2. The Ravens’ offensive slow starts
With exception of Week 1 against the Las Vegas Raiders, the Ravens offense has started slow repeatedly in the first half.
The opposing defenses have been showing the offense new looks each week so it seems it takes them a while to get adjusted.
However, the Ravens cannot keep relying on second-half heroics to win games. Thursday night, it finally caught up to them as they were held without a touchdown in the first half for the first time in the Lamar Jackson era.
Jackson is at his best when the Ravens are in an up-tempo offense. But they never use that philosophy in the first half.
Instead, they try to rely on the ground game which has been unsuccessful the last few weeks. As a result, the Ravens continuously find themselves in third-and-long situations in which they are terrible.
The Ravens might want to speed things up early on offense to start games. Whether they find ways to get Lamar Jackson outside the pocket or utilize more RPOs, they can’t continue with their predictable patterns.
The Ravens love to either run inside zone out the pistol on first down or heavy play action with one or two receivers for a deep shot.
Then on third down, they run the veer option play with Jackson. While that play was especially successful last year, teams are better prepared for it.
The Ravens need to make an adjustment on how they start games or this could be the start of losing skid for them.