ExtremeRavens Posted September 9 Posted September 9 The early portion of Thursday’s season opener seemed to bubble over with confusion about the NFL’s new emphasis on how officials would call illegal formation penalties, which the Ravens were flagged for five times. After watching the film and reviewing available data, coach John Harbaugh said Monday that he’s “not worried about it going forward.” That’s because of the highly detailed and accurate data teams get from tracking chips in each player’s shoulder pads called radio-frequency identification tags, or RFID. “We have the tracking data from that game,” Harbaugh said, referencing Baltimore’s 27-20 loss to the Chiefs. “We know exactly where the Chiefs tackles were lined up and exactly where ours were lined up.” The veteran coach was terse about specific findings. But the discourse is unambiguous, he said, because of the data available. So they’ll have a sense of whether officiating crews call it consistently as the season progresses. Three of the Ravens’ five illegal formation penalties, including two on the opening drive, came against left tackle Ronnie Stanley. Stanley said after the game that he felt targeted by the officials and that his presnap alignment followed what he was told by offseason referees. An illegal formation is called when a player’s helmet isn’t aligned with the waist of the center. It’s advantageous for a lineman in pass protection to be lined up further back behind the line of scrimmage. Stanley said Thursday night that he was confident his head was “breaking the center’s butt.” “I thought Ronnie was in reasonable position almost all the time,” Harbaugh said. “I do think the adjustment that needs to be made, is during the course of the drive, if it’s something that you didn’t expect and it’s totally different than they’re calling the games, you gotta make the drastic adjustment right away and then we’ll talk about it later. Ronnie actually thought he was doing that. When you watch the tape, I think what he says bears out.” Illegal formation penalties aside, Harbaugh said the offensive line — which has been a hot topic through the preseason as they replaced three starters from last year — set a “pretty darn good baseline,” particularly in the deafening conditions of Arrowhead Stadium against a formidable Chiefs defensive front. Similar to the slew of early penalties, Harbaugh isn’t worried about his offensive line. “I know how hard they work and I know how talented they are and I watch all the other offensive lines in the National Football League,” he said. “I think if you applied some of the same standards to the other offensive lines out there, you’d be like, ‘Oh, boy.'” Against Kansas City, the Ravens ran for 185 yards on 32 carries. Half of those were by quarterback Lamar Jackson, who finished with 122 rushing yards; Derrick Henry added 46 on 13 carries. The Chiefs combined for one sack and one quarterback hit. For reference, Kansas City totaled four sacks and seven quarterback hits in the AFC championship game in Baltimore in January. “Our offensive line is going to be really good this year,” Harbaugh said. “I believe that. And we’re working hard toward that.” View the full article Quote
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