Luke Jones and Nestor discuss Harbaugh, clock management and penalities on offensive line in loss to Chiefs
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
offensive line, play, run, chiefs, clock, game, teams, lamar, ball, ravens, second half, derrick henry, training camp, oyster, clean, offense, raiders, win, talking, guess
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones
Nestor Aparicio 00:02
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore, positive. We’re gonna try to be positive around here. Maybe the Orioles will win some games next 10 days. Ravens are oh and one to start the season. We’re gonna be watching football all weekend long. We’re gonna be back out next friday at Coopers in Fells Point. Come on down. It is the Fells Point oyster festival. Every day is an oyster festival for me. This month, we’re doing 26 oysters in 26 days to celebrate our 26th anniversary. All of it brought to you by curio wellness and foreign daughter, as well as liberty, pure solutions. They keep your water clean. Well water clean. To keep my well water clean, I’ll be talking about them really all football season. They’ve been taking care of me for years well water, as well as for plumbing services. And our friends at Jiffy, Lu multi care sending us back out. I’ll have the Raven scratch offs next Friday. I have a handful of the Gold Rush, seven stumblers. We had an unbelievable conversation with Mark Viviano. Uh rasig. You’ll be hearing that today, tomorrow, into next week, as well as Lawrence Gowan from sticks is coming on this week, we’ve had all sorts of really cool guests. Nils lofman from Springsteen is not coming on for next week, but I do have a word in for Pearl Jam, so we’ll see how it goes. And I am headed to Pearl Jam, which, my God, dude, we’re gonna have Pearl Jam Springsteen sticks, all the stuff’s going on next week, before we play a football game again, they’re gonna be all in one, they’re gonna be all one on Sunday, on the pregame shows and all of that stuff. And we’ll be watching the raiders and figuring that out and getting ready for Dallas and all that. But just the general sense of that first game loop that you look at it, you say, not gonna play a better team than that, you know? I mean, so there is a point where you wake up on Friday and you’re like, well, they came a Tippy, tippy, tippy toe from maybe winning the game, and hardball had the balls to go two points, and like all that, maybe they would have won 2820 by the way, my pregame prediction was 2620 it was 2720 so I’m getting a little attaboys and pats on the back for my almost my near miss on getting the score right. Too bad I didn’t bet on it up in Hollywood Casino. But you know you’re seeing the elite of the elite. To start the season on the road with your neophyte offensive line. Things didn’t go perfectly. Things didn’t went far from perfectly. Lamar ran to all the offensive line, all the things that went on, they still must be the G so, I mean, there is, I’m gonna get into the moral victory world. But if they play that well against every team, they’ll be 16 and one because they, you know, they came that close against the best team on the road. They’re still a very good team, you know, I mean, and they should beat the Raiders by two touchdowns next week, but then they have to go do that. And this next month, with this offensive line, with whatever, whatever weaknesses they showed other coaches and tape, and Marvin was texting me after the game last night, literally, whatever he saw, they’re going to try to figure out. And, you know, the ravens are going to become at the way the chiefs are, but they’re not going to have an opponent like the Chiefs the rest of the year.
