Week Five Observations

The Baltimore Ravens snuck out of Kansas City with a 9-6 win over the Chiefs.  The last time the Ravens won a game without scoring a TD was 5 years ago yesterday with a 9-7 win over the San Francisco 49ers.

Bad Overall Play
As I said in What To Look For this was a trap game for the Ravens and they played just like that.  The Ravens should have rolled over the Chiefs easily but they game out flat and almost played for it.  If you are an optimist then you can look at it this way: last year the Ravens lost all 4 of their games in this fashion but yesterday they won.

Turnovers
The Ravens won this game because of turnovers but they almost lost the game because of turnovers also.  The defense was very opportunistic forcing 2 interceptions and 3 fumbles.  They should have recovered the 3rd fumble but Ed Reed lost control of the ball and it went out of bounds.  The 2 interceptions resulted from tipped passes.  Intercepting tipped passes has been a staple of the Ravens defense over the last few years. The beneficiaries of the tipped passes were Lardarius Webb and Cary Williams, who gets his 2nd interception in as many games.  The two fumbles also involved some luck as the Chiefs messed up a toss on a sweep play and Matt Cassel fumbled a snap on the Ravens 1 yard line.
On offense Joe Flacco threw for a bad interception and kick returner Deonte Thompson fumbled a kickoff.  Flacco was trying to throw the ball to Anquan Boldin on a deep curl but CB Brandon Flowers jumped the route.  On the opening kickoff of the 2nd half, Thompson fumbled the ball and the Chiefs recovered.  Luckily the Chiefs didn’t score off of it because of Cassel fumbling the snap on the goal line.

Run Defense
During the first half the Chiefs ran all over the Ravens defense for a total of 179 yards.  The second half was a completely different than the first as the Ravens only gave up 35 rush yards.  Coming into the game the pass defense was the concern but that looked fine.  The new concern is the run defense.  In two weeks the Ravens travel to Houston to play the Texans.  The Texans have the best run game in the league so this issue needs to be sorted out fast.  The defensive line got pushed back a lot and the linebackers were being blocked.  On a few plays Haloti Ngata got some good pressure but that was it really.  Ray Lewis had 10 tackles and most of them were 7 or 8 yards down field.  He needs to be making these tackles 3 or 4 yards down field.
On offense Joe Flacco threw for a bad interception and kick returner Deonte Thompson fumbled a kickoff.  Flacco was trying to throw the ball to Anquan Boldin on a deep curl but CB Brandon Flowers jumped the route.  On the opening kickoff of the 2nd half, Thompson fumbled the ball and the Chiefs recovered.  Luckily the Chiefs didn’t score off of it because of Cassel fumbling the snap on the goal line.

Offense
To put it simply, Flacco played awful.  He wasn’t helped by the offensive line as the Chiefs had 4 sacks and Flacco was constantly under pressure.  Both tackles, Michael Oher and Kelechi Osemele, gave up 2 sacks and got terrorized by Chiefs OLBs Justin Houston and Tamba Hali. Oher and Osemele need to get their act together fast as they face All-Pro DeMarcus Ware this week.  The receivers didn’t help Flacco out either as they dropped many passes.  I don’t have the exact numbers but it has to be more than 3, which is unacceptable.  The only bright spot on offense was Ray Rice, as usual.  Rice carried the ball 17 times for 102 yards.  He also had 1 catch for 16 yards on 3 targets.