Quote:
Originally Posted by OneWinningDrive
I'm not discounting the Chiefs' pass protection or Mahomes' elusiveness. They're both great. And the Ravens will blitz. What I was addressing is the suggestion that the Ravens cannot get home without blitzing and so will be forced to blitz more than they want to/should.
The Dolphins game two weeks ago was an example of a team that had no choice but to run the same blitzes repeatedly against the Chiefs. They had so many injuries that even though the blitz is a known death sentence against Mahomes, doing so was still better than not getting any pressure whatsoever with four and just letting Mahomes carve them up.
The Ravens are in a completely different position. They get to the QB with four.
Of course, that won't be enough. If all you ever did was bring four, that wouldn't amount to nearly enough pressure. So they will need to blitz occasionally. But it's not like any kind of blitz is prima facie dead on arrival against Mahomes. The thing you can't do is give him looks he has already seen on tape or in the game. But the Ravens have as deep and diverse of a playbook as there is in the league, and they will give him looks he hasn't seen before. He might still beat them, but it's not going to be spamming of the same blitz packages that he easily recognizes and brushes off.
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Styles and matchups matter.
Yes, the Ravens have, over the course of the season, had success getting to the QB with just 4 pass rushers. In the aggregate.
That does not mean they will have success against the Chiefs' offensive line, which is one of the better pass blocking units in the NFL, and arguably the best - complete - pass blocking unit the Ravens have played (you could put the Lions ahead of them, probably, at full strength).
I hope the Ravens send their core 4 against the Chiefs and try to get home with 4 consistently. The Chiefs are better against that than most teams the Ravens have played or in the NFL period.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StalkRavenMad
The only issue with this is that you cherry pick how the Ravens beat an injured Texans team while in the same breath lauding the Chiefs for beating two teams whose defense were depleted by injuries.
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I have not been lauding the Chiefs for beating the Bills or the Dolphins or pointing that out as a reason the Chiefs will win. All those games tell us is that for the first time this season (a trend that started after the Christmas Day debacle, when they simplified the playcalls and narrowed down the personnel being used) the Chiefs are showing the ability to avoid penalties and drops stalling and killing drives.
You guys keep pointing to the wins against 10-win teams thing, which is an interesting factoid but not reliably predictive of anything (especially when looking at the context of those wins). It would be far more effective to just talk about crushing the 49ers on the road and Lions at home. That's far more influential and predictive of the Ravens having success tomorrow than anything else (and even then, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison).