3. The offensive line
I’m willing to accept that this may have been a bad day at the office for the offensive line, though there were some concerns last week, so it’s something to watch out for. The entire offensive line was getting beat off the line of scrimmage. While it’s kind of fun watching Lamar Jackson do his magical escape act, it’s not something you want. You don’t want Jackson running for his life back there, escaping from pressure before he has a chance to do much of anything else. The offensive line has shown problems two weeks in a row and it’s important not to underplay these concerns because the Ravens won both of their 2020 games easily.
There is a twist here though that we have to explore. Last week the Ravens struggled to run block. This week the running backs did their thing. Gus Edwards averaged over seven yards per rushing attempt, Ingram had over six yards per carry and while J.K. Dobbins only had two runs (and a 13 yard reception) he averaged 24 yards on the ground. It’s hard to complain about the run blocking even if it still needs to be worked on. In this game it was mostly the pass blocking that was problematic. Jackson was sacked four times. If Joe Flacco was the quarterback in this game he would have taken six or seven sacks. The line was not conducive to having a big day passing. This is the biggest reason that there were no real deep shots down the field to Marquise Brown, this is the reason Jackson got just over 200 yards in the air.
The offensive line has shown the opposite problem in back to back weeks, which means if you’re Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs defensive line, you’re probably excited about this match up coming up on Monday Night Football.
The Ravens can get away with the offensive line being a bit iffy against the Browns. They can score about twice as much when they take on the Texans. What they cannot do, is beat the Chiefs with the offensive line looking like this. It’s not one player. It’s not like Tyre Phillips came in and became the obvious problem. This is across the board something the offensive line has got to figure out.