How the Kansas City Chiefs can beat the Baltimore Ravens

Where the Ravens’ struggle

To be perfectly honest, in a season where there were no preseason games and less training time overall, most mistakes and team struggles are questionable at best. So when examining the Ravens’ struggles in 2020, we had to be pretty selective with what we highlighted.

We are not highlighting the missed tackles (just keep in mind that their rotational linebackers have a pretty high missed tackle percentage) or their predictability in the red zone (since they run almost 90% of the time in the red zone). However, that still leaves plenty to talk about.

Starting with the offense, the Ravens’ offensive line has been playing very poorly. Lamar Jackson is being pressured on 26.7% of his dropbacks and only being given an average of 2.7 seconds in the pocket. Normally, this would not be a big deal for Jackson, because he can use his feet to make a play, but that has not yielded great results so far this season.

Jackson is averaging only 3.4 yards per rushing attempt, with only 99 yards to show for in two weeks (For comparison and context, if he were to maintain his current pace, he would end the season with 792 yards, less then two thirds of his 2019 output.) He is barely making it to the linebackers with those yards, and when he gets there, he is not making it any further. He is averaging only .9 yards after contact, which is less yardage then he would get if he were just to lay out (Jackson is 6’2″ which is 2.05 yards).

Actually all of the Ravens’ ball carriers have struggled with being physical and aggressive on the ground. The Ravens’ average only 1.9 yards after contact on the ground and only 4.6 yards after catch through the air. This is not ideal for a team that centers around aggressiveness and attacking the line of scrimmage for a bunch of yards on the ground.

Defensively, the Ravens have some major concerns in a few key position groups.

The Ravens’ linebackers are allowing 83.6% of passes thrown into their coverage, and although we maybe looking past the 7 missed tackles that follow those catches, we are not overlooking the 8.9 yards per completion allowed by the linebackers, or the fact that the linebackers only have 1 sack or 6 quarterback hurries. This is despite the Ravens blitzing just as often as they do not.

Ravens safeties have not been targeted much this season, due in large part to Mayfield not taking deep shots and the Texans not having any downfield targets to shoot for. However, they have been targeted 8 times, and have given up 7 completions on those passes (87.5%) for 99 yards (14.1 yards per completion). Also, starting strong safety Chuck Clark plays so close to the line in all of his coverage (the average depth of target when he is targeted is 1.4 yards) which leaves Deshon Elliot, the free safety who has given up completions on 100% of targets, to cover the deep routes.