gilman was a two-for-one trade, allowing the Ravens to upgrade their deep safety position and move Kyle Hamilton closer to the line of scrimmage.
Since he entered the league, Hamilton has been the most effective blitzer in the NFL. When the defense faltered last season, the Ravens moved Hamilton from his typical role around the box back to deep safety. It worked. Now, with the front struggling, adding Gilman allows them to push him back into an attack role closer to the line.
Hamilton bouncing between roles as a blitzer and slot corner should help elevate the Ravens in two crucial areas. They still lack the juice to win up front without blitzing. But if they win on Sunday, they could go hunting for extra veteran help on the trade market to offset the loss of Oweh.
Chances of improvement: 4/10 – The Gilman trade has worked but this is a unit with deep flaws.
Luck
Looking at the schedule, the Ravens probablyneed to win seven of their next eight games. They host the Bears, then face three road games in Miami, Minnesota and Cleveland. After that, it’s a home stand against the Jets, Bengals and Steelers before they face the Bengals on the road. With Jackson back, the Ravens are likely to be favored in all eight games. But the NFL is weird. Teams lose games they’re expected to win. Fortune comes into play: a bad officiating call, the bounce of a ball, a missed kick or another injury could be enough to end Baltimore’s postseason hopes.
Playing in the AFC North will help. Joe Burrow is not expected to return for Cincinnati until after Christmas, and may be shut down before then if the Bengals are clearly out of the playoff race. The Steelers lead the division but are hardly a juggernaut. And the Browns, despite an outstanding defense, have the lousiest offense in football. In another division, the Ravens’ odds would be narrower. But if Jackson returns to full health, the Ravens could rip off eight-straight wins to put them in a position to win the North in the final three weeks.
Those final three games will be tricky. The Ravens host the Patriots before traveling to the Packers and Steelers, which could be a one-off game for the division crown. But to get to that position, they cannot afford another slip-up against a beatable team.
No team has ever had the same quarterback-coach combination for at least five years and then won the Super Bowl for the first time with that duo. This is the eighth year for Jackson and Harbaugh. Time isn’t just running out; it’s nearly gone. Harbaugh’s future may hinge on Sunday.
If the Ravens can put a run together and make the playoffs, they will be one of the most dangerous teams in a weak AFC field. If they sputter to the end of the campaign, they will be looking at a hard reset.
Chances of improvement: 5/10 – The whole point about luck is you can’t predict it. More importantly: if you’re relying on it, you’re not a very good team.