Random Ravens Thoughts: New Forum Edition

[diamondbull424]

1 hour ago, paraven said:

hes already starting to become my favorite player on the team, and he hasnt even played a down

Yeah, to be honest, his playing style and the point he’s at in his career, is probably more similar to Derrick Mason than any other veteran we’ve brought since. So while he excels in the intermediate routes, I could see Crabtree connected well with Flacco on the deep ball off of double move opportunities. I think Flacco will do better matching his deep speed than most of the elite speed receivers we’ve brought on. They seem like they will be an optimal fit for each other to be honest.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

I wonder when this number is going to change if we want to see this offense actually start to produce good numbers?

 

[DreamKid]

15 minutes ago, Darth Pees said:

I wonder when this number is going to change if we want to see this offense actually start to produce good numbers?

Stanley's astronomic per year is looming and that will raise us up the ol' list. 

Our offense is weird. We nurture young talent that leaves for way too much money KO, Wagner, Jensen. That's on the OL where we always reload though so no too much of a hit, but then at skill positions the only player worth any kind of money was Torrey. He left for a little more but his play also dropped around that time so no big loss. Then we low ball all promising free agents, and roll the dice on veteran ones. Also we rarely draft offensive players high limiting our hit rate. So it's certainly a weird approach. We might be the franchise with the lowest non OL big second contracts for offensive players, Flacco withstanding.

Force feeding an identity(defense) established by legendary players long gone and starving the offense has burned us in recent years.

[sp6488]

19 minutes ago, Darth Pees said:

I wonder when this number is going to change if we want to see this offense actually start to produce good numbers?

 

1) No QBs is a pretty freaking large qualifier.  

2) I assume that's based on cap hits (correct me if it's some other metric).  We just "invested" a bunch of money to improve/revamp our WR core, however, guys like Crab and Snead have relatively lower numbers this year.  There's not really any prior year signings, other than Flacco (which is excluded), hitting their later seasons to "offset" this math.  Yanda and Flacco are the only guys I can think of who are on the latter portion of a second or third contract.

3) With respect to guys not being on the latter portion of second/third contracts, we have large swaths of our position groups on their rookie deals.  All of our running backs.  All of our tight ends, all of our linemen with the exception of Yanda.

4) Just spending money for the sake of spending money won't make it better.  You want that number to be larger-to the extent that you want it to be larger-by virtue of extending key in-house contributors (and strategically targeted FAs).  The in-house guys who have been worthy of second contracts as of late got paid WAY more to leave than I think we should have paid them.  Torrey, KO, Wagner and Jensen all got massive deals we weren't going to be able to match (KO is the only one I think you could possibly argue would have been worth it, even then I would disagree).  The real legit criticism I could point to in this is that we haven't found enough guys that we got to sign a second contract (again, many we couldn't keep because of strong drafting/retention needs across the team).

5) Some of this is bad luck, for lack of a better term.  Ray Rice and Pitta (more Pitta than Rice due to age/position) were large second contract guys that we would likely still have around, inflating that number, were it not for extraneous circumstances (legal/off-field and freak injury, respectively).  The timing and circumstances around those two deals have been fairly underrated IMO with respect to post-SB average/mediocre performance.  Yes, drafting could have been better and the Flacco deal has restricted some activity, but those events/occurrences happening almost immediately following those deals taking effect was incredibly unlucky (and hurt our cap situation big time, with little in the way of return/production).

TLDR - Excluding QBs makes the point or takeaway of that list, as far as there is one, fairly meh (if not useless)***.  If you accept that qualifier, there are still some structural reasons the number looks the way it does outside of "not investing" in offense.  The more accurate takeaway IMO, is that the team hasn't drafted enough guys on offense worthy of a second contract, however, that point is somewhat flimsy if you dig in further.

*** say what you want about Flacco and how he has lived up to his deal, the team signed him as their franchise QB following an awesome SB run.  That very much counts as finding an offensive player worthy of putting on a second contract.  Hypothetically, if they did not have what they viewed as their franchise QB, they could have retained some additional players like KO and that number would be higher.

[sp6488]

1 minute ago, DreamKid said:

Stanley's astronomic per year is looming and that will raise us up the ol' list. 

