The confident groundwork laid by the Baltimore Ravens in Indianapolis has buoyed spirits here that the home team will be a solid favorite and expected to win every week for the next month. Luke Jones and Nestor get ready for the New Orleans Saints, who are first up into the Charm City to see Lamar Jackson and the defense of Jesse Minter. The Ravens will 2-0 by 4 p.m. on Sunday, right?
The discussion assessed Baltimore’s Week 2 matchup with New Orleans, emphasizing player availability, offensive adjustments, and the new coaching staff’s early performance.
Game Outlook
- Luke expects Baltimore to beat New Orleans even if Zay Flowers does not play.
- New Orleans has capable players, including Alvin Kamara and Chris Olave, but remains a lower-expectation team.
- Baltimore must limit explosive passes, clean up offensive-line penalties, and handle the Saints’ passing game.
Offensive Health
- Flowers’ recurring hamstring issue was treated as the key concern; both speakers favored caution to protect his availability later in the season.
- Without Flowers, Baltimore can rely more on Derrick Henry, Rashod Bateman, Mark Andrews, tight ends, and younger receivers.
- Can Legente Wester provide enough of Flowers’ speed and versatility if Flowers misses multiple games?
New Staff
- Declan Doyle’s debut was praised for creativity and preparation.
- Jesse Minter’s emphasis on improving Baltimore’s home performance was viewed as a meaningful cultural reset.
- Can the Ravens sustain their Week 1 discipline while reducing penalties?
- Host the Maryland Crab Cake Tour breakfast show at State Fair on the 24th, including the Maryland Lottery scratch-off giveaway and scheduled guests such as Alan McCallum. (@Nestor Aparicio)
- Invite Bud Becker to appear at the Maryland Crab Cake Tour event at State Fair on the 24th. (@Nestor Aparicio)
- Cover and prepare reporting on the Saints-Ravens matchup from Owings Mills during the week. (@Luke Jones)
- Host the rescheduled Pizza John’s event on October 2, featuring Casper Wells. (@Nestor Aparicio)
Ravens Week 1 Review
- Lamar Jackson looked like an MVP-caliber quarterback and created plays both as a passer and runner.
- Zay Flowers was highly productive before leaving with a hamstring injury.
- Baltimore overcame a large number of offensive-line penalties and maintained control late in the game.
Saints Matchup
- New Orleans showed competitiveness in Week 1, with Tyler Shuck making several strong throws.
- Chris Olave is a major receiving threat against Baltimore’s cover-two approach.
- Alvin Kamara and possibly Cam Jordan were expected to return or remain relevant to the matchup.
Availability And Adjustments
- Flowers’ recurring hamstring issue was the central personnel concern.
- Jacoby Lane’s surgery and placement on injured reserve reduce receiver depth.
- Potential replacements include Legente Wester, Rashod Bateman, younger receivers, and more involvement from the tight ends.
Coaching And Home Field
- Declan Doyle received strong praise for his first game as offensive coordinator.
- Jesse Minter’s attention to Baltimore’s poor home record from the prior season was highlighted.
- The new staff was viewed as detail-oriented and well prepared.
Nestor Aparicio 0:00
Two. Welcome home. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. It’s Baltimore positive. We are positively getting up on the New Orleans Saints marching into Baltimore, and maybe the Baltimore Orioles season marching out. It was marching up to New York. We’ll get to that shortly. Luke Jones joins us now. We’re going to be doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour on the 24th. That is a week from Thursday in the morning. Going to do a breakfast show. A lot of Maryland lottery scratch-offs to give away with the Kiss Face Bird. By then we’ll have the number 28 entry in our 28th anniversary. Kiss being the hottest band in the world and number 28 on my list. So if Kiss is 28, you can only imagine how good the other 27 are going to be here. And if I tell you the journey and a couple others didn’t make it, but our friends at GBMC put me out on the road, keep me healthy. Still haven’t had French fries and gravy. I keep talking about it. Maybe the more I talk about, I can like stave off actually eating it. But I’ll eat something good for me, good for my soul. At least at State Fair next Thursday, all it brought to you by Farnham and Dermer. Also, they are the comfort guys. I’m gonna have some comfort food. Zach is gonna come by next week at State Fair and make me more comfortable. I’ve got Richard Abraham’s coming by to talk rock and roll. I’m trying to talk Bud Becker into coming, who is the old voice of Hammer Jacks, man on the streets, and as I do my kiss and Paul Stanley stuff here, I think about the New Orleans Saints coming to Baltimore this week. And Luke, I’m having fun with my little rock and roll thing here. We’ve told some stories and showed some ticket stubs and a lot of kiss this week. And even Leonard Raskin was down with that. We’ve had a Depeche Mode cover band in town this week, but like it speaks to the fact that like the Ravens are number one in everybody’s power rankings except yours and mine because we don’t have power rankings around here. But I see the three teams that can win the Super Bowl now. The Ravens are one of them based on 60 minutes of beating up on the Colts on the road and Lamar looking like Lamar, which is you know
