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Having already covered the Cincinnati Bengals' early-season struggles on offense and power rankings at the quarter-pole of the NFL season among other topics, this is the right time to really dive into one of the biggest games from this past weekend.
The Baltimore Ravens were heavy favorites heading into their Week 6 game against the New York Giants, but surprisingly came up short.
This article will look at the factors that impacted the game:
Ravens Offense vs. Giants Defense
The Ravens were in control for most of the day, yet they gave away another multi-score lead. The Giants just kept hanging around and making the plays needed to be victorious in the end.
Looking at the Ravens' rushing success, it really was all Lamar Jackson keeping the ball around the corner or pulling and going downhill on inverted veer concepts. Power schemes were by far the most effective for them, either pulling the backside guard and tackle or having the fullback kick-out the end man at the line of scrimmage and making the guard lead up into the hole.
Kenyan Drake had 76 yards and a touchdowns on six of those alone. J.K. Dobbins unfortunately didn’t look like himself from a couple of years ago, trying to bubble around traffic and delay things near the point of attack. He finished the day with seven carries for just 15 yards (and no catches).
Baltimore lived in 21 personnel for the majority of this contest, with fullback Patrick Ricard playing an absurd 76% of offensive snaps. This saw them line up in an offset I-formation from the pistol and run dive option one play, motioning into empty with Ricard at tight end as a chip-and-release guy. This gave Lamar a clear picture as they spread out the defense, whilst having to match with base personnel and afford him solid protection.
Something I liked in that regard was the way they used their backs to clear out space to work over the middle of the field for Mark Andrews, at times off motions or creating four-strong looks.
Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale had a few really fun wrinkles incorporated into the game-plan. On the final play of Baltimore’s opening drive, the Ravens wanted to run their patented counter bash concept with Lamar. The Giants had three guys standing behind the other over the center before going different ways at the snap and blowing up the play.
The O-line wasn’t sure who they were responsible for, making Lamar try to reverse field and ultimately get taken down for a big tackle for loss, which pushed them out of field goal range.
In the pass game, the Giants ran some intricate games up front, including some layered three-man stunts, where they made it almost impossible for the Ravens O-line to pick it up, with a late looper coming free.
Looking at the box score, Mark Andrews was the only consistent target in the pass game for Baltimore, catching seven passes for 106 yards and a touchdown. No other Ravens player had more than three catches or 30 yards.
However, that 12-yard score – which was a perfect throw by Lamar on a slot fade route – was the only ball they allowed the tight-end to grab over the final 26 minutes, as Wink started to play primarily one-robber. This involved having a guy carrying Andrews vertically with outside leverage and dropping the safety to that side down, to take away the inside access towards the middle.
Fifth overall pick Kayvon Thibodeaux did a great job on a couple of plays, forcing Lamar to hand the ball off and then corralling the back. Julian Love had some excellent reps in coverage, one-on-one against Mark Andrews and covering ground as a deep zone defender. This paved the way for the game-turning pick, that set up the Giants to take their first lead of the game with just two minutes to play.
Giants Offense vs. Ravens Defense
The Giants coaches understand the personnel they have to work with. They simply don’t have any complete receivers that they can rely upon to consistently create separation.
But they have a special talent in Saquon Barkley, who they understood the Ravens would always have eyes on, which opened up opportunities for his teammates to make plays.
He did touch the ball 25 times on the day, but he was really more of a decoy. Rookie receiver Wan’Dale Robinson gave Big Blue a nice spark and found the endzone for the first time as a pro, on a little pick play to the flats. The Giants used a ton of 12 and some 21 “pony” personnel on the day (their wildcat package with two tailbacks), because Brian Daboll probably felt like they could be the most diverse out of those.
They also have some play-designs that nobody else in the league use. The clip below shows a play they ran on their first touchdown drive midway through the second quarter. They were in 31 personnel with three actual tailbacks, faked the dive with the deep back and put Daniel Jones on the move of a front-side bootleg, where he had Saquon out in the flats and Matt Breida wheeling up the sideline.
He hit the latter, as the safety to that side tried to take away Barkley underneath, for 15 yards. As much as people criticize Daniel Jones, he delivered some crucial plays on third downs, going 7-of-11 on the day, with conversions of 14, 12 and a touchdown.
They hit some deep crossers to extend drives and some other cool designs in the pass game proved fruitful.
Baltimore’s defense for the majority of the day was able to hold Saquon Barkley in check. He had just 95 yards on 25 touches, with none of them going for more than eight yards. That was thanks to having the guys on the interior hold up against double-teams on more vertical run schemes and great pursuit whenever he was threatening out to the edges.
However, while they did get some good hits on Daniel Jones in the pocket, he deserves credit for standing tall to deliver the ball. The Ravens DBs on the back-end simply couldn’t plaster the receivers quite well enough to avoid that little bit of late separation. Other than Justin Madubuike knifing through a couple of times per game, the Ravens don’t have anybody who can consistently win their pass-rush reps one-on-one.
Patrick Queen got close to Jones on a couple of wrap-around blitzes, where they could have gotten the Giants off the field on third downs, but both Barkley and Breida had tremendous pass-pro reps, allowing their quarterback to step into the throw and deliver big conversions.
Baltimore is tied for the third-most takeaways in the league (12) and one of only four teams with at least one in each of their six games. They got another in this contest, but the strip-sack on the final play before halftime was pretty much meaningless.
The only big one they nearly had came at the two-minute warning at the end of the game, when Marcus Peters was called for pass interference in the end-zone, and Saquon scored on a goal-line leap on the very next snap.
Ravens keep beating themselves
The Ravens suffered their third loss this season after leading by double-digit points in the fourth quarter. And once again, they made way too many costly mistakes. Up 7-0, they had the Giants stopped on a 3rd-and-4, with a screen to Richie James coming up a yard short. However, John Harbaugh decided to push New York back 10 yards on an offensive pass interference call, only for them to convert on a deep curl to Darius Slayton.
Lamar missed Devin Duvernay for a touchdown right after the two-minute warning in the first half, when he had a step on the safety on a corner-route in the high red-zone. He then threw a couple of inches too far on a drag route early on in the second half. They ended up settling for field goals on both of those drives.
Then up by three, with as many minutes left on a third-and-one, they got called for an illegal formation on what would have been a conversion on a QB sneak. They had that odd snap exchange on the very next snap, where the ball went through Lamar’s hands, but instead of throwing it away, he went back across his body and got picked off by Julian Love.
Marcus Peters got called for pass interference on third-and-goal, where the receiver tried to push off and his reaction was to grab cloth, before Saquon leaped over the top of the pile, to put the Giants up by four.
And finally, Lamar got strip-sacked by Thibodeaux, to seal the deal. Oh, and Justin Tucker missed a 56-yard field goal attempt at the end of the second drive on the day, which is also very uncommon. These were simply way too many miscues in a game that they should have really won.
The Giants, on the other hand, continue to play clean football and particularly in late-game situations. It sounds like a stupid cliché, but they simply don’t beat themselves, but rather wait for the opponent to make mistakes.
On their final four possessions, they scored a field goal, two touchdowns, and were able to run out the clock, with Saquon making the right decision for his team to win, as he slid down at the two-yard line instead of scoring, to the chagrin of several fantasy managers.
You can argue right now New York’s coaching staff is doing as good a job of maximizing the talent at its disposal as any group in the league. They play tough, smart old-school football.
If there’s one thing they can improve on, it’s adding a speed-element to that receiving corp, to open up more space underneath. Maybe even consider a “homecoming” for Odell Beckham Jr?
