I have listened all this week about the Ravens offense.  They can’t score in the red zone. Field goals aren’t enough. Steve McNair is hurt.  We should start Kyle Boller. (Which I’d never thought I’d hear in this city!) And maybe some of this is true … heck, I can’t really make many arguments against it, but the question that remains to me is, why are people shocked????  This is a Ravens team that hasn’t averaged scoring more than 24 points a game in any of the last seven years since they won it all.  That 24 points per game came in 2003, when they won the AFC North crown.  Last year when they won the division again, they scored 22 per game.  All the previous years were less than 20 per game.

Does that mean that over 20 points a game equals a division title?  Maybe. But what it doesn’t mean is that this team needs an offense to win.  They need a defense to win … and they have that!  A pretty good one that only gives up 66 yards per game on the ground.  The Ravens don’t need to light up the scoreboard to win and be successful.  They have to use their most reliable weapon, Matt Stover, to give them leads and let their defense win the ball game.  I don’t know any Ravens fan who would choose the offense to go down the field to score a touchdown in the waning minutes of a game, rather than place the defense on the field to defend the endzone against another team.  I would certainly choose the latter.  History has told me that formula is a winner, not the other way around.

Look at the big picture.  The Ravens have two very winnable games in the next two weeks.  They have a chance to hit the bye 5-2 and a maximum only two games behind the AFC’s best team.  None of that is bad!  It’s time to focus on Ravens football and just winning games with defense.  The offense will do what they need to do to help out along the way, but Ravens football has always been marked by defense.  Is there a reason to change now?

Posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 2:52 pm.
Categories: Ravens.
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