Our offense is weird. We nurture young talent that leaves for way too much money KO, Wagner, Jensen. That's on the OL where we always reload though so no too much of a hit, but then at skill positions the only player worth any kind of money was Torrey. He left for a little more but his play also dropped around that time so no big loss. Then we low ball all promising free agents, and roll the dice on veteran ones. Also we rarely draft offensive players high limiting our hit rate. So it's certainly a weird approach. We might be the franchise with the lowest non OL big second contracts for offensive players, Flacco withstanding.

Force feeding an identity(defense) established by legendary players long gone and starving the offense has burned us in recent years.

As I mentioned in my post above (was typing it as yours came in), that ignores big deals for guys like Rice and Pitta, which burned us through some very poor luck (not sure what to call it).  We signed Todd Heap to a big second contract when he was here.  Jamal Lewis was extended beyond his rookie deal.  We even put McGahee on a second deal when we dealt for him. You already mentioned O-Line.  Pretty much everyone worth extending has been retained on the offensive side of the ball, with the exception of Torrey.

Maybe we haven't had enough players worthy of retaining (largely due to our WR drafting adventures), which would be a fair criticism, but I'm not sure there has been anything strategic about cheaping out on big second contracts for offensive players considering we've done it for almost every positional group.

[sp6488]

8 minutes ago, DreamKid said:

Stanley's astronomic per year is looming and that will raise us up the ol' list. 

Our offense is weird. We nurture young talent that leaves for way too much money KO, Wagner, Jensen. That's on the OL where we always reload though so no too much of a hit, but then at skill positions the only player worth any kind of money was Torrey. He left for a little more but his play also dropped around that time so no big loss. Then we low ball all promising free agents, and roll the dice on veteran ones. Also we rarely draft offensive players high limiting our hit rate. So it's certainly a weird approach. We might be the franchise with the lowest non OL big second contracts for offensive players, Flacco withstanding.

Force feeding an identity(defense) established by legendary players long gone and starving the offense has burned us in recent years.

I want to highlight this point.  This is why I mentioned "spending money to spend money isn't helpful."  I realize that point is obvious, but your statement helps illustrate the actual meaning of that.  Extending Stanley, all else equal, would vault us up the list, but we would have the same player.  That's why you really need to go a level or two deeper to really see what that number means (again, the non-QB qualifier really makes the list pointless in some ways IMO).

[DreamKid]

1 minute ago, sp6488 said:

I want to highlight this point.  This is why I mentioned "spending money to spend money isn't helpful."  I realize that point is obvious, but your statement helps illustrate the actual meaning of that.  Extending Stanley, all else equal, would vault us up the list, but we would have the same player.  That's why you really need to go a level or two deeper to really see what that number means (again, the non-QB qualifier really makes the list pointless in some ways IMO).

Yea being higher or lower on the list is almost meaningless especially when the QB is removed. It's just a somewhat coincidental barb hanging out there with our offense in the state it's in. There hasn't been anything so wrong with our approach to contracts or team building strategy as we've got two rings in two decades but as you pointed out our ventures just haven't been as fruitful lately .

Look at the Vikings lol. A franchise QB with like 30 mill guaranteed(Cousins), a young franchise runner(Cook), and two bookend receivers(Thielen&Diggs). In many cases it's good to be low on that list.

[coordinator0]

http://draftanalyst.com/nfl-draft-notes-april-24

Quote

* I’m told the Ravens are not as desperate to come out of the draft with a tight end as many are making it seem. They would draft a tight end if a highly rated prospect falls into their laps, but there is also a belief the team could soon sign receiver Eric Decker.

Eh?

[DreamKid]

16 minutes ago, coordinator0 said:

http://draftanalyst.com/nfl-draft-notes-april-24

Eh?

[diamondbull424]

 

52 minutes ago, coordinator0 said:

http://draftanalyst.com/nfl-draft-notes-april-24

Eh?

?

That FaceTime part at the end where teams are using that to bypass official visits is crazy. They can really code their interest in specific players now.

