WARNING: This analysis of Ravens' Q1 offense not for faint of heart

[TL24x7]

* In Flacco's 21 regular season road games the Ravens have scored 56 points in total during the first quarter for an average of 2.67 points

* The Ravens have been shut out in the first quarter in 10 of Flacco's 21 road games and in 8 of the last 11

* During the last 11 road games Cameron's offense has produced a TOTAL of 13 points, 1.18/game

Conversely at home the numbers while not prolific they are certainly better...

* In Flacco's 20 regular season home games the Ravens have scored 106 points in total during the first quarter for an average of 5.3 points

* The Ravens have been shut out in the first quarter in 4 of those 20 home games and only once in the last 13

* Over the past 12 home games the Ravens have averaged 6.4 points in the first quarter

Clearly something has to be done to jump start the offense on the road early in games. Come out firing on all cylinders in a no huddle. Forget about the hometown crowd and those challenges. Seems to be when the fans in the Georgia Dome were at their loudest the Ravens' offense was actually more effective and they helped keep a defense struggling to win on third down off the field.

I posted something nearly identical to this on my blog and my findings were fairly challenged in a blog comment. The anonymous comment stated (as submitted):

“I'd say your reaching a little bit here. Its called home field advantage for a reason. And to be honest, I dont know how bad that is. I'd like to see those numbers compared to the rest of the league. Because the Ravens certainly dont give up a ton of 1st quarter points at M&T Bank Stadium.”

Fair point, right?

I chose not to go through the last 11 road games of all 31 teams besides the Ravens. Instead I chose those teams like the Ravens, who made the playoffs in '09 AND have a winning record in 2010. I also included the St. Louis Rams who had 2009’s most inept offense, mustering up just 175 points over the course of the 16 game season.

Here’s what I discovered about their respective offensive road prowess or lack thereof: LINK

[RavenScallywag]

The funny thing is that Dilfer was asked about this on the Norris and Davis show, and said basically the opposite.

His thinking is the Ravens NEED the opposing D to go into a single high safety alignment. The way to do that is go run heavy early, so that the D cheats up a safety to take out the run game, and that's when Joe can hit a playaction pass to take advantage of a lack of safety coverage.

But I think that approach has been used before. The problem is that at certain times, our run game is getting stuffed WITHOUT the single high safety, so the team sticks with a Cover 2, giving us less pass options to pick it up. A no huddle offense does seem to work well to get the D on their heels, and Joe going to his bread and butter, the 8-12 yard out patterns, starts moving the team down the field. Sprinkle in a few runs to start getting the safety to cheat up...that will really help.

Luckily also, our toughest road games are behind us. We've got Houston, Cleveland, Carolina...Carolina should be an easy one. Houston has a scary passing game, but their D is atrocious. Cleveland is the most worrisome...