The Baltimore Ravens defense has been dominant this preseason. That dominance doesn’t stop when the starters leave the field:
The Baltimore Ravens have the best defense in the league. That’s an opinion that will the football world will begin to accept as fact once the regular season gets underway. The purple and black have held their two preseason foes to a combined 258 yards. The Washington Redskins and the Miami Dolphins went 4 for 25 on third down conversion attempts. The Ravens had two dominant wins in row.
Dominant wins in the preseason don’t tell you much about the starters (not in the first two games any way). By the time most of the action happens in the preseason, the starters have their pads off. What does completely shutting down an opponent for sixty minutes mean in the preseason? It means that your depth is better than their depth.
The Many Options of the Baltimore Ravens:
At all three levels the Ravens defense has depth. When Brandon Williams, Michael Pierce and Brent Urban go to the bench it’s time for Willie Henry, Bronson Kaufusi and Carl Davis to play. Don’t forget about third round pick Chris Wormley.
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The outside linebacker group is sensational, even if it is rather unproven. Terrell Suggs is proven, he’s potentially a Hall of Fame player. Behind that you have rookies and second year players with bounds and bounds of potential. Matt Judon is coming off a strong rookie season. Tyus Bowser looks every bit the part as the Ravens 2017 2nd round pick. Bowser is flying around and making impact plays early into his career. Tim Williams is crazy athletic and has the physical attributes to be incredible.
At inside linebacker the purple and black have one of the best in the business, C.J. Mosley. The Ravens have some interesting options to put next to him. Option one is Kamalei Correa. Correa was the Ravens second round pick from 2016. Correa is trying to replace Zach Orr’s spot and has shown some positive things on the defense. Bam Bradley, who has the coolest football name ever, is playing sensational football, albeit against other backups. Bradley is showing himself to have the same kind of aggressive style of Orr.
Putting It all together
The secondary is the deepest it’s ever been in Baltimore. Having Lardarius Webb gives the Ravens an insurance policy at free safety and at the nickel cornerback spot. Anthony Levine is trying to earn a spot by being a jack of all trades. Brandon Boykin, Marlon Humphrey and undrafted free agent, Jaylen Hill make quality reserves. There is a healthy competition for the nickel job, which means there is healthy depth at cornerback.
Baltimore has depth on top of depth defensively. Ozzie Newsome deserves a ton of credit. He stacked the defensive roster up like a chef stacks flavor on top of flavor. Like a fine dish, there are layers and different elements to the defense. The purple and black are going to dominate, not just in the meaningless preseason games, but in the meaningful regular season.
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It’s hard to go nuts over the preseason statistics. However they paint a pretty good picture of the Ravens defensive depth. The starting defense is out of this world good. The depth behind it will be key to rocking the competition all season long. Rotation will be a very used word this season.