I’ve been avoiding a lot of local sports talk radio recently. What with a disappointing Orioles season now complete and free agency uncertainty in full bore, now Baltimore sports fans have to deal with a Ravens season that is in full implosion mode, with no end in sight. We may be seeing the formation of the NFL’s first true Black Hole, but it won’t be in Oakland.
It’s hard to believe that in August Sports Illustrated’s pro football issue picked the Ravens to represent the AFC and win Super Bowl 50. By now they’ve probably sent the author out for a drug test.
Or two.
The way I look at it, three things have led to this Titanic-like season: Cap management (or failure thereof), disastrous injuries to key personnel, and failed personnel evaluations.
Cap Management: The Ravens are carrying almost $22 million in dead money this year. 22. Million. Of that, 19 million is due to three players: Ray Rice at 9.5, Haloti Ngata at 7.5, and Jacoby Jones at 2.6. And……the money owed to players on injured reserve for the likes of Terrell Suggs, Matt Elam, Will Davis, and Michael Campanaro, et al. is over $10 million. That’s over $31 million owed to players that either aren’t on the team or can’t play. Think about it.
Injuries: The less said the better. It started in the first game at Denver when Suggs went out for the season with a torn Achilles and the hits just kept on coming. The latest Raven to ride the cart to the locker room is safety Kendrick Lewis who went out in the 3rd quarter of the 49ers game with as yet undiagnosed (publicly, anyway) right knee injury.
Personnel Mis-evaluations: This might be a bit unfair, as the personnel a team selects is highly dependent on the health of the roster and the available cap space (see above). So you’re left with signing the likes of a Shareece Wright – but more on that later.
Am I upset? Yes?
Am I worried? No.
I’m not paid to worry. I’m a fan. Every year I pay for my season tickets and for 10 dates I get to endure sketchy Light Rail service, boring half time shows, and an annual hike in beer and food prices.
But that’s OK, because I’m a fan.
I’m not worried because I don’t have ownership in the team’s results.
The people who should really be concerned are the team’s stakeholders, those team officials and players who have a moneyed interest in the team’s fortunes. Stakeholders like……
Ravens Owner Steve Bisciotti: As this dumpster fire of a season winds down, Steve will be viewing more and more empty seats in M&T Bank as fans, fair weather or not, will vote with their feet and watch the remaining games at home. The schedule is back loaded with six home games in November and December but nobody wants to stand in 30 degree (or lower) weather watching a team fumble and misplay their way to a 4-5 win season.
This will cut into his brand and his share of apparel and food sales at the Purple Vault.
And Bisciotti, as we know, has a very low tolerance for failure.
GM Ozzie Newsome: We’re fond of calling him the “Wizard of Oz” for his drafting acumen and personnel evaluations, but he simply can’t go unscathed here. He is the architect of disastrous early-round
picks in 2010 and 2013, years that produced players who normally would now be in their professional football prime, but are either out of the league or vastly underwhelming. Newsome has only one player left on the team from the 2011 draft – the underperforming but highly compensated Jimmy Smith. The even more highly compensated but more often injured Lardarius Webb is all that’s left from the 2009 draft.
The chickens have indeed come home to roost.
While the 2014 and 2015 drafts seem to have put better players on the field, this year Newsome managed to select a first round wideout speedster, Breshad Perriman, who has what looks to be the slowest healing, non-contact, non-surgical knee injury in league history.
John Harbaugh: Harbs has a say in which players the Ravens draft, trade for, and sign from the waiver and free agent wires but, more importantly, he and his coordinators are responsible for the game plan and execution. The number of dumb plays and penalties committed this year are staggering and they are costing the team field position and games. Remember the 12 penalties for 98 yards against the Browns, at home? Frankly, I was stunned to see that the Ravens only committed three penalties in the 49ers game. While a fan could logically argue that averaging 24 pts a game in the five losses should be enough to win at least a couple of those games, the mental mistakes are killing us.
Joe Flacco: Flacco’s cap number goes over $28 million in 2016 and it’s widely anticipated the Ravens will re-negotiate and probably extend Joe’s contract to make it more cap friendly. But as Flacco and his agent Joe Linta look to squeeze every available dollar out of the Ravens, he’s not helping his cause at the negotiating table with performances like Sunday, in which he threw two boneheaded, inexcusable interceptions. Joe’s on course to pass for over 4,000 yards this year but he’s also on pace to throw 20+ interceptions – both career highs.
I love telling people that Joe is my franchise quarterback and I mean that. But he’s far from elite and for one reason – unlike the Bradys, Mannings, and Rodgerses of the NFL, he has consistently failed to elevate the level of his play and that of those players around him.
Bubble Players: With all the injuries on the team this is the perfect opportunity for our 2nd and 3rd string players to step up and it ain’t happening. Kamar Aiken and Marlon Brown have no speed, can’t get separation from d-backs, and they short-arm passes when running over the middle.
Hell, I can’t think of one other AFC North team that would even have these guys on their practice squad, let alone starting.
As CB Will Davis went down with a torn ACL, the Ravens sign a free agent, Shareece Wright, who requested his release from the 49ers just a week earlier. The thinking was Wright could immediately fill a void and maybe pass on some tidbits on the 49ers defensive and offensive mindsets. So what happens? Ex-Ravens Torrey Smith and Anquan Boldin both torch Wright. Really, what did you expect? They obviously knew more about his deficiencies than anything he could impart about their schemes.
Fortunately, the bubble players mentioned above and other selected live bodies currently on the team won’t be part of the improvement.
Looking Forward:
The Ravens will slog through the rest of this season with no let up. Harbaugh will not let these guys ease off. But they will learn from all of this and will be better for it. In 2016 their money miseries will be a thing of the past as a ton of dead money will come off the cap. They will be able to sign some decent free agents. For the first time since 2006 they will be drafting close to the top 10 and, for once, not sit in the draft room at slot 26+ hoping somebody they covet falls to them.
2016 will be a better year.
But…… we’ll have to be patient, take our lumps, and ride out this miserable 2015.
