After a win against the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday Night Football, the Baltimore Ravens are officially in the driver's seat for the division. They are now 3-2 in the division and swept the Bengals in the season series. Still, there are plenty of questions emerging despite the win. What do fans need to know going forward?
10. What will Lamar Jackson look like without Mark Andrews?
Despite the win, the Baltimore Ravens are losing in the longer term with the injury to Mark Andrews. Andrews is expected to miss the rest of the season with an ankle injury.
The Ravens offense has gone through Andrews for the past five years and has hardly missed time in that span so this is going to be different for Baltimore.
The Ravens are going to need all kinds of players to step up. It will take Isaiah Likely, Patrick Ricard, and Charlie Kolar to step up at tight end.
More than that, the Ravens will be asking a lot more out of their receivers. Zay Flowers is starting to run more routes, and Odell Beckham had the best two-game stretch of his career. Beyond that, Rashod Bateman is playing more, so the skill players may be ready for the challenge.
Is Lamar Jackson ready to trust them? Will his sacks go up because he does not have his safety blanket and easy outlet? Will he force passes? The Ravens are fortunate that they have a bit of a lead in the division and can try some things out over the next six games. We will see a version of Jackson we have never seen over the final six games as he looks to get into his best form by the playoffs.
9. What is going on with the Baltimore Ravens and Broderick Washington?
One of the big surprises of the night was seeing Broderick Washington inactive before the game. Washington had not been playing nearly as well or as much as he had been playing in 2022. However, the Ravens extended Washington this season, so they have a bit of a commitment to him.
One of the reasons Washington was inactive was due to the squeeze at cornerback. The Ravens were without Marlon Humphrey and wound up playing Ronald Darby, Rock Ya-Sin, and Jalyn Armour-Davis this week to replace him.
Armour-Davis is typically inactive but played the fourth quarter on Thursday. Still, the Ravens also had Brent Urban active over Broderick Washington.
You can argue this is the right move, but the Ravens just gave Washington a solid extension, and Urban is a journeyman making low-end money. The Ravens need to get more out of Washington.
Will they continue to dress the extra cornerback with Humphrey out, and will Washington continue to sit behind Brent Urban?
8. Did the Baltimore Ravens expand the role of Keaton Mitchell?
The Baltimore Ravens have had to play Keaton Mitchell more. He missed the first six games of the season due to a preseason injury, and after a few snaps in week seven, he tweaked his hamstring again, causing him to miss week eight. In the last three weeks, he has started to come alive. While it does not show in the box score, it is clear that Mitchell is about to get more work.
However, he has come alive in the last three weeks. Mitchell went for 138 yards in week nine. In week 10, it was 34 rushing and 32 receiving. Then, in week 11, it was just 33 rushing and eight receiving.
His role has been the opposite progression, though. He went from 17% of the snaps on offense to 22% to 37% against the Bengals. He went from 8% of the routes run to 17% last week and 24% against the Bengals.
Mitchell saw a career-high 30% rushing attempt share in week 11, he got more work on long down and distance, and he saw his first short down and distance snap.
The Ravens led and pounded Gus Edwards late. If they are in a tight game, it is clear that Mitchell has replaced Justice Hill as the speedback.
7. How many sacks will Odafe Oweh finish with for the Baltimore Ravens?
Odafe Oweh is on fire this season. You could tell he was in for a good year when he performed well against Laremy Tunsil despite not recording a sack in week one. A week-two injury put his breakout year on hold.
However, since he has returned, he has been excellent. Oweh has a sack in three straight games, and he has four sacks in the last five weeks. He is one sack away from tying a career-high and already has more sacks in this partial season than he had in the entire 2022 season.
Oweh has an 18.8% pass rush win rate. That is up from 12.6% last season and 11.5% in his rookie year. The sacks that are coming are real, and because he is winning. He has sacks against Taylor Decker, Charles Cross, and Orlando Brown, so he is not just feasting on weak names, either.
Can Oweh get to 10 sacks? It would mean six sacks over the next six weeks, which sounds outlandish but is in line with the run he is on.
6. Is Patrick Mekari the most underrated Baltimore Ravens player?
Patrick Mekari will not win an award for his play in 2023, and it will lead to a decent contract, but nothing close to making him the highest-paid player or even one of the 15 highest. Still, his play this season has been as valuable as anyone, and that is what makes him the most underrated player on the roster.
Injuries to Ronnie Stanley and Morgan Moses have had him shifting back and forth between right and left tackle. Mekari played 283 snaps at left tackle and 187 snaps as a right tackle this year.
In weeks two, three and four, he started at left tackle. In week five, he was back to right tackle. In week nine and ten, he came in at right tackle, then shifted to the left side for week 11. With Stanley having an ankle injury, he may be in at left tackle for a few more weeks.
