@ Baltimore: Solutions to Victory!

awesome write-up, I dont think they win this game though...alot to overcome going up there and pulling it out...now that doesnt mean they wont of course...

My key to victory is containing this guy....he murders people....

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XZDzOGFXts"]YouTube - Ray of Light (Ray Lewis)[/ame]

 

Good write up man.

Two of the things you mention worry me.

1. We should come out passing. But will we? I hope the coaches don't try and second guess themselves here.

2. Execution. We have to be precise in every phase. Can't afford the type of mental errors that seem to hit us in bunches this year - e.g. dropped passes, missed special team blocks

 

Yeah, I'm crossing my fingers that the touchdown drive last week was the beginning of the offense finding its feet. Some more of that would be tasty.

 

It's the octagon not the pentagon...Otherwise pretty good write up.

 

1. No turnovers
2. We have to cover Boldin and contain Rice.
3. TD's in the red zone instead of FG's.

 

This week is a unique opportunity HF, the Ravens have the worst Special Teams unit of any team in the Top 10 Special Teams units, actually, their hidden points average is ranked as the worst in the NFL at mind boggling -12.9.

This is a game we can win the hidden yardage battle, specifically watch Nolan Carroll and Devone Bess on Returns as the Ravens are even more vulnerable than the Bengals were at giving up return yardage.

Secondly, force them to drive the field, no turnovers, Brandon Fields has to pin Flacco and the Offense inside their 20yd lines consistently.

Thirdly, start Ricky Williams, he is rolling better with the new offensive line, his one step and go style just fits the Jerry-Berger-Incognito blocking effort better.

Foruthly, we need some uknowns to make some plays, Shuler, Mastrud, Wallace, we need new blood to create something on offense.

 

Well, we've played poorly and won 3 games that could have gone either way and the 4th win (Cincy) should have been by a bigger margin had we played better....We've played poorly and lost 3 games with only one (Pitts) that could have gone our way instead of the other.... How about we start out and play well this game... If the receivers don't drop balls, if Henne continues to look to not just his first read and the OL provides some holes for the RBs and Henning doesn't fade into his dementia mode, if the dbs actually make some int's instead of dropping them like hot potatoes perhaps ...just perhaps... we have a chance to win against a good team....it's there, we're capable, but I'm afraid we have to be almost perfect....

 

One caveat though, the Raven's Cundiff does lead the NFL in touchback percentage I'd say that makes the Raven's coverage unit even less impressive, but Carroll won't be returning every kickoff.

 

I don't start Ricky, the Ravens are very good at stripping the ball, and Ricky is very good at getting stripped.

 

I'm a Ravens fan...

This might be a close, hard fought game but I think the Ravens will win. I definitely don't think this will be an easy game for us but since we're coming off a bye, and we're at home, that makes me feel a little better. You guys beat Cincy and probably should have beaten Pittsburgh but I think the Ravens will win this one. The only thing I'm worried about with Baltimore is our defense. It hasn't been quite as good as it has in years past. Hopefully, that will change in the second half of the season.

Good luck to you guys on Sunday. Hopefully both teams can come out of the game with NO INJURIES, but with a Ravens win

 

Problem is bro, he hasnt been on it all year....and Balt is a tough team, and place to find it....

 

Heard some interesting stats:

-Joe Flacco completes 57% of his passes against blitzes

-Joe Flacco completes 36% of his passes when he is pressured.

Which would mean Nolan has to find a way to dial up pressure on Flacco from the Nickel 4 man rush line, we did some of that last week via running stunts and twists with Wake but we can expect Wake to be a marked man this week.

So we need another athletic Dlineman who is explosive to run those stunts and twists..Misi hasn't shown much of an aptness for doing that, so who?

Starks? Ikaika? Who?

 

Matchups are important in a game like this. And I don't mean like matchups with slight favorable edges, like Vontae Davis against Derrick Mason or something like that.

I mean like, Haloti Ngata against Richie Incognito, John Jerry, and Pat McQuistan if they continue rotating. You've got a guy having a legit All Pro season going up against the weakest link of the offense, the guard tandem. The result of this kind of matchup nightmare is either production, adjustment, or both. Either way, there's a blast zone for this kind of mismatch. Either Ngata is going to be a one man wrecking crew, or Joe Berger, Jake Long, Vernon Carey, Ronnie Brown, Lousaka Polite and Ricky Williams are going to have to spend some time bailing their teammates in the pass and run games, and that limits effectiveness in other ways. You need to be able to get people out on their linebackers to run the ball, and you want to give Henne checkdown choices in the passing game.

Which team has more of those?

I think they do. They also have another mismatch which will create a blast zone in Anquan Boldin going up against Benny Sapp and Sean Smith. He moves around all over the place and is often in the slot. I realize I'm a Smith backer and he just came off a fantastic game. I also realize his tackling is vastly improved compared with a year ago. However, overall his tackling and physicality in support is still the weakest in the secondary, and he'll be coming up in support a WR that might be the toughest to physically tackle in the NFL aside from Brandon Marshall. That's a pretty severe test to put on a guy that is still trying to adapt to defense (only his 4th year on that side of the ball) and whose tackling is still improving. Meanwhile, Benny Sapp is the weakest player in the secondary in coverage, and what you worry about there is his inability to adjust his alignment in a timely manner to combat a motioning Boldin. That could result in a touchdown if Benny's not careful.

One matchup the Dolphins have in their favor which creates a significant blast zone is Brandon Marshall on Fabian Washington. Take what Bryan Mattison says with a grain of salt, he's trying to get the Dolphins to do something that HE wants them to do. He's not dumb. Fabian is one of the weaker starting corners in football. He got abused by Lee Evans and Steve Johnson. The Bills hit him up for 164 yards and 3 TDs. My guess, not having seen the game, is that with Ed Reed out they played simpler coverages and gave Fabian (who plays on the free safety's side) more help. With Reed back they probably wanted to move him around more, get cute with his disguising coverages, generally trying to create interception opportunities (which worked, he got 2 interceptions). This left Washington exposed to Evans and Johnson though, and that led to nastiness. I don't think the Ravens are going to want that to happen again except with Brandon Marshall (who lines up on Washington's side of the field) holding the headsman's axe.

Which brings me to a fourth blast zone mismatch and that is Ed Reed against Chad Henne's eyes. We all know that Henne can at times telegraph his passes and Ed Reed is a master of reading the quarterback, disguising his coverage, and jumping the ball. He likes to, at times, come sneaking basically from opposite field to pop over and pick off a ball where a QB didn't even bother looking for him because he had to go out of zone to go get the ball. He did this to Pennington in the 2008 playoffs. However, if he's scared of the Marshall/Washington mismatch, he's really not afforded that kind of freedom. He has to stay more disciplined. His game therefore becomes trying to convince Henne that he's not doubling Marshall, when he actually is. Hence Bryan Mattison basically inviting Henne to throw the ball to Marshall by saying "Double Marshall? No way, why would we do that?!?". Henne's eyes may work against him at times versus a guy like Ed Reed but his general safety with the football works very much for him if Ed is handcuffed in his responsibilities. This threatens to make Reed irrelevant during the game.

If you think about Henne's interceptions this year, which ones have come from him forcing the ball somewhere? There was the non-interception against Pitt, 4th down tip-up pick against the Jets where he had no choice but to make the throw even though Wallace had run the wrong route and brought an extra defender to Fasano, the pick against the Pats where Marshall hung Henne out to dry, the pick against the Packers where Marshall slipped on his break and then floated to the sideline instead of coming straight down his stem as he was supposed to, and then the pick to Ninkovich where Rob was is single coverage and Henne just threw a bad ball and Rob made a good play. That leaves two interceptions. One was a pick to Ninkovich where Rob played an underneath robber zone and Henne failed to recognize it. The other was the play-action interception to the Bengals where Henne absolutely forced the ball into multiple coverage. But if you listen to Brandon Marshall's interview after the Bengals game, he revealed that Henne went into that game in the mindset that he has to take some chances with the ball. Sometimes, that's in the game planning. I remember a story of Bill Parcells taking Phil Simms aside before a game and saying "if you don't throw 2 interceptions today then you're not being aggressive enough" or something along those lines. The Bengals game was one of those games where they felt they should take some chances. Will the Ravens game be like that? I say absolutely not. They're not going to be as chancy with the football. So, Henne's not going to be inclined to force it where Ed Reed could be waiting. That leaves the Ninkovich robber pick. Also if you remember he had a near-pick to Devin McCourty where Devin played another underneath zone and followed Henne's eyes, got depth and nearly picked off the pass. Henne IS susceptible to this, but can Ed Reed execute this kind of thing when he's handcuffed to babysitting Fabian Washington on Brandon Marshall all day? I say no.