Luke Jones 2:00
all we really needed to see the last nine months, right? Like Lamar looking like Lamar makes it like up. They’re good for 1213, wins. They’re good as long as he stays healthy. And the Jacoby Lane things, you know, old news because it was so Sunday, Monday, and here we are. And they’re just going to plug and play and do what they do. But this is the way it goes. There’s attrition, but in a general sense, I can talk rock and roll this week because not a whole lot going on with the football, and the baseball team doesn’t want us to talk about them unless we were like the Mets, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I guess I I don’t feel exactly that way. I mean, I’m I’m a little more concerned about the Zayflowers thing, not not for week two specifically because I don’t think he’s going to play Sunday, but in terms of making sure you get him right, I mean, I said it to you after the game on Sunday that I think you’re seeing someone who is rapidly becoming the second most important individual on that offense. Lamar Jackson by not a mile, but by 10 miles, and then it’s everyone else. But I think you’re seeing Zay Flowers become someone that’s even more critical than Derrick Henry, and I don’t say that as a knock on Derrick Henry. I mean that as a compliment to what we saw Zay Flowers do. I mean, lining him up all over the field. He was out wide. He was in the slot. He was in the backfield a couple times, and he was absolutely sensational. So,
Nestor Aparicio 3:18
and that may be one of the reasons Lamar’s been like, you know, seeing this offense drawn up back in March, eight February, March. Yeah, reading the notes, getting the emails, coming in April, running around a little bit, and then running around probably beginning in July with creative things that maybe Greg Roman wouldn’t trust Lamar to do seven or eight years ago, or the guys around them, personnel-wise, the Pat Ricard thing, and the way they wanted to play more heavy, especially when they got Derrick Henry, run Lamar less, all of that. But Lamar fancies himself a passer, right? Like, so it’s fun for Lamar to throw the football probably more fun than running it when he doesn’t like to get hit. He doesn’t like to have his win taken away. I think he likes these fancy schmancy plays, but it doesn’t look like he’s looking to make them. I mean, they happen only because he’s out there playing street ball seven seconds after the ball was snapped. And looky here, I’ve got the ball and I see green, right? Like that’s kind of how that has evolved, right?
Luke Jones 4:25
Yeah, I think that’s fair. I mean, go back and look at him in Louisville for all the, all the really dumb discourse, and I’m talking way back when the oh he should move to wide receiver kind of discourse, right? Go back and look at him in college. He threw the ball a lot. I mean, Bobby Petrino’s offense was a pro style offense. I mean, this wasn’t Lamar Jackson, and he shot it,
8Nestor Aparicio 4:45
man. I mean, he checked it, right? I mean, it wasn’t Dinky Dunkey. I mean, every time I saw a highlight of him when he was drafted, the ball was going 50 yards in the fly.
Luke Jones 4:54
Yeah, and and let me be clear. Like, yes, he ran plenty in college as well, but this was not. Tommy Frazier at Nebraska in 1993, right? I mean, this was a quarterback who threw the ball plenty. No, he he needed more development, as plenty of quarterbacks need development. Josh Allen developed a heck of a lot from the time he arrived in the NFL. So so yeah, I I think that assessment is very fair. I mean, I’ve heard Lamar say on a number of occasions that he he doesn’t really like to run all that much. Now, I I think that’s him being a little coy at times, but I think the the overall prevailing point that you’re making, and I agree with it, is yeah, all things being equal, I think Lamar would rather be a 5000 yard passer than you know a guy that’s continuing to run for 1000 yards a season, like he was earlier earlier in his career, but he still has that ability and that scrambling ability. I mean, my goodness! I mean, that play on Sunday, as I said to you, I don’t know where it ranks. It’s probably not even in the top five of Lamar plays that made you go wow, but it still made you go wow like crazy. And as I said to you, for me, it was crazy in the sense that at that point he had what five or six live bullet reps under his belt, you know, since January, and he does that in that situation. But but yeah, and I think that the thing you see
Nestor Aparicio 6:14
him do that on the practice field a lot, though, right? You see him no, no, you don’t have to do that. No,
Luke Jones 6:19
and that and that’s why I was so impressed by it, right? I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 6:22
fair enough.
