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Originally Posted by duncan_idaho
All well and good. Here's another key point that you probably don't want to consider if you are not a Chiefs fan:
The Ravens front is NOT as good at pressuring the QB with 4 than the Eagles front we saw last season. By a decent measure.
And the Chiefs OL, for all that the T have been maligned for their penalties, is BETTER at pass blocking than it was last year, because Taylor and Smith are better pass blockers as a duo than Orlando Brown and Andrew ****ing Wylie. In 2022, the Chiefs had to give help consistently to Wylie and Brown on pass sets. They often were running chips on both ends using a TE and a RB. This year, they have been more traditional and chipping a single side as needed, because both T are been able to hold up on an island against outside pass rushes.
Yes, the penalties have been an issue. Each has been pretty clean in that regard the past few weeks.
I think most AFC teams are building their squads with an eye on how to beat the Chiefs, and agree with you that the changes the Ravens have made give them a better matchup than they previously had.
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No disagreement with any of that. To be clear, the Ravens' strength is not their front. To put things in perspective, their front is the weakest part of the defense. They haven't even tried to get a dominant edge beyond taking Oweh in the 1st in that trade between the Chiefs and Ravens for Orlando Brown Jr. Instead, they built the d-line from the inside out. But even there, they didn't spend high-end draft picks on their DTs like the Eagles did; Madubuike and Jones are both 3rd rounders, and Michael Pierce was a cheap signing/UDFA.
The strengths of the Ravens' defense are the secondary and ILBs. And both of those units are significantly better than what the Eagles had. The Ravens' YPA through the air are the lowest in the NFL this year, and through much of the season it was the lowest in several decades. The Smith/Queen ILB duo were both all pros this year.
So while the Ravens' front might not be as good as the Eagles' front, the Ravens' everything else is way better than the Eagles' everything else. And even still, the Ravens' led the league in sacks with four rushers, so the front is perfectly fine.
I think the Eagles were a wildly overrated team last year and going into this, and I don't like the comps people like making here between them and the Ravens. The Eagles won a lot of close games, but they played a Charmin soft schedule. Their collapse this year speaks volumes about who they are.