And so this is an example of the blast zone of one team's mismatch nullifying another team's potential mismatch.

But that still leaves the Boldin mismatch and the Ngata mismatch. And Miami doesn't have anything juicy to counter those.

Another thing to consider is looking at how Miami has made its way. Miami's defense struggled one time this year and that was when the Jets' offensive line could be relied upon to keep Cameron Wake and Koa Misi at bay. Much like 2008 when the sombrero was often on Joey Porter, the Dolphins depend heavily on pressure coming from Cameron Wake. But in this game he will line up mostly on the left side (as usual) and he will be going up against Right Tackle Marshall Yanda, who might be the most successful pass protecting Right Tackle in football this year. No joke, if you look at his sack/hit/pressure stats, you'd think you're looking at Jake Long's (near identical). And that's with Joe Flacco being a guy that eats the football at times waiting to the last moment and then buying time. If Yanda can neutralize Wake for much of the day, that would hurt Miami's defense significantly. On the other hand the Ravens are facing the same thing as the bulk of their pass rush has come from Terrell Suggs, who will work on Jake Long a lot obviously. But, Miami has played games with very little pass rush on Henne before, and still struggled a little in the passing game. Wake getting caught up in a stalemate could be more impacting to us negatively than Suggs getting caught up in a stalemate.

And that is why Vegas has us at +5.5 underdogs in this fight.

Is there any hope for us? Yes. I'll give you a number of possibilities that could lead to hope:

1. Rock meets rock? Richie Incognito and John Jerry are weaknesses and going up on Ngata should be a chore, but those two are weaknesses mostly because they can't pull into space, sometimes Incognito has trouble with speed on the inside in pass rush. We shouldn't be surprised if during the game stylistically the sheer size, strength and anchor ability of Incognito, Berger and Jerry effectively neutralize Haloti Ngata, even in one-on-one situations. It could be that Ngata's not the kind of guy built to destroy them. If this mismatch is not as damaging on the field as it seems on paper, it could change the face of the game significantly.

2. A rookie ray of light? Though Wake draws a tough matchup on Marshall Yanda, Michael Oher can be had on the other side. He has particularly struggled against 3-4 OLBs, two-way players that could rush or cover, that come with wide spacing and maybe some unfamiliar angles. When you look at the fact that Oher has struggled against the likes of Michael Johnson, Jason Hunter and Jermaine Cunningham, it gives you hope that Koa Misi could do some good work against him that actually impacts the game even if Wake is tied up.

3. Breakout for Brian? The more the season has gone on, the more comfortable Brian Hartline has seemed to get. The last two weeks he's made 3 people miss tackles on him and created 72 yards after putting the football in his hands. He hadn't made anyone miss prior to Pittsburgh. When he dropped that flea flicker ball, he was challanged by Marshall to step up and make sure he takes advantage of each and every one of his opportunities, and he responded with two big plays on that impressive 96 yard TD drive. He's a guy that I feel can get a little comfortable at times, probably because of how young he is. How do you think he's going to respond to everyone (Brandon Marshall included) getting all moist this week for Randy Moss, who would have been Hartline's DIRECT replacement? I knocked this guy's RAC ability earlier in the year, but if you take aside the first two weeks of the season, he's created 125 yards after the football comes in his hands, on 24 touches, and he seems to be getting better at it. The Ravens will have Chris Carr on him in base 2-WR packages, but they figure to stick Lardarius Webb on him when Bess comes on the field. Webb CAN be had, he missed a tackle last week and he's been thrown on 13 times the past two weeks with 10 completions for 135 yards, 2 TDs, and allowed 57 yards after the catch on those 10 catches (5.7 avg). You don't normally accuse a Brian Hartline of being the kind of mismatch on a Lardarius Webb that would impact the game, but if the trend is valid and if his motivation is where it COULD be due to the Moss thing...that could be exactly what happens.

