OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Joe Flacco made no excuses for the Ravens offense’s performance in the 44-7 loss to Jacksonville this past Sunday.
The 10th-year quarterback threw for a career-worst 28 yards in easinly one of the worst game of his career. Jaguars signal-caller Blake Bortles threw for more yards on his first attempt of the game, illustrating just how impotent the Baltimore offense was in London.
But Flacco doesn’t think that poor showing should skew the narrative about the Baltimore offense so far in 2017. The group may rank dead last in the NFL in total yards per game and passing offense through the first three weeks of the season, but Flacco says those numbers don’t paint an accurate picture.
“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves when we all of a sudden say we haven’t played well for three weeks,” Flacco said. “We played terribly last week. There is no way around that, but the other two weeks, we did what we had to do to win football games. I don’t think that is anything that we can hang our heads over.”
Flacco has a point — at least to some degree. In the season opener, the defense forced five turnovers to make it easy for the offense as the Ravens ran 42 times for 157 yards to protect a big second-half lead at Cincinnati. Baltimore again benefited from five takeaways in Week 2, but the offense did produce 21 first-half points before playing ball control in the second half. The ground game hasn’t been spectacular, but it’s averaged a respectable 4.3 yards per carry to rank 11th in the NFL.
It’s an acceptable formula if you remain on a historic pace for creating turnovers, but therein lies the problem. What happens when the Ravens defense doesn’t play at an unbelievable level?
Our first glimpse at that reality certainly wasn’t pretty as the offense showed no ability to help out the other side of the ball. When Flacco’s best defense is that the offense did what they needed to do in the first two games of the season, how does anyone really know what to expect when the Ravens start playing tougher competition such as Pittsburgh and Oakland the next two weeks?
The problems on offense are plentiful, but the state of the offensive line is far and away the biggest issue, greatly impacting other phases of the unit in the process. Left tackle Ronnie Stanley is now the only holdover from last year’s starting offensive line, and even he hasn’t played at a high level so far in 2017 with Pro Football Focus ranking him 38th among all offensive tackles. Head coach John Harbaugh did express satisfaction with the combination of Matt Skura and Jermaine Eluemunor in Sunday’s loss, but the fact that the Ravens have already used three different players in place of injured six-time Pro Bowl right guard Marshal Yanda doesn’t speak well for their confidence level.
There just isn’t a lot of upside or reason for optimism with the group.
“I wasn’t at all displeased with the way the two right guards played,” said Harbaugh of Skura and Eluemunor. “But across the board, we had an issue here, an issue there that ended up hurting us against a defense that played really well, and it snowballed on us.”
The line is the biggest reason for concern, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other problems. Flacco continues to check down and throw short passes at an alarming rate, even on the occasions when there isn’t pressure in the pocket. His 5.3 yards per attempt rank last in the NFL and will not quell concerns about the health of his back as he’s already thrown four interceptions in just 69 attempts.
Perhaps more appalling than anything has been the disappearance of the wide receivers, who have caught a total of 13 passes. Thirty-five players in the league currently have more receptions while Mike Wallace and Breshad Perriman have caught only four passes for 26 yards between them. The trio of Jeremy Maclin, Wallace, and Perriman should be a relative strength of the offense, but you’d never know it when watching the Ravens operate so far in September.
Flacco again pointed to game situations to defend the poor numbers, but he acknowledged the need for improvement moving forward.
“If you don’t get everybody involved and get those guys’ confidence going and level of play really going, you have no shot,” Flacco said. “Football is a team game, and it is about getting everybody going and everybody involved. The more that we can do that, the better it is going to suit us.”
Sunday’s game will provide an interesting test. The Ravens return home to M&T Bank Stadium where Pittsburgh hasn’t won since 2012, but the Steelers currently rank second in total defense and pass defense and third in the NFL in points per game allowed.
Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh offense are off to a slow start in September, but they have too much talent to expect them to be down for long. The Ravens offense is going to have to show it can pick up the slack, but we have no idea if the group is capable without an otherworldly performance by the defense.
Last Sunday’s test was a colossal failure, but the Ravens want to prove that was an aberration.
“We built our team to play against the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are coming to our house this week, and we have a good football team,” Flacco said. “We have to continue to believe that and continue to go out there and do what we have been doing and do it a little better.”
