Uruk-Hai
Footballguy
I'm too lazy to look up the old thread and there are only 4 or 5 of us anyway, so......NEW THREAD!
I thought Kevin Clark over at The Ringer had an interesting take on Baltimore: that they are the rare team hoping their old guys bounce back when most teams hope their young players step up. I think that speaks to the FO's draft failures recently. The Kindle/Cody and Elam/Brown drafts were disasters from the standpoint of putting elite players on the field. They've offset that somewhat by canny FA signings and lower-round (or UDFA) picks panning out. And Pernell McPhee aside (who they weren't going to pay anywhere near what the Bears did), they've always had a knack for letting guys go at the right time (see: Adalius Thomas, Ed Hartwell, Paul Kruger, and a bazillion others). But there's been a top-end talent sap going on for years - you can only hope to strike lightening in a bottle on "undesirables" so many times.
That said, they lost - I think - 9 games by one score last season, and that's with having 17,000 starters or major contributors on IR. Normal distribution would have had them at somewhere around .500 (injuries included). Two of their five wins came against Pittsburgh. The only blowouts were against Arizona and Seattle. They didn't quit, which says something to me about the players and the coaches.
Anyway, on to this season. They are not as talented as either the Stillers or the Bengals (who have owned them recently). Barring injury, I think the offense will be fine. Top-to-bottom, it's the best (or, at least "deepest")WR corps Flacco has had. TEs are a mess right now, though. RB stable is stocked with "he's pretty good" guys. Losing Osemele sucked, but OL is one of the two areas the Ravens have improved with youth the last couple of years.
The other is DL. Those are nasty young men up front and good luck to other teams running up the middle on them. LB scares the hell out of me. I thought Mosely was the Second Coming - and he's good - but he couldn't cover me on a pass route. Suggs & Dumervil (I'd love to know the ethnicity behind this name, by the way) are almost as old as I am, and the other ILB is an UDFA. The secondary has been a mess for years. Maybe Weddle shores that up?
ST: Devin Hester? Ok, why not. Tucker got paid and I can't figure out who made out in the deal. He tried a crap-load of long FGs last year and missed a good portion of them - not sure if that's on Tucker or Harbaugh....
....speaking of whom, I don't think he's on the hot seat yet (the SB win still glows and the injuries killed them last year), but something needs to go right or he'll be on it next year.
I'm thinking 8-8, with a swing of 2 in either direction.
I thought Kevin Clark over at The Ringer had an interesting take on Baltimore: that they are the rare team hoping their old guys bounce back when most teams hope their young players step up. I think that speaks to the FO's draft failures recently. The Kindle/Cody and Elam/Brown drafts were disasters from the standpoint of putting elite players on the field. They've offset that somewhat by canny FA signings and lower-round (or UDFA) picks panning out. And Pernell McPhee aside (who they weren't going to pay anywhere near what the Bears did), they've always had a knack for letting guys go at the right time (see: Adalius Thomas, Ed Hartwell, Paul Kruger, and a bazillion others). But there's been a top-end talent sap going on for years - you can only hope to strike lightening in a bottle on "undesirables" so many times.
That said, they lost - I think - 9 games by one score last season, and that's with having 17,000 starters or major contributors on IR. Normal distribution would have had them at somewhere around .500 (injuries included). Two of their five wins came against Pittsburgh. The only blowouts were against Arizona and Seattle. They didn't quit, which says something to me about the players and the coaches.
Anyway, on to this season. They are not as talented as either the Stillers or the Bengals (who have owned them recently). Barring injury, I think the offense will be fine. Top-to-bottom, it's the best (or, at least "deepest")WR corps Flacco has had. TEs are a mess right now, though. RB stable is stocked with "he's pretty good" guys. Losing Osemele sucked, but OL is one of the two areas the Ravens have improved with youth the last couple of years.
The other is DL. Those are nasty young men up front and good luck to other teams running up the middle on them. LB scares the hell out of me. I thought Mosely was the Second Coming - and he's good - but he couldn't cover me on a pass route. Suggs & Dumervil (I'd love to know the ethnicity behind this name, by the way) are almost as old as I am, and the other ILB is an UDFA. The secondary has been a mess for years. Maybe Weddle shores that up?
ST: Devin Hester? Ok, why not. Tucker got paid and I can't figure out who made out in the deal. He tried a crap-load of long FGs last year and missed a good portion of them - not sure if that's on Tucker or Harbaugh....
....speaking of whom, I don't think he's on the hot seat yet (the SB win still glows and the injuries killed them last year), but something needs to go right or he'll be on it next year.
I'm thinking 8-8, with a swing of 2 in either direction.