Q&A With Rams Blog: Turf Show Times

He suffered last year from a lack of talent next to him at RG, but we signed Harvey Dahl who had been on the Falcons. He’s been back on track this year.

  Let me take the second question first – not at all since we signed Quintin Mikell. He’s been a perfect veteran addition at the back of the secondary. As loved as Togs was, the Redskins were willing to pay him more.
  At the back, Craig Dahl is the starting SS – he’s a liability in pass coverage, but a solid run defender. Darian Stewart is the 3rd safety right now but could take over for Dahl by season’s end. I mentioned Fletcher above, and I think he’s going to start getting some media buzz this year. The real issue is the other CB spot now that Bartell’s gone for the year. Justin King is a flat speed guy; he really has issues covering to the inside. I expect the Ravens to go at him early, so you guys will notice how deficient he is early on.
  I guess if I had to rank them, I’d put them middle of the pack. Mikell and Fletcher are well above average, but the other spots need to be addressed in the offseason.

  Better than last year. We went out and signed Ben Leber and Brady Poppinga, and they’ve definitely been an upgrade. Week 1 was a bit of an anomaly dealing with Vick; he torched us on the ground, but only passed for 187 yards. So it should be interesting to see how they do in this game.
  Actually, the Rams have struggled with the run, but they’ve faced two above average rushing attacks so far. And hell, Ray Rice is a handful for anyone. In terms of Dickson, it’s something we haven’t really seen yet – focusing on the TE in pass coverage. So I’m not sure how the Rams will approach Dickson as a receiving threat.

Man do we need Carr and Jimmy back. Looks like we won’t be seeing Jimmy back until after the bye week though.

I think its time for the Doss, Dickson, Pitta era to begin.

Agreed. I still don’t understand how Doss is last on the depth chart. He was the most consistent and I felt most ready young WR on the team and he isn’t even active. I really hope he gets a shot because he is more developed then Torrey or Laquan at this point.

Stats like that are a little misleading this early on though. The Rams were behind in both games and teams have been able to run effectively on them, so naturally the team with the lead is going to run the ball a lot more to try and eat up the clock. Not saying their pass defense is horrible, but that stat can be very misleading.

Coaches would be fools to continue to play him after fox voiced this himself

… I dont care if he said to have bad hands throw the ball to him and see what happens.

I guess that’s the difference between you and Flacco. Joe knows he has veterans that are good for clutch drops and not making plays on passes thrown to receivers that aren’t wide open; why put his professional performance in the adorably tiny hands of a rookie who’s proven in game situations that he can’t catch? The only objective statement I found from that analysis was that Smith has one target and zero catches. I can’t say that I’m surprised by that stat at all.

this clearly verifies that Flacco needs to get better with his awareness of the field …

There’s a limited amount of time Flacco is going to have to go through his progressions when a three or four man rush is breathing down his neck every snap. You can’t necessarily blame that on Smith, but you also can’t blame it on Flacco when he’s already running for his life and extending plays only to have two receivers unable to get open against seven or eight defenders playing the pass.

I don’t really understand why you’re still so caught up on this Torrey Smith thing. Everybody that knows the game realizes that receivers tend to take a couple seasons to acclimate to the game, and Smith was less pro-ready than other high-round draft picks. It’s not an insult to say that he’s a project with limited expectations this year. The signing of Lee Evans should be all the clear verification you need that the Ravens expect him to be a late bloomer.

Jazz,

How many targets did Smith have during the preseason versus how many catches he had? I’d be willing to bet its around 25% and I’d be willing to bet he has roughly 1-2 drops in each preseason game (I honestly can’t recall specifics right now). For a 2nd round guy that is supposed to be in the mix during each game, that is unacceptable! That right there means he has bad hands.

I think you are taking it a bit far by saying

so the statement that he can’t catch is not fully true

. All everyone means is that he can’t catch by NFL standards. If he litterally couldnt catch, I seriously doubt he would have made it into college, much less the NFL. He has bad hands and that isn’t on Flacco by any means if he doesn’t feel comfortable throwing to him.

WRs will always wave their hands and arms around like they are open, but how often do you think that they can’t see the safety behind them waiting for that ball? I’d put my trust in Flacco to see who is open and who is just getting baited. Even aside from that, Flacco has progressions to go through (ie: deep, middle short,…. left, middle, right) and if he doesn’t have a full 3 seconds, he might not see someone. Its not as easy as playing Madden and that’s something a lot of fans need to understand when it comes to Flacco’s performance.

Its not about Torrey what Im geting at is the problem of Joe Flacco not scanning the field consistently so he can atleast get the ball out faster.

There are a lot of mitigating factors to consider when talking about Flacco scanning the field up to your standards. Any given play could be designed to go to a specific receiver. The plethora of outs and comebacks to Mason last year were all timing patterns designed to get Mason the ball; even if Boldin was wide open and waving his arms, the play just wasn’t designed to go to him. The upside of those plays is that they are high percentage calls that play to the strengths of both Flacco and Mason. The downside is that the moderate gain from those plays comes at the expense of ignoring another receiver that might have broken free and would otherwise give the offense a chance at a greater gain. Mason is just an example, too; we haven’t gotten rid of plays like that just because we dumped Mason. The truth is that a receiver just isn’t going to be part of every play, no matter how open he gets.

Something else to consider is that there is a finite amount of time in which Flacco can actually scan the field before the play ends. If he’s under constant pressure (as was the case last year and last weekend), there’s only so much field that can be scanned before time runs out. Even as good as Flacco looked while scrambling against the Titans, many of our fellow fans are going to have to get used to the idea that he’s not Roethlisberger or Vick (and also that quarterback rotations are a terrible, terrible idea). It doesn’t help much to have Smith free on a nine route if Flacco can’t see him through an approaching pass rusher’s helmet. It’s also worth noting that even the best quarterbacks in the league can be — and have been — put off their game by incessant pressure, which leads into my next point.

The final major factor to consider is that, much like every other quarterback in the league, Flacco isn’t perfect. Every quarterback leaves plays on the field. Cherry picking a couple of instances in which Flacco didn’t target an open receiver doesn’t mean that the same exact thing couldn’t be done for any other quarterback in the league. This goes to the unrealistic expectations that many fans seem to have for Flacco, wherein every mistake he (or the offense as a whole) makes is taken as evidence that Flacco has some underlying trend of weakness, or he doesn’t have “it,” or he’s “not scanning the field consistently.”

I guess Boldin must of had bad hands …

It’s worth noting that Boldin led the team in receptions last year.

If the ravens/coaches felt like Smith was a project than he wouldn’t be seeing the time on the field like he has.

Torrey Smith happens to be at the top of a depth chart of three rookie wide receivers (Smith is coincidentally the highest draft pick), and leads them all with one target and zero receptions. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement from the coaches, no matter how hard you try to read between the lines.

flacco has thrown completiond to only 2 WR all year. 2. he has tunnel vision.

What other receivers should Flacco be throwing to? Doss has yet to be activated. Williams has played in one offensive play. The biggest story on Smith is that the game’s too fast for him and he’s not running his routes at full speed (the story about his tiny hands is old hat at this point). Reed has been dealing with suspension and injury. Despite this alleged tunnel vision, our tight ends have combined for eleven catches, and Rice has also been active in the passing game.