Battle Plans: The Only Key is Not to Tip Your Hand

This Battle Plan will be short and sweet. It’s the strangest game in prospect since I’ve been writing the column. With the announcement that the Bengals and Bills game from Monday night won’t be rescheduled, the stakes for this game are at an all-time low.

For the Bengals, there is no chance at the number one seed. They will of course prefer the two seed and a potential home matchup with the Bills in the Divisional Round, if both teams make it through, but it feels foolish for them to go all out to win this game. That’s because the Ravens are most likely locked into the 6^th seed, and are their most likely opponent on wild card weekend.

It adds up to very little motivation for either team to show their full hand, schematically, on Sunday afternoon. So, there is not much to write home about for this column this week. I’d also normally write a start, stop, continue piece for the second divisional matchup of the season but both these teams have changed so dramatically since their first meeting, even doing that would be a challenge.

I wrote in Battle Plans, for the first game between these two, about “the cuttlefish,” as I’m calling him: Lou Anarumo – the Cincinnati Bengals Defensive Coordinator. “The cuttlefish” because of the way his defense changes and adapts to the opponent they are facing and moves, in mysterious ways, post-snap to confuse opposing Quarterbacks, disguising their coverages expertly.

Cincinnati has faced a gauntlet of high-powered offenses and have had to be at their best to reel off the wins they have since the Ravens game. They won’t need to be this week against this Ravens passing offense. There were times during the game against the Steelers that this offense epitomized the anemic passing game we’ve seen throughout the season. Not just because of the lack of reliable receiving weapons, but also in some of the concepts deployed.

There won’t be much to combat scheme-wise against this Bengals defense because they are very naturally good at stopping the strengths of this Ravens offense. They are excellent defending Tight Ends, and they are very good making tackles at the second level and in the open field against the running game.

Where they can be found wanting at times is in their pass rush – Trey Hendrickson and Sam Hubbard have got pressure on the Quarterback this season, but they have not gotten home, and lie firmly towards the back of the pack in terms of sacks across the league. The Ravens should be able to protect Tyler Huntley well again this week, but I’d be surprised if the sophomore signal-caller will be able to carve up this Cincinnati pass defense, given its complexity.

Having said all that, there is only one offensive key to this game: the Ravens should not, under any circumstances, deploy any concepts that they think they will use in a potential playoff game, back in Cincinnati, a week later. It is highly unlikely that the Chargers lose to the Broncos. The Ravens have very little to gain from winning this game, and they certainly shouldn’t be emptying the vault to do so. That includes in their running game which should contain no traces of unusual concepts rarely seen by the Bengals.

The Ravens need all the help they can get offensively to win a playoff game against these Bengals. If I was Greg Roman, I might have already started building a gameplan for a playoff game back at Paycor (formerly Paul Brown) Stadium, just to ensure the gameplan this week features no concepts remotely close to the ones they would use in a potential future matchup.

The same goes for the defense, in many ways. This Bengals Offensive Line remains a patchwork, botched repair job that has not yet resulted in Joe Burrow having a season freer of molestation from opposing defenses. The Ravens will have some pressure packages they can dial up for the Bengals but none of them should be in use in this game. The blitz needs to be applied sparingly against Burrow anyway, but in this game, it should not be applied at all. Any experimental pressure packages should be saved for a future playoff game.

The real question for the Ravens defense is what kind of coverage they play. They have shown throughout the season that they can revert to a two-high shell this season when playing the most effective passing offenses in the league.

The Bengals though, only saw one half out of the Ravens best weapon in deploying this system – Marcus Williams, who suffered his long-term wrist injury in the first half of this matchup. The Bengals also haven’t seen Roquan Smith in this defense or indeed Kyle Hamilton at his best, as the rookie played his lowest number of defensive snaps in that game.

There is plenty of tape on all this now, so I’m not sure the Ravens should consider sitting these players, but I certainly wouldn’t have them doing anything particularly out of the ordinary within the scheme.

What the Ravens might want to do is some sort of rope-a-dope with the defense they deploy most of the night.

I would come out with an entirely different approach from a coverage perspective than I would intend to use in a future matchup with Cincinnati. I’d run with more man coverage than the first meeting between these two, and test how much single coverage they can afford to play against Tee Higgins and Ja’marr Chase.

The biggest conundrum to solve when facing this Bengals offense, is how much attention to pay to each of the two receivers. Both have had big games against Baltimore in the past, so if they can find a way to cover one of them with less resource then they can dedicate more to the other, instead of constantly having to stay balanced in their coverage.

Ravens fans should brace themselves for a weird game, and perhaps even a blowout loss to the Bengals. The Ravens cannot simply line up and play vanilla against the Bengals and win. There are areas where they outstrip Cincinnati from a talent perspective, but they are few and far between. The Bengals win a straight up, ordinary game between the two, with Senior Bowl type rules.

The Ravens need their coaching and their scheme to win a playoff game between these two, and the way they set up on both sides of the ball must be geared towards a future playoff meeting.

Then, after all that, the Bills will go and lose to the Patriots, and the Ravens will head to Buffalo in the wild card round.

Here’s to next week’s full Battle Plan, hopefully the first of four successful Battle Plans across an unlikely Ravens playoff run.