ExtremeRavens Posted September 5 Posted September 5 There’s all kinds of pressure on Lamar Jackson — to deliver on his draft night promise of winning a Super Bowl, to the kind he faced in last year’s AFC championship game loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. The two are not mutually exclusive. On the quarterback’s two most spectacular plays of that game, what Baltimore didn’t do against the Chiefs’ blitz was a microcosm of the 17-10 defeat at M&T Bank Stadium. What lessons the Ravens have learned in the seven months since will be on display Thursday night in a rematch to open the NFL season at Arrowhead Stadium. But if Baltimore is going to move forward by showing it is capable of beating the two-time defending Super Bowl champions, a look back sheds light on one key area: the blitz. To wit, long before Jackson spun free of a would-be sack against a five-man blitz and hit Zay Flowers for a 30-yard touchdown pass to answer Kansas City’s opening score, the receiver was open in the flat with plenty of room to run. Two possessions later, Jackson stunningly caught his own pass for a 13-yard gain after Justin Reid batted the ball skyward, but it was the quarterback failing to drop back that prevented him from completing an easy lob over the charging safety to wide-open running back Justice Hill in the flat. Those were just two of the several plays Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner honed in on in his eponymous YouTube channel, QBConfidential. “I think so many of these guys have gotten used to bailing themselves out with athleticism,” Warner told The Baltimore Sun this week. “No matter how talented you are, it’s a tough world to live in. “For Lamar, we know how great he’s been. I think this is one area where he can improve, whether it’s his mindset and what he’s doing or whether it’s his challenging of the coaches to give him answers and not expecting to have to bail the team out with his greatness. … They’re going to have to handle pressure better. It wasn’t all Lamar — Lamar made some great plays against pressure — but they weren’t finished on the other end.” Having an answer with what Warner calls hidden yardage goes a long way, he says, especially against a team like the Chiefs. Last season, Kansas City blitzed Jackson on 43.5% of his drop-backs, per TruMedia, which was above the Chiefs’ 37% rate going into the game. It was an amount that Jackson said afterward surprised him, though the Houston Texans blitzed him a whopping 75.9% of the time the week before in the divisional round. And while Jackson was somewhat successful against the Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s five-man pressures, he struggled even more when they brought at least six rushers. That included on his own catch-and-run against Kansas City’s “blitz zero,” and two plays later when tight end Isaiah Likely ran an out-and-up rather than cutting the route off. The latter didn’t appear to be an option as Likely wasn’t looking back, but Jackson was nearly sacked before getting a pass off that fell incomplete. Other throws, meanwhile, were simply off the mark, including one to Flowers in the flat as Jackson failed to set his feet and an inside fade to Nelson Agholor that was beyond the wideout’s reach. By comparison, Warner pointed out how Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes often handled the Ravens’ myriad blitzes by making quick decisions and having “hot” route options, particularly in the first half. “Patrick is special because he does it all,” says Warner, adding that Mahomes could also go down as the best quarterback in NFL history, so it’s a tough comparison. “In a game like that, when you don’t make a couple of those big plays playing against Patrick Mahomes, you lose. That’s just the fact.” When Jackson was asked earlier this week about the challenge of the Chiefs’ blitz, he said it was more than that. “It was all type of things that went on in the game that we felt like could’ve worked for us, went our way,” Jackson said. “We missed certain things throughout the game. It was all type of things. I just can’t pinpoint them blitzing us, because we picked them up sometimes, here and there. All type of things we could’ve done better that game.” He’s not wrong, of course. That the Chiefs blitzed Jackson and likely will do so again also shouldn’t be a surprise. The two-time NFL Most Valuable Player ranked in the top seven in opposing blitz rate each of the past three seasons, including first two years ago. So what’s the solution? “It’s going to take ID’ing those pressures when they’re coming, ID’ing how we pick them up or to block them or to throw off them if they’re hots … and then executing,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Sunday. “That’s what it takes. When a team comes after you and blitzes, you’ve got to meet them. You’ve got to meet them where they stand, stand your ground and attack them. That’s what you have to do. So we’ve been working hard at that. We always have, and looking forward to seeing how we do.” View the full article Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.