Luke Jones 02:57
Yeah. I mean, I think, look, they’ve had, I don’t know if I opportunity is the right word to use, but they’ve been afforded the chance to be so myopic as it pertains to the chiefs. I mean, you played them in the AFC Championship game. You lost the the focus and the topic of conversation throughout the off season was what happened. How do you overcome it? Where do you go from here with coaches walking out the door, players walking out the door, you bring Derek Henry in, you have this rebuilt offensive line, and lo and behold, they find out in May that they’re going to be playing the Chiefs again. So it’s been chiefs, chiefs, chiefs, Chief chiefs, Chief chiefs. And it really is important now, and I think they’re going to do this. Let me be very clear, but it is very important to turn the page. And I don’t just mean the Raiders next Sunday, but your next opportunity to play the Kansas City Chiefs will not come until you know the earliest the wild card round, right? I mean, that’s the absolute earliest you could play them again. So the Chiefs need to go away in terms of what you’re thinking about. I don’t mean that in terms of you’ve abandoned your big picture goals and understanding that, yeah, the AFC goes through Kansas City. A big surprise there, right? Even if the Ravens had won on Thursday night, that still would be the case until we see otherwise, but it really does become now, okay, you’ve, you’ve exhausted so much attention and focus and preparation for the Kansas City Chiefs, because, as you know, Nestor, I mean, you get into training camp, okay, the first couple weeks, yeah, they’re the dog days. But you get to the last couple weeks of training camp, you’re taking a look at the chiefs and also doing some advanced work on the raiders and the cowboys and the bills. I mean, you’re looking generally at your first third, your first three or four opponents as you get to the second half of training camp. So so much focus on the chiefs, and understandably so when they’re the team you’ve played in each of your last two real games. That’s why you need to turn the page now and. And you’ve got to move on from that, and you can’t let that linger. And to your point, this is a really good football team, you know, I fully expect them to be there. Are they going to be 13 and four in the number one seed? Well, the chances to do that took a hit Thursday night, no question, right? And Kansas City has the head to head tiebreaker. If it comes down to these, these two teams are both, I don’t know, 13 and 412, and 12 and five, whatever it is. And you know, whatever the number one seed might be. And let’s not forget about the other teams in the conference, or some other teams, including in this division. So you really do get an opportunity now to as much as you’re disappointed, say, look, it’s over. We’re not focused on stopping Patrick mahomes anytime soon. We need to focus on stopping the Raiders. And then it’s Dak Prescott and the Cowboys. Then it’s the bills, and then, oh yeah, the Cincinnati Bengals, who, even though the Jamar Chase thing and the T Higgins thing are both these really interesting subplots in terms of the future of their two star, star wide receivers, Joe burrows back in healthy. So, you know, you can’t, you can’t afford to have a Kansas City hangover here. I mean, you really can’t, right? So you’ve got to turn the page. And now it’s a case of getting back to week to week football in the regular season. You can’t do anything about January for another four months, right? I mean, it’s a long ways away, and you need to play well enough over these next 16 games to make sure that you’re in good position to do something in January. So I think they will again. You don’t want to overreact to week one. You want to react, right? I mean, if they need to look at their offensive line, or they need to look at how they operate, certainly the clock management and loot, you know, burning two time outs on defense early in the second half. I mean, you can’t have that. You can’t have busted coverages, you can’t have blown assignments. But again, if you look around the league, I’m guessing you’re going to see other teams do those same things. And again, it’s not an excuse. They have to clean those things up. Point is, you can’t overreact to week one, and as disappointing as it is, as close as they came to potentially still having a chance to win. And I mean, my goodness, we haven’t even we’ve talked about this in passing, but just imagine Nestor, if Isaiah likely gets his toe in, they go for two. And, heaven forbid, they wouldn’t have gotten it. Can you imagine what it would feel like then, where you would have had a chance to tie the game with an extra point, but you go for two in that spot and look, let me be clear, process wise, I would have been fine with that, because you could see on that last drive, Kansas City’s defense was tired. There was no question about that. Those guys were sucking wind. They called that time out. They signed the clock when someone wanted to stop the clock. Yeah, so well, and they did have what? Someone was banged up, I guess, right, that’s correct, yes, right, right, but, but it’s still it served the purpose that you could tell they were sucking wind. So with Lamar Jackson, and then at that point, presumably Derek Henry would have come Henry would have come back on the field for a two point try. Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you would have gotten it. That doesn’t mean it was guaranteed you would have gotten it. So again, it’s frustrating. You hate to lose. They did not play clean football across the board by any stretch of the imagination. They’ve got to clean up mistakes. Certainly, you look at the offensive line, and even if the past protection was better as the game went on, you know, the run blocking is, you know, it’s a question mark. It was a question mark back in the preseason, not in terms of, you know, recognizing that, yeah, Linder Baum and Ronnie Stanley weren’t out there and Lamar wasn’t out there and Derek Henry wasn’t out there. But, you know, they just, they didn’t move people, you know, even FA Lele, who, if there’s one thing you would think at face value, he would do well with it would be as a run blocker at 380 pounds, but he’s better pass protect, his past protections better than his run blocking. So, you know, he was, he settled in a little bit in the second half. But, you know, there’s a lot of evaluating that’s going to go on. And I think again, you want to react, but not overreact, and understand that. Yeah, you know, in this day and age where, you know, it’s not like 50 years ago, where there were six preseason games and guys were coming in the training camp and playing football for six weeks because they were out of shape, and they need, needed to get into football shape. Now, yeah, they approach it differently. Guys come into camp in shape, physically speaking. But now you do question not not the ravens, just anyone, and how they approach training camp in the preseason. You know, how much is, is too much? But you know, there’s the flip side to that, is there not enough, and is there a drawback to that? And yeah, I think you would see. I would venture to guess, and I say this completely anecdotally, because I don’t think there’s any data out there that would be objective enough to really draw the conclusion, but I’m guessing across the league. Nestor, I would venture to guess, tack. Selling in weeks one, two and three is worse than it is at any other point during the season. And I think it’s a direct product of where we are in terms of just not tackling in training camp the way they used to, and not playing much in the preseason, if you’re starters. So all that has to get better. There’s no doubt about that. And again, from a game management standpoint, from a clock management standpoint, from a tempo standpoint, those are things that they got. They’ve got to clean that up. There’s no doubt about that. And you know, as I already had, some people point to me on social media, and it’s difficult for me to argue with it, even if it’s still, you know, kind of drenched in some hyperbole. But I made mention that their clock management was in preseason form. Some people said, Hey, Ravens have had issues with that over the years, and it’s hard to argue that that they haven’t at times.
Nestor Aparicio 10:50
You know, well, that’s on hardball, right? I mean, and sure, and you know, he doesn’t like it when I criticize him, which is why he threw me out. But you know, there comes a point where these, you know, he’s losing these games to the Chiefs too, and by a Tippy, tippy toe or whatever. And you just saw the little things that go wrong in a game like that, where flowers kept going instead of sitting in the back of the end zone, that would have been a touchdown. Lamar thought he was going to sit. He didn’t sit. Just little decisions in a game that would have changed everything. But in the case of hardball, the clock management thing falls to him. 15 years into this and saying, there’s 10 minutes left to go in the game. How many times you gonna get the ball? Two or three. You want to make it two. Let’s take our time. They did that. Let’s kick we’re not gonna kick a field goal. Let’s go forward on fourth. Let’s choose some more. And then they kick a field goal anyway, right? But that being said, they had a chance that flowers in the back of the end zone. End Zone, and that’s why you want to keep that drive alive, because harbo would say, hey, we going for it down. We get four more new plays. It’s four more chances for Lamar to shake them and get seven, and then we only need Tucker to hit a 61 yarder at the end, instead of having to go to length of the field. So I’ll hear that, but the urgency and the way the offense is, and I think it’s hard because Lamar, six years into this, and you’re like, Tirico and Colin, oh, he’s managing the offense. He’s in complete control. They wanted to be in complete control. They wanted to have every you know, when he gets up to the line of scrimmage, make decisions, make decisions, make, you know, and then he decides to run around and play street ball, because that’s that’s like, this is instinct when they’re down 10 points, is my best chance isn’t these slappies blocking for me? Henry’s not on the field because we’re not going to run the ball. My best chance is to I see a hole. I’ve done it before. I can make that guy miss. I can get down, you know? And because he’s, he’s the best that’s ever done it right so that, that would be his instinct in that case. And again, this speaks to clock management, not having timeouts. You burn the timeouts earlier. Now you have a running quarterback, and you’re saying, Get down. Get down. Get down. While it gets down, your clock keeps going like there’s all of not to mention just the risk that we you hate talking about, but I’ll talk about all the time. You know, I didn’t love the way they played the game on Thursday night, and I didn’t love the way they played the game, because they couldn’t run the ball. They could have Walter Payton back there. They could, you know, whoever they want back there. They couldn’t run the ball with their running game. And until that happens, and until they’re in second and two and second and three, running the ball, not passing the ball 50 times like they did last time, until they’re controlling the game that way and eating the clock up. And the game’s not a three hour and 25 minute Opus. It’s more of the, oh, look, it’s 342 and it’s the two minute warning. You know, that’s the way they need to play to win. That’s the way they’ve won. They’re not going to win with this being behind 10 points running around. I mean, they need to get the offensive line better, or they’re not. I don’t want to be like my dad. You’re not going anywhere. You know, like that’s but they’re not going anywhere if the offensive line isn’t better than this in week 1012, or 15, or they don’t figure that part of it out, because they don’t have good enough players on their offensive line right now. Offensive line right now. As the as comprised, I’m, I don’t it’s, it is the weakness of their team. And you can talk about Simpson and young guys, likely, guys stepping up and impressing. I’m not sure that’s going to be for he’s or Ronnie Stanley, or anybody on the offensive line. We’re going to, we’re going to forget about Zeitler and Moses on the right side.
