Sporting an offense that has shown the ability to beat opponents any number of ways, and a defense that can — wait for it — also beat teams any number of ways, the Ravens are a popular pick across these fruited plains as the current best team in the National Football League. Hyperbole? Prisoners of the moment? Stone-cold fact?
I’m going with stone-cold fact, with the pretty important caveat that it doesn’t matter.
Giving wedgies to two of the premier teams in the NFC in a three-game stretch, leading a division that would currently produce four of the AFC playoff teams and being tied atop the conference by record puts you in the conversation, right? Consider that the Ravens also lead the NFL in DVOA, ranking top-five in both offense and defense, and they sport a league-leading point differential of 115 points, with second-place Buffalo far behind at 80. So, yeah. It’s an easy argument to make.
And it doesn’t matter at all.
No team in the NFL has even clinched a winning record yet — it’s still that early in the season. We’ve seen injuries decimate promising seasons before, and we’ve all watched a certain guy in Kansas City do what he does in the playoffs. Oh, and a guy in Cincinnati. And Philadelphia. And… you get the picture.
And, again, yes, I do believe the Ravens are currently playing like the best team in the league when you consider everything in one picture. The counting stats are nice. The analytical examinations are good. There have been outrageous periods of domination on both sides of the ball that make you believe that nobody can beat this team when it’s rolling.
And that’s an important part there. The “when it’s rolling” part.
I do believe that nobody’s best can beat the Ravens’ best this season, judging from the data that we’ve seen to this point. There wasn’t a team in the league beating the Ravens Sunday. Or a few weeks ago against Detroit. When the offense is mixing in the run and the pass efficiently, and then ably transforming itself into a bull-dozing ball-carrying force of nature to steal the souls of their vanquished souls late… it’s a machine. An absolute machine.
Oh, yeah. There’s another little item to add there. Quarterback Lamar Jackson may not be producing the gaudy stat-lines every game that jump off the box score, but his efficiency at running the offense, improved accuracy and ability to pull off the kinds of things that only superstars can pull off is the kind of thing that can save an offense when it does get bottled up. He is currently leading NFL quarterbacks in competition percentage and running yards — a ridiculous stat I saw earlier on Twitter, but absolutely failed in remembering from who.
And the defense?
If it’s not the best in the league, it’s second to the team they’re going to see this weekend, the Cleveland Browns.
But remember when I said nobody’s best can beat the Ravens’ best? I meant that. But the problem is we don’t always get that best. Remember the Colts? The Steelers? The fourth quarter of that very strange game against the Cardinals? Teams like the Chiefs can beat the Ravens when the play like that. And the Bengals. Oh, and the Steelers and Colts, right?
What we’ve seen from this team has been at times brilliant, violent, clumsy, discombobulated, efficient, explosive and head-scratching. If we assume reasonable health the rest of the way, it’s a pretty safe assumption we’ll see this team in the playoffs again.
If they’re rolling, they bring home the trophy — and I don’t believe there’s another team that can do anything about it. If they’re “those other guys” we sometimes see, well… you might get a different answer from me as to who’s the best team in the league.
It appears that only the Ravens can beat this year’s Ravens if they stay healthy.
[Related Article: The Good, Bad & Ugly From The Ravens 37-3 Win]
3 Responses
They appear to be the best right now, but that’s subject to change weekly in this league of mediocrity! So…….stay tuned……..
Wow, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. This team has shown tendencies in the past to play great games and then play horrible games . I would like to see this team stumble for a half and then slowly get their groove and come back from behind. It just seems to me the Ravens play their best football in the preseason and regular season then when the pressure is the greatest and mistakes are amplified the Ravens play tight and panic. I understand a win is a win whether you win by 1 or 34 points but sometimes knowing you can play a bad game against a good team and still pull out the win has a better effect for a team than a blowout.
This is a well-considered piece. I agree that no team can beat our best, but that the Ravens playing their best game seems like a maddeningly random occurrence.
I could almost excuse the Colts and Steelers games because it didn’t seem like the Ravens had put it all together yet. Early injuries were also a factor. But I don’t know how to explain that turd of a game against the Cardinals after the Ravens had just thrashed the Lions. Travel fatigue?
I hope that the Ravens can continue to build, and that we’re not peaking too soon. We’ve been very fortunate with injuries lately. Let’s hope that continues and the team figures out how to be consistent.