The Ravens held the Steelers to just 315 yards of offense last week as they continue to play much better on the defensive side of the football.
I was worried about Baltimore’s defense heading into the season because of the brain drain from the coaching staff with whiz-kid defensive coordinator Matt Macdonald taking the head coaching job in Seattle along with assistant coaches Anthony Walker and Dennard Wilson getting promoted to coordinator jobs at Miami and Tennessee. Former Baltimore Pro Bowler and linebacker coach Zachary Orr took over defense — but the 32-year-old had never called plays. Their defense last year was highly dependent on Macdonald’s schemes. They ranked seventh in disguised coverage schemes out of their base two-high safety shell — and despite relying on four or fewer rushers nearly 80% of the time, MacDonald’s disguised pass rush plays generated a league-leading 60 sacks.
Predictably, things started slow for the Ravens' defense especially when defending the pass. Dak Prescott threw for 361 yards against them in Week Three. Two weeks later, Joe Burrow tore them up for another 359 yards.
That’s when the ever-savvy John Harbaugh brought back the forever-young Dean Pees out of retirement (something he has done several times in his career) to serve as a senior advisor on defense for Orr. That helped. And after Burrow torched them for another 421 passing yards in Week Ten, Pees’ fingerprints were probably all over the decision to move safety Kyle Hamilton from strong safety often playing inside the box against the run to free safety dedicating himself to pass coverage.
Since then, Baltimore is only giving up 174.8 passing Yards-Per-Game going into Week 17 — and the 5.4 Yards-Per-Attempt they are giving up is far below their season average of 7.0 YPA by their opponents against them. From Week One to Week Nine, the Ravens ranked 28th in Opponent Expected Points Added per dropback Allowed. Since then with Hamilton moving to free safety, they lead the NFL in that metric. So just citing Baltimore’s second-to-last pass defense giving up 259.4 passing YPG raw numbers does not capture what this unit is doing now.
Not surprisingly given Harbaugh’s penchant for making positive changes as the season moves on, Baltimore had played 20 of their last 32 games Under the Total in Weeks 16 and 17 going into their Christmas Day game on the road in Houston against the Texans.
The Ravens may have played their best defensive game in the season in our NFL Total of the Month for that contest. Baltimore held the Houston offense scoreless in a 31-2 victory. The Texans managed only ten first downs and gained only 185 yards of offense. Quarterback C.J. Stroud completed only 17 of 31 passes for 185 yards before he got subbed out of the game.
Moving forward, with Hamilton playing at free safety and Pees providing his insight on a weekly basis, this Ravens team may have one of the best defenses in the league — despite what the season-long statistics may suggest.
Best of luck — Frank.