[Danand]

Regarding the balance offense/defense in term of allotted cap numbers, it comes down to 2 explanations

1. A lot of players either on their rookie  contracts or low priced veterans

2. Lack of players worthy of 2. contracts

Ravens are somewhat in between, but the lack of 2. contracts as already mentioned is a huge issue, as those players should be the big contributors on offense, and rookie contracts and veterans should be complimentary pieces.

Ravens FO simply haven't been able to balance the team in a way, that the offense had key contributors besides Flacco and a patchwork of players around him.

[paraven]

10 hours ago, Darth Pees said:

I wonder when this number is going to change if we want to see this offense actually start to produce good numbers?

 

So that means the ravens must be ranked pretty high in money invested on defense.. and they still cant stop Andy Freaking Dalton on 4th and 20..... Ozzie cant retire soon enough IMO

[sp6488]

47 minutes ago, paraven said:

So that means the ravens must be ranked pretty high in money invested on defense.. and they still cant stop Andy Freaking Dalton on 4th and 20..... Ozzie cant retire soon enough IMO

I put that more on Pees than Ozzie.  The defense was good this past season overall.  #8 in yards/play, #6 in points allowed, #1 in turnovers (both total and by %), #5 in defensive scoring %, #2 in fewest penalty yards against, #3 in profootballreference's expected points contributed metric, #5 in football outsiders' DVOA metric.

Hand up, I may be a huge Ozzie stan, but a situational collapse like that is on the coordinator/coaches more than the GM IMO.  He's not the one calling that play.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

2 hours ago, sp6488 said:

I put that more on Pees than Ozzie.  The defense was good this past season overall.  #8 in yards/play, #6 in points allowed, #1 in turnovers (both total and by %), #5 in defensive scoring %, #2 in fewest penalty yards against, #3 in profootballreference's expected points contributed metric, #5 in football outsiders' DVOA metric.

Hand up, I may be a huge Ozzie stan, but a situational collapse like that is on the coordinator/coaches more than the GM IMO.  He's not the one calling that play.

And Ozzie has done a good job of getting us defensive talent every single year. Past getting us the talent, it's on the coaches to maximize the potential of that talent.

Overall though, in terms of the offense, there's no way you can say you're giving your QB the help he deserves when you're dead last in money invested outside the QB position - UNLESS you have some absolute studs on their rookie contracts (which we don't have).

[DreamKid]

We all know Joe Flacco loves playing football, but we also know he isn't obsessed with the sport or interested in letting it consume his life. The former made it fine to make him our franchise QB, but the latter has no doubt held him back from playing at the highest levels consistently. Being "Joe Cool" has helped him accomplish many amazing things in this sport and for this club, but it's also helped him shrug a lot of criticism away that maybe could've helped him along the path to present day. 

With the drafting of Lamar Jackson we all know what's coming, and I think it's pretty clear what's going to happen. The 2018-19 season is going to be Joe Flacco's last ride. We can get out from underneath his contract after this year, and I think a 34 year old crazy rich Joe Flacco with Super Bowl ring and MVP trophy in tow isn't going to be too interested in anything but working that Jersey Italian hog of his and extending the Flacco line. Something he's already deep into with 5 kids. 5 kids and staring 35 in the face after this year. His hometown teams will have no interest, and I don't feel he'd have interest in their media markets either. Joe Flacco isn't going to pick up and move anywhere, he'll see it as a blessing in many ways to be able to hang em up and spend time with his young family.

My prediction is we see Flacco come out and admit this. He'll wish Lamar the best of luck going forward and announce his intended final season. We could also see him in the booth for Raven games or at least join the media team in some capacity as Pitta did. They're bros and I imagine it could make for a fun second work life for Flacco. Now hopefully his last ride nets Joe the same hardware Ray's did, though I'd settle for just the ring. Sizzle can take the MVP trophy .

A 2 year plan could be in the works, but I'm iffy on Flacco taking a pay cut and still being all that into playing as he's about to turn 35. That would be ideal though, it can't be understated the leaps Lamar would be able to make getting that cushion. He's a young 21, and letting him progress as a passer and grow physically for 2 years would give us a real demon come the 2020 season. Either way I think we're in a very advantageous position, and I feel so much better about the state of the franchise going forward. We just took a very cheap swing at a home run QBOTF.