The Ravens play their second Thursday Night Football game of the season, getting a Thanksgiving matchup against a divisional rival in the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals are 3-8 but set to get franchise
quarterback Joe Burrow back from injury for this game. Can the Ravens avoid spoiling the holiday like the last two seasons?
1) Long drives on offense
There can be no excuse this week. I know Lamar Jackson isn’t healthy and doesn’t look like himself. I know that it’s a short week and it can be hard to game-plan. It doesn’t matter — it simply can’t matter. The Ravens can’t let it. The defense has been excellent, but the Bengals’ offense will move the ball. It won’t matter that Tee Higgins is out. Ja’Marr Chase has historically tormented this team, and I wouldn’t bet on it suddenly changing. The Ravens’ offense is going to have to chase points in all likelihood.
The Bengals’ defense is currently the worst defense ever tracked by DVOA since they started tracking in 1978. Not one of the worst, but the literal worst in nearly 50 years. According to Sumer Sports, they are last in EPA, success rate, EPA per pass, 31st in sack percentage, and 28th in EPA per run. They are also rank in the bottom-five in pressure rate and no-blitz pressure rate. I’m not asking or expecting the Ravens to put up 40 points, even if they really should be able to, but the offense has to look its best since Jackson’s return.
The Ravens are probably going to want to shorten this game. Thursday night matchups typically don’t favor teams playing well or clean football. Being able to sustain drives and keep the clock running needs to be an emphasis. It will also help the defense stay fresher and potentially find a couple of stops against the Bengals’ offense.
2) Don’t let Ja’Marr Chase beat you
Usually, one of the hardest parts about defending the Bengals is facing the best wide receiver duo in the NFL, with Chase and Higgins. This week, though, the Bengals will be missing Higgins after he took an awful hit against the turf on Sunday that put him in concussion protocol. It should make it easier to focus on Chase, but that might not be as easy as it sounds. The Ravens played the Bengals last year without Higgins in a Thursday Night matchup and Chase still went off for 11 catches on 17 targets with 264 yards and three touchdowns. He had two long touchdowns of 67 and 70 yards. Double coverages have to be part of the plan. The other part of the equation will be good tackling. Chase has taken multiple short passes for long touchdowns against the Ravens, running through weak-arm tackles.
The Bengals have other dangerous weapons like Andrei Iosivas, Mike Gesicki, and Noah Fant that the Ravens can’t ignore either. Chase is the known killer though and has to be the top priority. He’s going to get his, but allowing another game like last year while your offense has been struggling will be a death sentence for winning this game.
3) Step up offensive line
If there was ever a game for the offensive line to start gelling and make a leap in progress, we are here. Cincinnati will continue to be without Trey Hendrickson, another Bengal that’s become a Raven-killer and given Baltimore fits. As mentioned above, the Bengals struggle to generate pressure without blitzing and even when they do blitz, it’s not much better — both below a 30% pressure rate according to Sharp Football. They are also last in run stuff rate and third-to-last in yards before contact on running back rushes, meaning running backs get past the line of scrimmage easily against them. That being said, the Ravens haven’t allowed a rusher to get past 70 yards on the ground since their bye week, so they might have found improvements in that area.
Either way, the offensive line needs to step up. This is going to be one of the easiest challenges they’ll face all year. They need to keep their quarterback clean and settled so Jackson can help chase the Bengals’ offense in points. They can also make their life easier if they can find holes for Derrick Henry. Henry is a very large, one-cut-and-go, speed back. They can’t keep treating him like a power back and expecting him to bulldoze through defensive lines for three yards and a cloud of dust. If they can get him to the line of scrimmage, Henry will continuously get them five yards until he finally breaks one and outruns the entire secondary.
This is the time for one of the best games by the offensive line and hopefully kick-start a turnaround for this whole offense.
4) Improve the run defense
The Ravens’ defense has been fantastic since their turnaround. It started against the Los Angeles Rams during Alohi Gilman’s first game and has been dominant since their bye week, where they found the formula. Six games in a row allowing less than 20 points, including to teams like the Rams, Chicago Bears, and Miami Dolphins. They’ve even fixed one of the weakest parts of the team by adding juice to the pass rush with scheme fixes and a trade. However, the weakest part of the defense right now is the run game. The stats don’t explicitly show it either. No running backs have had massive games during this stretch. The worst has been De’Von Achane with 67 yards.
Still, they aren’t passing the eye test. Everybody can see that you can run the ball on the Ravens. For some reason, teams have been abandoning the run against the Ravens despite the offense not creating large leads. Achane only got two more rushes in the second half of that game. Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason had 15 carries combined for the Vikings despite averaging 5.2 and 6.3 yards a carry, respectively. The Browns went 50/50 on pass-run despite having two rookie quarterbacks play. Their only offensive touchdown was a drive mostly fueled by Quinshon Judkins. We’ve seen teams consistently rip 10-plus yard runs on this defense.
Whether it’s Joe Burrow or Joe Flacco, the Bengals are likely to lean on Chase Brown. Since the bye week, he’s had games of 99 and 107 rushing yards. On a short week, the Bengals would be smart to not abandon the run. The Ravens’ run defense has to be better at not allowing these longer runs that allow teams to extend drives against them. It’s the last puzzle piece to perfecting this defense.