 

change your name then.....

 

FOR PETE'S SAKE THERE HAVE BEEN DOZENS OF PLAYCALLS SINCE 3RD AND 6 AND THE WILDCAT COULD PEOPLE JUST GTF OVER IT!?!?

As if Henne throwing an incomplete pass would cause the same "I can't believe they called a pass on 3rd and 6 and Fasano dropped the ball" would cause the same level of consternation.

It has nothing to do with nothing, just a failed 3rd down conversion attempt.

 

Yeah, and we've had O-Line issues all year with Gaither out. We've been without Gaither all year (he was just recently put on IR too). We have our starting right guard at right tackle and a backup guard at right guard. Yanda hasn't done too bad at right tackle but our line is much better with him at guard and Gaither at left tackle. Oh well.

 

I thought it was quite funny the name was even available on a dolphins message board so I took it

 

Not particularly concerned about Ngata dominating this game, Sparano won't allow it to happen and pays to much attention to how to block him and keep him blocked, a cat like Kelly Gregg maybe feasts, but Ngata won't.

Not seeing it, Flacco is 57% completions against the blitz, but 35% completions when pressurred, I suspect we will see more along the lines of the Bengals second half defense, 4 down, mix of DB's and Lb's behind it, but Wake had his best success on stunts and twists, something I have not seen Misi have much success at doing this season.

In those situations it could be Langford at LDE in the 4 man rush line, maybe even Ikaika or Q Moses, not saying Misi couldn't do so, just saying I have not seen him run twists and stunts effectively.

 

As Nolan said "I'm going to try and ruin their day, they are going to try and ruin ours".

 

Not that this necessarily matters for this week's game but maybe you guys would find this interesting:

Joe Flacco is the NFL's highest-rated passer since Week 3. Since throwing a career-worst four interceptions in Cincinnati, Flacco has rebounded extremely well. Over his past five games, Flacco has an NFL-best 105.0 quarterback rating, throwing nine touchdowns and one interception.

Hopefully, he doesn't fall and throw 3 INT's Sunday. He usually plays very well at home, though, so we'll see.

 

I was quite shocked it was available myself.

 

Thanks. Couple of notes though.

Ngata is not a Nose Tackle. He plays DE and DT. Kelly Gregg is their NT when they have one.

Also, you need a 2nd TE to run a 2-TE formation.

I saw vast improvement in Sean's tackling back in preseason so I'm not sure how much his work as a dime CB really impacted that. I think it's something he worked on all off season because he had to hear about it from everyone, from the analysts to the people talking trash to him on twitter.

 

This question goes out to miamidolphins.

What do you think Miami has to do to beat Baltimore?

Thanks in advance.

 

Some of the usual keys to football games...

• Dominate TOP
• Create turnovers and capatilize on them
• Sack/pressure Flacco
• Score TDs instead of FGs
• Run the ball and run it well

The Ravens are facing a pretty well-balanced team here. Two solid running backs (Brown and Williams), a QB who can get the job done, a stud WR, and a very formidable defense. Very similar to the Ravens.

You guys have played every game tough just like us, so I expect it to be a close game. But the Dolphin's lack of finding the endzone might prove to be the difference.

 

Thanks. So, you're giving us a chance then, right?

In all seriousness, I agree with you. Especially the part about scoring TD's instead of FG's. In all honesty, I think the Ravens are a very good and very disciplined team. Add in playing in your house, and after your bye, it's going to be quite the challenge. I think we have to play our best game of the year, and probably get a few breaks along the way in order to beat your boys. Forcing Flacco to make mistakes (if possible) is going to be key IMHO.

Any predictions?

 

Of course. Anything can happen.

 

We welcome our rival fans points of view even though they may be deluded so please treat them with respect.

Homers have a habit of being deluded .It comes with the territory except for Dolphin fans of course.We are not deluded or biased .

 

LOL...well to me, it's nice to read and discuss football with other fans' point of view. It's the reason I'm here now.

On the BaltimoreRavens.com message board we have a couple Steelers fans that are very active (one has like 11,000 posts) and a colts fan, browns fan, etc.

It's nice to have them come in and bring all/most of the fans down a level LOL

And thanks for the welcome! Although, some here haven't been so kind. But I think I can take it.