Luke Jones 14:23
That’s fair. I’ll say this. I would agree with what you said, as it pertains to when you’re going up against the best of the best, and what that could mean in January, if we don’t see market improvement, but
Nestor Aparicio 14:36
they’re gonna have the best of the best, Dallas Buffalo and Cincinnati. That’s three playoff games there. That really is. They’re three very, very good teams, okay, but
Luke Jones 14:44
ravens a really good too. I mean, like, let’s,
Nestor Aparicio 14:47
let’s be clear about, well, if they’re, if they’re one in four at the time, they won’t be if they’re three and two. Well, I’d say they’re very good. I’ll, I’ll
Luke Jones 14:53
bet you whatever you want, they’re not gonna be one in four. I mean, it’s just, I’d be shocked by that. Can. City’s got a really good defense. Ken, the city’s the best. They lost by seven points. I hear everything you’re saying. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m not going to be fatalistic about it either. I’m not going to sit here and say that I think their season’s in trouble right now. Their offensive line has to get better. The offensive line was better in the second half than it was in the first half. Now, run blocking wise, that’s much more up for debate, right? Because they got in a position where they’re down 10, and when you are down 10, and you’re in a position where you’re going to be throwing the ball more, and you’ve got Justice Hill, who has a different skill set than Derrick Henry, so yeah, you’re not going to just line it up and play three yards in the cloud of dust when you’re down two scores in the second half, because just not, it’s not going to work that way. Just isn’t again. This goes back to my original premise on not feeling like Derrick Henry was going to fundamentally, like completely met him, you know, transform what they do, because what they did last year and what they want, how they won, and they ran the ball they had leads in the second half. And yeah, Derek Henry’s gonna be awesome when you do that, and that’s gonna help protect leads and help you win football games. But you’ve got to throw the football in this league. You do? You just do? You’re not, you’re not carrying the ball 50 times a game to the Super Bowl at some point in time, you’ve got to throw the football so and look, Lamar Jackson proved that I actually kind of you made mention of commentary talking about how in command Lamar was of the offense. It’s like, hello, he won the MVP last year. He was in command of the offense last year. We talked about this. The second half of the year. We talked about his pocket presence and what he was able to do playing from the pocket and, you know, in situations where, yeah, he was breaking away from defenders when the past protection wasn’t great. So, so, you know, for me, I was more unmoved about that in terms of, I saw Lamar do this last year under Todd monkin, but yeah, the operation was spotty at best, right? You know, I mean, I’m not going to sit here and say always completely fine at the same time, I’m not going to, I am not going to sit here and say that it’s all gloom and doom either. You know, let’s see what it looks like in week two. Let’s coaching staff look at the tape. Evaluate your offensive line. Do you need to make any changes? Do you need to adjust anything? We saw them chip a little bit more in the second half, they did use some Max protect at times. We didn’t see Patrick Ricard on the field a ton. But are there times where you need to do that? And if they do, then so be it you have to. I mean, that’s just the reality of it. But again, they went up against the Super Bowl champs. They went up against the best. They didn’t play their best brand of football by any stretch of the imagination, and they lost by seven. I mean, you do the math there. I’m not saying that improvement isn’t needed, because it is. But at the same time, I’m not going to sit here and suddenly say, oh my gosh, because they lost one game to the defending Super Bowl champions by seven points on the road, that suddenly I feel that their season’s in peril. You know, they got to clean it up. But most teams around the league need to clean it up. The Kansas City Chiefs, over the next few days, are going to see things on tape to say, we need to clean it up, because some of those calls that went against them and not debating whether they were the right calls or not, but some of those penalties that went against Baltimore really changed the complexion of the game at some different points in that game, where things that we that necessarily weren’t doing well would have been magnified a little bit more. So there’s