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Lamar Jackson: Point Guard

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Ravens Pass-Catchers Through 15 Games

Merry Christmas, Ravens fans!  WOW.  This was more than I thought was possible.  You might remember last week I said that playing the Niners tight “would be an accomplishment,” and we fans should “not let it ruin our Christmas” but instead “take the long view” that the Ravens could use this game as an opportunity to closely scout the opponent to prep a winning gameplan for a February rematch.

Yeah, no.  Instead they just stomped the 49ers.  I didn’t see it coming.  A couple of posters on the RSR forum did (shout out to Mmcclend, PGCountyRaven85, and GOTA), and I told them they were wrong.  Oops!

Closely following a sports team over a long period – this is an idea I got from the great Washington Post sports columnist Tom Boswell, and I’ve pestered my poor wife with this analogy for many years –  is like reading a long, long novel.  There are chapters and characters and arcs and motifs and incidents and tragedies and morals and returning characters etc etc.  It’s “rich”, like a story can be rich, and surprising like Game of Thrones could be surprising.

Sometimes when you follow a team, you get a sense that a group in a particular season has a chance to be special.  They make a play you didn’t expect, like Joe Flacco & Ray Rice converting 4th-&-29, or they win a game you didn’t think they could, like the Mile High Miracle.  Sometimes that team has a driving disappointment in its background, like the crushing 2011 playoff loss in New England.  All of these things wrap together to form the fabric of a championship team.

For 13 years I lived and died with every bounce of the ball for the Maryland Men’s Basketball Team, as they clawed their way up from NCAA sanctions in 1989-90 to winning the National Championship in 2002.  For those teams, I could tell you chapter and verse of the tiny hints & indicators that they could be special, from the turnaround win over Florida State in 2000 when they showed they could feed the post with relentless discipline, and Steve Blake & Juan Dixon’s first win at Duke a month later, through the soaring joy of their Regional Finals win over Stanford in 2001 and the crushing disappointment of their loss in the Final Four a week later, and the insane tension of their NCAA Regionals games versus Kentucky and UConn in 2002.  I could talk for hours on that stuff – have done so on occasion!

Maybe it’s different for perennial champs like the Belichick-Brady Patriots or the Magic-Kareem-Riley Lakers, but for normal “pretty good” teams who ascend to a championship level, it’s not just talent and skill that make a champion; it’s also the cumulative experiences and lessons-learned of months and years stacked on top of each other.  It’s layered.

If these Ravens go on to win the Super Bowl, we’ll think of this surprising win, and we’ll think of how everything seemed to suddenly come together when they came home from London and stomped Detroit 38-6 in October.  We’ll think of previous crushing playoff disappointments that help drive them: 2019 vs Tennessee and 2020 in Buffalo and last year in Cincy, not to mention 2021 when Lamar’s injury knocked them out of the playoffs altogether.  It’s all wrapped together.

Of course there’s a long, long way to go before then.  My oldest friend, best man at my wedding, predicted last week that the LOSER of the Ravens-Niners game would win the Super Bowl.  That sounded good to me last week.  Today it gives me pause.

In the event of a rematch with San Francisco, I would not necessarily expect it to go the same way.  The game script got away from the Niners on Monday, but they’re still hella talented.  At the same time, the Ravens offense didn’t play its best game either.  There were drops by Rashod Bateman & Zay Flowers to open the game, plus Lamar was a little wild to start. The bizarre play where the ref sacked Lamar seemed to settle him down.

Did you notice how grim Lamar seemed to be after the game?  Ravens defenders were celebrating (damn well deserved!), but offensive players were not. They were focused and business-like.  Maybe they’re taking their cue from Lamar, who is one serious individual these days. Harbs gave him a game ball in the postgame locker room, to chants of “MVP! MVP!” and Lamar barely cracked a polite smile.  I’m not sure we’ll see Lamar give a genuinely happy smile until & unless they win it all.

So how good are these Ravens?  According to DVOA, they are insanely good.  I can’t even say how good, because it’s preposterous and a little frightening.  Instead I’ll insert a picture of the DVOA ratings table:

According to DVOA, since 1981 only the 2007 Imperfect Pats, 1991 Redskins, and the ‘85 Bears have been better through 15 games than this year’s Ravens (and Niners) have been.  That’s, wow, I can’t even fully grasp that. Unbelievable.

Christmas Lumps of Coal for:

— Mike Florio, who made this prediction in the week leading up to the game:

Walking up the tunnel postgame, Lamar mispronounced his name talking with Ronnie Stanley, calling him Flores:

That’s an absolutely perfect amount of respect for that clown.

