The good news in Baltimore is that their victory over their most hated rivals last week snapped a four-game losing streak for the Ravens. The even better news is that the win over the Pittsburgh Steelers thrust the Ravens into first place in a surprisingly disappointing AFC North.
The bad news is that while a win is a win, the issues that caused the Ravens to drop four games in a row were still very much in evidence against the Steelers—issues that the team has to get figured out in a hurry if Baltimore is going to make any sort of real noise in the AFC in 2016.
Chief among those, as the Ravens prepare to face the winless Cleveland Browns on Thursday night, is getting their floundering run game untracked before the weather turns cold.
Head coach John Harbaugh admitted to Garrett Downing of the team's website that while it felt great to beat the Steelers Sunday, there's a lot of work left to be done:
What we have to focus on, really, is being a better football team. We’ve taken steps in the last couple of weeks to do that. We’ve cleaned a lot of that stuff up, but we still have a ways to go. That’s the beauty of football, especially in the NFL. It’s a long season and you have the opportunity to improve. Our guys are willing to do that. I really do believe we have the pieces in all three phases to be very good, but we have to find a way to make it happen and keep trusting in one another, and that’s it.
Nowhere is that need for improvement more pronounced than on offense.
Over a third of the Ravens' total offense against the Steelers came on a single play—a 95-yard catch-and-run by Mike Wallace in the first quarter. The Ravens managed only 41 yards of offense in the second half, scoring their only touchdown after halftime on a blocked punt. Baltimore gained only 50 yards on 29 carries on the afternoon.
That's 1.7 yards a pop, folks. And that is ungood.
It isn't a new problem, either. Before peeling off a whopping 1.4 yards per carry against the Steelers, starting tailback Terrance West managed only 1.3 yards per tote in a Week 7 loss to the New York Jets. He hasn't gained four yards a carry in a game since Week 5 and has only one 100-yard rushing game for the season.
The Ravens entered Week 10 ranked 28th in the NFL in rushing at 81.8 yards per game. In their last playoff season in 2014, the Ravens were eighth in the league. They were 11th in the NFL on the ground in their Super Bowl season in 2012.
The Ravens are an offense long built around running the football. Of late, they've done a rotten job of it. And asking Joe Flacco to carry the Baltimore offense with a so-so cadre of pass-catchers is a recipe for the sort of offensive futility we saw against Pittsburgh.
Mind you, this is an offense that's already on their second coordinator of the season, with Marty Mornhinweg taking the reins from the fired Marc Trestman last month.
Since then, the run game has actually gone backward. As Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun pointed out, in five games under Trestman, the Ravens averaged 4.2 yards per carry. In three with Mornhinweg calling the plays, that number has free-fallen two full yards.
West told Zrebiec that despite that alarming stat the Ravens are making progress. "Coach is game-planning, and it's been a more balanced game plan," West said. "That's what happened."
What needs to happen now is less talking and more walking. Fewer platitudes and more production. Because I've got news for West and anyone else buying that nonsense—teams that rush for less than 2.5 yards a carry don't make the playoffs in the NFL.
Luckily for the Ravens, they play host to the NFL's lone winless team on Thursday. The Browns rank dead last in the AFC in total defense, allowing over 420 yards a game. Only the San Francisco 49ers have allowed more yards on the ground this season than Cleveland's 146.4 yards per game.
As an aside, the Niners are giving up 193...yards...per game. That is not a typo.
The Ravens also might be able to goose the ground game with an infusion of new blood. After missing time earlier in the season, rookie Kenneth Dixon has been steadily eating into West's touches and snaps of late. Harbaugh told Ryan Mink of the team's website that he wasn't going to make any huge changes heading into the Steelers game, but the Ravens did plan to feature the youngster more:
We’re not going to have some big, monstrous change in what we’re doing. We believe in the things we’re doing. We just want to do them better, game-plan them better, scheme them better, block them better and all of those sorts of things.
I would like to see Kenneth Dixon play more. He is young, in terms of pass protection stuff, for sure. So sometimes it is a little harder to get him out the field when you are going no-huddle. That probably is part of it.
Dixon's nine carries for 13 yards against the Steelers isn't a number that would blow a dandelion away, and he suffered a chest contusion in the game. But Dixon was back at practice Monday, and given that West hasn't hit two yards a carry since October 16th, it isn't going to hurt to give Dixon more work. Give him a true shot to show what he can do.
Frankly, who the Ravens run the ball with against the Browns isn't as important as the fact that they make a concerted effort to run it and have more success doing so than against the Steelers. Find a guy who can get you even 3.5 yards a carry and feed him, whether it's West, Dixon, Buck Allen, a guy from the stands—whoever. Wear the Browns down.
The Ravens managed only 80 yards on the ground against the Browns in Week 2—a game where Baltimore fell behind by 20 and had to abandon the run. That can't happen again. The Ravens should be hellbent on increasing that total by at least half.
The Baltimore Ravens have their flaws. In an AFC North that's sprouting warts left and right in 2016, that's OK. The Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals have them too. The Browns are just one big walking flaw.
The Ravens are also a team that has shown time and again the ability to get hot once the playoffs start and play their best football in the NFL's second season. The 2012 incarnation went 10-6 in the regular season before embarking on one of the great postseason runs in NFL history.
But first you have to make the playoffs, and as veteran stalwart Terrell Suggs told Downing, that's far from guaranteed right now: "It’s always good to beat your division rivals, but what does it mean if we drop it Thursday? It means [nothing]. It’s time. We’ve got to start doing what we know we are capable of doing and winning. So we’ve got some work to do."
Suggs is absolutely right. And while there's not much he can do to help the run game (although it would be, um, interesting to see him line up at fullback), it's that rushing attack that will determine whether Thursday night is the beginning of a second-half surge for the Ravens or just more running into the pile.
Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter: @IDPSharks.
Read more Baltimore Ravens news on BleacherReport.com
from Bleacher Report - Baltimore Ravens http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2674768-ravens-must-rediscover-rushing-attack-in-thursdays-tune-up-game-vs-browns
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