Expectations are a dangerous thing, particularly high ones. Fail to reach them and criticisms are sure to follow, fast and furiously.
Enter the 2015 Baltimore Ravens.
Many believed that John Harbaugh’s gang would be a lock for a postseason berth while others anticipated much more than that. Instead the season has been a train wreck, derailed shortly after takeoff.
And we all want to know what happened. We all want to point the finger of blame. We all want to uncover any and all problems and focus on solutions to ensure that 2015 doesn’t happen again.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. There are even valid excuses that can explain away, at least in part, the grossly substandard team results and the accompanying individual performances.
Yet the thing that bothers me most is that I no longer recognize the Baltimore Ravens. If not for the jerseys they wear and the familiar names on their backs, the Ravens could be the Miami Dolphins or the Washington Redskins or the Tampa Bucs. In other words, a soft team with little to no identity.
The Ravens were once a team defined by a nasty, stingy defense – one that challenged you to match their physicality. Most couldn’t.
That defense, combined with excellent game managers who helped win the clock, win the battle of field position and protect the football, defined the Baltimore Ravens. The blue-collar mentality of the team matched the DNA of the city it represented.
Those days are gone.
The Ravens are now lost souls.
It’s fair to question whether the team’s apparently worn out blueprint for success can work in the wide-open, arena football style of today’s NFL. One only needs to look at the Seattle Seahawks for proof. The blueprint can still work yet on the surface it appears that the Ravens have somehow abandoned it.
Beneath the surface, perhaps the team’s shortage of talent has ushered them into the land of mediocrity. After all since their Super Bowl XLVII win, they carry a regular season record of 19-19, the definition of mediocrity.
Long gone are the stars who embodied the team’s identity: Ray Lewis; Ed Reed, Haloti Ngata and Jamal Lewis to name a few.
Today the roster is comprised of guys, not playmakers. The team can’t grind you down because the defense is a sieve – one that can’t get off the field. The Ravens can’t out-physical opponents and they clearly can’t outrun them.
And it all boils down to far too many misfires by the men who run the player personnel shop at One Winning Drive.
What has changed in the talent evaluation process?
Have the scouts failed to adapt to the changes in the game?
One thing we can say with certainty – the Ravens no longer produce star players. Sure there are the occasional hits during the John Harbaugh era, like Rick Wagner, Brandon Williams, Dennis Pitta and Pernell McPhee, all of whom produced value given their draft status. Yet each of these fine picks is offset and then some by players like Matt Elam, Arthur Brown, Gino Gradkowski, Christian Thompson, Sergio Kindle, Ed Dickson and Terrence Cody.
To be fair, all teams swing and miss. Thirty-one teams passed on sixth round picks Tom Brady and Antonio Brown no less than five times. Draft mistakes happen regularly. Although they try to make it a science, the NFL Draft is art. One team’s Van Gogh is another’s paint-by-numbers.
Speaking of numbers here’s a snapshot of the AFC North draft picks since Harbaugh’s arrival in 2008:
* Does not include drafted players on a team’s practice squad
The chart suggests that the Ravens have drafted less impactful players than their AFC North rivals, and on whole, they’ve been less effective during draft weekend than the Bengals in terms of the overall number of contributing players.
Considering the Ravens 2015 roster and its dearth of speed and playmakers, we only need to look at recent draft classes to understand why Harbaugh’s troops are a barren wasteland in those categories. Generally speaking, outside of a team’s quarterback we look for speed and playmaking ability in the modern NFL at the positions of wide receiver, cornerback and edge rushers.
