How far can the Baltimore Ravens defense take this team?
By Cory Hughes
With all the injuries the Baltimore Ravens have suffered this season, how far can the defense really carry this team?
The Ravens improved to 2-0 last Sunday in impressive fashion. The defense got to the quarterback three times, only allowing ten points, causing five turnovers, four of which were interceptions. Three interceptions came from the Rookie Deshone Kizer and the other coming from backup Kevin Hogan.
Even with how dominant the Ravens looked on Sunday they’re not complacent with what they’ve done. Safety Eric Weddle wasn’t hundred percent satisfied with the way the defense played, concerned with blown coverages and other mistakes that could’ve been avoided. He expressed those thoughts in the postgame press conference saying:
"“But we made too many mistakes, too many blown coverages, too many big plays as a defense, so we are not happy about the performance we had. We let those mistakes creep in, and [if] we don’t fix them, it’s going to hurt us down the road. It may look like a great, great defensive effort, but when you look at it, we made too many mistakes out there. Luckily, we clutched up. It shows our mental toughness. We kept our head down and kept grinding and made the plays in the end. But we’ve got to fix those – and we will. You can count on that.”"
Looking at the Ravens defense, you have to scratch your head and wonder just how far can they take the team as injuries continue to add up. What had felt like a feel-good Sunday afternoon certainly didn’t last long. As coach John Harbaugh confirmed they lost Guard Marshal Yanda for the rest of the 2017 season.
After taking a step in the right direction, it felt like the team had been blown back miles with news like that. Yanda has undoubtedly been the backbone to the offensive line, which even before his season ending injury was the Ravens Achilles heel. Going up against the Jaguars who been getting to the quarterback makes things much worse.
Everyone remembers the 2015 season, just as much as they would enjoy forgetting it. The Ravens placed 22 players on injured reserve and went a putrid 5-11. With Yanda and the Bam Bradley injured, the Ravens take the field vs. the Jaguars with 15 players on injured reserve. Just something to put into perspective. As much as we don’t want to admit it, the start of this season definitely has a familiar ring to it and it’s ring we would all like to ignore and let go to voicemail.
The bottom line
With all these injuries occurring, don’t expect this defense to miss a beat, not just yet anyway. All the major players are still on the board and in play on that side of the ball. But, if the Injury bug continues at the pace it is, how long before it does start to catch up to the team and become too much?
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Lets just cross our fingers and hope the injury bug has been cured.