always so much to like and so much not to like with games, other than those rare exceptions, like what the Ravens did last year, I guess, against Detroit and Seattle, right, where they just pummeled teams, and Miami later in the season, where they just pummeled teams, but by and large, most weeks again, that’s why you need to be so process oriented. You need to be focused on process. And as I said to you, if Isaiah likely gets the toe in and we’re having a way different conversation, and there’s a way different tone. If they go for two and they win the football game, there’s elation, right? You know, everyone’s elated right now, yet every single play up until that point looks exactly the same as you and I and so many others and fans. You know, whether they’re having their morning coffee Friday or they’re out at happy hour at some point over the weekend, all the things they’re lamenting still would have been the same, even if they won that game. So you got to go to work, you got to clean things up. You’ve got to get better. They’ve got to be tighter with their clock management. There’s no doubt about that. And I’m not going to sit here and excuse that. You know, again and a half that was an opportunity there, instead of a 25 yard field goal, you know, you look at the second or third play of that drive, you know, Lamar had a couple scrambles. I mean, 30 seconds came off the clock. They had three timeouts in their pocket. And I understand you don’t want to burn all those timeouts right away, but part of having timeouts is to what preserve time. Key. Time on the clock. As long as you preserve seconds on the clock, you can continue to run plays. If you let the time run down, you have timeouts. It doesn’t add time back on the clock, right? Those seconds are gone. Once they’ve they’ve come off. So, you know, I looked at that and I get it. You didn’t want to put the ball back in Patrick mahomes hands. But you would, you sure as heck would have liked scoring a touchdown there, rather than, you know, having to settle for a field goal. And, you know, they they could have run, you know, potentially another couple plays. So with again, you got to get better. And yes, the offensive line is part of that. Yes, your coaching is part of that. Yes, your quarterback’s part of that, making sure guys are getting up to the line and getting in and out of the huddle, and yes, you’re making checks, but you don’t want the clock to wind all the way down to zero in the process. So you know, that’s part of it, and they’ve talked about it. They’re putting more on the Mars plate than they did last year, and last year they had put more on the Mars plate pre snap. That’s a process. It absolutely is. And I’ll leave you with this as it pertains to clock management and all these different things, and blaming John Harbaugh for it. And look it, he’s in charge of the operation. I will also say that his mentor, the guy that was coaching on the other side, who he coached under for years in Philadelphia, go look back at Andy Reid’s long standing reputation for clock management, really, until Patrick mahomes got there, and Patrick mahomes is on his way to be in the next Tom Brady. Let’s call it what it is. He’s got to do it for another 12 years. But that’s what kind of path he’s on right now, with three Super Bowls already under his belt before that, even with guys like Alex Smith and Donovan McNabb and some really accomplished quarterbacks. One of the first things that people mentioned when Andy Reid’s name was brought up was his clock management stinks. It’s gotten better over the years, and I think a big reason why is because he’s got an all universe quarterback that, you know, again, that’s all married, and it’s all in concert. It’s all synchronized. And this is year two for the Ravens with monkin Lamar took major steps forward last year in terms of playing from the pocket and pre snap responsibilities, things of that nature that frankly, he really wasn’t asked to do all that much under Greg Roman. So let’s see what it looks like. Again. It was choppy across the board. The operation was very choppy at best. Offensively well on Thursday night and at times, it was way worse than that. But let’s see what it looks like again. Offensive line is a big piece of this. They’ve got to I want to see a step forward. You know, if you see a step forward next week, then all right, you know, you continue to get better. So they got better in the second half compared to how they were in the first half. So that I’ll take some level of encouragement there. But no question, it has to get better. There’s no doubt about that. And it might be good enough to beat. I don’t know where it is right now. Is it good enough to beat half the teams in the league, two thirds of the teams in the league, three quarters of the teams in the league, okay, even if it’s three quarters. Well, what about those other eight teams that you’re going to run into, whether we’re talking the next month or come January? So there’s a lot to work on. And even if Isaiah likely gets that toe in, there was still going to be a lot to work on. So again, that’s where you have to move past the disappointment of losing the Kansas City again. There’s nothing you can do about it until mid January at the earliest. So move on. But we knew this was the way it
