Expert envisions "Top-5 season" for Baltimore Ravens in 2023

With one week of training camp in the books and four practices under their collective belt, the Baltimore Ravens finally took the field wearing full pads on Monday to kick off the second week of their pre-season program.

Already looking at a few matchups in August in which some battles are expected to be decided and with all 22 starters getting named or at least penciled into Baltimore's no. 1 roles in the depth chart, most pundits have started to pro their first Power Rankings of the 2023 campaign.

One of them, Conor Orr of Sports Illustrated, took on the tall task last Wednesday coinciding with the start of the practices organized by the Ravens. The analyst, turns out, ranked Baltimore as high as one can.

"Too high? Perhaps. I’m not smitten by the pomp of the Odell Beckham Jr. signing as much as I’m excited for what someone like Todd Monken can bring to Lamar Jackson. I don’t think Baltimore is going to look fundamentally different, but I do think they will be in fewer positions where they have to throw their hands up offensively because of how their scheme boxed them in. The Ravens are not an organization that makes a lot of bad decisions, and so if they’re paying Lamar Jackson like a quarterback who may one day fulfill his wishes of throwing for 6,000 yards, then they believe he can, and will install a system to buoy that belief. "

- Conor Orr, Sports Illustrated

"Too high?" pondered Orr. Nope, we think!

Orr ranking Baltimore as the fifth-best NFL team for the 2023 season is quite an accomplishment for the Flock mob. In Orr's rankings, the Ravens are only behind the four teams that made it all the way to the conference finals last year: Philadelphia, San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Kansas City.

For Orr, though, the fifth position is "perhaps" too high, but he reasoned his decision to slot the Ravens at such a slot by saying that he is "excited" for what new Offensive Coordinator Todd Monken "can bring to Lamar Jackson."

Orr isn't buying into the whole narrative that the installation of a new scheme will disrupt the Ravens game and throw the team into a tailspin that would derail their 2023 season after reaching the postseason last year--even with Jackson missing time.

"I don’t think Baltimore is going to look fundamentally different," wrote Orr. "The Ravens are not an organization that makes a lot of bad decisions."

Orr also brought back Lamar's comments from earlier this offseason in which the quarterback said he aims at "throwing for 6,000 yards," saying that if the Ravens are "paying Lamar Jackson like a quarterback who may one day fulfill [those] wishes," then the franchise "believes he can, and will install a system to buoy that belief."

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