Anybody who studies football trends over time will tell you that defensive performance is far more volatile from season to season than offensive performance tends to be. It’s highly unusual for a truly great defense to be truly great from year to year. For example, the Legion of Boom Seattle Seahawks led the NFL in fewest points allowed every season from 2012-2015, and the last team to do that at least four years in a row was the Cleveland Browns, who managed it for five consecutive seasons from 1953-1957.
It may not happen again for a similar space of time.
Therefore, we should not be at all surprised a when formerly great modern defense craters a bit after leading the league in multiple categories. That said, what’s happening to the 2024 Baltimore Ravens may not be uniquely bad, but it certainly feels like it.
(Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
The 2023 Ravens under defensive coordinator (and now Seahawks head coach) Mike Macdonald led the NFL in Defensive DVOA. They led the NFL in fewest points allowed at 280. They tied with the Browns and the New York Jets for the league’s lowest yards per play average at 4.6. They allowed a league-low 19 passing touchdowns, and they had 15 interceptions. Only the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers had more total pressures than Baltimore’s 308. This was an utterly dominant unit from front to back in every possible dimension.
Once Macdonald left the building, the Ravens replaced him with Zach Orr, who played linebacker for the team from 2014-2016, and then began his coaching career as a defensive analyst for his home team in 2017. After one season as the Jacksonville Jaguars‘ linebackers coach in 2019, Orr returned to the Charm City to be the Ravens’ inside linebackers coach in 2022 and 2023 before his recent promotion to defensive coordinator.
You can blame “brain drain” to a point for Baltimore’s defensive regression, and that’s much more about Macdonald’s defensive genius than any assumption that Orr isn’t up to the task — we don’t yet know whether he is or not. But it’s certainly a thing at the moment.
These Ravens rank 16th in Defensive DVOA. And they’ve allowed:
- The NFL’s third-most points at 253, 5.7 yards per play, tied with the New York Giants and New England Patriots for fourth-worst in the league.
- 22 passing touchdowns (the most in the league), with just six interceptions.
- An opponent passer rating of 102.0, sixth-worst in the NFL, after last season’s 77.9, which was the NFL’s second-best behind the New York Jets.
The only thing keeping the 7-3 Ravens together is an offense that can outscore whatever the defense allows. That was certainly the case in Baltimore’s 35-34 win over the Cincinnati Bengals last Thursday night. Joe Burrow completed 34 of 56 passes for 427 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, a passer rating of 108.3, and a Passing EPA of +8.7. The problem for Burrow (besides Clete Blakeman’s officiating crew missing multiple Baltimore penalties on Cincinnati’s final two-point conversion attempt) was the fact that Lamar Jackson completed 25 of 33 passes for 290 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, a passer rating of 141.4, and a Week 10 league-best passing EPA of +21.4.
Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.
But if the Ravens want to make their first Super Bowl since the end of the 2012 season, they’ll have to do more than outscore their opponents as their defense continues to leak oil all over the road. How have things fallen so far so quickly, and what can Orr and his coaches do to fix it?
Zone defense has become an absolute nightmare.
Ja’Marr Chase demolished the Ravens’ futile attempts at zone coverage.
(Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
After the Bengals game, defensive back Marlon Humphrey was asked about Cincinnati receiver Ja’Marr Chase, who absolutely torched the Ravens for 264 yards and three touchdowns on 11 catches and 17 targets. The Bengals knew that the Ravens would try to do what everyone who plays the Bengals tries to do — eliminate Chase as a threat with bracketed coverage. Clearly, the Bengals were just as sure that the Ravens wouldn’t have the answers.
Humphrey’s answer was long, but worth the read, as it encapsulates so much of what is wrong.
“These wins are getting harder to enjoy based off of what we’re doing in the pass defense. I feel like when I was a rookie – first-year guy, second-year guy – the vets I looked up to [and] the standard that was there and the pass defense … We’ve really lost that standard, and I feel like that falls on me. We’re going to keep chasing at it. We’re going to keep working at it, because I’m not really satisfied with what I’ve built in this secondary [and] where it’s gone. I just don’t think [with us] playing like this [that] we can go far. It’s cool winning; it’s great we’re winning, but I want to go far; I want to go to the end. The way we’re playing … Something has got to change. We’ve just got to play better. I’ve got to play better; we’ve all got to play better. We’ve got to play as a unit, and we’re just not doing that.