Luke Jones 6:22
No, because you don’t hit him in practice, or you don’t hit the quarterback in practice, so he
Nestor Aparicio 6:26
doesn’t have to worry about such anything ever. And it’s
8Luke Jones 6:29
funny, Marlon Humphrey was asked about the only time you have to
Nestor Aparicio 6:32
run for your life when you have to run for your life. Sure, sure, yeah. I mean, there’s only so much of
Luke Jones 6:37
quote practicing that, right? But Marlon Humphrey kind of said it best. He he said, you know, we see Lamar in practice, and don’t get me wrong, he’s he’s great in practice, and and you can tell like, oh, that’s what it looks like, an elite quarterback, a you know best MVP caliber quarterback, all that. But then you see to the games where all bets are off in terms of hitting the quarterback and all that, right? I mean, it’s a real live game, and it does. It sometimes takes your breath away just how impressive he really is. And I mean, that’s the thing that you don’t see in practice. I mean, you know, he’s capable of it. He’s fast. He can run away from people in practice when he scrambles and breaks the pocket and all that. But there’s no one hitting him. There’s no threat of hitting him, right? Nor should there be. But yeah, it’s something that’s incredible. But just to get back to Zay Flowers for a moment and how this is fitting, I saw someone make this comment. I don’t, I, I don’t even remember who it was. It may have just been a Ravens fan that that just came across my timeline, and he made the comment that Zay Flowers is starting to remind you a little bit more and more of Antonio Brown pre Vonta’s Burfect hit, and I was just like, you know what? It’s probably not that far off. Don’t get me wrong, Zay’s got to do it for a number of years. I mean, Antonio Brown, for as much as we think of him as just a wacko at this point in this stage of an historic, the ways that they
Nestor Aparicio 8:04
could isolate him off the line of scrimmage five to eight yards off the line of scrimmage, win a second and a half, you don’t get your quarterback hit, you can draw it up, you can block it up as long as he can get into the space and have that moment to get the ball, right? I mean that that’s what Antonio Brown was, and usually the ball in front of him with a step without a safety looking to take his head off because it was drawn up that way. Sure,
Luke Jones 8:29
sure, and you could just move him around. I mean, you could, despite his size, you could line him up outside. He played in the slot. You can. I mean, we saw it. I mean, Zay Flowers lined up in the backfield twice in in his not quite a full half of football on Sunday, so looking how
Nestor Aparicio 8:44
Tom Brady salivated to get that kind of a player in his offense, no
Speaker 1 8:48
doubt, and that was later in his career. Yeah, well,
8Nestor Aparicio 8:51
I mean, and if you’re talking about it in that way, that if a 29 year old court, excuse me, 30 year old coordinator now would be looking at tape or film and saying that guy who’s is comparable. How can we? He doesn’t play like Steve Smith. He doesn’t play tough like that. He doesn’t play like hand slap. I’m gonna you know I’m gonna beat up on a bigger guy and run away from you. He just runs away. And I I saw him take a little hook slide last week too, and I thought, all right, get down, dude. That’s yeah. I mean, I mean, when you’re
Luke Jones 9:23
when you’re 591, 186 pounds or whatever it is, yeah, you need to be smart, right? I mean, look, five guys
Nestor Aparicio 9:30
there. You’re not going to get out of this. Go down, right? Let me be
Luke Jones 9:32
clear. I mean, I don’t I don’t think Zay Flowers lacks toughness, but he’s not going to be play like a six foot four wide receiver, right? He’s not going to play like Calvin Johnson or or guys like that. I bring
Nestor Aparicio 9:44
Steve Smith up because he had that body frame, but didn’t play like that body frame. Sure,
Luke Jones 9:48
sure. But but but I think you just see someone that is dynamic, and that’s the point, and that’s why it’s funny we’re spending so much time talking about Zay Flowers. I don’t think he’s going to play Sunday because I think you need to be smart. I mean, this this is not. Not just him tweaking or or feeling his hamstring grab a little bit on Sunday. This is a hamstring injury that goes back to the Minnesota joint practice. They shut him down for two weeks. They ramp him back up. He was ready to go. I this is not me questioning at all him playing in week one, but the fact that this was reaggravated. That’s where I think you need to be really, really careful here. This is not, oh, he just felt a little bit of hamstring tightness and he’s fine a few days later. This is, oh, he’s been dealing with this, you know, sore hamstring, managing this for the better part of four weeks now. So you have to be smart. And if that means you don’t have them for Sunday, if that means you don’t have them for week three, even. But if that mitigates the risk of a situation where he’s not 100% or he gets re-injured and then he is out six weeks, eight weeks, you don’t want to be in a position where Zay Flowers is compromised for the bulk of the season, because while Lamar Jackson is number one by a mile or by 10 miles, as I said, Zay’s rapidly becoming one of those guys on the short list that you don’t want to be without, right? I mean, Derrick Henry, Kyle Hamilton, Zay. You know, you could pick out some Ronnie Stanley because of a lack of an unproven alternative, Roquan Smith because of the lack of depth at inside linebacker. Right, so so you can you know we can pick and choose the guys that either you don’t have a lot of depth at a certain position, or they just are that dynamic, or it’s just that that much of a premium position. But Zay Flowers is on in that list comfortably. That short that short list he is comfortably on that short list, and you