— Jason La Canfora of sports-talk radio, who last year on draft weekend said Kyle Hamilton was not a playmaker and was a wasted draft pick because he doesn’t play a premium position. Hamilton was just named AFC Defensive Player of the Week for his two interceptions and five combined tackles against the Niners, and he’s probably going to be named All-Pro at the end of the season. There might not be a more important player on the team after Lamar.

Play of the Game

Let’s go with a sequence of three pass plays.  The Sequence of the Game.  Start with the Ravens first offensive snap of the second half – I think this illustrates something about Lamar:

He plays Quarterback like a basketball Point Guard.  First, look at this moment, a second or two after the snap, Lamar to the far right staring at the pass rush:

This is a sack, right?  When Nick Bosa (#97) and Javon Hargrave (#98) have you boxed-in like that, any other human being playing quarterback is going down.  Hard.  But with Lamar, this turns into a 39-yd pass play.  What the hell does a defense have to do??  It has to drive them absolutely out of their minds.

So Lamar breaks the backcourt trap like a Point Guard, and he creates the 2-on-1 fast break opportunity:

#57 Dre Greenlaw is in no-man’s land.  There’s just one of him to account for Lamar and Gus Edwards.  If he stays back to guard the wing, Lamar drives right to the hoop: you just can’t let Lamar run free in the open field.  Greenlaw has to come up and challenge.  Lamar pushes the ball to “widen” the triangle, and when Greenlaw commits, he dishes the rock to his Power Forward for the finishing dunk, a 39-yd catch-&-run.  It’s pure basketball. Trae Young doesn’t do it any better.

Also, watch Hargrave & Bosa after Lamar breaks contain.  Bosa is the reigning Defensive Player of The Year, led the league in sacks last season.  Hargrave is a difference-maker; a Pro Bowler, he had 18 ½ sacks the last two years for Philly, has seven this season.  They are engines that drive one of the NFL’s best defenses.  Yet when Lamar steps up to split their rush, doesn’t it look like they immediately lose steam?  You always want to be careful about making generalizations like “break their will” or whatever; but Hargrave is on Lamar’s hip, and he’s just jogging.  Lamar is almost within reach, but Hargrave knows he has no chance to impact this play anymore.  We don’t see Bosa after he spins to reorient – but that’s sort of the point.  One of the NFL’s most relentless and terrifying pass rushers, and he never re-appears on screen after Lamar slips past him.

Just like that the Ravens are instantly down to the 5 with 1st-&-goal.  The Niners stuff a Gus run to bring up 2nd-&-goal from the 6.  Now we get this:

Here’s the end zone view on that one:

Again we see the Niners pass-rush have Lamar absolutely dead to rights:

#94 Clelin Ferrell actually gets his hand on Lamar’s hip:

Doesn’t matter:

The defense is screwed.  Lamar could almost certainly run this at least down to the 4- or 3-yard line; he might even be able to get in if Justice Hill can win the block. This looked like a sack just 2 seconds ago: now Lamar is in the open field. But he doesn’t have to run it.  He’s got the vision to let Nelson Agholor uncover in the end zone, for the easy pitch-&-catch.

Re-watch the end zone video and look at the body language on #54 Fred Warner as the pass is caught.  Warner is a 2-time All-Pro and the consensus best ILB in the league, even over Roquan Smith.  And he is just about done.  This was the Ravens third offensive snap of the second half!  And he is frustrated.

On the next play from scrimmage Travis Jones hits Brock Purdy while throwing and Patrick Queen intercepts down to the 9. Lamar and Todd Monken immediately take the kill shot:

 

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They start with a trick play formation:

That’s Tight End Charlie Kolar at Left Tackle.  Over toward on the right side, Tight End Isaiah Likely is “in line” at the Right Tackle spot, but he stays eligible because he’s off the line.  Ronnie Stanley has moved over to the right “slot,” but because he’s on the line he’s the actual Right Tackle (and ineligible).  Do you remember when Belichick and Brady messed with the Ravens minds in the 2014 Divisional Round, putting an eligible receiver inline and an ineligible receiver split out?  This was in that family of tricky formations.

On the snap Lamar fakes the toss to Gus:

 

The Niners pay attention, but they trust themselves to tackle so they don’t bite all the way.  Instead they key on Likely running the wheel route:

This draws four defenders.  Zay Flowers slips past and is all alone:

When JT O’Sullivan of the QB school sees a Wide Receiver like that on tape he says, “That’s a mailbox.”  The flag is up:

Easy delivery.

