Players recharge, regroup during bye, prep for tough schedule ahead
Gus Edwards looked chiseled and rejuvenated as the 6-foot-1, 238-pound running back slipped a sweatshirt over his thick dreadlocks in the back corner of the Ravens’ locker room. Nearby, defensive tackle Justin Madubuike, out of concussion protocol, quietly chatted with a team reporter. Across the room, left tackle Ronnie Stanley moved swiftly in sweats finished with a pair of big, blue, fluffy slippers and no obvious sign of hinderance to his right knee, while veteran right tackle Morgan Moses held court with a handful of encircled media.
It was their first time back in Owings Mills in more than a week following the bye, which couldn’t have come at a better time.
Edwards spent part of his time off in Orlando, Florida, where he took his son to a Magic game. Moses hung out at home in Virginia doing dad things like attending his kids’ basketball games. Others, such as wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., stayed in Los Angeles following Baltimore’s 20-10 win over the Chargers on Nov. 26.
“It’s great,” Edwards, 28, said of the Ravens’ bye. “You get a chance to get your legs back under you, work on the little nicks that you have, spend time with family. It started feeling like [the season] was dragging. It came right at a time when we needed it to come [mentally and physically].”
And now the 9-3 Ravens are back at work, tied for the best record in the AFC with the Miami Dolphins, and in full control of their playoff future with five games remaining in the regular season.
The formula is simple: Win out and Baltimore will earn the AFC’s No. 1 seed for the postseason. The path is not: The Ravens have perhaps the NFL’s most difficult remaining
schedule with a gantlet that begins Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium against the 6-6 but surging Los Angeles Rams; followed by road night games against the 8-4 Jacksonville Jaguars and 9-3 San Francisco 49ers; and concluding with showdowns at home against the Dolphins and 7-5 Pittsburgh Steelers.
Still, there is plenty to be pleased about. Notable among the reasons is the Ravens’ overall health. The time off allowed muchneeded rest and recovery for Stanley, who has been plagued by a knee injury and struggled with his pass protection of late. The same is true for Madubuike and cornerback Marlon Humphrey, who has missed the past two games with a calf injury.
“They are looking pretty good right now,” Harbaugh said of Madubuike and Humphrey when asked about their availability this week. “I think on Wednesday we’ll probably have a more definitive type of an answer, but I’d say right now there’s a lot of optimism.”
The same is true for where the Ravens find themselves entering the stretch run as they vie for a Super Bowl title.
Baltimore has the league’s No. 1 defense, according to FTN Fantasy’s Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). They have the league’s No. 5 offense by DVOA. And they have an NFL Most Valuable Player candidate in quarterback Lamar Jackson, who has completed a career-high 68.3% of his passes while throwing for 2,618 yards, 13 touchdowns and five interceptions. He has also rushed for 574 yards and five scores. Those numbers aren’t quite as on pace to match his 2019 MVP season, but they’re not far off.
Yet, there is still a lot of work to do. Jackson has fumbled 11 times, losing six of them, the second-most in the league behind Minnesota Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs. In all three of the Ravens’ losses this season, they have blown fourth-quarter leads, and at other times struggled to hold onto them in wins with 83 of the 174 points Baltimore has surrendered this season having been scored in the fourth quarter and overtime. And there’s that schedule, in which the Ravens will face a handful of elite pass rushers, including the Rams’ Aaron Donald (six sacks), the Jaguars’ Josh Allen (13 ½), the 49ers’ Nick Bosa (eight) and Chase Young (6 ½), the Dolphins’ Bradley Chubb (6 ½), and the Steelers’ T.J. Watt (14) and Alex Highsmith (six).
The Ravens have also struggled at times this season against the run — particularly up the middle — and in pass defense in the middle of the field. The Rams, San Francisco, Miami and Pittsburgh all excel in the ground game and the 49ers and Dolphins are exceptional at attacking defenses through the air in the middle part of the field.
These are things that are not lost on Harbaugh, of course.
“You look at your team, you have the eye test [and] what you see on tape,” he said. “You have the analytic test [for] what the numbers tell you. You look at all that stuff, and you say, ‘OK. What are we doing well? What are we not doing well, and where are our opportunities? What can we leverage to give our guys an advantage going forward to make plays and be the best players they can?’
“You just do the best you can figuring all that stuff out, and you go forward and go fight.”
And while Baltimore is relatively healthy now — on Monday they also activated linebacker and Baltimore native Malik Hamm from injured reserve, giving them another player on a defense that leads the NFL in sacks — there is always the looming threat of injury. It’s a proposition the Ravens are all too familiar with after Jackson missed the final four games in 2021 with a bone bruise in his ankle and the final six last year with a PCL sprain in his knee.
It was also just two years ago that the Ravens became the first team in 19 seasons to go from being the top seed in a conference to failing to make the playoffs altogether six weeks later. That season, Baltimore was 8-3 and atop the AFC on Nov. 28 despite having lost Edward, J.K. Dobbins, Humphrey, cornerback Marcus Peters and Stanley to season-ending injuries. But then they lost
six straight, including to the Steelers in the final week of the season.
But that was then.
Despite some big hits, Jackson has started every game and played every meaningful snap this season. The running game has flourished even without Dobbins again, thanks to Edwards, Justice Hill and more recently speedy rookie Keaton Mitchell. There will be a need for wide receivers Beckham, rookie Zay Flowers, Rashod Bateman and veteran Nelson Algholor to make up for the loss of injured tight end and security blanket Mark Andrews. The Ravens will “roll” with second-year tight ends Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar, rather than sign veteran and recently released Zach Ertz. And they’ll need their defense, led by inside linebacker Roquan Smith, safety Kyle Hamilton and Madubuike, along with veteran outside linebackers Jadeveon Clowney and Kyle Van Noy, to continue to produce.
As Moses said, there’s still a lot of football left to play. “[We have] probably the hardest schedule left in the NFL,” he said. “We look to embrace it.”
The question is how will they survive it? “Our guys have a good perspective on it,” Harbaugh said. “They understand where we’re at, what’s required and what’s possible.”