2. Patrick Queen:
While it all starts at the line of scrimmage, the second level of the defense plays a huge role in run defense. Defensive linemen clog up rushing lanes, linebackers take down the runner. Having such an athletic linebacker, too young to have any fear or reservation about the challenge of tackling Henry would have made a big difference. The Ravens got beat up and a lot of it did come right up the gut. Henry ran through the defense. He was an unstoppable force. Yes, the Ravens needed their defensive line to be an immovable object, but they needed an unstoppable force of their own. Queen could have been that. Queen can be that kind of a player for this defense.
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The fact of the matter is that Earl Thomas shouldn’t have been the leading tackler in that game. The fact of the matter is that the Ravens needed to have a linebacker with more than just three solo tackles in this game. The Ravens saw their linebackers seemingly vanish. Just like Nick Chubb and the Cleveland Browns in week four of the 2019 season, Henry made it look like it was too easy. The Ravens saw that they had very average linebacker play. That’s why they double dipped at the position in the 2020 NFL Draft. They knew they had to fix the command center of their defense and they got two very promising players to do it with Queen and Malik Harrison.
The Titans and Ravens get a rematch this season. The Ravens play the Titans in the back half of November this season. By this point in the season Queen will have established himself as the new star in the Ravens defense. This should show that if the Ravens played the Titans with this defensive front it would have been a completely different game.