This play is Kansas City/Andy Reid -style creativity in the Red Zone.  Beautiful; crisply executed, too.  If you can stand just one more look at this play, Dan Orlovsky points out a few sweet details: the Ravens speed from huddle to snap, which stresses the defense’s communication and decision-making, and how Wide Receivers Agholor and Flowers check & confirm their alignment with the ref pre-snap.  No Kadarius Toney mistakes here:

Overall the football game was clearly won by the defense.  They got five INTs off one of the statistically greatest offenses in history and held them to 12 points until garbage time.

But.  We’ve talked about “Big Inning Theory” and taking advantage of opportunities on offense, striking while the iron is hot.  In a sequence of three pass plays (in five total snaps) around their first possession in the second half, the Ravens offense essentially put this game away.  Great stuff.

Lamar: Still Ridiculous

What’s stupid is that this play doesn’t even make the “Sequence of the Game”:

This offseason, if I can figure out how to do it technically (hopefully someone will beat me to it), I’ll try to put together a compilation video of insane Lamar deliveries from twisted, contorted & off-balance positions.

It’s Time to Worry About

Seeding and matchups.

If the Ravens beat Miami this week, they clinch the #1 seed: first-round bye and guaranteed Home Field through the AFC playoffs.  That’s the top reward for a great season. But the scenario remains where the Browns and Ravens both finish 12-5 and Cleveland wins the AFC North, relegating Baltimore to a Wild Card and playoff road games.

Who do you want to see in the playoffs?

The teams that don’t scare me are the other three division leaders: Jacksonville, Miami and Kansas City.  Not to be arrogant, but I don’t think the two Florida teams can win in Baltimore in the playoffs.  As for Kansas City – well of course Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid will always have your full attention and respect.  They’ve shown some disarray lately, but we’ll have to see them actually eliminated before we believe them an “easy out.”  However. This Ravens defense is specifically built to play the Chiefs.  The back-line safety play from Marcus Williams & Geno Stone; the do-everything versatility of Kyle Hamilton; the athleticism of Brandon Stephens; the middle-of-the-field speed from Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen; the up-the-middle pressure from Justin Madubuike; the edge rush from Jadaveon Clowney & Kyle Van Noy – the whole unit is geared to hold the Chiefs in check.  Anything could happen, but that game is not the kind of matchup problem it would have been last year or the year before.

So who does worry me?  Two teams currently in wildcard spots: the Buffalo Bills and, yes, the Brownies of Cleveland.

The Bills fired their Offensive Coordinator in mid-November, and since then they’ve gone 4-1, with the only loss at Philadelphia in overtime.  They seem to have become the team they were supposed to be.  They’ve averaged over 150 yards rushing per game over the past five games, including a prodigious 260+ against Dallas.  Josh Allen has averaged 270+ yards passing over that span, excluding the Dallas game where they didn’t need him to throw (he only attempted 15 passes).  DVOA has them as the #3 overall team in the league with the #2 offense (ahead of the Ravens offense).  Josh Allen is a solid MVP candidate.  They could still win their division!  If the Ravens beat the Dolphins, and Buffalo wins at home against New England and then the season finale in Miami, then the Bills are AFC East champs and the AFC #3 seed (behind Kansas City).

As for the Browns…

Look, call me a worry weenie, but I don’t want any part of a divisional opponent in the playoffs.  Especially this divisional opponent.  Cleveland still has the best defense in football by DVOA.  They know the Ravens inside and out.  Last time they were in Baltimore they pushed the Ravens around on both the offensive line and defensive lines.

Their head coach is patient enough to stick with the run and let the game come to them.  Jerome Ford’s statistics aren’t great, but he’s a bludgeoning runner.  And now the Brownies have Joe Flacco (!) under center.  His efficiency stats haven’t been awesome; but with that defense, like Trent Dilfer he doesn’t have to be awesome, just solid & productive. God knows Joe is better than Trent Dilfer.  He still has the big arm, and his presence has activated Amari Cooper & David Njoku & Elijah Moore.  No one knows better than Baltimore fans how poised January Joe can be. It all could stack up to be a nightmare.

And they could still win their division!  Which of course is our division.  If the Ravens lose to Miami and Pittsburgh, and Cleveland wins out, they are AFC North champs.  (They’d be 4-2 in the division and the Ravens would be 3-3.)  How’s that for a disgusting thought?