know has been you know going back a couple years now. I mean we’re talking about a homegrown two time Pro Bowl wide receiver. He was second in the league, second in the AFC in receiving yards last year, and that was even with Lamar missing as much time as he did. So so I think you have to be careful, and I think the difference here, and and I’ve heard because I’ve seen some people say, and I I don’t disagree with the sentiment. Yeah, they need to take advantage here. You want to you want to make your hay with this early season schedule. But I would also say, if Declan Doyle’s as smart as we all think he is, and I say that as a compliment to him because I do think he did a fantastic job in week one, and you see the excitement. You now go into a week where you say, “All right, maybe we’ll be surprised come Sunday and Zay Flowers. Maybe he’ll be ready to go, but we’re putting together a game plan, working under the assumption that Zay Flowers isn’t going to play. And I think when you look at it through that lens, this team should have more than enough, even if it becomes a little more of a Derrick Henry game than you otherwise would have thought, this team should have more than enough to beat the New Orleans Saints. Who look, they manned up. They had a very competitive game in Week One, lost in overtime. Tyler Shuck threw the ball all the way all the way across the field. Like, not saying you just roll the ball out and that’s an
Nestor Aparicio 12:58
interesting from the quarterback perspective. And they’ve people don’t know that name. Don’t know much about him. Most Ravens fans will show up on Sunday and say, “Who’s this guy? Can’t pronounce his name. Whatever. I mean, they are-they’re an anonymous group, right? As as far as the Sean Paytons and the Drew Brees’s being long, long gone, it’s like it’s almost like when the Colts like, “Who’s the quarterback again? You know who? Who’s the coach? What are they? Because we haven’t heard much about them since. Yeah,
8Luke Jones 13:25
it’s it’s funny. They have a couple holdovers, right? I mean, Alvin Kamara didn’t play in week one. He’s going to play in week two. But they have Travis used to be ETN, now it’s HN, right? Which is just kind of strange. Kind of reminds me of calling Adalius Thomas Adalius for all those years, and then it’s oh, it’s a Dalis. Okay, no problem. But yeah, so they have a couple of those guys. Yeah, Cam Jordan didn’t didn’t play in week one. He’s been dealing with the hamstring. I mean, he’s practicing on a limited basis. We’ll see. So, but but yeah, you look at Chuck. Obviously, the backfield looks different. Chris Olave is someone who’s been around for a few years now, but he’s had concussion issues. And you, but you were reminded in week one. I mean, what 10 catches, 182 yards. I mean, that’s the kind of guy that, with Jesse Minter and this defense wanting to play a lot of cover two shell, that’s what you have in mind. You don’t want Chris Olave to, you know, you don’t want them to throw the ball over your head and Chris Olave come down with it 65 yards downfield, right? That’s the idea of the kind of defense they play. And as I said to you a couple days ago, why? Yeah, they’ll concede a little bit here and there with the ground game if it just means it mitigates the risk of them, you know, deep balls being completed on them. So, you know, it’s a New Orleans team that I don’t think there are especially high expectations. I mean, in the NFC South, who do you really expect to be really, really good, right? I mean, look, Carolina won that division, what, at eight and nine last year, or nine and eight, what, whichever one it was. Point is, that division is kind of like the AL wild card picture. That that the Orioles are still hanging around it somehow, some way, to some small degree, but you know it’s a it’s an interesting team. Shuck not ready to deem him like, oh he’s going to be the guy for them long term, but he was interesting enough down the stretch last year, and certainly put up some big numbers on Sunday. Now, granted, they were in a position where they were throwing the ball a lot, right? I mean, that’s kind of what happens when you’re, you know, when you’re playing a tough team and you’re trailing and all that. But they made some plays. I mean, he made some. Go back. If anyone goes back and just watches like the the expedited highlights, where you can see like 35 minutes of the game condensed into, you know, like they take out all the commercials and all the lag time. He made some big time throws over the course of that game. So, believe me, this isn’t me sounding the alarm that there’s any reason to be fearful. But I think you want to see the Ravens clean some of the things up that we saw Sunday as well as they played Sunday. I mean, Kyle Hamilton said it after the game. He kind of said the defense, kind of a C plus. You know, I might have been willing to say B minus for the defense, but you know they still gave up some points. They weren’t great in the red zone. Jonathan Taylor popped some runs against them last week. Obviously, the first drive was ugly, but there were still plenty of really good things they did. Obviously, taking the ball away twice in in the manner they did, that was huge for for the defense. So yeah, they need that group to play well, and on offense certainly need to knock out the penalties. Right, you don’t want to be in a position where you’re having 100 yards, 10 penalties like they did last week, especially with the offensive line. Right, that that’s when things can be a little bit different. You can absorb that when you have a big-time playmaker like Zay Flowers with the yak ability that he showed in the first half last week. But if you don’t have that, you just you need to be a little sharper. And certainly, I I would think they’ll lean a little bit harder than they even normal for for Derrick Henry, and that’s fine.
Luke Jones 16:59
But it’s also an opportunity to get Rashad Bateman going a little bit more. See what some of these other younger receivers can do. Chris Moore was elevated to the 53 because Jacoby Lane having the surgery. He’s on IR now, so he’s out the next four games. So you know maybe get the tight ends a little more involved in terms of receiving ability, especially looking at the you know like a Matt Hibner for example. So we’ll see how it plays out in that way. But like I said, I keep coming back to the the flowers thing, even if it was precautionary. Even they can say all they want about he would have went back. He would have gone back in if if it had been a playoff game, and that I believe that. Like I don’t think that’s you know I don’t think that’s lip service. But week two is not a playoff game, right? We all understand where they are, and we all understand, especially if you have a full week to account for that. There should be enough firepower on this offense that they should still be able to score more than enough points. You know, maybe maybe won’t be on a pace to score 50 like it looked like they had a chance to before Zay Flowers exited on Sunday. But be in a position where you can still be productive and account for Zay Flowers not being out there because the last thing I want is to force that in week two, and and and he pulls up lame midway through the first quarter, and now you’re talking about it being a six-week injury. Now you’re talking about being something that’s going to linger when your schedule does pick up, and you are facing some tougher opponents once we get to October and November. So that’s where I think you just have to be smart. Again, this isn’t an isolated thing that happened on Sunday. He’s been dealing with this, so I just think you have to be smart, and that’s why, if it were up to me, he definitely wouldn’t play Sunday, and I’d be saying wait and see for even for week three because Zay Flowers is that important that I want him as close to 100% as possible for October, November, and December. Not so, not not being so obsessed that he needs to be out there for week two and week three.
Nestor Aparicio 19:05
Luke Jones is here. He is Baltimore Luke. He will be out in Owings Mills, getting us ready for Saints and Ravens this week. We’ll be watching plenty of football. We’re gonna be doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour on the 24th. That’s next Thursday at State Fair. Then we have moved Pizza Johns to the second. That’ll be next. That’ll be the Friday afterward of baseball playoff week. We have Casper Wells coming out. Alan McCallum gonna do some baseball on the 24th at State Fair. We’re also gonna do some more rock and roll and 28th anniversary rock and roll stuff as I go through these bands and the coming days and weeks. Whether it’s Kiss, John Mayer, AC/DC, Bad Company, and Paul Rogers and the firm and other things like that. So those are the coming weeks in a general sense around here. Baseball sort of petering out, and we’re going to get to that and Pete Alonso in New York and all that good stuff. But the Ravens thing to me. At least for now, and I haven’t shaved since the game, and I’m low key, and I’m dreaming of Koco’s Pub because I’m wearing my Koco’s Pub gear here. It feels very quiet. It feels like they’re going to roll the ball out on Sunday and win. It feels like they got a pretty good team. Might have the right coach. We’ll see. I wrote a dear Jesse Minter piece that everybody can read about about my lack of him being interesting, but I’m interested in seeing how this thing plays when they had a three touchdown lead on Sunday, and I’m like, can they blow this? And I’m like, oh, they used to blow this regularly. That’s what got the coach fired. It happened a lot. Happened a whole lot. It happened way, way, way, way more than I care to remember on Monday mornings, and I know you do as well. What impressed you about the first hour of of this, as you see it?
Luke Jones 20:55
Well, I mean, a lot of what I mentioned was Zay Flowers. I mean, I I think you have to be impressed with Declan Doyle, right? For as much as we talked about the idea that they hired this 29-year-old, now 30 offensive coordinator who had never called a play in his life, other than just in his mind, right? Other than just walking the field before games, right? Whether he was a member of Sean Payton’s staff or with Ben Johnson last year, kind of in the role that Anthony Weaver’s in right now as the defensive coordinator for the Ravens, where you’re certainly instrumental in doing the work, doing the legwork, but you’re not the captain of the of the ship, right? You’re not driving the car. I’ll use whatever metaphor you want to kind of use to to to kind of make that comparison. But I think you know. I was just-I was really impressed with Declan Doyle. I was impressed with the creativity. I was-I was impressed with how most of the operation went. I mean, I mean, even even the offensive line-it-it was-they were holding penalties, and I’m not ready to say that that group’s going to do that every single week. I mean, that can kind of be a a high variance week to week thing where you just I don’t know you have a crew that’s really looking to call holding penalties right so but but I but I think you know really going back to what you just said look in reality I mean the Ravens won even in in these last several years with Lamar Jackson and John Harbaugh together, they won a lot of football games, so they didn’t blow that many leads. But it was enough that it was in the back of your mind on Sunday, right? When when new when Indianapolis cut it to 15, when they made it two scores on two different occasions. One was what late in the third quarter, and the other was in the fourth play away
Nestor Aparicio 22:41
from one score game. That
Luke Jones 22:42
that’s where you’re just at no point was I like oh my gosh here we go again. But it’s in the back of your mind, right? And you’re saying okay, this this was about the time last year when Derrick Henry fumbled in Buffalo, right? They didn’t do anything like that, right? They just they played clean. That what that that six minute drive they had in the fourth quarter where Loop hits that field goal to end any any shred of doubt about the game that was one of their few drives all game all day where they didn’t have a penalty it was just it was a clean operation when it needed to be clean and that’s what you wanted to see right, and and yeah, they did that more than than they absolutely should have, and it’s one of the reasons why John Harbaugh’s no longer the coach here, right? But it wasn’t just John Harbaugh, right? Derrick Henry fumbled the ball. John Harbaugh didn’t coach Derrick Henry to fumble the ball last year, a couple different times at critical moments. John Harbaugh did not coach Mark Andrews to fumble the ball and drop it in Buffalo two years ago, right? So, so for me, that’s where you want to see everyone mature, right? You want to see everyone grow from those experiences, right? It was interesting since we brought this up, or since I brought up John Harbaugh, I had a chance to see. I guess it was the more extended conversation he had with Mike Tomlin on Sunday Night Football, and it was interesting to hear not just Harbaugh but Tomlin as well. They both talked about their their last stops, right? And