Surprise Christmas Present
Receivers Report, Game 16 Packers
It absolutely blows my mind that these Ravens have a chance to play for the division title next week. I’m sputtering, nearly speechless (almost). Not gonna lie, I wrote them off last week. But after tripping over every damn blade of grass this season, choking on every opportunity; the stars align and the Ravens STILL have a chance to win the division.
Thanks, Brownies!
So:
Do these Ravens deserve to make the playoffs?
Oh, hell no. If there’s one thing they’ve shown over and over again, it’s that they can’t play a complete game. Even in this season-saving win against Green Bay, they gave up over 13 yards per pass attempt to Malik Willis, and let him post his career-best Passer Rating.1
But my stock answer to every “deserve” question always always always comes back to William Munny. Just for fun, this time let’s filter it thru The Wire:
NFL team’s “deserve” the postseason berth they earn by stacking wins & losses.
Here, flip the question around:
Do the Steelers deserve to walk away with the division and skate into the postseason?
Of course not. The Steelers suck. They haven’t developed a Quarterback in 20 years; not since Big Ben Roethlisberger sprang fully-formed from the head of Ken Whisenhunt & Bruce Arians. They don’t have any more victories over teams with a winning record this year than the Ravens do: just one each. (Ironically, the Steelers schedule would gain a second win over a team above .500 if they lose to the Ravens on Sunday. That would retroactively move the Ravens into the over-.500 column.)
The two teams are neck-&-neck in DVOA; 13th & 14th, separated by a tenth of a percent. One is three or four spots ahead of the other on offense; the other is three or four spots ahead on defense. Mirror images. Neither of them has shown they “deserve” any separation from the pack of AFC also-rans. The AFC North could fall into the sea, for all these two teams have shown.
And yet.
One of them is going to win the division and host a playoff game. The winner of Sunday’s game will have a 4-2 record in the division; the loser will have a 3-3 record, and that’s the first tiebreaker after head-to-head.
The mere idea that these Ravens could wash away their (numerous!) sins and wind up hosting a playoff game – it’s thrilling and frightening.
Maintaining a streak
Ken Filmstudy pointed this out two weeks ago:
The Ravens have not played a game when they were already eliminated from Super Bowl contention (before the game even started) in the last nine seasons.
Is that language too twisted to make obvious sense? Here is what I mean:
● The Bengals were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention when the Ravens beat them a couple weeks ago. Their last three games have been “playing out the string”: no playoffs, just marking time til the season is over.
● The Chiefs were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention when they lost to the Chargers on Dec 14 (the game where Mahomes got hurt). So their last three games this season are meaningless, playing out the string.
The Ravens have not played a game like that in nine seasons. The last time was 2016 That year, they got to 8-6 after game 14. They needed to win in game 15 to keep pace, but they lost. That dropped them to 8-7; two games behind the last Wild Card team (who was 10-5) with one to play. That meant their season finale was “playing out the string”: they were already eliminated before the game.
Since then:
— 2018: won division
— 2019: #1 seed in conference
— 2020: made playoffs as 1st Wild Card
— 2021: a win in season finale would’ve put them in 4-way tie for the last Wild Card at 9-8. I don’t know how the tie-breakers would’ve worked out; but they had something to play for. (Lost to the Steelers, missed playoffs.)
— 2022: made playoffs as 2nd Wild Card
— 2023: #1 seed in conference
— 2024: won division
— 2025: a win in season finale would put them in.
That’s worth noting as an accomplishment. Obviously it’s not on the same level as the Patriots making the Conference Championship Game 9 straight seasons, 2011-18. But it’s something. Lots of teams aren’t playing meaningful games in December & January. Some haven’t in several years. We’re in a different category from that.
That column in the Sun
I’m not going to link it. But there’s a columnist for the Baltimore Sun named Mike Preson who last week published a hit column on Lamar. Some choice quotes:
“The breakdown of an NFL player’s body is natural, but Jackson could help himself. He doesn’t need to be up late at night playing video games or falling asleep in team meetings.”
