The Baltimore Ravens have ended two seasons in a row with rushed exits to the playoffs. The team, which opened its 2020 training camp on Tuesday, lost the 2018 AFC wild card game at home to the Los Angeles Chargers before suffering a surprising surprise in the divisional round last season at the hands of the new Titans of Tennessee.
But the way the team ended doesn’t diminish what it did between those two losses. Head coach John Harbaugh said during a preseason interview last year that his team would have a revolutionary offense in its first full season with Lamar Jackson at center, and he was right.
Jackson was unanimously voted the league’s MVP, and the team ended the regular season with the best NFL record, the highest-scoring offense in the league and the best rushing attack in NFL history. While sophomore’s elevated quarterback play was key to the unit’s success, the use of his tight-winged trio and stable of backfield teammates for Jackson allowed the offense to really flourish, especially in heavy formations.
Although the Ravens used a variety of personnel sets, their heavy builds attracted national attention because they contradicted the rest of the NFL. While the rest of the league was building offenses from scattered formations, Baltimore designed a system that executed nearly half of its plays from heavy formations, according to the ESPN Statistics and Information Group. Of a total of 1,060 offensive snapshots in the regular season, Baltimore lined up 453 times (or 42.7 percent of its snapshots) in heavy formations featuring different pairs of tight ends plus Ricard. Meanwhile, the rest of the league lined up with just 27 percent of heavy set plays.
In 2019, Baltimore relied heavily on fullback Patrick Ricard and tight ends Mark Andrews, Nick Boyle and Hayden Hurst. The team traded Hurst to Atlanta in the offseason, but undrafted rookie Eli Wolf will compete for that third tight end spot with Charles Scarff, who spent last year on the practice team. Therefore, it seems likely that the Ravens will continue this scheme this year.
Members of the Baltimore tight end / fullback team were reliable blockers for Jackson and the running backs (Mark Ingram, Gus Edwards and Justice Hill) as well as viable receivers, allowing the offense to use multiple variations of the group within sets. heavy to keep defenses guessing. In some cases, the team even had all four on the field at once.
Despite having fewer rushing yards and total rushing yards with heavy personnel than with extended personnel (the Ravens ran for 1,089 yards in heavy series while running 1,560 yards in extended series), team production within the heavy series was vital to his success because he used them to extend the units and control the clock. But perhaps even more important was Baltimore’s third down conversion rate into heavy pack plays: the unit converted 69 percent of third downs during the regular season. Converting these kills at such a high rate led the team to average nearly 35 minutes of possession time.
His field production also regularly opened up the air game by forcing defenses to use personnel packs designed to clutter the line of scrimmage. This created opportunities for crime to take advantage of mismatches by forcing larger, slower defenders to cover tight ends. Jackson was able to make the most of these moments, as each of the three tight ends recorded at least 20 receptions for over 200 yards. Andrews, Boyle and Hurst averaged 12.3 yards per reception while representing more than half of the team’s 1,569 total passing yards from heavy formations. Although Ricard was used primarily as a blocker throughout the season, he also recorded a touchdown catch on a heavy set and ended the regular season with eight total catches for 47 yards.
The group’s depth and versatility allowed them to account for almost half of the team’s total receiving yards and 15 of Jackson’s 36 pass touchdowns. Andrews ended the regular season as the team’s main receiver with 852 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns, and led all tight ends in touchdowns.
Baltimore’s postseason loss to the Titans showed what can happen if teams can limit the team’s dynamic attack. After allowing the Titans to take a 14-point lead early in the second quarter, the Ravens began favoring the pass in an attempt to reduce the lead. Jackson recorded a record 22 pass attempts in the first half, while the team only had 16 rush attempts in the first half. Jackson ended the game with 59 pass attempts, another professional record.
Jackson and the offense entered halftime with season lows in yards rushing and yards rushing. The unit averaged 3.81 yards per run and gained just 61 yards on the ground. After averaging more than 37 attempts per game during the regular season, Baltimore ended the game with 29 carries, tying the second-lowest total of carries the team recorded in one game throughout the season.
The Ravens’ struggles were more apparent in a couple of fourth attempts. By the postseason, Baltimore had turned eight of eight quarter and 1 attempts, but failed to become fourth and 1 in the second quarter and again in the third against the Titans. The offense posted its third lowest total of snapshots and yards earned from heavy formations in defeat (17 plays for 77 yards) and also completed 37.5 percent of heavy series passes, the lowest of the season.
While Baltimore’s last outing was yet another postseason disappointment, the team’s future is still bright as it approaches another season. What remains to be seen is whether the rest of the league will have grasped the Ravens’ unconventional offensive approach and devised a way to stop it, or whether Jackson and his plethora of miscellaneous weapons will take them to another postseason.