“[There’s] really nothing really more to say. We’ve got to keep working. We’ve got to take the practice to the game. [We had] a great practice week … What is missing there from how we’re practicing to how we’re playing in the game? It’s become clear that it’s something. I think each guy has got to look at themselves in the mirror and figure out, ‘Why are you not playing how you practice something?’ You practice this route concept [and then in] the game, you don’t do it how you practice. It’s becoming more of a mental thing, I think, but we’ve got to get that fixed. It’s not cool to win a game, and you look up and a team has 300 passing [yards on you] every week. It’d be different if we didn’t have [any] guys that could play. I haven’t once heard anybody say, ‘We don’t have the guys; we don’t have the players; we don’t have the skill.’ We’re not doing it in practice. It’s clear that it’s something from … When we do that last preparation to the game, what is happening in that span? We’ve got to figure it out. It’s pretty simple.”
Step 1 in “figuring it out” is to solve the issues in zone defense. Zone defense is about communication and synchronization, and the 2023 Ravens were absolutely remarkable with it under Macdonald. That’s fallen apart completely under Orr, and it’s something that head coach John Harbaugh addressed on Monday.
“The basic thing is to keep the ball inside and in front at its most fundamental level,” Harbaugh said. “Whether it’s zone – it applies to run defense, as well – you have to keep the ball in front of you. We believe in top-down principles for sure. Sometimes we’re in spot-zones, sometimes we’re in match-zones, sometimes we’re in fire-zone, sometimes we’re in two-deep, sometimes we’re in three-deep. All those things are different, and they have different ways of playing routes, but the bottom line is that you want to keep the ball in front of you, and you want to be able to see your threats and the ball. That’s important, and maybe that’s sometimes stated in terms of playing square. If you’re running with a route downfield, or you’re in press coverage, that can be zone, as well, and it looks like man. It’s kind of a man version of zone, [and] you still have to be able to find the ball. That’s kind of where it starts.”
Well, here’s where it’s gone. Harbaugh was asked specifically about, and responded to, the Ravens’ tendency to give up big passing plays in zone this season. The tape and the numbers do not lie; this is kind of gross. When in Cover-2, Cover-3, Cover-4, or Cover-6 in 2024, the Ravens have allowed a league-high 16 attempts of 20 or more air yards on a league-high 28 targets for 534 yards (only the Indianapolis Colts have allowed more), a league-high four touchdowns (tied with the Los Angeles Rams and the Houston Texans), no interceptions, a league-worst passer rating of 141.4, and a league-worst Passing EPA allowed of +32.32.
In 2023 under Macdonald, and under those same “deep passes vs. zone” situations, the Ravens allowed 10 completions on 39 attempts for 331 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, an opponent passer rating of 49.6 (by far the NFL’s best), and an opponent Passing EPA of -10.05 (wildly the NFL’s best; the San Francisco 49ers ranked second at -0.67).
Macdonald obviously had a much better handle of how his defenders should communicate and react in zone coverage. Now, we have things like Chase’s 70-yard touchdown against Baltimore’s Cover-4 last week, and everybody gets lost on a simple three-on-three concept.
“Obviously, we want to make sure that we get lined up,” Orr said earlier this month regarding his guys being in the right place at the right time. “I got to make sure I get the call in fast enough for those guys, so it’s a combination of those things. I think that we have a good resolution to those problems – getting the call in fast; keeping things simple and then going out there and executing. Obviously, it’s costing us at critical points of the game, so I’ve got to do a better job, and we’ve got to do a better job of executing and with the communication, and I think that we got a great plan going forward to make sure that we take care of that, because you want to be able to be lined up to give yourself a chance. If you’re not lined up, you’re giving the offense the easy way off the hook.”
If that’s where the Ravens really are with their new DC, there’s precious little time to graduate.
The defense is not nearly as diverse.
The 2024 Ravens defense has become simpler, which means that it’s also easier to beat.
(Ken Blaze-Imagn Images)
Macdonald’s superpower as the Ravens’ defensive coordinator was his ability to balance multiple fronts with multiple coverage concepts, have them change from pre-snap to post-snap, and still have everyone on point for their individual responsibilities. It was a primary reason that defense was an absolute joy to watch. From simulated and overload pressures, to the most subtle yes effective coverage switches, you could never get a real bead on what Macdonald was doing.
Now, things are more static pre- and post-snap. That defense has gone from modern to retro, and not in a good way.
“I think you’d be crazy if you look at some things and [think] you don’t have to change some stuff up. We’ve been looking at that hard – looking to see what our guys can go out there and absolutely execute to the highest level and feel confident in, and we’re going to do that. Also, you look at some of the things that you may not have executed like you wanted to, but you’re looking at the rules [and] the fundamentals and the principles of everything is sound, and we’ve got examples of doing that well. So, you just continue to try to coach that up. It’s a good balance you have to find, but here, we’re always about, ‘What can our players do,’ and what can they execute at the highest level and go out there and play confident and fast. We’re always looking at that, and me personally, I don’t care what we run [or] what coverage we run; if we got to blitz a whole bunch; if we don’t have to blitz at all – whatever these guys can go do [and] whatever’s going [to] help us play at a high level of defense, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Maybe it’s the focus on “playing fast” that has Orr fixated on more simplicity. Regardless of the reason, it’s much easier to figure things out. Even when the Ravens bring an extra linebacker in a blitz or mug look, and drop another linebacker into coverage — something Macdonald had dialed up at a master’s degree level — the results don’t really bear out.
