As sure as the Sun rises in the East, as sure as the Pope is Catholic, you can now add; as sure as the Ravens drafting two Tight Ends and the second one being a complete stud. I’m sure some version of this has been written several times over the years and will be sure to be written again, that is, if Isaiah Likely lives up to the now considerable hype around him, and follows in the footsteps of Dennis Pitta, Nick Boyle and Mark Andrews before him.
His line in the Ravens second pre-season game: 15 Snaps, 12 Targets, 8 Receptions, 100 Receiving Yards, 1 Touchdown.
His Draft story is one that proponents of the Ravens Draft strategy will cite as showing their prowess not only in drafting Tight Ends but also in remaining calm in a crisis to stick to their best player available mantra. The story, as told by Peter King after having access to their war room this Spring, goes that the Ravens were keen to add Calvin Austin, the speed merchant Wide Receiver out of Memphis, but were gazumped by the Steelers who added the former Tiger to their ranks.
The Ravens, never ones to panic, changed tack.
Knowing a move Tight End might be even more valuable to their offense than Austin, the Ravens selected their best Tight End available. That TE just happened to be one best suited to operating out of the slot and being moved around the formation as a matchup problem for the opposing defense.
The problem though, with buttressing their Draft resume with this story, is that Likely was at least their second rated Tight End and likely (no pun intended) lower down the TE board than this. Maybe the Ravens are operating like the Rams, and not stacking a board full of players at traditional positions but evaluating the roles they need their draft picks to perform and looking at the player pool through this lens.
Either way, teams missing on their evaluation of Likely was not difficult. He has modest athletic ability. And athleticism is really important for Tight Ends. Best illustrated by Kent Lee Platte or @MathBomb on Twitter, creator of Relative Athletic Score, in this thread highlighted by RSR’s @TheMattWise.
If Isaiah Likely lives up to the early hype, he'll be an extreme statistical outlier.#RavensFlock would get to have a very interesting, & fun, discussion about why Likely is (literally) one of a kind.#Ravens#NFL https://t.co/A3aIwzAwHs pic.twitter.com/lqnf2N8wLX
— Matt Wise (@TheMattWise) August 12, 2022
Knowing this, and the level of competition he faced with the Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina, you could be forgiven for writing Likely off in his shot at the NFL. This was from my evaluation of him pre-Draft. I liked him a good amount and gave him a good grade, but he certainly wasn’t my TE1. (I would have taken him over Kolar though!)
“His route stem is remarkably consistent and it allows him to win with good processing at the break-point, manipulating defenders with the consistency of his stem and his good body posture through all the different types of break. His main vehicle for separating is his play strength which is very good. He understands how he can use his size and strength advantage against DBs to get to the back of their shoulder and get back on top of them – can use a club, arm-over move, reminiscent of a good pass-rusher to get open on corners or posts. He has some athletic ability to win but it is only solid speed and change of direction that helps him. He’s a guy who sets the DB up just enough with his stem and body lean to bring his play strength into play to separate.”
Putting his evaluation to one side though, allows me to pick up perhaps the more interesting conversation – the Ravens usage of Likely in the upcoming season.
The Ravens offense of 2019 was historically elite in the regular season, the greatest rushing season ever put together by an NFL offense, punctuated by bursts of ridiculously efficient passing from the NFL’s only second unanimous MVP in league history. Would it shock you if I told you the Ravens leading Wide Receiver in that season, Marquise Brown, had only 584 Receiving Yards on 46 receptions?
There has been much conjecture this off-season about the Ravens trying to return to a 2019 type offense and this being fool’s gold, given the early exit they made in the tournament.
It is unarguable that it was a regular season offense for the ages but many would argue that it was found wanting in the playoffs, because of an inability to effectively pivot to the pass game and to be responsive to what the game script required.
It was though, an offense that was about as efficient as you could hope for at passing the ball, particularly in the Redzone. A huge part of the efficiency, was the presence of three genuine receiving threats at Tight End and a high-functioning Offensive Line.
Granted, this Offensive Line is not as good as the one in 2019. But the Ravens have invested a lot of resources there this off-season and it has the chance to be at least good this season. However, my main hypothesis for the offense is that the passing offense, with the weapons they have, could actually be better, or at least more able to pivot towards volume.
This is because…
- I actually think Likely is a better player for this offense than Hayden Hurst was and I’ll explain why below, but even matching Hurst would be a real boon. He managed 30 receptions for 349 yards that season, it feels like Likely could eclipse that.
- Year 5 Mark Andrews is objectively better than Year 2 Mark Andrews. Self-explanatory.
- Rashod Bateman, in about as many snaps, matched Marquise Brown’s production in their respective rookie years. 2019 was the rookie version of Marquise Brown. I would be very surprised if Bateman doesn’t beat both their rookie seasons’ production this year, if he stays healthy.
- While Mark Ingram was a punishing and effective runner in 2019, he was also a solid receiver out of the backfield, managing 247 yards on 26 receptions. This feels like Dobbins’ floor as a pass-catcher if he is healthy.
- The rest of the supporting cast can be as good, if not better than 2019, as long as someone steps up to match Wille Snead’s production that year.
But the big force multiplier: Lamar Jackson. Lamar was arguably more disciplined in 2019, being in his first full year of starting and played more within himself. This led to huge efficiency and consistency but the 2022 version of Jackson is far superior. Not just due to the improvements you can see he has made across every off-season, going back to his days at Louisville, but because his ceiling is far higher.
So, what if the Ravens are trying to build the 2022 offense on the framework of the 2019 offense but with just a little more balance and just a little more talent in their pass-catchers? That sounds like a recipe for success to me.
I get that this set of pass-catchers is objectively worse without Marquise Brown. But I think the offense as a whole could be better. It does though, hinge on the emergence of Likely, and here’s why:
Isaiah Likely is not a great blocker in-line, his issues are fixable and he could certainly develop over time, but he is not yet a guy that can be used in this way. Where I did like him in college as a blocker and a role he could play in the NFL early, is out in space. He does actually flash the ability to fit and finish well on space blocks – NFL defenders are built different than those who play in the Sun Belt, but there’s potential there.
This is important because, that 2019 team utilized Hayden Hurst in a myriad of ways – he lined up in Tight formations with Mark Andrews, he lined up in the slot or outside at the X position and he had a myriad of assignments from these positions.
He was enough of a receiving threat that he could act as a decoy, perhaps with Andrews running a stick route and catching the ball for a first down, because Hurst would fire out into the flat and either manipulate enough or occupy entirely, an underneath defender.
Lined up at the X position with Andrews in the slot, he would be enough of a receiving threat to keep defenses honest and prevent them from jumping quickly on a bubble screen. He could then go out and block a second level defender to spring Andrews after the catch. Or he could work as a receiving threat himself with enough speed and wiggle to get open when running routes from the slot.
Isaiah Likely vs Cardinals (Preseason) | 08/21/22pic.twitter.com/fpALAyX3rw
— 🏜 (@SimplyAS10) August 22, 2022
Likely can do some of these things now. He has the potential to develop into a blocker in open space matching Hurst’s prowess in doing this – he sprung many longer runs that year with his second-level blocking. But Likely also threatens to be a far better receiver, opening up even further what the Ravens can do in the passing game. A more convincing decoy and a more dangerous pass-catcher when he’s thrown the football is a big upgrade for the passing game. Hurst was solid but teams certainly could afford to discount him at times.
The versatility that Hurst brought in 2019 and Likely could bring in 2022 is the key. In the brave new offensive football world, spread offenses are in vogue, but multiple TE sets are still a key to many offensive schemes. That’s because teams that want more balance than a typical spread offense would afford them, can utilize versatile Tight Ends to create an offense that can do some of the things a spread offense can do, without compromising too much their ability to run the football.
And crucially, they can do this without substituting and therefore preventing the defense from doing the same.
Beat writers already calling 4th-round rookie Isaiah Likely the "leading candidate" for No. 3 pass-catcher job. Behind Mark Andrews & Rashod Bateman.
Likely went 59-912-12 in 13 games for Coastal Carolina last year.
Likely has played 42 snaps this preseason & gone 12-144-1. pic.twitter.com/S5WdcCfNfi
— Adam Levitan (@adamlevitan) August 22, 2022
The return of a genuine receiving threat at Tight End and an improvement on the 2019 pass catching weapons, opens up a world of possibilities for Greg Roman to build on the success of 2019 and turn that regular season juggernaut into a more flexible machine, capable of a deeper playoff run.
There are a lot of ifs in this piece but I would bet all the money in my pockets that the Ravens are banking on this kind of approach, perhaps one last time, to see if this type of offense can get them back to the Promised Land.
This season, I’ll be continuing my run as the custodian of the Battle Plans piece at RSR, breaking down how the Ravens might go about beating their opponents that week. Look out for it every Thursday, beginning in two weeks with how the Ravens could shut down the likely Joe Flacco-led Jets.
Dropped in the bucket.@JoeFlacco 🎯 @e_moore03 pic.twitter.com/zwqG4hwHuC
— New York Jets (@nyjets) August 20, 2022
