Who are The 2012 Ravens?

The 2012 Baltimore Ravens have been a bit of a mystery heading in to their bye week. They started the season with a dominant showing in a win over ,the always tough, division rival Cincinnati Bengals in which they looked nearly unbeatable. Since then however the Ravens have looked very, well, beatable...They looked especially bad this past weekend when they were handed, what was probably, the worst beating I've ever seen them take by the Houston Texans, a team that has never beaten Baltimore in the past.

Even with the disaster in Houston the team is still heading into their bye week at 5-2 and is sitting atop the AFC North. The question now looms, was this game a sign of things to come or just a product of two teams hitting each other at exactly the wrong time. Baltimore lost two of their stalwarts on defense just the week before and are most likely still trying to figure out how they will deal with the loss of Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb.The Texans however were smacked around last week by the Packers and needed a strong showing against a hobbled Ravens team to keep the team and the fans on track. A loss or a mediocre showing could have sent them spiraling downward.

This team played the first six games without the reigning Defensive Player Of The Year Terrell Suggs and the pass rush was non existent. Now they are playing minus their best linebacker and best corner. Will both of these areas suffer as well? If this past weeks game is an example of things to come, we may be looking at a long season. At least this is all happening right before the bye week so the coaches will have some time to tinker with the starting line up and figure out their most formidable group for each occasion.

are the 2012 Ravens a good team gone bad or a bad team with some really good luck? I honestly don't know and neither does anyone else. At home they are very good, on the road they are very average to very bad, so maybe they'll end up 8-8. Maybe we can petition for more home games in 2013? All we can do as fans is buckle up and hope for the best. It has got to be better than last week but somewhere below the week one showing as well I'd assume. the offense needs to find what drives them and the defense needs to remember how to tackle. Hopefully they can do that in two weeks time.