Ravens defy trend with top defense
Brees brings NFL’s No. 1 scoring team to clash in Baltimore
This NFL season is all about offense, all the time. Yet the Baltimore Ravens aren’t on board.
Few teams are playing defense very effectively during a season in which totals for points, touchdowns and touchdown passes are the most ever through six weeks. No one else is playing it as well as the Ravens, who have the top defensive unit entering Sunday’s intriguing matchup in Baltimore with the New Orleans Saints, the NFL’s highest-scoring team.
“They’re an extremely talented defense across the board: front, linebacker corps, back end in the secondary,” Saints quarterback Drew Brees said when he met with reporters this week. “You see they’ve built that defense to fit those pieces. So our execution has to be at a premium to beat these guys. ... It’s really impressive, a great defense.”
The Ravens lead the NFL in total defense, based on yards allowed, by a margin of 35.7 yards per game over the second-place Jacksonville Jaguars. They lead the league in scoring defense by 4.4 points per game over the Dallas Cowboys.
This is a franchise that once won a Super Bowl led by a defense for the ages, with Trent Dilfer at quarterback. But that was 18 years ago, a time when offenses were not so revved up.
“This is the NFL and this is kind of an offensive-driven league, a passing league,” Terrell Suggs, the veteran pass-rusher for the Ravens, told reporters this week.
Suggs laughed when a media member asked him if the adage about defenses winning championships still holds true in today’s NFL.
“Last year’s Super Bowl begged to differ ... very high-scoring game, 1,000 yards passing or something like that,” Suggs said, referencing the 41-33 triumph by the Philadelphia Eagles over the New England Patriots. “I don’t know. ... That’s not very good, especially for me, being a defensive player. I hope it’s still true. But I don’t know the answer to that question.”
The Ravens, with a record of 4-2, are trying to return to the postseason after missing the playoffs for three years running. That has put plenty of scrutiny on quarterback Joe Flacco and coach John Harbaugh. Owner Steve Bisciotti said after last season that firing Harbaugh had been a consideration. Then the Ravens used a first-round draft choice on quarterback Lamar Jackson. So it’s fair to say that the jobs of Harbaugh and Flacco could be on the line for the first time since they won a Super Bowl in which Flacco was the MVP to cap the 2012 season.
But if the Ravens are going to sustain their success, it likely will be the defense that leads them. In most NFL cities, defensive players are complaining about rule changes they say make playing defense next to impossible. For most NFL teams, the way to play defense this season might be to simply try to force turnovers, since actually stopping an opposing offense seems too much to ask.
T h i s Ba l t i mo re d e f e n s e, though, is fully capable of shutting down an offense entirely. Last Sunday at Tennessee, the Ravens shut out the Titans and sacked quarterback Marcus Mariota 11 times. Still, such dominance will be far more difficult to achieve against Brees and the Saints, who average 36 points per game.
NFL standings
This game perhaps will serve as a case study into whether a defense-first team such as the as Ravens can qualify as a title contender in an offense-first NFL.
“They’ve got a lot of good pass rushers, a lot of good matchups for them,” Brees said. “It’s obviously something that they’ve done well for a very long time. They do it well with their D-line ... and obviously from the linebacker position as well.”
The Saints are coming off their bye week. Brees became the NFL’s leader in career passing yards in the Saints’ last game, a triumph at home against the Washington Redskins. He is one touchdown pass shy of 500 for his career.
Simply keeping up with all the milestones at hand for Brees is a cumbersome task. He has a career record of 0-4 against the Ravens, the only team in the league he has not beaten. He could join Peyton Manning and Brett Favre as the only NFL quarterbacks ever to have beaten all 32 teams.
“Listen, I’d love to beat these guys, you know,” Brees said. “They’re always a great team when you play them, so you always know it’s gonna be a slugfest.
“You don’t get to play them all that often, right? It’s a once-everyfour-year deal being AFC (vs.) NFC. But they’re a great team. They’re the number one defense in the league right now. So we’ve got our work cut out for us.”