Nestor Aparicio 23:25
was going to be if they lost, right? If they lost, it was going to be like and we knew if they lost, we’d look at the offensive line and say, was it good enough? We look at Derrick Henry and say, what did he do? What was he capable of doing? And we’d look at Lamar and see, how many times did he run the ball. Were they behind? Were they ahead? How are the penalties? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, okay, and bad. You know, that’s and they came a white shoe, as Patrick mahomes would say, away from having a chance to, in your words, steal the game, which is what they would have done. They were outplayed. They were outplayed. They were out class. They were not the better team because of deficiencies and because of strengths of the chiefs and because of the home and road thing. So that doesn’t mean they won’t be the better team if they go back at the end of January. But I’m telling you this offensive line, I’m not on fire about it. You and I have talked about it more than we talked about anything the last day of months. I saw it in action and as comprised right now, they’re gonna have a really hard time beating good teams with that with and running the ball and the way they’re gonna have to do it, taking the ball away defensively, you know, there was a turnover and they, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t cash. But like I said, defense, turnovers shorten the field. Defense needs to be worth seven or 10 points a week to kind of pitch in and help out a little bit because the offensive line is not what it used to be, and it’s not where they want it. Quite frankly, you know, with a $50 million quarterback and a ten million running back and and to all world tight ends now and a wide receiver that they just try to get a little bit of space and make something happen, they almost won the game with them last night. And say, flowers, you. If he sits down in the end zone, the game’s different at the end. So the offensive line, the offensive line, the offense I mean, I’m not worried about roquan Smith, I’m not worried about the back end. I’m not even really worried about Marlon Humphrey, other than, you know, the way he thinks and what he says and what he does. But other than that, I’m not worried about him at all. I’m not worried about most of the team. I’m not worried about Tucker missing a field, long field goal. I’m I’m worried that the offensive line over the next 16 weeks, 17 weeks, if you put the buy in, it’s really going to be better in December. I don’t know. You know. And is that going to make Derrick Henry better? Is that going to mean that Lamar doesn’t have to run the ball so much? Is that going to mean that he’s going to have time to throw the ball better and to make plays with these exceptional first round wide receivers and great talent at tight end. Um, totally get the until the offensive line gets better, they’re not going to have an elite offense. And I don’t think they can have an elite offense this year, because I think they’re they’re going to struggle against good teams to do what they want to do, what they want to do is being in second and three, second and four, second and one, running the ball, running the clock, that’s what they want to do. That’s what they’ve wanted to do for six years. They’ve wanted to do that through three coordinators. Now can’t do that against the Chiefs because the offensive line isn’t good
Luke Jones 26:10
enough, and we’re going to see if it gets better. I mean, I still think it’s going to be a high end offense, even if the offensive line is an issue. Because the offensive line was an issue back in 21 and they scored points then. I mean, But your point is well taken, and I agree that you need to have a much cleaner, more efficient operation overall, and that’s going to begin with the offensive line you don’t want we know Lamar Jackson can run 17 or 18 times and for 120 yards, and you can win that way. I’ve always been in agreement with you. You don’t want to have to be forced to play that way every week. If that’s what you have to do, you have to do it. But boy, that’s that’s not the idea. That’s not how you draw it up. When