they were talking about Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively. They talked about a lot of the scar tissue that everyone had, and they both, to their credit, they both had some grace in saying, “I’m still rooting for those guys, and like they deserve a fresh start. They deserve a clean slate. And Harbaugh and Tomlin both said that, right? Think, I mean, the Ravens, it was the blown leads and falling short in January, right? In Tomlin’s case, they haven’t won a playoff game in a decade, right? So, so I think some of that, and it goes back to what we kind of said when we, you know, when we started speculating about it in passing, and then when the ax fell, and everyone was like, “Oh wow, they actually made the change, right? That you and I talked about for maybe 30 seconds at a time. But didn’t really genuinely believe was going to happen. But we talked about it then. We said, you know, this this can be good for everyone, right? There’s just a lot of baggage of everything that plays out. So when Jesse Minter comes in, yes, I realize he was here in Baltimore for a few years, but that was 2017 through 20, right? That’s a long time ago in the NFL, so I think that’s where you look at it and say Jesse Minter can come in and he’s aware of the past. Like for example, he brought up this week that you guys stunk at home last year. Yeah, I don’t think he said it quite in those terms. I mean, maybe he did, but that was part of the message. Kyle Hamilton brought this up. Marlon Humphrey brought this up this week. Where a point of emphasis this week is, you guys need to go out there and play well in front of your home crowd. You didn’t just. It’s kind of
Nestor Aparicio 25:50
amazing. Like even over 30 years, they. I mean, one or two years during Billix’s era or whatever. Oh, I mean, it’s yeah. They’ve always that’s been the strength of the organization. Yeah, and really the strength of the fan base to make it a lousy place to come in and play-it’s not like it used to be at all. Yeah, and look, I mean, it’s not that kind of place anymore because they’ve chased people like me and my generations left, and the new people aren’t the same way. It’s just not what it used to be to come in here and play Ray Lewis in 2009. I mean, but
8Luke Jones 26:21
I don’t disagree. Certainly, when you look at pregame introductions, right? I mean, it’s you know it’s not close to what it was when Ray Lewis is coming out and doing the squirrel. But but keep in mind, home field advantage is more than just the crowd, right? It’s the comfort, you know, the the familiarity, right? The the idea you’re not getting on a plane, all those different factors. But they need me to get
Nestor Aparicio 26:40
people down there honking horns in front of the Saints Hotel. Maybe, maybe
Luke Jones 26:44
you know, or or the old what the old New England trick where the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night. Well, you know that’s the
Nestor Aparicio 26:50
that’s the the World Cup trick everywhere. Yeah,
Luke Jones 26:52
yeah, yeah. But but but they were three, but they were three and six at home last year, and I thought that was interesting that Jesse Minter kind of didn’t shy away from that. It’d be really easy for him, especially as a first-time head coach, be like, “Oh, guys, we’re not even going to talk about last year, right? I wasn’t here. The coaches weren’t here. Some of you guys weren’t here. No, he he threw it right in their face to say that is
Nestor Aparicio 27:15
unique that he can point at them and say, ‘I’ll add no part of this this ish show. I was starting to clean this up. And
Luke Jones 27:21
again, I don’t think his. I’m the
8Nestor Aparicio 27:22
deodorizer. Yeah, but I’m guessing his
Luke Jones 27:25
tune is much more just you know to kind of hey, let’s protect our home turf, right? Let let’s reestablish the Ravens’ identity. To what you said, I mean, even go back and look at some of the Ravens’ more disappointing seasons, and there haven’t been very many over their 31-year history now, but even some of those years where they didn’t have great records, they generally were good at home, and that’s why last year, considering they, I mean, they were five and three on on the road last year. Generally, if you tell me that going into a season that a team’s going to be five and three on the road, that generally will translate to being a playoff team. So for the Ravens to have missed the playoffs with a five and three road record, I mean, it just speaks to how lousy they were at home. So, so I I thought that was interesting. But to go back to your your big question that you asked, which you know what impressed me the most, I just they were ready to play, and that’s one thing I said about the preseason. As much as it’s backups and it’s third-string guys, and it’s you know even though the scheme wasn’t quite as vanilla as maybe you would have thought preseason, you know that that’s changed a little bit. I think you’re seeing defenses, at least Jesse Minter and Brian Flores-like defenses, maybe blitz a little bit more and do some things that that maybe you wouldn’t have seen in the past, but I think the thing that just impressed me over the preseason one, yeah, they had good depth and they scouted undrafted guys and they they had a good 90 man roster for for whatever that’s worth, but they just they were ready to play and they looked like a well coached team and yes, they committed a lot of penalties on the offensive line on Sunday, and that’s something that must be cleaned up. I mean, that’s a non-negotiable, non-starter. I mean, if you’re going to do that every week, you’re going to run into problems, right? You absolutely are. You might get away with it for a game or two, but you’re committing that many penalties on the O line week after week after week. That will burn you, especially against better teams, but but I think beyond that, with that exception, I just thought they they played they played well, right? They for the most part looked pretty fundamentally sound. I thought for the most part, considering they hadn’t tackled all preseason, talking about the starters, thought they tackled well enough for week one. Right, I thought there were enough signs that it felt like they were well prepared for week one. Understanding that week one is rarely ever going to be perfect, and that’s what I think impressed me. And that’s and that’s what we go back to that we’ve heard players talk about. Over and over and over, it’s the attention to detail, the detail-oriented nature of Jesse Minter and Declan Doyle and Anthony Weaver, right? And and Anthony Levine, the special teams, right? They have to continue that. I think week two is always a different challenge, right? You always hear the cliches of teams will make the most improvement from week one to week two. Well, that’s not always true because there’s plenty of teams that win in week one and then lose in week two. So we know that that’s not true. But I think what’s interesting now for a new coaching staff and kind of this is kind of the next checkpoint to see how it looks. Think about it. From what what the schedule came out, what mid May I think it was, right? It’s a little bit later. You know, it’s a little bit later than it used to be, but they’ve known since mid-May that they’re going to play the Indianapolis Colts in Week One, right?