All of the while, he has held things down, and the Ravens moved to 8-3. Mekari had to face Myles Garrett at left tackle in week four and then TJ Watt as a right tackle in week five. In week 10, he faced Za’Darius Smith as a right tackle, and in week 11, it was Trey Hendrickson as a left tackle. Being able to flip sides in a week and take on elite rushers is as impressive as it gets.
5. If Isaiah Likely cannot replace Mark Andrews, could these two Baltimore Ravens step up?
With the injury to Mark Andrews, everyone is expecting Isaiah Likely to step up. He had a great rookie season, and while he is in the midst of a sophomore slump, a lot of that can be explained away.
Likely went from a top pass catching option to weel down to the totem pole because Rashod Bateman is healthy, and the team added Zay Flowers, Odell Beckham, and Nelson Agholor.
More than that, Todd Monken likes to spread teams out much more with wide receivers and does not go as heavy as Greg Roman. So, now that Andrews is out and Likely is the man, he could prosper.
However, Andrews left after one drive Thursday and missed week one, and Likely has just one catch for four yards over that span. To be fair, Andrews was a late inactive in week one, and Likely did not practice with the first team very much either week. Now, the plan will include him.
Does he play well? If not, do we see Charlie Kolar and Patrick Ricard? Ricard is the best run blocker and could help change the identity as we get into the winter months. Kolar had a nice catch against Cincinnati. The truth is that the Ravens need all three to replace Likely.
4. What is going on with Baltimore Ravens LB Patrick Queen?
Something has been wrong with Patrick Queen in recent weeks. It is evident he is not playing the same style of football as he was to start the year. Queen hit the ground running as the sidekick to Roquan Smith. The best play of his career has been the ten games to close 2022 with Smith and the first six games of the 2023 season. However, the last five games have not been on that same level. He has ten missed tackles in the last five weeks. Queen had just three in the first games. He also has gone from 23 yards allowed per game in coverage to 52 yards allowed per PFF.
The tape matches as it has not been the same. When the Ravens were winning, it was fine, but his play was a huge issue against Cleveland and was not cleaned up by the following games. Now that he has extra time off, can he finish strong?
3. Is less more for Odell Beckham on the Baltimore Ravens?
The last three games have easily been the best three games that Odell Beckham has played. He is averaging 70 yards per game in the past three games, with a 116-yard game against the Bengals.
That is a lot better than the 27 yards per game he was averaging before that. However, it is interesting to note that his snaps have gone down in recent weeks. In the last three games, he has played under 50% of the overall snaps. They are three of the four lowest snap shares of his season, and he got banged up in the other game.
In the first eight weeks of the season, he ran 66% of the routes, and that is down to 52% in recent weeks. However, his target rate is up from 15% to 2%, and his targets per route run are up from 18% to 28%. Also, his air yards are up from 23% of the air yards to 28%. He is more involved in the offense despite being less involved in the offense.
His yards per route run in the last three weeks is 3.93 when it was 1.10 in the first eight weeks. Less is certainly more for Odell Beckham right now.
2. What will the Baltimore Ravens do on the opposite side of Brandon Stephens?
The Baltimore Ravens were without Marlon Humphrey in week 11. They had been without him for the first four games of the season, but there was still a question of who would step up.
In the first month, the team platooned Ronald Darby with Rock Ya-Sin. Both had differing injuries, and in an effort to preserve them, they split the time. Ya-Sin came in against Cleveland, but it was Darby who started in week 11. Still, like in the first month, Darby did not play the whole game.
Darby played 31 snaps, and Rock Ya-Sin played 19. However, Ya-Sin committed a blatant Pass interference, and it was the only thing that the Bengals offense did well with Jake Browning on the field. So, Ya-Sin was benched, and we saw Jalyn Armour-Davis for the first time all season.
The circumstances helped, and it was a good time to get Armour-Davis on the field, but if Humphrey misses more time, would this continue? Can Darby get through a whole game? He is the best cover corner of the group, but the question with him is his health.
1. Is the Baltimore Ravens defense still surviving off of bad quarterback play?
After the loss to the Cleveland Browns, we asked whether or not the team would be able to rise up against the best quarterbacks. Their schedule softened up last year, and this year, they got CJ Stroud and Joe Burrow at their weakest. They did manhandle Geno Smith and Jared Goff, but we know who those quarterbacks are.
DeShaun Watson was the first hint of a playmaker in the variety of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, or Jalen Hurts. It was the worst game the defense played. We thought that a healthy Joe Burrow would test them, and to be fair, he did score 10 points in the first half. However, he was out of the game before the final three minutes, and the defense feasted on Jake Browning.
We know that the Ravens can shut down backups and weaker quarterbacks; we have seen it all season. Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, the Dolphins, and the 49ers offenses loom, and those will be the real tests. We still have not seen them prove that they can shut out those types of units.