Nestor Aparicio 26:53
I look at the stat sheet on Friday morning after Thursday night’s game, I’m like, That’s not, that’s not they played the Chiefs game, Lamar running around and playing street ball, and we’ll get you, we’ll get you on the ground. And here’s what I thought. I I went to the bathroom at the two minute warning, and I almost text you, and I almost tweet out, because 1130 at night, and I didn’t want to be a jerk. I thought Lamar would throw a pick on the last you know, I thought they would force him into running around, and the ball would just go up in the air, you know, it would just be desperate. You know what? I mean, like, that’s how I thought the thing was going to end. Is him running for his life and throwing the ball up in the air because they had to get the ball down the field. They were better than that. I mean, I would have been embarrassed that I I didn’t tweet it because I didn’t want to be a dick. And they win the game, you know, when they almost did, yeah, but I thought this is a setup for Lamar to have to throw in a two minute with no timeouts that he can’t run and get down and get his head knocked off and get up and dirt the ball and runs a flowers 40 yards back, and, you know that’s how and they’re and he’s just going to throw a pick. I thought that’s what was going to happen. And instead, can’t say he had a bus stop. Lamar got loose, got the ball down to field abatement, because they do have fast guys. They do have talented skill position players. They do now, whether they could ever get the ball to them or not, that’s part of protecting Lamar. And so I am heartened that they came as far as they did in a two minute offense, and they ran it better than I would have predicted they were going to run it given what I’d seen the first seen the first 58 minutes of the game,
Luke Jones 28:24
well, and that’s where you kind of look at it from a big picture standpoint. And I know this was the major talking point a few years ago when we talk about the Greg Roman offense. I mean, you’d like to be in a position where you can play with tempo, right? And I’m not saying you run a two minute no huddle, K gun for the entire game. But, boy, when you have Lamar Jackson, when you have two tight ends that run the way that they do, when you have zay flowers and Rashad Bateman, who’s really fast, also when you have that kind of personnel with your skill position players, boy, you’d love to play with tempo, because the the opposition gets tired, and that’s when you could take, you know, you take a shot, and you can make those big plays, but your operation has to be clean enough from a pass protection standpoint, and you’ve got to be on your P’s and Q’s, and you’ve got young guys on the offensive line. It that’s a skill to be able to do that, right? So it’s, you know, again, not saying they go to playing No huddle offense all the time, but that’s something I think you’d like to have in your bag and go to more, but you’ve got to have an offensive line that can handle that, and you’ve got to have an operation that’s going to handle that, because the tricky thing about a no huddle offense is, you know, and you try to play quick game. And they played some quick game last year, and they they did a good job. Go back and look at that, that early season game in Cincinnati with they were banged up and they were afraid of not afraid, but they were cognizant of the Cincinnati pass rush. They played a lot of quick game. In that game, the ball came out quick and the timing was really good. That was a big reason why they won that football game. So you want to be able to play like that, but you’ve got to have an offensive line that is synchronized and comfortable and knows what it’s doing, and on the line is scrimmage, you literally just took the words right out of my mouth, and unfortunately,
Nestor Aparicio 30:17
it was a game about toes and feet, right? I mean, really was
Luke Jones 30:21