Luke Jones 30:45
So you spend so much time on that, and my my experiences covering past coaching staffs generally they do some advanced work on like weeks one through four. You don’t want to get too ahead of yourselves because whether you have new coaching staff, you have new tape, you have new offenses, you have new wrinkles within old offenses, all of that. So, but but I think week one is a different animal because you’ve had so much time to be so heavily focused. Yeah, so every game in a
Nestor Aparicio 31:15
year you have a month. You literally talk. I mean, you have months, right? You have
Luke Jones 31:19
months if you want, right? I mean, you’re not necessarily doing, you know, you’re not putting in your game plan the first week of training camp, but the coaches behind the scenes
Nestor Aparicio 31:26
days are that much more difficult if you lose.
Luke Jones 31:28
Yeah. Oh, no question. But if you
8Nestor Aparicio 31:30
lose, you don’t play. You you don’t look good. But but you look like oh boy, that didn’t
Luke Jones 31:35
sure
Nestor Aparicio 31:35
that doesn’t. And half the teams lost, and half the teams have to assess,
Luke Jones 31:40
and some of them looked really bad, right? The Saints weren’t one of
Nestor Aparicio 31:43
them, as we’ll talk about this week, that looked okay. But like in a general sense, like when you look good the way the Ravens did, it puts more of a shine on you to say they got really good players,
Luke Jones 31:54
and it’s more pressure too. Like, hey, you did it once, you better do it again, right? Go do it again. So, but but I think the difference I’m talking about here is now you go into week two and and like this is the next checkpoint for this coaching staff. Now it’s normal week where it’s a quicker turnaround and you say, all right, Colts, that was fun. That’s history, right? We watched the film. Now we got real tape
Nestor Aparicio 32:15
on Sunday on this new team. Yeah, whatever we thought they were last week, they’re they’re not. This is what they are. This is what they
8Luke Jones 32:22
showed us. And it’s it’s always a little bit different, right? I mean, you have new personnel, you have new wrinkles. Sometimes you have a brand new coaching staff. So you know, it’s not point.
Nestor Aparicio 32:32
Zay Flowers isn’t in the offense. There’s probably eight plays they’re not going to run on Sunday that they would take differently and different down at distance because they don’t have him, right? Probably not designed for him.
Luke Jones 32:42
Yeah, I mean, I mean, maybe you see Legente Wester run a couple of those plays, and we and we even saw it when he comes in the game and replaces A this past Sunday. They even threw him the ball a little bit, not obviously not a lot, but
Nestor Aparicio 32:54
well, maybe on Sunday he catches five for 80. I mean, maybe runs. I mean, I’d be
Luke Jones 32:58
surprised by that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he catches a few balls. Yeah, I mean, like you know, he’s, and and that’s the thing when you kind of look at wide receivers, right? We tend to look at it in like this, this weird linear way of saying, okay, who’s the number one? Who’s the number two? Who’s the number three? Who’s the number four? Right? And I understand why people do that, but really, it’s who’s your ex, right? Who’s who’s the bigger body type out wide? That was supposed to be Jacoby Lane, right? That’s been Rashad Bateman in the past, but you know who who’s your guy that is going to line up in the slot? You know, Zay lined up in the slot a whole lot on Sunday, but he can still line up out wide, and he can move into the backfield, and you know you do so much pre-snap motion, all of that. So yeah, the the the problem when you lose A Flowers beyond the fact that he’s your best wide receiver by a wide margin, is you you kind of say, okay, who has that skill set? Who has that body type? Who has that level of speed and agility? All of that, and Wester is the closest they have to that, but look, Legente Wester, maybe he’ll make, maybe he’ll surprise everyone. To your point, who knows? But he’s not Zay Flowers, right? So that’s where you kind of look at this thing, and that’s why I said to you, even on Sunday, if I’m Eric DeCasta, I’m watching Lejante Wester very closely, and if he ends up doing a, you know, a C plus version of Zay Flowers, then okay, you can live with that. If it’s a D version, however, that’s where you look at it and say, between now and the trade deadline, is there another receiver out there that we can get that can be, you know, a little more Zay Flowers insurance for us if Zay something happens to him at some point? So you’re not in the in the position they were in two Januarys ago when he got hurt, right? And you didn’t have him in Buffalo, so you know that that’s something you’re looking at. But but again, I think the the difference is you’ve got enough weapons, you’ve got enough ways to play, right? I mean, you’ve got a even though. 32 years old. You’ve got a guy who’s a 1,500 yard back. A guy who people are slowly but surely starting to talk and whisper a little bit more about his path to breaking Emmitt Smith’s record. I mean, he’s got to do it for a few more years, which is asking a lot. But three years ago, everyone would have been saying, “Well, Derrick Henry’s not. He can’t go on much longer, and he keeps doing it, right? So who the heck knows? Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 35:22
