Baltimore Ravens: Get Run Over

by JosephWIlliam | 7 years ago | 1 Comments

The Baltimore Ravens are in the final stages of completely overhauling their offensive strategy and the rest of the league should be on notice.  

Through the first 5 seasons of the cycle, the Ravens regular season record of 66-14 outpaces the rest of the AFC by a long shot. The Jets, Bills, and Steelers have overall wins of 59, 54, and 53 respectively and the gap widens after that.  The Ravens are averaging over 13 wins/season for the cycle. Let that sink in. 

Here are the pass/run percentages by year for the ravens.

2017: 58.7% Pass

2018: 63.4% Pass

2019: 62.5% Pass

2020: 58.2% Pass

2021: 50.3% Pass

The data shows that the Ravens have been steadily shifting towards a more balanced attack since the start of the cycle. I've played the Ravens many times and have had a lot of success. I've had, on numerous occasions, the thought that if Astin ran the ball more he would be a much tougher opponent. He seemd to give up on the run game too often and look for big chunk plays.  This weakness has been adressed. The Ravens are 5-0 to start 2022 and have already beaten 3 AFC playoff teams.

Through these first 5 games of season 41, the Ravens have passed the ball on only 43% of their offensive plays.  That's down over 7% from last season and over 15% since they won the superbowl in 2020. 

Rookie HB Pappas Hubbard has been carrying the load in season 41.  Pappas is leading the league in carries (87) and yards (577) and is on pace to crush this cycles season rushing-record. Why would Astin change his gameplan so much? Is he trying to slow the game down and have more efficient possessions? Is he finding himself to be more skilled at running and PA passes than just chucking it deep? Is he trying to spam a rookie HB into ROTY/MVP territory for XP cheese? 

The motives simply do not matter. The rest of the league is on notice; stop the run or get run over.