thundercleetz

Coached with Harbaugh and Castillo in Philly under Andy Reid. Might be a better fit chemistry and philosophy wise. No excuse for abandoning the run like Trestman did yesterday when we were averaging over 5 YPC.

Good season. Tough to lose this game with Britton on the bench but Liriano could have gone another six innings with his success against us. Great strategy by Toronto. Everyone in our bullpen pitched great outside of Jiménez. I think we found another bullpen stud in Hart. He's lights out against lefties. Givens had a rough patch mid-season but rebounded excellent at the end of the year. His K/IP ratio is outstanding and he should be even better next season (remember, he's still new to pitching relatively). We have one more year to strike. Davis needs to get healthy (said his hand was bothering him all year). I am not worried about Davis. When Davis struggled two years ago he was pulling everything. This year he had even power distribution. His hand affected his bat speed and contact IMO. Next year Bundy and Gausman have to take the next step. Schoop and Machado will improve again hopefully. Wieters is gone, don't even give him the qualifying offer because he will accept it since no one will pay him. He isn't worth anything near $20M for one year. I will be happy to see Chance Cisco and his high OBP batting approach in the majors. Give Trumbo the qualifying offer. If he accepts, great. If not take the draft pick. Duquette has been good at finding low risk, high reward batters so I'm not worried there. Álvarez would be a cheap re-sign and Trey Mancini is ready to play. If we can't sign Machado this offseason he needs to be traded at the end of the next season or even before that at the trade deadline if he's having a hot year and we are out of it (sell at the highest point). What does the free agent pitching market look like? If there was ever a year to make a splash its this one. Salary can always be dumped later on.

Trestman is scaring the ish out of me this season. When Joe's been under center taking shots downfield off of play action he's been very effective. When Joe's out of the gun on first and second down the run game is worthless, the play action is useless and it appears Joe goes into automatic checkdown mode. Stanley and Wagner struggle with deep pass protections (PFF ran an draft analysis of Stanley how he didn't have much experience pass protecting with five step drops from the QB). Having Joe get rid of the ball quickly from under center, or utilizing the play action to keep rushers on their heels help our tackles. When Joe is constantly out of shotgun, a deep pocket is established, Stanley and Wagner are already at a disadvantage because the rushers are full tilt. Throw in a play action out of the shotgun and that's an extra half second our tackles have to block. When your QB has passed the ball 40 times there is no benefit to a shotgun play action and it is a huge burden on the offensive tackles. All that speed and talent at WR and we went into complete turtle mode in the fourth quarter last week.

Oakland is good but they aren't a top team. Then we have Washington and NYG the two weeks after that. Sure we could lose all three games, but each of those three teams are a similar talent level to us. Even 1-2 in those games puts us at 4-2, 2-1 at 5-1. I think any of us on this board would take either of those two starts. Then we have the Jets after that before the bye. A good team, but not much different than the quality of team we'll have already played. Oakland, Washington, NYG & NYJ, we have a 50-50 chance of winning each of these games IMO.

How Ravens stack up to other 3-0 teams with similar point differentials over the years: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-vikings-and-ravens-are-in-for-a-rude-awakening/

Ken McKusick (aka Filmstudy) at RSR also gave Suggs high marks: http://russellstreetreport.com/2016/09/26/filmstudy/defensive-notes-jaguars-week-3/

PFF grades for the Ravens Week 3: https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-bal-jax-grades/

One other thought: I hate how we got so conservative in the forth quarter. Joe went into automatic check down mode. We had that beautiful drive with the near TD on the Wallace drop where it looked like we'd start shredding the Jags through the air. Playing for a 54 yard field goal at the end nearly gave me a heart attack. Love the confidence in Lucky Tucky but man that was ballsy. Would have loved to see us go for another 10-20 yards.

Oakland will be a good test next week. Good thing it's a home game.

I thought the playcalling was much better this week. Less shotgun, more under center playaction. West got some good runs, we got some good gains. Offensive line got its ass handed to them in the fourth quarter. Holding penalties, offsides, the Jags defensive line was in our heads. Need to continue to get better up front. Improvement from weeks 1 & 2. Man we have lots of talent at WR. Need to find ways to get these guys the ball. Perriman is a big dude. Looks like a man child out there. He had a drop (got scared!) but I'm impressed with his body control and shiftiness in and out of routes. I think he'll get much better as the season goes on.

To my untrained eye I thought Zach Orr had a good game. Seemed to be filling well and always around the ball. We'll see if the film and advanced statistics back me up...

He needs to be given the Bonds treatment and walked every time.

Note on the playcalling difference between the two halves: http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/214790/joe-flacco-campaigned-marc-trestman-for-more-downfield-passes

I thought play calling was better in the second half: less shotgun and more playaction. Secondary is still a major concern. We were getting a pass rush and McCown was throwing up the ball with no concern and their receivers were schooling our guys. With the sort of pass rush we were getting no way the receivers should have been that open. I will give our secondary credit, they come up and support the run very well. Btw typical Ravens move at the end, play for the FG to go up by only 4-6, have to "rely on the defense."

You're right, NC has a governor election coming up with could be huge. NC is so horribly gerrymandered. NC already has two or three more Republican congressmen then they should have based on the stats. On the state representation level it's probably even worse. Gerrymandering creates polarizing candidates, so even rational voters of the majority party feel like they are continually choosing between the lesser of two evils. It should be illegal.