Not even two months ago national publications pegged the Ravens as a Super Bowl 50 winner. The organization, in their own words, believed they were “loaded”.
Many of us bought in. I know I did. Maybe I was loaded in a different way.
Yet the logic inherent in the conclusion seemed rather straightforward, the deductive reasoning was simple – perhaps over simplified, and it certainly seems that way in hindsight.
I looked at the Ravens as a team that was a couple of plays away from the AFC Championship Game last season. A bad secondary crushed the dream. Get healthy, add a couple of players to the defensive backfield and a return trip to the Super Bowl seemed plausible.
Like many, I overestimated the ability of the team’s secondary repairman.
How did it get so bad so fast?
We can all conclude with reasonable certainty that the Ravens’ struggles can be attributed to a lack of team speed, a very limited number of playmakers and of course the injury bug.
Injuries happen. They are unfortunately a prominent element of the NFL landscape. The most successful teams are often the healthiest teams. Deal with it!
Speed kills, but unfortunately the Ravens lack it. When your homerun hitter on offense is a 36-year old receiver who has already announced his retirement, you’ve got problems. Did anyone see the 88-yard catch and run by the Steelers Martavis Bryant on Sunday against the Cardinals?
The Steelers have a handful of those guys. The Ravens have an empty hand.
Ok, I get that Breshad Perriman COULD be one of those guys, BUT one guy isn’t enough – not in this wide open, spread edition of today’s NFL.
Defensively they have no playmakers. Elvis Dumervil has done well, but without pressure from the opposite end, his efforts aren’t rewarded the way they could be. Instead of retaining a player with upside like Pernell McPhee, the Ravens opt instead to shell out too much money to players in decline like Terrell Suggs and Haloti Ngata.
The silver lining in McPhee’s departure (I guess) is that the way he’s tearing it up in Chicago, the Ravens will land a 4th-round compensatory pick (outside shot at a 3rd-rounder) in 2016.
But moral victories over victories on the field don’t put fans in the seats.
Speaking of fans, what can the Ravens faithful expect going forward? Where is the silver lining? After all, this Ravens team owns the league’s worst record, a dubious distinction shared with the Chiefs, Jaguars and Lions.
The hopeless feeling this early in a season represents unchartered waters for Ravens fans. Even during the early years, hope and enthusiasm prevailed because then, the team was still in the honeymoon phase of the franchise’s history. But as the honeymoon ended and winning began expectations soared, particularly after drinking from the cup of a champion not once, but twice in the team’s first 17 campaigns.
I remember in 2007, the Ravens’ last losing season, they started off (4-2) before losing eleven straight including an embarrassing loss to the winless Cam Cameron led Miami Dolphins.
During that season, I hosted The Bart Scott Show on 105.7. With each loss, Bart showed up progressively later to each show. Like the 2015 season, 2007’s was very disheartening. Coming off a 2006 season when many thought the Ravens had what it took to win it all, 2007 brought high hopes – hopes that crashed quickly.
The losing streak took its toll on Bart. His enthusiasm for the show sunk with each passing week, each passing loss.
During one of the shows after yet another loss, I cued up the locker room speech by Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/_b7bgtu2O4E[/youtube]
The inches to improve are all around the Ravens. They need to use the balance of 2015 to determine who they will be in 2016. And that will come with sacrifices.
Should Marlon Brown continue to get snaps with the starters or should Chris Givens and/or Jeremy Ross get those snaps? Should Daryl Smith continue to start or should Arthur Brown absorb his playing time? After all the Ravens personnel brain trust once projected Mosley/Brown as the next Willis/Bowman.
Should John Urschel take over for Kelechi Osemele who will undoubtedly hit the free agent market? We’ve seen the Ravens in action when it comes to bidding wars and besides, can the team really afford to invest so heavily in the interior offensive line?
It would be easy to give up on the season and hope for a better 2016. But the odds of a better 2016 are improved if the Ravens can learn more about who will be around next season, contributing in a way that helps turn things around. They did it in 2008. They can do it again in 2016.
Right now, the Ravens are in football hell. Earlier this season, John Harbaugh said, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Al Pacino said, “We can stay here and get the s*** kicked out of us OR, we can fight our way back…into the light. We can climb out of hell.”
But it all starts now, today by making the right choices, the right personnel decisions that will help the Ravens in 2016. And no, that does not include activating Dennis Pitta from PUP.
This season is lost. Let’s not compound the loss by heading into 2016 with even more unanswered questions.
Now is the time for answers.
The 2016 season starts now!
