The Baltimore Ravens passing game has been anything but efficient, but that could change a little bit moving forward.
The Baltimore Ravens offense has been a check down fest. You don’t have to break down hours of tape to know that the Ravens passing game was inefficient last season. Numbers don’t lie in this case, as Flacco averaged 5.7 yards per pass attempt in 2017. So far this offseason, much of the talk has been about the Ravens being more aggressive on defense. The offense needs to go for it a little more to. Expect to see less check down passes from Joe Flacco.
The safety valve has always been something Baltimore has afforded Flacco. It used to be Ray Rice, then it was Justin Forsett, Kyle Juszczyk and Dennis Pitta getting turns catching dink passes from Flacco. It’s a very appropriate part of a passing progression. When it’s done correctly, check down passes allow a play-maker to get some yards instead of the offense getting nothing with everything bottled up down the field. The problem is that Flacco has gotten into the bad habit of check down passes as an automatic response.
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Flacco isn’t going through his progression on a lot of plays. On more than a handful of occasions he looked at one receiver and dumped it off almost instantly, last season. Part of this had to do with Flacco’s back injury. Flacco was more eager than ever to avoid taking big hits. You saw Flacco come out of his shell in the last eight games of the season. This implies that the check down passes were self saving throws while he was dealing with pain.
Better situation, better attack
Flacco is walking into the 2018 season healthy and ready to go, and for the Ravens sake, let’s hope it stays that way. He will have a better group of weapons around him as well. The Ravens now have options in the passing game; they can attack the entire field now. John Brown is a deep threat on the outside.
Michael Crabtree is a receiver who can get open on intermediate routes and has the savvy to shake coverage down the field. Willie Snead works best out of the slot. Mark Andrews flexed out at the tight end position allows the Ravens to actually work some concept plays in. Before it was just hoping Mike Wallace got open or had a one or one match up. Now the Ravens have players who all do different things that are at least viable weapons. There can be better route spacing, the receivers can work together to get each other open, there can be a rhyme and a reason to the Ravens efforts.
One more factor
On top of this, Flacco doesn’t have a promised starting job any more. Lamar Jackson is sitting behind him and the Ravens will be tempted to get him under center. Flacco went from a franchise quarterback to a placeholder and he’s got to hold on to his job. Flacco has to take shots down the field, and be a play-maker.
When your job is on the line as a highly paid quarterback, the natural thing to do is to go back to what got you the big money in the first place. For Flacco that was clutch play and big time throws. Flacco has every motivation to ignore the check downs a little more. He has all the incentive in the world to take shots down the field, that will help the Ravens win.
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This should all lead to less check down passes from the Ravens’ quarterback. We’ll have to see it first, but there should be less check downs at least according to logic.