ExtremeRavens Posted December 21, 2023 Posted December 21, 2023 The Ravens will miss Keaton Mitchell. Those were the words of coach John Harbaugh on Wednesday, three days after the speedy and explosive undrafted rookie out of East Carolina went down with a season-ending knee injury early in the fourth quarter of Sunday night’s win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. In four days, Baltimore will face perhaps the best defense in the NFL, the San Francisco 49ers, in a Christmas night blockbuster between the NFL’s two best teams. In other words, next man up, as Harbaugh and his players like to say. There is little the Ravens can do, after all, other than soldier on. The challenge, of course, is that while Gus Edwards and Justice Hill have been productive at times this season, neither comes close to matching the dynamic ability and speed of Mitchell, who was just starting to find a significant role in the offense when he suffered a torn ACL. “We’re going to miss having that guy that can just take the ball from the minus-10 all the way to the house any given play, any little, small window,” quarterback Lamar Jackson said. “But I believe our guys are just going to step up all across the board. Our brother went down. Things like that happen in the NFL, but we still have to [have a] level head [and a] level heart. We still have a long season left to play.” It starts Monday night in Santa Clara, California, where they’ll face a 49ers team that is third in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game (89.4), fourth in rushing touchdowns per game (0.6) and second in points per game (16.7). Still, the 49ers haven’t been entirely impenetrable. Last week against the lowly 3-11 Arizona Cardinals, they gave up a whopping 234 rushing yards in a 45-29 win, with James Conner averaging 6.1 yards per carry, Emari Demercado 16 and quarterback Kyle Murray 8.2. Three other occasions this season, teams have topped 100 yards on the ground against San Francisco, though two of those came during a three-game losing streak in the middle of the season when they had several players out with injuries. And despite losing Mitchell, it’s not as if the Ravens, who lead the NFL by a wide margin with 2,293 rushing yards, are suddenly going to rewrite their playbook. Before Mitchell burst onto the scene in a Nov. 5 thrashing of the Seattle Seahawks in which he ripped off 138 yards and a touchdown on just nine carries, Baltimore still led the league in rushing and did so after losing their top running back at the time, J.K. Dobbins, to a season-ending torn Achilles tendon in Week 1. “We’re gonna run our offense,” Harbaugh said. “The plays he was running, the other guys can run. “Everybody puts their own fingerprint on the play. The play looks the way it does a lot of times because the guy’s running. … Everybody runs very similar plays but not all of them look the same. The guys running it will put their flair onto it. We’re gonna miss Keaton, he’s a great player, one of the young guys, kind of a revelation. He’ll continue to be that when he comes back. The other guys will get their chance, and they’ll get the job done.” How well is the question. In the past five games, the 6-foot-1, 238-pound Edwards is averaging just 3.34 yards per carry, well down from the 4.79 he averaged through the first 10 games this season. He has also taken something of a beating this season, suffering from turf toe and a concussion at different points, but also been a reliable force near the goal line with 11 touchdowns. Though the 5-10, 197-pound Hill is something between Edwards and Mitchell in terms of size and speed, he has also struggled at times, averaging just 3.17 yards per carry his past seven games, which included not even getting a carry two weeks ago against the Los Angeles Rams. Still, he brings a certain versatility that Mitchell didn’t — notably, pass blocking. In the past five games, Gus Edwards is averaging just 3.34 yards per carry, well down from the 4.79 he averaged through the first 10 games this season for the Ravens. (Kevin Richardson/Staff) “The offense is the offense,” Hill said. “The players are all interchangeable. That’s a big reason why they have us all here, is because we’re all versatile. Obviously [the coaches will] use you in certain ways, but we’re all capable.” At times, however, they have also been questionable. Aside from none of the Ravens’ backs having the same kind of burst as Mitchell — who ran the 40-yard dash in 4.37 seconds at the NFL scouting combine — there have at times been other problems. Specifically, Jackson and Hill have struggled occasionally with handoffs on run-pass option plays, resulting in a few fumbles. Though most of those issues occurred early in the season, the Ravens will also face two of the league’s best defenses in the 49ers and Miami Dolphins in their next two games. “We’ve just had more time to build together, grow together, understand each other, understand, just like Lamar and the receivers how to run routes and the timing on those things, for us as running backs, too, understanding how to block, understanding defenses,” Hill said. “Seamless execution on the field on game day, it just takes time. Sometimes things just happen, especially early on, when we hadn’t had that many repetitions you’re bound to make mistakes. But we haven’t had anything like that since then.” Indeed, Jackson has taken better care of the ball with just one fumble in the past five games after seven in the first five weeks. Then there’s veteran Melvin Gordon III. Though a two-time Pro Bowl selection with 6,515 yards and 55 touchdowns across eight-plus seasons, along with 2,513 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns on 312 catches, he is, at 30 years old, well past his prime and has spent most of the season on the practice squad. The 15th overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft, Gordon has played in just two games this season with 53 yards on 13 carries. He also has a history of fumbling. In two-plus seasons with the Denver Broncos between 2020 and 2022, Gordon coughed up the ball a dozen times in 41 games. That included five in 10 games in his final season, during which he was released before signing with the practice squad of the Kansas City Chiefs, who won the Super Bowl. That experience, he said Wednesday, was “the best feeling in the world,” and it’s one he hopes to experience again and now contribute to in Baltimore. “To have an opportunity to be out there with shoulder pads on is even a step closer to me feeling even better than I did last year,” he said. “I wanna get to that point, I want to feel that feeling again. “This locker room they did a good job with blessing this locker room with some dope guys and it would be amazing for them to feel that, too. If I can be a part of that and help them get there, [shoot], that would mean the world to me.” Week 16 Ravens at 49ers Monday, 8:15 p.m. TV: ABC, ESPN Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM Line: 49ers by 5 1/2 View the full article Quote
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