Baltimore Ravens: Why the defense will remain dominant in 2019
The Baltimore Ravens defense is going through a major metamorphosis at the moment, but there’s plenty of reason to believe it’ll maintain its dominance.
More often than not, team’s who lose key players, both younger and older, suffer a huge drop in production and quality of play. We see it all the time. Teams will have to make tough decisions and end up losing two-or-three valuable players to a unit and it gets completely derailed. For the Baltimore Ravens, that was all throughout the team’s defense.
Gone are veterans Eric Weddle and Terrell Suggs, as well as 2018 breakout performer Za’Darius Smith and perennial Pro Bowler C.J. Mosley. With that, Baltimore has lost its two leading sack-artists from 2018, a future Hall of Fame safety in Weddle (who was also a valuable team leader), and one of the best young linebackers in the league in Mosley. Ouch.
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How on earth can any team survive that kind of loss and remain elite? Honestly, they can’t. There’s simply no way any team can remain elite after losing that kind of talent and production. For the Baltimore Ravens, however, this is simply the same ol’ song and dance.
Flash back to 2013 when the team lost Ray Lewis and Ed Reed, two of the greatest Baltimore Ravens of all-time, Paul Kruger, and Danell Ellerbe. How do you survive those losses?! By reloading and retooling through smart front office moves. That 2013 defense was still the 12th best unit in the league, by the way, even with those losses.
Back to the matter at hand, how do the Ravens survive the onslaught they just suffered this off-season? I can give you five good reasons to defend my case that the Baltimore Ravens 2019 defense will continue to be one of the NFL’s best defensive units. Let’s start off it off by discussing…