Ravens Turnover Woes Must Stop
The Ravens have a lot of excuses from the last season. However there is no excuse for their inability to take care of the football. There is also no excuse for their inability to take the football away. Football games often come down to the turnover battle, and the 2015 Ravens turnover ratio was -14.
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The biggest problem the Ravens had (from a turnover perspective) was throwing the ball to the other team. The Ravens resorted to using three quarterbacks after Flacco was lost for the season. Flacco threw 12 interceptions in 10 games. Matt Schaub threw four interceptions. Jimmy Clausen and Ryan Mallet both had a pair of picked off passes. That’s a grand total of 20 interceptions thrown by Ravens quarterbacks.
Equally troubling, the defense only had six interceptions. While we were probably spoiled in the days when Ed Reed was piling up picks, that low number is not normal. That is a very low total. The Ravens pass defense was awful, and it’s not just about the yards.
When you play a lot of zone coverage, don’t get much pass rush and have players out of position to make plays, you’re going to struggle. Pass rush solves a lot of problems in the secondary. If Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil can get back to 2014 form, that will help the Ravens woes. But the secondary was not good enough and pass rush stats don’t offer them an excuse.
Basically the Ravens gave more than one gift-wrapped footballs to the other team a game. When you look back at all the narrow defeats, how many of those games were decided by turnovers?
Flacco has to get it together next season. He usually has 10 or 12 interceptions in a full season. He had 12 interceptions in just over half a season. In no way am I a Flacco basher, but that’s just unacceptable. Some of those interceptions were just dumb. There is no nice way to analyze these kinds of errors.
He was frustrated with his lack of weapons. It also seems like Trestman’s offense is like pulling teeth for Flacco. The Ravens have added two weapons in Ben Watson and Mike Wallace. Breshad Perriman is potentially another weapon. Common sense says that the Ravens need to run a Flacco friendly offense; though it will be interesting to see if the play calling changes next season.
Next: Ravens Draft: The Case For Noah Spence
The Ravens have to get better at taking care of the football. They have to get better at taking it away too. Just think these numbers are staggering (without fumbles being included). That’s how bad the interception stats were for the 5-11 Ravens.