“In the National Football League system, run-first offenses and sustained winning models are considered especially heinous. In Baltimore, Maryland, the dedicated fans who support the front office and coaching are members of an elite squad known as the Purple Patrol. These are their stories.”
DUN DUN.
Let’s take a quick moment to discuss Greg Roman slander today, because I found a totally fantastic nugget from the Week 7 postgame notes that really shows the value the Ravens Offensive Coordinator carries.
For those living under a rock, or not on social media, or never stepped into a bar on Sundays at 1pm: Ravens fans generally hate Roman.
Why?
That’s still not fully verified, if we’re being honest. Some folks believe Roman is everything that’s wrong with the Ravens offense and that they’d thrive if he was fired immediately, while others believe it’s not so much his playbook, but the calls he makes at the times he makes them, and the Ravens would be better off with a magic 8-ball or one of those elementary school little fortune teller things calling the plays. There’s also a weird group that believes Roman is Tight End-obsessed, hates wideouts, refuses to pass the ball, and somehow has taken away the free will of Lamar Jackson reading through his progressions and forces him to throw between the hashes.
The truth kinda lies somewhere in the middle of that therapy session… but to summarize?
Ravens fans want Roman out of Baltimore yesterday.
So check out this nugget of a quote from Justin Fields following a huge 33-14 Bears win over the Patriots on Monday Night Football this past week:
“It brings another whole element to our offense, stealing some plays from the Ravens…. Yup-yup-yup. We got a couple of ones from them.”
Oh, you want another? Here’s Patriots DB Devin McCourty on the Bears offense:
“I think with the extended time, they added some plays we saw in the Baltimore game. Some of those style of plays.”
Remarkable.
The Roman-led offense in Baltimore has encouraged the Bears to do a little copypasta action and borrow some plays, notably plays that proved effective, as the Bears and Ravens are the only two teams to score 30+ on the Patriots this season thus far. Hell, the only other team to score 20+ on them was the lowly Packers who also did it on the strength of 199 rushing yards.
The ground game… wins games???
Naturally, Ravens fans found these quotes and loaded up the replies with “please take him, Chicago!” not fully respecting the fact that once again, Roman’s offense is top-10 in scoring this season (6th in Points For, to be exact) and it has done so despite the uneven play by Lamar… numerous drops… Rashod Bateman injury… JK Dobbins coming back for a cup of coffee then headed back to the IR… Left Tackle shuffle for four weeks with four different Left Tackles… a slew of pre-snap penalties stalling drives… Gus Edwards just getting healthy…
So basically a bunch of self-inflicted wounds and… whatever the opposite of self-inflicted wounds are. So I guess, just wounds?
Again, Roman isn’t infallible – his adjustments surely leave something to be desired – but the ‘grass is greener’ notion for an OC isn’t always the right solution, especially for a guy leading another top-10 campaign and starting to influence other offenses in the era where mobile and hyper-athletic quarterbacks are becoming the norm.
