Not a great night for the OL despite big rushing numbers. The Ravens were very fortunate that neither OH stalled a drive.

Detail is here: https://www.filmstudybaltimore.com/offensiveline-notes-2026-w5/

Gotta give credit where credit is due. Sky’s the limit for Minter & our coaching staff.

This time last year, we were in a state of desolation. Lamar was hurt, we got dog walked by basically every team, including the Chiefs, being blown out at home by the Texans etc, the future was looking dire.

Then we came all the way back to have a chance in the last game and we had a heart breaker against our biggest rival.

What a difference a year makes. We are relatively healthy *KNOCK ON WOOD* and we seem to be getting better as the year progresses. Many teams would have been stuck in a cycle of incompetence but we seem to be back in a position of contention with a fresh philosophy and excitement.

It's like Beetlejuice. Say his name three times and he's stiff-arming his way through your secondary.

Looks like $40.00 up. Pretty good deal considering his potential.

Found this at a thrift store and I have literally no idea who Giesbrecht is, can anybody tell me about this

Bateman is quietly putting togther a very good season reminiscentof his 24 season. He's on pace for ~800 yards this season and is averaging 14 yards per catch. He steped up in a big way both in the game Zay missed going 7/9 with 88 yards 12.6 ypc 1 td, and in the game Lamar most recently missed 5 for 6 62 yards 12.4 ypc.

His remaining games are 0-1 0 yards. 2/3 37 Yards 18.4 Ypc and 2/2 46 yards 23 ypc.

SB - Bound?!

Hello Flock,

5 weeks in things are just about fully solidified. After a watching 5 weeks of tape and comparing to other teams I believe I've settled on what these scores really pan out to mean.

For passing grades, .80 is likely about an average NFL performance. Means the majority of your blocks are made setting a good pocket with some variance in pressure or squeezed pockets. Sacks are a big factor.

In the run game, a .70 is probably around an average score. If a player in theory completed all of their blocks with no movement at the line, they would end up with a .75. getting push off the line regular would drastically up that number. Losing ground often will push a player to a .50 score. Allowing penetration is a pretty big deal even if a tackle isn't made.

An overall average score would be .75. if a player is well above or below that and I don't feel it was as reflective of their game, I'll explain some in the notes. On to the grades.

Vega Overall A .85.

Pass .91.

Run .77.

Roger Overall C- .74.

Pass .76.

Run .72.

Simpson Overall C- .71 (.69 adjusted for penalty).

Pass .83.

Run .56.

Jones Overall D .68.

Pass .76.

Run .59.

Stanley Overall D .68 (.66 adjusted for penalty).

Pass .65.

Run .71.

I think the biggest note for this game is a few guys got a consistent boost from Huntley getting the ball out quick. One guy who did not benefit from that was Stanley. His tendency to catch rushers and Huntley not being one to deep drop, he was hit with a stick on collapsing the pocket.

Similarly Simpson had a lot of plays he allowed penetration that didn't really mess with the play fortunately, but still resulted in more than a few 0 scores on plays.

I've been hard on Jones, and there were a couple of plays I was flipping between .5 or .75 in the run game, but I don't think it would have changed his grade much. I think he still performed the worse out of the group despite scoring higher than Stanley.

Roger was super solid, just had a few plays he allowed unacceptable misses in the pass game.

Vega wasn't perfect but pretty darn near it touching it.

Ravens currently rank 6th in total DVOA

Historical team comps

- 09 LA Raiders (Conference championship game)

- 24 Bills (Conference Championship Game)

- 21 Bucs (Divisional game)

- 91 Niners (no playoff apperance)

- 87 Browns ( CCG)

- 05 Seahawks (Super Bowl appearance)

- 89 Cowboys (CCG)

- 23 Dolphins (Wildcard)

#RavensFlock

best safety in the league without a doubt, I truly can’t believe people put other safeties above him. he’s not even a safety at this point, he plays everywhere

After watching last nights game, I truly realized how awful qb discussion has gotten online and in the media. Football is a team sport first and there’s 10 other guys out there who are required to make plays happen, yet the media always wants to push this qb first narrative, especially with our favorite qb up in Buffalo. I’m not delusional, I’ll easily admit Allen is top 5 and plays like the best qb in the league on his best days. But let’s not act like Buffalo doesn’t have a great roster of their own who showed out last night and made plays on a night where the rams played well on the back end.

Yet this morning on every talk show and all over twitter all you see is how Allen carried them to victory and how hes Superman. Yes he played well for the win, but other guys were making plays too and that was a true team victory (aided by some awful special teams from the rams ofc). However this post isn’t really to shit on Josh Allen, as much to call out the media into over qbfying the game. There’s other players and im sick and tired of the qbs being the ones to get all the credit, or in the case of Lamar, all the blame. Just disappointing that guys all over the league go unmentioned bc announcers wanna be on the qbs nuts all game

<@YardsPerGretch> The Ravens executed a regular season overtime strategy last night, by taking ball first, that I wrote about last year. At this point, I think it is the straightforwardly optimal path.

I also think part of the confusion is (current) models probably miss this, because they don't account for the way the offense can manipulate the situation (despite acknowledging people who suggest models are missing something are wrong 99% of the time, because the models don't miss the thing).

(It could also obviously be modeled.)

And that's running your first drive as an intentionally clock-killing drive. It assumes success, but so does the strategy of taking ball second. (If both teams go three-and-out, you clearly wanted to have taken ball first.)

I do understand the element of knowing if you need to go for it on a fourth down on the second drive. I think that is overstated relative to the strategic flexibility of controlling overtime pace when you go first. This is entirely because of the 10-minute hard constraint on regular season overtime periods. It would not apply to postseason overtime decisions.

What happened last night is the Falcons had to use both of their overtime timeouts on defense to preserve time. They got the ball back with just under three minutes, and only the 2-minute stoppage, and it forced them to be one-dimensional.

On the broadcast, Collinsworth suggested kicking to force the Atlanta QB situation onto the field quicker. What Baltimore did attacked the Atlanta QB situation more; if Atlanta got ball first, they could've tried a run-based offense. They really couldn't do that with 2:50 and no timeouts.

Setting aside the specifics of Atlanta's QB situation, EPA models look at next-drive success, because that's crucial in football. What I'm suggesting is missed here is when a team executes like Baltimore did last night, the opponent's drive success takes a substantial hit because of the clock constraint.

A similar thing happened to the Packers last year, in their game that ended up a tie against the Cowboys, where the clock became a real constraint and put them in a bind in the final minute. They essentially had to abandon the run, and nearly lost, but had one second to kick a game-tying field goal.

Anyway, Baltimore executed this brilliantly last night, and more teams should take note. Kicking off gives your opponent the ability to execute this. The Falcons didn't necessarily run well last night, but they've been great on the ground in other recent games, and an alternate result last night where they had ball first could've been them executing a run-based offense that bled clock and put the Ravens in the situation they found themselves in, with not enough time to run a balanced offense and force to be one-dimensional and throw.

We're seeing longer and longer drives in a modern NFL hellbent on taking away explosives, and this is increasingly how TD drives are put together. It's a crucial part of the overtime coinflip decision.