This 20-yard completion from Jameis Winston to tight end David Njoku when the Ravens were playing the Cleveland Browns in Week 8 was one example. Here, linebacker Roquan Smith dropped into hook/curl coverage to take Njoku in Cover-1, and linebacker Trenton Simpson was manned up on running back Nick Chubb’s angle route. Smith hung in the middle of the play, and Winston made a great tight-window throw over Smith’s head, and just out of safety Kyle Hamilton‘s coverage. Not a bad overall concept, but there’s just something about this Ravens defense that doesn’t quite match up when it’s time to move players around post-snap.
“I think it’s a combination of things of we’re getting there, but the coverage is a tick off, or we [are] making a misstep,” Orr said regarding the lack of effective simulated pressures. “So, I think it’s been effective for us, [and] it’s been good for us, but at certain times, it hasn’t been, and then, like I’ve been saying, the offense has been capitalizing on those mistakes that we’ve been making. I think the pressures – the simulated pressures specifically – are good. I think you see guys in the backfield [and] guys causing havoc at a high rate. But now, we just have to continue to put together the rush and the coverage together.”
The edge-rusher situation has become… well, edgy.
The Ravens’ current paucity of edge-rush excellence has cut into Nnamdi Madubuike’s own monster production.
(Katie Stratman-Imagn Images)
Thank goodness for 11-year veteran Kyle Van Noy and his seven sacks and 35 total pressures. Without them, the Ravens would have precious little quarterback disruption from their edge defenders. Odafe Oweh has five sacks and 27 total pressures, but after that, it drops off pretty severely. The team obviously thought it had a plan beyond Jadeveon Clowney, who had his best NFL season in 2023 under Macdonald and signed a two-year, $20 million contract with the Carolina Panthers this offseason.
Maybe both sides would like a do-over at this point. There’s no replacing Clowney’s 11 sacks and 78 total pressures last season, and until last Thursday, that had also cut into Nnamdi Madubuike’s effectiveness. Madubuike went nuts against the Bengals with three sacks and 10 total pressures, looking every bit the force he was in 2023, but before the Bengals game, he had totaled just three sacks and 28 total pressures. Not what you’d expect from a defensive lineman who had 15 sacks and 78 total pressures from just about every gap.
“I see the same player,” Orr said of Madubuike before his best pass-rusher finally went off. “Obviously, teams are starting to pay a little bit more attention to him. We’re trying to find different ways to move him around to keep the offense off balance [and] single him up. He’s not discouraged. I told him, ‘Keep playing how you [are] playing. Keep studying how you [are] studying, and the numbers are going to come.’ It’s just like somebody who’s going on a streak like shooting [in basketball] – like a great three-point shooter. OK, you know you’re a great shooter, [and] you’re shooting and shooting, [and] you might not be getting all those opportunities to make shots, but when it all hits, you go on a streak. I think we’ll see that from ‘Beeks’ soon. He’s been playing great football for us. He’s going to continue to play great football for us, and the [defensive stat] numbers are going to come soon.”
The problem is the promise of everything coming soon when the Ravens had an unbroken defense that didn’t need fixing.
So, how does THIS defense get fixed?
John Harbaugh’s defense could keep his team from a Super Bowl berth.
(Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images)
When Orr was promoted from inside linebackers coach to his current position in early February atter Macdonald’s departure, he immediately spoke about building on what he had been given.
“That’s a scheme that we helped build here for years. It’s been a scheme in [the] making. Kind of going back to the point I made earlier; all those questions that you just asked, we will find out in the offseason studies – in the self-scout studies of what we want to do and how we’re going to build on it and what we’ll change up and how we can get better. Like I said, we’re always looking to get better. That’s why you’ve seen great defenses here in the past. That’s what we have to do to continue. You have to look at yourself and look at how you can improve and how you can make that better, and on top of that, staying in front of what’s next. We know it’s going to be something that offenses [are] going to get together and try to present to us new this year. We’re trying to stay in front of that, but that’s part of the process, that’s part of what we’re excited to go do, and we can’t wait to get started on that.”
It’s a nice legacy statement, but the results have not panned out at all. For the Ravens to turn things around to where they need to be when the regular season is already halfway over is a Herculean task, but anything else will likely have this team falling short of an ultimate goal that the offense is built to obtain.
Yes, defensive performance is volatile from year to year. But the Ravens had better hope there’s a chance for such a swing in-season, as well.
