This year the Ravens have the chance to have their most balanced team in the short history of the franchise. I see no reason why the defence shouldnt be top 3 and though the offense is not dynamic, it was much more pleasing on the eyes last year and should improve with another year of Cameron. Lets just hope we get out of the Billick “good year, bad year cycle”.

What if Marcus Smith or D-Williams all of a sudden breaks out like MANY other WR have in the past and together they put up 80+ for 1200 yards and 8-10 TD’s?

Clayton sees comes to his own and tears it up and Mason is Mason

McGahee runs for 1200 and has a pro bowl year.

Then Joe. Gets a 92 passer rating while passing for 3100 yards and 23 TD’s.

Do not need to say much about our defense, cause we know they will be great. So, do we HAVE to have a Peyton Manning and Tom Brady style offense where we put up the most points in the league every year to be considered “Great”?

If all the players on offense do their jobs and make plays when they are supposed to, I think that is great. We say this offense is going to improve, well they were the 11th ranked scoring squad last year. So if we are improving, we could very well see top 10. A top 10 offense is not great? Oh yea, we have to throw 40 TDs for that one.

With a good or great Defense, a smart coaching staff will stick with some sort of ball control offense. Thats one raeson you don’t see a team "great "on both sides of the ball. I still see us controlling the clock alot but with a few more down field attacks to keep them honest. If anybody is expecting big time numbers, you will be disapointed. If our offense makes some improvements and we get some breaks, it could be our year. Don’t forget how important a touch of luck is.

I don’t want to rain on anybodies parade or anything, and I am a huge Ravens fan, but the Ravens D is a little up in the air right now. Sure we still have most of the same D players as we did last year, but our DC is different. I know Mattison was with the team during the Rex Ryan era, but that doesn’t mean he will be just as successful as Ryan. As much as I hope the Ravens D is just as intimidating as previous years, we can’t just assume that everything will be exactly as it was. Right now it looks like the Ravens are making that turn into being an offensive team, and as the author of this blog has said, you can’t have a great O and D it’s usually one or the other, these next couple of seasons we may see the O and D passing on their respective syats rankings.

Take it easy Beatdown.

I believe the evidence points most strongly towards the important choice not being O vs D, but Pass vs Run. Pass O and Pass D correlate much more strongly with winning than their running game counterparts.

O vs D is a much weaker split. FO says that O’s have less year to year variance, so it’s easier to maintain a great O than a great D. Advanced NFL Stats research has O as a bit more strongly related to winning than D in all categories, but not by a lot.

(Here‘s a big chunk of the Advanced NFL Stats conclusions, the FO stuff is harder to track down, since a lot of it is in their books and their website isn’t easily searchable.)

as far as pitt goes i totally agree the 4-3 is best. bens best in the scramble. a little containment solves him. we’d rush 3 and try a blitz off the end and he’s simply run the other way out of the pocket and find a dump off guy while our lb’s were frozen between receivers and rb’s looking for the pass. 4 guys on the line will help seal him in a little better.

When the Patsies were winning three out of four SuperBowl’s, I believe they were pretty balanced. In other words, both their offense and defense were ranked similarly: good, but not great.

I believe that when you have an extreme unbalanced situation, a la the 200 Ravens, the Rams and Colts when they won the SuperBowl, it can give you a chance at a championship, because one facet of the game is so much more dominant than what the competition can offer; however I do not believe that model is sustainable for a long run. By sustainable for a long run I mean winning three out of four. I believe only a balance situation is sustainable for a long run.

As a Ravens fan, I am going to sound like a bit of homer with this next comment, but if our young offensive line can gel, I truly believe our O-Line will be better than Pittsburgh’s and we have a good chance of leap frogging them. Yes, they will have better receivers (unless we get Boldin -oops, did I just open up that Pandora’s box again? Sorry folks…), but I think overall everything else is a wash including Flacco almost equaling Ben and our defenses canceling each other out. Yes Pittsburgh did beat us three out of three last year but even an objective Steelers fan would say the margin between the two teams is pretty thin. Really, it came down to Flacco being an NFL rookie and Ben being able to buy himself an extra second in the pocket and withstand direct hits from Leonard…

our o-line was better than pitts and will be agin this year..i get what your saying but when the fourth quarter rolls around we are not that even with pitt.. ben, ward, holmes, harrison and troy all made monster plays in the fourth quarters of our games. our stars didn’t. ben went the distance- flacco threw picks. harrison got into the backfield more that our LB’s. ward caught, baited and decoyed for his team. mason got eaten up. holmes made the catches that mattered and clayton was a no show. scores were close but offensive killer instinct wasn’t.

we need Oher to bring a bad ass swager to that side of the o-line. and we need flacco to throw medium deep before we settle for the massive short stuff. i truly think we will benefit from the deep ball even if it means a few more INT’s. what was he 13 tds and 11 ints last year throwing conservatively. i think his natural ability and just letting him air it out won’t produce that many more INT’s than 11. the got was folded up and obvious in the playoffs. let the guy have some fun with some 3 receiver sets. i think he can be that type of qb.

what better know player do you guys think is out of here if they do not produce this year?
i think d. williams, heap and mcgahee need big years to keep them here.