While last season Baltimore battled a depleted secondary and filled them with practice squad replacements, their troubles don't seem to be near the rest of the National Football League. The ranking for healthiest teams has come out over the past two years, and the Ravens sit behind only the Eagles and Jets.
While this could mean Baltimore is having a stroke of good luck, it could also be the Ravens training staff in the health & conditioning department. A little of column A and B is not a bad thing either. I don't expect this train to take a 180 any time soon, and if the Ravens don't have all the injuries in one particular position, as last years story played out, they are more than capable of great things. We as fans can only hope going forward this continues.
Something worth note is the AFC North is the healthiest of groups with their lowest ranking team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, coming at 13th, still 3 places above .500. The AFC North rankings are all very high in fact:
- Baltimore 3rd
- Cleveland 5th
- Cincinnati 8th
- Pittsburgh 13th
The ranking of AFC North teams is a little odd when you consider the smash mouth style of football that each team is known for. Hard running, stout defensive play with big plays splashed in, the matchups between the Ravens and the Steelers is always a "double chinstrap" type of series. With such a high ranking, it goes to show that flashy high-passing offense don't always mean that players stay out of the training room.
Meanwhile, NFC East Eagles sit at #1 while rival New York Giants sit at 32nd and by a margin almost doubling 29th ranked Falcons. Jason Pierre-Paul also not helping with the silly injury of a fireworks incident this 4th of July either.