And:
“A major problem, a lot of it on the Ravens, is that there are team rules and then there are rules for Jackson. That’s why Baltimore practices in the heat of the afternoon instead of in the morning.”
And:
“Jackson isn’t a mean-spirited person, just an overgrown kid in an adult’s body.”
So, a few notes about this piece and its author.
● Mike Preston is a clickbait piece of shit who long ago became frustrated that the Ravens don’t run their decisions by him.
● He wrote pretty much this exact same piece about Brian Billick and Ray Lewis 20 years ago. That’s not an exaggeration. A fan on Xitter comes thru with the reference:
● When John Harbaugh hired Gary Kubiak to be Offensive Coordinator back in January 2014, Preston’s “reporting” on the hiring press conference said Harbaugh looked like a kid who was disgruntled that Daddy had come to take charge. It was the one of the most offensive things I’ve ever seen in print about a public figure. Startling.
● It was probably fair to describe Lamar as “an overgrown kid” – back in 2019. Youthful joy was shining out of his pores back then. It was infectious.
One would have to be a willfully blind moron to cover this team over the past ~seven years and not notice Lamar maturing.
● Preston is canny enough to sprinkle some factoids amid the bullshit of his column. For example, Lamar did fall asleep in a team meeting – like six or seven years ago. Preston is recycling an old, old incident and treating it as if it’s current or chronic. That’s dishonest as hell.
● I don’t know why the Ravens moved practice to the afternoon. They don’t discuss those things with me. In his piece Preston heavily implies that it’s because Lamar doesn’t want to get up early. Okay. But it’s also true that the Ravens employ a sports performance staff to help with things like scheduling for peak effort. And the Ravens play their games in the afternoon.
To me it makes sense to me to move practice times to correspond to game times; build on circadian rhythms and work with the schedule rather than against it. But I’m no expert.
Preston is happy to sprinkle implications about Lamar’s preparation habits. Really? Lamar’s preparation habits seemed pretty adequate when he was 1st-team All-Pro the past two seasons. They seemed not to be holding him back too bad when he was posting a historically great season for a QB last year; nor the year before when the AP voters named him NFL MVP.
Here’s Marcus Spears rightly going off on the commentary on Monday Night Countdown:
“I don’t give a damn if you don’t like how he come to the building. Yo ass wasn’t talkin’ ‘bout that when he was out there winning MVPs. And putting the team on his back when everybody else was injured.”
Preach, Marcus!
Look: Preston’s job depends on driving clicks. He publishes some controversy-bait. That’s a job well done for him. But it’s not reportage. It’s not even informed commentary; Preston is “informed”, but he’s being dishonest and deceptive here . The column is a web of innuendo and bullshit. Don’t give it any credence.
Game Stats
No explosive plays. That’s the second week in a row; though last week vs the Pats Zay Flowers got the tilde of “almost” for a 19-yarder. The Ravens also had three 18-yard receptions in that game: Zay, Mark Andrews, Charlie Kolar. All four of those passes were thrown by Lamar.
That’s the thing about Tyler Huntley. He looks like he’s playing great and the offense is crisp, because he gets rid of the ball very quickly. Decisive, in-rhythm, lots of completions: Huntley completed 80% Saturday. But even with only 4 incompletions, Huntley’s yards-per-attempt was only 5.35. That’s worse than the lowest number for a “qualifying” passer this season: Tennessee’s Cam Ward comes in at #32 in yards-per-attempt with 5.8
Huntley just doesn’t have the arm to make all the throws.
You can see that very clearly in Lamar’s and Snoop’s stats:
Huntley’s completion pctg is 14 points higher than Lamar’s, but Lamar’s yards-per and Net-Yards-per (net of sacks) are both higher. The most remarkable thing is, even with that higher completion pctg, Snoop’s Success Rate is lower. Lots of short completions that don’t move the sticks.