Put some respect on Kevin Stefanski’s name.  He is the only Brownie head coach to win a playoff game since Bill Belichick in 1994, when it was actually the Ravens who were the Browns.  He’s the only Brownies non-interim head coach since their re-creation to post an overall winning record at .554.  You have to go back to Marty Schottenheimer in 1984-88 to find a Brownies (non-interim) head coach with an overall winning record.  And the divisional competition has been no joke during Stefanski’s time.  In addition to Lamar’s Ravens, Stefanski has contended with Big Ben’s last division-winning team in Pittsburgh, and the Bengals who’ve made two straight trips to the Conference Championship Game.  It’s a fine performance.  Also, he’s only 41 years old.  Imagine if they found a long-term solution at QB?  Stefanski could settle in for a long & productive career.

The Ravens would almost certainly have to beat one of those teams, and maybe both, to win the AFC.  One of them (let’s say Cleveland, but it could be Buffalo) will be the lowest-seeded team to emerge from the Wild Card round, so the Ravens would play them in the Divisional round.  The other one (let’s say Buffalo, but it could be Cleveland) could win the other side of the bracket and make the Conference Championship Game.  They don’t currently look as flashy as the current 2-3 seed Dolphins and Chiefs, but they’re more physical than either and could prove tougher.

First things first: Miami.  But those two teams are lurking behind as under-the-radar potential problems.

Vocab Redux

Do you remember last week’s vocab word?  Surprise, there’s a quiz!

And here you thought there might not be a way to use that word in a football context.

Stats

In four games since Mark Andrews’ injury, Isaiah Likely has 17 catches on 23 targets for 249 yds (10.8 YPT) with 2 TDs and 3 “Quality Starts,” which is a game with 3+ catches and 7+ yds-per-target.  He almost has 4 QS, as the other game he just missed with 4 catches on 6.7 YPT.

Charlie Kolar has catches in consecutive games for the first time in his career.  Two single-catch games might not seem like much; but he’s also carved out a role for himself as the QB sneak/tush-push guy, and he’s been the blocking Tight End in special formations (like the Flowers touchdown).  The only way to get snaps on a good team is to make yourself useful, and Kolar is doing that.

Justice Hill had 26 yards rushing to go with his receptions.  Plus he had an 18-yd Kick Return.  That’s tied for the second-highest scrimmage yards total of his career; he had 60 yds against the Pats and 57 against the Bills last year.  It’s the third-highest all-purpose total of his career; he had multiple kick-returns in the last two regular-season games last year.  It would be nice to have an every-down back, but Hill & Gus are doing quality work.

Brutal drop from Bateman on the first pass play of the game.  That ball was right in his hands.  He had a 21-yd completion called back due to penalty on RG John Simpson.  Add that catch (which Bateman did make!) to his actual stats, and Bateman has 35 yards and 7 YPT for the game.  Still not great, but enough to say that Bateman’s actual play was better than his stats.

Someday I will have concede that this is a lost season for Bateman and it looks like he’ll never be the “#1 WR” I thought him to be.  Right now I’m still in denial.  If you’re still a Bateman truther/denialist like me, this Tweet might give some solace:

Bateman’s career-best game was against Xavien Howard and Miami last year.  And guess who’s coming to town next week – ?

Season Stats & Leaderboard

Here are the full-season stats to date:

Flowers is tied for 21st in the league in receptions, and he’s 40th in receiving yards.  That’s as high as any Raven pass-catcher is on league leaderboards.  (Mark Andrews is still 11th in Receiving Success Rate.)  Likely’s yards-per-target would tie for 11th, but he doesn’t qualify – I think he’s two receptions short this week, and would need four next week to break onto the leaderboard.

But the Ravens have seven players among the top 140 in scrimmage yards, and 10 among the top 180.  Does offense-by-committee work in the playoffs?  I think it has been shown to, by Tom Brady and others, but your trigger man has to be on-point.

Flowers has already set the Ravens rookie record for catches (he set it in the Nov 16th game against Cincy).  He needs 90 more yards to set the yardage record; Torrey Smith gained 841 in his rookie season 2011.  Flowers’ 50 yds-per-game average would be enough to get that done.  But maybe you’d want to put an asterisk on that, since he’ll have taken 17 games to do what Torrey did in 16?  Flowers career-high is the 78 yards he got in game 1 vs the Texans, so getting 90 against Miami is a tall order.  I’m all for it, though.

