Baltimore Ravens wide receivers under producing this season
The Baltimore Ravens need their wide receivers to pick up their production:
Pick a random team in the NFL and it’s a good bet that they have wide receivers that outproduce the receivers of the Baltimore Ravens. How about the 0-9 New York Jets?
Well Jamison Crowder is their top target with 31 receptions and 409 yards. That’s about on par with Marquise Brown. Okay let’s keep going. Braxton Berrios has 24 receptions for 223 yards. Breshad Perriman has 16 receptions for 219 yards while Denzel Mims who has played in just three games has 10 receptions for 146 yards.
The only Ravens wide receiver with 200 yards other than Marquise Brown is Willie Snead. The top four most prolific wide receivers of the Jets have 997 yards this season. The Ravens top four wide receivers have 991 yards. While it’s close, so far my theory is off to a good start. I picked the worst team in the NFL and the Ravens have receivers six yards behind them.
How about the Denver Broncos? The top four receivers of the Broncos are Jerry Jeudy, Tim Patrick (a player who didn’t make it in Baltimore), K.J. Hamler and DaeSean Hamilton. Their top four receivers register at 1,209 yards with Juedy and Patrick making up 867 of those yards. Two random teams with bad records and the theory holds up.
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How about the Miami Dolphins? Their top four receivers have 1,089 yards. The Tennessee Titans? Well, you don’t need their fourth string wide receiver to get to the 1,000 yard mark. The Chicago Bears? Allen Robinson has 712 yards all on his own and they have two receivers with over 300 yards. That’s five random teams, five teams with more receiving yards out of their wide receivers than the Ravens.
I could go on but you kind of get the point by now. The Ravens don’t have enough firepower at the wide receiver position. If they did, Dez Bryant would have never signed with the team in the middle of the season. So what’s going wrong?
It is fair to point out that the Ravens have only had Lamar Jackson throw the ball 213 times, so it’s not the most pass happy offense in the league. That being said, Jackson is hitting on 62 percent of his passes. Jackson has had some rough games but it’s not fair to put everything on him. Does he have enough help at wide receiver? It’s a fair question to ask.
Marquise Brown didn’t become the next Tyreek Hill despite the fact that I was far from the only pundit who thought he’d have that kind of trajectory take place this season. Miles Boykin had to take the next step -so we said a bunch this offseason – that next step has not been taken.
Willie Snead has been very good this season. If he produced like this while Boykin and Brown saw their numbers rise in a big way everything would be fine. Snead is a strong number three option who is basically right behind Brown in the pecking order. Devin Duvernay has impressed but he’s a rookie and he hasn’t been given a huge opportunity.
Do the Ravens need to take more shots to Brown down the field (and hit them at a better clip)? Yes. Do the Ravens need to give Duvernay and maybe even Dez Bryant a chance to take off? Yes. That being said it’s hard to imagine that the Ravens receivers will be talked about as a strength by the end of the season. In fact, we’re probably looking at wide receiver being talked about as a major draft need yet again.
The Bottom Line:
The Ravens don’t have the most receiver friendly offense, but it’s not like they don’t pass the ball. It’s not like the Ravens don’t need more production when they target their passing options other than Mark Andrews or a running back out of the backfield.
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The Ravens either don’t have enough talent at the wide receiver positions, or they aren’t maximizing the talent of their wide receivers. The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. In a different offense, Hollywood Brown could be a more potent offense. Still the opposing defense isn’t all that consumed with stopping the Ravens wide receivers. We’ll see if it changes but as of now it just hasn’t been good enough at wide receiver.