That last column, YTS: remember it stand for “Yards Times Success” and we calculate it as Net Yards per Attempt × Success Rate. Lamar’s number there is his worst since Todd Monken joined the team for 2023; and it’s still good for 11th in the league. Huntley’s number would be 29th; basically tied with Spencer Rattler, ahead of only Jaxson Dart, Joe Flacco and Cam Ward.
Remember this when you read suggestions that the Ravens should start Huntley against the Steelers even if Lamar is healthy. That’s nonsense.
Please don’t read this as me crapping on Snoop. I’m grateful to him; it’s not too much to say that he saved the Ravens season – twice! First in Chicago and then in Green Bay. He makes good decisions and has a tremendous attitude. Valuable dude.
But the Ravens aren’t better with Huntley than they are with Lamar. They’re more limited. On Saturday they turned the “limitation” into a positive, by being extremely disciplined with their play-calling: not fucking around even a little bit. It also helped that the O-line played probably their best game – and Green Bay defenders were dropping like flies.
But they can play disciplined offensive football with Lamar. They should.
Season Stats & Leaderboard
I sorted the team stats by YTS (efficiency) this week because I noticed Tez Walker doing a ton of grunt work against the Packers: lots of blocking on the perimeter for run plays. Walker played 20 snaps on offense Saturday, third most among the WRs (one more than DeAndre Hopkins). He also played 14 snaps on special teams.
Walker also got a Sack, last week against the Patriots, on that fake punt they attempted:
Those are potentially significant developments, because of how old-school and traditional Harbaugh is. Putting in the grunt work (blocking for run plays; tackling on special teams) is a tried & true path to more playing time for Wide Receivers.
Huntley can’t really use Walker, because of the noodle arm. But Walker is laying the groundwork, making it so they can’t keep him off the game-day active roster. That can lead to him getting reps with Lamar. And Lamar can use Walker.
Zay Flowers is 9th in the league in receiving yards; 11th in catches. He’s 21st in Yards-per-Target; 19th in YTS. But he’s been targeted 112 times, so he’s 8th in the league aYTS.
It turns out aYTS is a pretty good predictor of Pro Bowl selections. Here’s the league’s top 20 in Receiving aYTS, with Pro Bowls noted in the right-hand column:
The top six pass-catchers in aYTS all made the Pro Bowl (one at Tight End).
All eight of the Pro Bowl Wide Receivers are in the top 12 by aYTS.
The top 17 by aYTS includes 2 Pro Bowler TEs and a RB.
The aYTS to Pro Bowl correlation could’ve been even tighter. Olave and CeeDee were shut out by having four NFC players ahead of them. If they’d been in the AFC, one or both of them might’ve made it.
Stats don’t usually do this good a job of “predicting” Pro Bowl selections. I’m really proud of aYTS! Good job, little buddy.
Next Up:
The Marbles. Sunday Night Football in Pittsburgh.
As a starter. Willis has actually posted a higher Rating in two games; but he didn’t start either of those. He came off the bench in both, and had limited pass attempts, 11 and 5.
Ultimately this team is capped by the DL and OL, and we're well past the point we can reasonably expect upside from either.
I feel better about OL, maybe just maybe the run blocking improvements against Greenbay sticks somehow, the run game takes off, and this looks like 80% of last years offense, we could totally win a playoff game with that.
I just don't trust this D to overcome Mads being out, we just don't have the horses to play straight up against the best on 3rd down, but that's not going to change until next year.
I've arrived at an equilibrium. The Steelers game being meaningful is more fun than the season being fully resolved. Schadenfreude from the Steelers fumbling the division is worth the slightly increased probability of the Ravens being trapped in competitive purgatory.
There are no complete teams in the AFC, and we've played some of the NFCs best surprisingly hard in the course of the season. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we get steamrolled in the first round the of the playoffs, I'll take it to watch the Squeelers squirm.