right. But you know what? It’s all. I even said this to my brother just, you know, in the moments of closing, moments of the game, as you know, we were waiting to hear from John Harbaugh and everything. I didn’t know your brother watched football. I thought he’d be watching, oh, he does. He does. Uh, he’s not a big baseball guy. But I said to him, it’s okay. I said to him, my goodness, this was just another reminder that sports, it’s such a cliche, but it is so true. It’s a game of inches, and it just shows that the the margin for error between winning and losing in the National Football League, it’s not much. It really isn’t. You know, it’s not like college football, where it’s Georgia going up against some FCS, Slappy school that is getting a payday and has no chance to keep the game within six touchdowns. You know, the NFL the best team in the worst team. You know, it’s not a dramatic difference. It’s not as big as we think. Anyway, okay, I get it. Patrick mahomes is, you know, already a lock for the Hall of Fame and and all that, but boy, you’ve got to be on your P’s and Q’s and you have to be sharp. That’s why, to me, the clock management burn timeouts, self inflicted mistakes, those are the kind of things that were disappointing, because even with all of those factors, they still had a chance at the end. That’s why it’s frustrating. So you can take that as a positive, or you can take that as a negative, but you can’t dwell on it. You got to go back to work and you got to get better. And yeah, I, I’m in agreement with you. I said it to you probably a month and a half ago, you know, right around the time they started training camp, I said this offensive line, you know, it, it’s, it’s the factor, to me, it’s the biggest question mark they’ve had from an on field standpoint, not talking about Lamar contract a couple years ago, or anything like that, any off field issues, anything like that. This offensive line is the biggest on field question mark they’ve had in a few years now, in terms of three new starters and how this is all going to look week one, I can’t say I’m stunned by how it looked, but boy, you want to see progress starting next Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders.
Nestor Aparicio 32:25
He is Luke Jones. He is a Baltimore Luke. He’s covering the Orioles and the Ravens because they allow him in. They don’t allow me in. I’ll let you guess as to why, or ask Greg Bader or Chad Steele. I am writing about it. Eric the Costa is getting a chef’s kiss from me because I didn’t eat any barbecue on Thursday night. Neither did Luke. So we’re gonna be around all week. The Orioles are home, still in first place for a minute, at least as I’m talking. We’ll find out see how it goes one way or another, but I have a feeling things will go okay this weekend, and they’ll still be in position to play playoff baseball in October, while we’re watching regular season football next weekend, the raiders in town. We’re doing the Maryland crab cake tour. The oyster tour is underway. Day three, the oyster tour for me will take me to the pepper mill. Day four will have me out in Frederick at the shucking oyster shack in Frederick. I talked to the Frederick Mayor about that down at Mako last week. We’re also going to be getting around Hamden, all through the state and down to the Eastern Shore and talking about the oyster recovery partnership and how the oysters keep the water clean in the bay, so that you can have crab cakes on the Maryland crab cake tour. We’re going to be at Cooper’s next Friday. It is the Fells Point oyster festival. Come on down. Say hello. We’re gonna have some great guests. Dave shining from the Washington Post, my pal, who’s the agent for Josh Jacobs, running the ball for the Packers down in Brazil, from Brazil to Fells Point will be at Cooper’s next Friday. Angela also Brooks will join us on the 24th she’s running for Senator. Well, we’ll have her at State Fair. I have invited larry hogan working that out. On the 27th will be at Costas in Dundalk as well, and we’re going to be back down at fadelies On the 20th before the Orioles take on the Tigers on Friday night, Luke will be down there as well. And I have a guest. I forgot who? Oh, John Sarbanes, Congressman. Sarbanes gonna be our guest at fales. But lots of lots good stuff, all month long, all of it brought to my friends, the Maryland lottery. Have the Raven scratch offs. They’re out now. I do have a handful the gold rush, seven stumblers. I’ll have a Cooper’s next week. Our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, keeping our water clean, and Jiffy Lube, multi care, getting us out on the road at some point, I’m going to have the 26th anniversary oyster crab cake thing. I don’t even know what it’s going to be. It’s like a little creature we’re going to have for our new logo. But we are celebrating our 26th year because you guys listen and you follow, and Luke’s good at it, and I anger you, and you still listen anyway. I’m Nestor. He’s Luke. We are wnst am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We’re gonna try not to suck. Great weekend. It’s great month of sports around here. We’re Owen one, but trying harder. Stay with us. We’re Baltimore positive. We’re.