we’re one of those points for for him, like Bettis and other guys at the end, like gotta win a Super Bowl. Well, sure, and that’s why Week One, them looking this good, that gets that gets them all believing a little bit. I mean, even Marlin Humphrey, I saw 11 minutes of him on Wednesday. He’s buying his own hype too, so that’s good. Yeah,
Luke Jones 35:40
but but the point I was trying to make is you have other ways you can play, right? And they and they even did that on Sunday, right? I mean, it was very striking when Zay exits the game. Their offense wasn’t the same for the next five drives. I mean, I think it’s it was obvious, but because they did have a lead, and that’s why if you’re going to play this way, it’s that much more important that you start fast and you jump out to a lead that you can lean on a team with Derrick Henry. And I think you know, assuming Zay Flowers doesn’t play Sunday, probably going to see the Ravens do that maybe a little bit sooner than they would, maybe right out of the gate a little bit more than they might have. But you know, I think that’s where you know you you’re hoping that we should have enough talent to win games, win a game or two without Zay Flowers here. If it’s that important to make sure he’s right physically the rest of the way, and that’s that was kind of my overall point talking about that. And that means more Derrick Henry, if that means more Rashad Bateman, if that means a little more Mark Andrews, if that means seeing what Tez Walker and Elijah Serat can do, then so be it. Right? You’re hoping the silver lining there is you can evaluate a little bit of some of these other options that you have. Not not that that is your preference, but it’s football. Right? Guys are going to get hurt. This Zay Flowers and and Jacoby Lane aren’t going to be the last injuries that they have this season. You hope you don’t have any catastrophic ones, but we know how this game works. So that’s where again the saving grace here should be. If Declan Doyle’s truly as talented and as smart as we all think he is, and I say that as a compliment, I’m not saying that you know tongue in cheek or anything. Then he should be able to put together a game plan that is, you know, taking into account that you’re not going to have Zay Flowers out there. And yeah, even though Legente Wester might be able to do some of those things, their passing game isn’t going to be centered around throwing the ball to Lejante Wester. So that’s that’s what we’re saying here. And I think again with a full week to prepare and hoping that you do clean up some of the penalties on the O line from week one to week two, then this team shouldn’t have that many problems going out there and moving the ball again. Maybe they don’t, you know, they’re probably not going to hang 50 on them without Zay Flowers or anything crazy like that, but they should still be able to move the ball and score points, and again, go back to the defense. And you know, Tyler Shuck throwing the ball around the field the way he did last Sunday is well and good. Doing that against the Jesse Minter defense, that’s I think that’s a little more of a challenge, right? We know what Detroit’s defense has been that decimated by injuries. I mean, they’re still kind of dealing with that, so it’s a little different animal if you’re going up against the Ravens. We hope, we expect, we think, as far as what we think this defense is going to become. So it’s going to be quite a quite a test for the young quarterback going on the road. But you know, I think I think the Ravens. You know, even without Zay Flowers, I think you can tell I’m expecting them to win this game, and you hope they go out and play that well in front of the home crowd after a lousy 2025 at their home stadium.
8Nestor Aparicio 38:49
Luke Jones is drinking the purple Kool-Aid right along with me. The Jesse Minter defense. I love how we’re getting into week two. We will be at State Fair next Thursday. We’ll have the Ravens scratch off with the Kiss Face Bird. We’ll be doing breakfast at State Fair on the 24th afternoon into late lunch, and just in time for me to maybe get a milkshake and a pizza to go at Pizza John’s on October the 2nd, the end of baseball season, the beginning of football season, and the beginning of our 28th anniversary, and a little bit of a fun rock and roll history march through all sorts of places and all sorts of faces. I even got like Johnny O last week to talk about seeing Stevie Wonder at the arena. So I’m going to get concerts out at some point. Luke’s going to tell me about the Pink Floyd Roger Waters experience with his family, and we’ll do some more because even Luke and I share rock and roll together, so it’s going to be fun as we get through this. We’re not going to have any baseball to share here, but we’re not done with that-not just yet. He is Luke. I am Nestor. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking. Baltimore positive. Stay with us.
