Take-home points from first quarter of 2019 Baltimore Ravens

The remodel isn’t perfect:

• There was a lot said about the losses the Ravens experienced on the defensive side from last year’s top-ranked unit, and I kind of thought that was overblown.  I thought C.J. Mosley was never appreciated enough by the fans and pundits of the Ravens (similar to Brandon Williams), but the other guys wouldn’t be too bad to replace, I figured.

I figured wrong. Really, really wrong.

Either these lapses by the defense and allergic reactions to tackling are figured out, the team is going nowhere this year. This young offense is good, and it is explosive. But it is young. And other teams are bringing defense to the party to try to slow them down. The Ravens need to start bringing their own to games.

• Look, this new face-lift for the Ravens is not about the 2019 season. This is largely Eric DeCosta attempting to construct a team that will win for a decade, and if we can win this season, too, hey, that’s great.

Here’s the thing: This team can win now. They have enough talent to get to the playoffs if they can clean things up, starting yesterday. I’m all for the building a giant for the next decade, and I’m against moves that will strip the team of needed draft capital and salary cap space DeCosta feels he needs to make this team a titan.

If the Ravens were one player away, I’d say go ahead and spend two first-round picks and $20 million a year on that guy you identify as taking them over the top. But we’ve seen this defense. We’ve seen the interior offensive line. The Ravens are not one guy away. Stay the course, and keep coaching them up to improve, while still searching for additions that won’t hamstring the franchise down the road.