Baltimore Ravens hit the bye week at the right time, on a roll

Leading the division, the Baltimore Ravens take to their “get-well” week

The Baltimore Ravens having a bye week in the middle of the season is pretty ideal. Having a bye week when you have a two-and-a-half game lead in your division and you have some prominent starters that could use another weak to get healthy is even more ideal. Having two weeks to prepare for Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots is, well, pretty close to sublime.

The 5-2 Baltimore Ravens are now heading into their bye week, coming off their most impressive win of the season and sitting comfortably atop the AFC North standings. With budding star quarterback Lamar Jackson seemingly taking more control of this team’s fortunes by the day, and a defense that appears to be coming together by the week, there is plenty to look forward to if you’re a fan of the Ravens.

For starters, being 5-2 at this point of the season is a good thing. Don’t listen to the talk about schedules or penalties or injuries or any of that other outside noise. You know, the kind of stuff that doesn’t determine who makes the playoffs. The Ravens have won five games. They have lost two games. That is all that matters in the end, regardless of what some hyperactive, slightly-delusional Cleveland Browns fans might be trying to tell you.

Say it with me: The Ravens are 5-2.

This is a good opportunity for Marquise Brown and Jimmy Smith to get themselves healthy and back on the field, as well. Every NFL player has some bumps and bruises at this time of year, so they can all use the benefits of a bye week, but players who have missed multiple games due to injury can take advantage of this extra time between games to get right and jump in some practice sessions. The hope is that the Ravens can come back off the bye as close to full strength as possible.

The strong running attack, with Brown, Miles Boykin, Mark Andrews and Hayden Hurst providing targets for Jackson, offers promise for an offense that can continue to move the chains and put up points as the season goes forward. You want to play the Ravens in a field-position game? Jackson, Mark Ingram and Gus Edwards can play that game. You want to creep up to stack the line against the Ravens? Well, you better be able to cover in the back end or you’re going to get zapped that way, too.

The Ravens are in prime position to make a run. Sure, the schedule toughens up coming out of the bye, as they face New England, the Bengals, Houston, the Rams, 49ers and Bills, but the Ravens are a good team, who appear to be putting it together at the right time. If they go 4-2 over these next six games, they are 9-4 going into three winnable games against the Jets, Browns and Steelers. Go 3-3, or even 2-4, and they’re still in fine shape.

Coming into this year, I saw 2019 as a bridge season for the Ravens. The full-time transition to Jackson at quarterback, the changing faces on defense and a complete transformation of the offensive skill position players, led me to believe that this would be a “see-what-we-got” season. A season to build off going into next season, with the stockpile of draft picks and salary cap flexibility facing the team. And it really still is — this version of the Ravens is still very much a work in progress.

But they’re 5-2 right now, in a season when the other teams in the division are struggling and the conference in general seems a bit down. They might as well go ahead and try to win this year, too, right?

And the bye week is the perfect time to get recharged and ready to take on the back half of this schedule.