Lamar is still 4th among QBs in yards-per-attempt and 8th in passer rating (which has yards-per as one of its components).  Also he’s still 8th in QBR.  He’s 7th in Passer Success Rate.  Lamar is not as high in the counting stats as the efficiency stats.  He’s tied for 14th in TD passes (with Trevor Lawrence; 1 behind CJ Stroud & Justin Herbert).  He’s 15th in passing yards, between Jordan Love and Herbert. The DVOA guys have him 12th in their counting stat and 14th in their efficiency stat (min 25 attempts).

It’s very late in the season, so team statistics have largely found their level and settled down.  The Ravens offense is 7th in pts-per-drive still, and now up to 5th in Scoring% per drive.  They’ve fallen to 11th in 3rd-down% but risen to 8th in Red Zone TD%.  They are still 4th in pts-per-game and still 4th in DVOA.

The DVOA playoff projections have the Ravens getting the AFC top seed in 78.5% of simulations, and making the Conference Championship Game in 78.8%.  A Niners-Ravens Super Bowl is by far their most common projection, occurring in 38% of their simulations.

Expected Points Added

If you already know what Expected Points Added analysis is all about, skip this and go right to the next section, “MVP Redux.”  I’m only covering EPA here to introduce that bit.

The idea of Expected Points Added analysis is that every combination of field position with down-&-distance has an “Expected Points” value.  Data scientists crunched all the possible position-down-distance combinations and determined what teams typically did in those spots.  That give an “Expected Points” value for every down-&-distance at every position on the field.  You can see those values for any play in any game by looking at the play-by-play sheets on PFR.  (PFR is so amazing.)

Let’s look at one particular play to get an idea how it works.  The game page for Monday night’s game is here.  Scroll down to where it says “Full Play-By-Play.”  Every play has a value for “Expected Points Before” and “Expected Points After” listed in the far right columns.  So for example, if you scroll down to Q2 9:38, the Ravens have the ball 4th-&-goal and the Niners 1.  The Expected Points Value for having 4th-&-goal at the one (“EPB”, before the play) is listed as 3.55 points: teams get the 7-pt touchdown about half the time, maybe a smidge over half.  In this instance the Ravens give the ball to Gus Ewards.  He scores!  The value after the play (“EPA”, after the play) is 7: Gus got the whole 7.  For that play, the Expected Points Added is the difference between the 3.55 before and the 7 after: 3.45 points.

Scroll down to Q3 12:13, the 2-on-1 fast break pass to Gus.  The Ravens have the ball 1st-&-10 at the Niners 44 yard line.  The Expected Points of that position-down-distance combination (before the play) is 2.65 points.  Gus picks up 39 yards on the catch-&-run , giving the Ravens 1st-&-goal on the Niners 5 yard line.  The Expected Points of the new position-down-distance combination is 6.06 pts.  So the Expected Points Added is the difference between 2.65 and 6.06: 3.41 points.  That’s a big play.

MVP Redux

Last week I presented a series of “conditionals” that led to a probable MVP winner – the closest I could bring myself to an MVP prediction.  After the Niners game, Lamar seems to be the MVP front-runner.  But if you have a subscription to The Athletic, there’s a fascinating piece today that uses Expected Points Added analysis to arrive at a surprise MVP recommendation.  The piece is here.

What Mike Sando does in the piece in The Athletic is very clever.  He starts with the idea that “The ideal MVP candidate is a quarterback (the most important position) whose production helps his team win with a highly-rated offense in spite of weak defense/special teams.”  Then he uses EPA analysis to look at teams to figure out how they win.  Is the team getting most of their Expected Points Added from offense, or from Defense/Special Teams?

That gives him this chart:

I didn’t want to spoil the article too much, so I hid the team names at the bottom of the chart.  But I marked the Ravens with a purple star.

You can see how this analysis hurts Lamar’s MVP candidacy.  The Ravens are an excellent team, but a lot of their winning is driven by Defense & Special Teams.  As Sando writes in the piece, “Jackson, with his 3,357 yards passing and 786 yards rushing, is a huge part of a smaller offensive pie.”  Smaller not because the offense isn’t good, but because the D & Special Teams contribute a lot to the Ravens winning. Sando wonders, “What would the Ravens look like without Lamar?  With their elite defense, they might look like the Cleveland Browns, who have cycled through four starting quarterbacks without getting even average production from any.”  The Browns are 10-5.

One team on this chart is winning with a good offense dragging along shitty Defense & Special Teams, the fifth team from the left.  That’s the LA Rams.  Sando is suggesting Matthew Stafford as an MVP candidate.  It’s not crazy.  The piece is well worth reading.  I find the argument pretty persuasive.  If Lamar falters and the Rams win, keep Stafford in mind.

Next Up

Then, Happy New Year to you & yours!

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