Ravens entering uncharted territory in this new era

The Ravens new high-powered passing attack

This is where the good news comes in, I think the Ravens are finally past the stage of relying on that historic defense, and Monday night confirmed this theory for me. The Colts seemed to completely sell out on the run and force Lamar Jackson to beat them through the air.

And that he did, shattering multiple franchise and NFL records in doing this. This is the third week in a row that a team has forced him to use his arm, and believe it or not Lamar haters, the Ravens are 3-0 in those games.

The most impressive drive against the Colts started in the fourth quarter with a little over 11 minutes left. The Ravens ran six straight pass plays with no runs and capped it off with a touchdown to Mark Andrews.

Jackson went 6-of-6 with 78 yards on that drive in 2:22. His last three drives leading into overtime all went at least 75 yards and ranged from a time of 2:10 to 3:50. They essentially ran a two-minute offense the entire second half and that might be the key to this offense.

With an athletic QB like Jackson and young receivers like Marquise Brown, James Proche, and Rashod Bateman (who is expected to make his debut this Sunday), that college-like hurry-up offense may do wonders against the competition.

This is another reason why I have always thought the Ravens should bring in an offensive coordinator from the college level who can work better with the types of athletes they currently have. But, since Greg Roman seems to have some better offensive game plans as of recently, I’ll lay off on that for a bit.

The amazing thing about having No. 8 at QB is that now if teams decide to respect his arm and play him more conservatively, the run game comes right back to life.

Obviously not having J.K. Dobbins or Gus Edwards back there is a huge killer, but this offense has shown that no matter who is back there, they can be productive when the defense isn’t entirely focused on stopping the run.

Still, on the subject of running backs, I think the vast majority of Ravens fans were very confused when they saw Ty’Son Williams was not active in Week 4 after a great start to the season.

Coming in as an undrafted free agent and having to start Week 1 on primetime TV and average 7.2 yards a carry with a touchdown was enough for him to become one of my favorite players already.

He is still averaging 5.5 yards a carry after two not-so-great games against Detroit and Indy. I hope to see him back in the starting lineup over Latavius Murray, who according to PFF, has been the least effective running back when it comes to explosive runs and forced missed tackles.

Watching this new Ravens team is like watching an episode of the Twilight Zone for me. It is still taking some getting used to that the offense is the one saving them every single week.

I think Hollywood put it best when asked why to never count out the Ravens, “Because we’ve got Lamar Jackson.”