Twelve Ravens thoughts following conference championship weekend

With Cincinnati and the Los Angeles Rams winning on Sunday to advance to Super Bowl LVI, I’ve offered a dozen Ravens thoughts, each in 50 words or less:

1. The Bengals being “ahead of schedule” — whatever that means — reinforces that winning and development aren’t linear and teams need to strike while the iron is hot. The 2019 Ravens were “a year early,” but only sixteen of the 53 players on that postseason roster are currently under contract for 2022.

2. Rams general manager Les Snead hasn’t made a first-round pick since 2016 and isn’t scheduled to have another until 2024, but Los Angeles won’t mind if that nets a Super Bowl title. It’s an extreme example, but we’ll see if executives become more aggressive trading draft capital for high-end talent.

3. Eric Weddle hadn’t played in a conference championship game since his 2007 rookie season. Less than three weeks after coming out of a two-year retirement, he started, played every snap, led the Rams in tackles, and is now going to the Super Bowl. What a crazy story.

4. Patrick Mahomes appeared on his way to shattering the NFL record for touchdown passes in a single postseason — shared by Joe Montana, Kurt Warner, and Joe Flacco — before going 8-for-18 for 55 yards and two interceptions after intermission. His fall from brilliant in the first half to awful was stunning.

5. A big key to early success for Mike Macdonald will be getting the most out of Odafe Oweh and Patrick Queen. First-round picks don’t need to become perennial All-Pro stars to be deemed a success, but they need to be pillars for a defense that’ll be getting younger and cheaper.

6. With reports of defensive line coach Anthony Weaver interviewing for Denver’s defensive coordinator opening, it’s fair to wonder if some defensive assistants depart with Baltimore hiring a coordinator who’s younger and less experienced than others. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong hire, but it’s an understandable professional consideration.

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7. Macdonald has no chance of bringing Heisman Trophy runner-up Aidan Hutchinson with him to Baltimore, but fellow Michigan edge rusher David Ojabo could be in the conversation at 14th overall. Like Oweh, there’s much projection involved there, but an Ojabo-Oweh pairing is a marketing dream for the alliteration alone.

8. The defense needing to collect more sacks is an annual hot topic, but just four of the top 10 teams in sacks — and none in the top five — finished in the top 10 in points allowed this season. Sacks are potential game-changing plays, but they’re not the be-all and end-all.   

9. A more concerning trend has been the defense’s end-of-game performance. Football Outsiders defines “late and close” as all plays in the second half with the score within eight points. Baltimore ranking 30^th in efficiency in those situations wasn’t surprising, but Martindale’s unit was also 31st in that department in 2020.

10. Lamar Jackson bowing out of the Pro Bowl was the only logical decision with him being sidelined since Dec. 12. Now we wait to see what kind of movement the Ravens and the 25-year-old quarterback make toward a contract extension to potentially lower his $23.1 million cap figure for 2022.

11. I heard Ed Reed’s recent comments and wholeheartedly agree that the Ravens haven’t been as great without the Hall of Famers and special leaders from that era. Are we going to continue to debate this or pivot to more sensible topics like the virtues of bringing Antonio Brown to Baltimore?

12. The Bengals offer optimism yet for teams that wear orange and black and have been mostly lousy since the 1980s. The rest of the AFC North has to hope this is more lightning in a bottle than the start of the Joe Burrow era. The Patriots were once losers too.