ExtremeRavens Posted August 30 Posted August 30 Zach Orr opens every defensive team meeting with a history lesson. That’s because most of his players either weren’t born or weren’t football conscious when the Ravens of yesteryear trotted out some of the baddest dudes in the NFL. The propensity to familiarize his players with organizational lore is Orr sending a message, loud and clear. “We want to be the most feared unit in the league,” he said, “and it’s time for us to get back to people being scared of playing us.” Orr spent this offseason collecting footage of every single Ravens takeaway starting in 2008, coach John Harbaugh’s first year, and each meeting since the start of training camp has begun with a four-clip appetizer. Ray Lewis and Ed Reed, two show-stopping Hall of Famers, are the stars of the show. Haloti Ngata, Terrell Suggs and Jameel McClain all get screen time too. They chased the ball relentlessly and forced takeaways in ways the 2024 Ravens fell short. Orr, the defense’s history professor teaching a generation of visual learners, drives the point home using graphics, like a game-by-game chart mapping out all 46 turnovers the 2000 Ravens forced en route to the organization’s first Super Bowl title. “We say these are the guys who helped build this place,” Orr said. “Let’s show them making plays, accomplishing what we’re trying to accomplish.” Using these history lessons as a way to inform the present and set the tone for the near future was an idea — a way of connecting with his players — that Orr acknowledged that he could only land on after the trials of last year. It takes time to figure out the best way to prepare his players. His rookie season was spent, in part, trying to figure out what players respond to. The verdict? Show his team enough purple jerseys striking fear and forcing takeaways, tethering the current team to their predecessors, in an effort to replicate that success this winter. “[It’s] like the theme of this year,” edge rusher Odafe Oweh told The Baltimore Sun. Much of this can be traced back to November, when signs of trouble first emanated from the home locker room at M&T Bank Stadium. Marlon Humphrey, the longest-tenured Ravens defender, acknowledged after a Thursday night whiplash that something was wrong. It wasn’t just a rough patch. The standard set by those Baltimore defenses for decades, Humphrey said, wasn’t being upheld by him and his teammates. He vowed that would change. “Obviously, we love Lamar Jackson,” Humphrey said. “He’s a great player. But I want the Ravens’ identity to be defense like it was when I first got here.” Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey defends during training camp. Humphrey wants to make the Ravens a feared defense in 2025. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) A slight shift followed that autumn night. The Ravens found a safety to play alongside Kyle Hamilton after the first two flamed out and the defense held a “soul-searching” meeting. Baltimore climbed from the worst defense in football to one of the league’s best over the final weeks of the regular season. It was all for naught when they fell short in the AFC divisional round. Most of the team and a handful of coaches fled town to recharge. This was Humphrey’s first offseason living in Maryland full-time. He spent the better part of the first two weeks in Owings Mills, locked away in a room alongside his coaches, reviewing last season with a fine tooth comb. There were no obvious holes in how they prepared, he said. But the “very simple answer” was the number of takeaways in their playoff loss: Buffalo 3, Baltimore 0. “Besides the final score, takeaways determine wins and losses more than anything else,” said Chuck Pagano, Baltimore’s new secondary coach. “If you’re plus two, you’re plus three, you’re going to win. If you’re plus three, you’re going to win 92% of your games.” Now, the goal of every practice is to force three takeaways. That number shows up as part of Harbaugh’s revamped, detailed grading system that gets posted on television screens all over the facility. Details that “truly impact winning,” Orr said, like how many times a player attacks the football, whether they were a leader in communication or operation, whether a player was penalized or “shots on goal,” meaning how many times a defender attempts to strip a ball loose. That’s all well and good, “but if the turnover box isn’t checked,” Humphrey said, “it wasn’t too good of a practice.” A good practice, by that definition, looks like Aug. 2. Jaire Alexander and Nate Wiggins combined for three interceptions. A week later, Wiggins and Chidobe Awuzie each intercepted Jackson in the same practice. On Aug. 13, David Ojabo jumped on a fumble and T.J. Tampa intercepted backup quarterback Cooper Rush. All of them warranted extra celebrations. “It’s an emphasis every meeting,” linebacker Trenton Simpson told The Sun. “Everybody’s talking about it. It’s a whole defensive thing.” Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr speaks with the media in July. Orr says he uses the 2000 Ravens defense as example of the standard he wants his unit to uphold. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff) The Ravens takeaway numbers have been bleak in recent years. It’s hindered them most in the playoffs. Since Jackson became the starter in 2018, the Ravens have forced three total turnovers in nine playoff games. The 2000 Ravens managed 11 takeaways in four playoff games. “I think them seeing the clips and how the game changes by taking the ball away just motivates them even more,” Orr said. “We honestly feel that if we play great defense, that’s gonna lead us to where we want to go. So we had to go all the way back to our roots.” That 2000 defense is widely considered one of the best in NFL history. Hamilton described them as the “ultimate top of the mountain.” On an episode of the “Nightcap” podcast, Shannon Sharpe told a story about what it was like to play tight end for that team. “If we got a 10-0 lead,” Sharpe said, “oh, it was over.” Defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis would go up to him on the sideline and say, “Shay, give us 10.” “I said, 10 what?” By the playoffs, Lewis’ request softened to a touchdown. “I said, ‘Marvin, do you realize what you said? Marvin, these teams are in the playoffs.’” All that defense needed was a lead, preferably an early one. “I was unaware of how elite that 2000 Ravens defense was,” Humphrey said. “Gosh, man. The 2000 Ravens, they got after the ball,” said Alexander, a two-time Pro Bowl selection who joined the team this offseason. “Those guys were getting after everybody, man. … That’s what we want to duplicate.” The late aughts and 2010s shaped what is now referred to around the building as “the standard.” The lineage is painted on every wall of the Under Armour Performance Center, too. Lewis and Reed are the cornerstones of the franchise and two of the best at their position, the only two homegrown defenders represented in Canton, Ohio. Suggs, Baltimore’s all-time leader in sacks and forced fumbles, unofficially named the defense’s successor to the post-Lewis and Reed era, is a good bet to be next on that list. He and Haloti Ngata were the most recent defenders named to the team’s Ring of Honor. When Orr was a player from 2014 to 2016, those guys were either recent exits or in the twilight of their careers. He still felt connected to the past. “Those guys have been gone for a while,” Orr said. This is an attempt to reconnect with an “organization built on defense.” Orr’s lesson doesn’t start and stop with grainy highlights or informative charts. Some of the formations that older Ravens teams ran, particularly in the 2010s, are similar to what his team does. So he and his staff will show a side-by-side All-22 clip of how that success is possible in the context of the current scheme. The 2025 Ravens aren’t the 2000 Ravens. But on paper, they might hang around with the best in the current NFL. There are five first-round draft picks in the secondary, two of whom are All-Pros. The pass rush returns two players with double-digit sack from last season, anticipates a breakout year from a former fourth-rounder and added a first-round talent in the second round. There’s an All-Pro along the interior defensive line and another at linebacker, both with what is expected to be solid help. The ceiling is high. “We know we can be that,” linebacker Roquan Smith told The Sun. “It’s not like, ‘Why can’t we?’ We should be this and we will be that. It’s about just holding yourself to the standard.” Orr’s daily testimony hopes to recapture that nostalgia in the contemporary form. Because, historically, what made those Ravens defenses special is that they were feared. Humphrey felt that when he was drafted by Baltimore. The “Raven Flu” was a term used at the time to describe an opposing player who might take an extra week to nurse an injury rather than face Baltimore. Seven years later, Humphrey isn’t so sure the Bengals or Steelers fear their defense. “I feel that way, too,” Orr said. “So that’s one of our goals this year is to be the most dominant, feared defense in the National Football League.” Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn. View the full article Quote
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