Staying with the Harbaugh Era, here’s a list of players selected at those positions with their corresponding draft round:
WIDE RECEIVER: Darren Waller (6); Michael Campanaro (7); Aaron Mellette (7); Tommy Streeter (6); Torrey Smith (2); Tandon Doss (4); David Reed (5); Marcus Smith (4); Justin Harper (7)
CORNERBACK: Tray Walker (4); Marc Anthony (7); Asa Jackson (5); Jimmy Smith (1); Chykie Brown (5); Lardarius Webb (3)
DEFENSIVE END*: Za’Darius Smith (4); John Simon (4); Kapron Lewis-Moore (6); DeAngelo Tyson (7); Pernell McPhee (5); Sergio Kindle (2); Paul Kruger (2)
* All listed as Defensive Ends when entering the draft except for Kindle who was listed as a Linebacker.
Take a look at this list. Marinate in it for a moment.
Of this group only 1 player who can still be considered a playmaker remains (Jimmy Smith) while 3 have departed (T. Smith, Kruger, McPhee). Is there any wonder why the Ravens appear to be devoid of playmakers and relatively speaking, look like they run in quick sand?
By the way, I’m still SMH over the team’s unwillingness to move up one spot in the 2010 draft to get Dez Bryant. But I digress…
Back to the Ravens talent evaluators…
One of Ozzie Newsome’s precious credos on draft day is, “best player available” (BPA). His argument has always been that even if you draft a player that isn’t a need position, some day that position WILL become a need. The classic example is their 2001 first round pick Todd Heap who was selected despite the presence of Shannon Sharpe.
The approach certainly has merit. Take the best player on the board.
Perhaps the fault in the logic is the board itself and which players comprise it.
The Ravens always seem to do well finding those big-bodied players who outperform their draft positions. Maybe that is the collective strength of the scouting department. Could it be that they’re just better at projecting those kinds of players into the NFL and consequently there’s a bias towards those types? No scout wants to miss, right? So it stands to reason that maybe the big guys are elevated on the board.
So while the BPA approach is logically sound, perhaps the disconnect lies in the way in which the board is stacked based upon the core competencies of the team’s scouts. It’s pretty clear that they struggle at WR, CB and edge rushers.
And for the record I’m not taking shots at John Harbaugh. I’m a big fan. I just want to give this a time stamp of sorts and his administration makes sense. Oh and another thing, four of the current eight college scouts on the Ravens staff started as area scouts for the team since Harbaugh arrived.
Not a shot, just a fact.
Making matters worse is the Ravens’ unwillingness to make a splash in free agency which in part is driven by the team’s annual right of passage – limited cap space, which in part is due to waiting too long to pay players until THEY have all the leverage which eventually leads to overpaying which eventually leads to players not performing to the level of their contracts which eventually leads to dead cap dollars.
But let’s give them credit for acquiring productive albeit aging free agents such as Elvis Dumervil, Steve Smith and Daryl Smith. Let’s also credit them with past acquisitions during Harbaugh’s tenure like Cory Redding, Corey Graham, Jacoby Jones and Vonta Leach.
But today, those positive additions have given way to duds like Marcus Spears, Michael Huff, Chris Canty, Kyle Arrington and Kendrick Lewis.
Like the 2015 postseason aspirations it’s enough to make a Ravens fan’s head explode.
SO NOW WHAT?
Clearly the Ravens need to do a ton of self-scouting. They need to be brutally honest with each other. Check egos at the door and define why an elite franchise is now so mediocre and what they need to do to fix it.
There are many extremely talented men at The Castle. They can fix this.
Some will suggest that a rebuilding program is in order. But if you look closely enough, that has been going on since the sound of the final gun during Super Bowl XLVII. The Ravens shouldn’t have let the 2014 season fool them. That was a mirage influenced in large part by the cakewalk schedule that included the patsies of the NFC South.
And they also shouldn’t forget how the team struggled when the Ravens had to have a win against the likes of the Blake Bortles led Jaguars, the Case Keenum led Texans and the Connor Shaw led Browns.
2014 was a detour. Today the Ravens are back on the road to reality.
And the reality is that they’ve lost their way. They are suffering from an identity crisis.
They are an elite franchise that has fallen short.
It’s time for them to step up, dust off and prove once again that they are better than this.
They’ll have until September of 2016.
Go!
