DVOA creator Aaron Schatz shares his updated outlook on the 2024 Ravens ahead of the final stretch of the regular season.
With the 2024 NFL season finally upon us, FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz, the creator of DVOA and many advanced metrics sat down with Baltimore Beatdown to share his thoughts, predictions and overall outlook for the Baltimore Ravens with four games left on the regular season. He talked about where they stack up in the hierarchy in the AFC and NFL at large as well as their odds of repeating as AFC North division champions and making a deep playoff run.
With a very favorable schedule down the stretch outside of maybe the Steelers game at home, how high are you on the Ravens and do you believe they can still make a Super Bowl run?
“I’m very high on the Ravens and my numbers are very high on the Ravens. We still have the Ravens second behind Detroit. I know that sounds weird because they’ve lost some close games. This is the second straight year of this where the Ravens have just been inconsistent which means that they have these big big wins like the win over Buffalo and then they have these very close losses. But the penalties problem is not necessarily predictive of the future. I mean look at the last game where they lost despite the fact that they didn’t commit a lot of penalties against the Eagles. At it’s core, this is still a really good team. The other thing is that offense is more predictive than defense and the fact that this team has been so stellar on offense this year, that’s more predictive than their defense will continue to struggle against the pass. It’s more likely that the defense improves than that the offense declines.
How much of the offense’s recent struggles with consistency do you choke up to the quality of competition being raised i.e. Steelers and Eagles or is more self-inflicted wounds like the coaches and players have been saying and is evident at times.
“If you adjust for the quality of opponent of the defenses that they’ve played, their offense hasn’t really gone down very much. We still have Baltimore offense as one of the top offenses we’ve ever measured. They’re the No. 8 offense through 13 games that we’ve ever measured in 45 years. They have not gone down very much in the last few weeks because we adjust for the opponent and obviously the Steelers and Eagles have good defenses.”
How impressed with the defensive turnaround have you been in recent weeks post second Bengals game? Confidence level moving forward
“I’m fairly confident. The big thing about the Ravens is that they’ve given up a lot of yards because they’ve faced a lot of plays because the offense has scored so much. Their defense is on the field more than other teams so of course they give up more yards. On an efficiency basis, we actually have their pass defense as average, not as bad and their run defense is good even if they had some problems against Saquon Barkley in the fourth quarter. The overall performance for the whole year has been good.”
What kind of Ravens team do you expect to emerge from this long-awaited and much-needed bye?
“Here’s my worry about the Ravens, that they’re enough behind the Steelers that they’re not going to be able to win the division and that means they’re going to have to go on the road and win three games on the road to make it the Super Bowl. My worry about the Ravens is that they’re too inconsistent to do that. They may have a huge win, they may go in the first round to Houston or somewhere and wallop them and then the second round, they’ll commit the penalties and they’ll have turnovers and lose close. It’s just hard to imagine them having three good wins on the road in a row because of the inconsistencies have been so strong.”
Can this team still win the division with the Steelers slated to play the Eagles and Chiefs who have looked shaky as of late?
“We still give them a 35% chance to win the division because their remaining schedule is easier than Pittsburgh’s remaining schedule and we do think they’re the better team than Pittsburgh even though they don’t have as good of a win-loss record. It’s a good chance they’re going to be going on the road and that’s tough… Come playoff time, they’re going to have to go to Buffalo and too Kansas City in some order even if they win the division. There is still a path for them to win the division but it is more likely that they’ll get a wildcard but do not abandon hope.”
Does Lamar Jackson still deserve to be in the MVP conversation or is it a two-horse race between Josh Allen and Saquon Barkley now?
“It depends how independent minded the voters are and I’m one of them. Do you want to go along with the big public narrative or do you think about all the players separately. I think if you think about all the players separately, you may come up with the answer being Josh Allen or Saquon Barkley but Lamar is in the conversation. I believe that MVP is the most valuable player over a 17 game season not over three games late in the season that happen to be on national television. Lamar Jackson is going to be on national television twice in the last four weeks so he’s got a chance to do that too. He’s got a chance to go have big games on national television that convince everybody that he is the MVP but to me, I don’t like this narrative which is the reason I voted against Lamar last year. He had a couple of big games on national TV near the end of the season but for the whole year, I thought Josh Allen was better. This year, it’s switched and it’s Lamar Jackson who has been better over the whole year but it’s Josh Allen who has had the good game on national television. I think you should vote based on all 17 games and based on all the game that have been played until now, I think Lamar Jackson should still be the MVP. Whether that’s still true in four weeks, I don’t know because Allen is coming up on him.”
When is the cutoff for MVP voting and do you think some of your fellow voters unjustly hold Lamar Jackson’s playoff success or lack thereof against him?
“Playoffs are not considered. We turn in out ballots three days after the regular season before the playoffs start. Same with the All Pro teams, no playoffs considered. There is a little fatigue because he has won (MVP) twice and you’ve seen that in other sports. How many times can we give the MVP to Michael Jordan, lets give it to Karl Malone this year, that kind of thing. I think that it’s not that Lamar Jackson has struggled in the playoffs in the past as much as it is that there is this kind of rumbling train narrative for Josh Allen and Saquon Barkley where they’ve had their biggest games late in the season on national television so that’s why there is where the emotion is and why the markets and gamblers are going toward those players. I don’t think what Lamar Jackson did in the playoffs matter.”
How has your hierarchy in the AFC and league at large changed since then if at all?
“To me, there’s a big three and I still think of Baltimore as being in it. When they play at their best, they are the best team in the AFC. Kansas City has the win-loss record even if their in-game performance is not as impressive and then Buffalo is kind of half way in between. Baltimore has the underlying stats, Kansas City has the win-loss record and Buffalo has them both. To me, that’s the big three and I mean no disrespect to Pittsburgh which does have an impressive win-loss record and Mike Tomlin is a Coach of the Year candidate and everything but to me, those are the Super Bowl contenders in the AFC. Probably Buffalo or or Kansas City and maybe Baltimore but they’re going to have a harder road.”
Where does the offense and defense rank in DVOA now?
“The offense in No. 1 by leaps and bounds over everybody else, No. 1 passing and No. 1 rushing, just No. 1 in every way. The defense is 14th and the special teams is 24th.
What is the most obvious or glaring weakness on this team now
“The other issue is the special teams and I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t know if (Justin) Tucker is cooked or if he’ll bounce back from this. There have been great kickers from the past that went through slumps and came out of those slumps and I don’t know what to expect from him but obviously that’s been a real problem this year and has led to some of the losses. (Special teams) is less of a weakness than you think because special teams is inconsistent compared to the other parts of football but (the Ravens) are 24th on special teams. It’s definitely a problem. If you take out Tucker on field goals, their special teams are essentially average which is lower than what the Ravens have been in the past but it average. So Tucker has been the real problem.”
“I think pass rush is a bigger issue than pass coverage. We have a rating that I have of passing if you take out sacks and throwaways and Baltimore is better when you take out sacks and throwaways which is usually an indicator that the coverage is better. I still think there’s too many penalties by the offensive line, I don’t know how deep the receiving core is and how much you can trust (Rashod) Bateman and (Nelson) Agholor when the chips are down compared to Zay Flowers and Mark Andrews.”
Do you think the offensive line’s struggles against elite defensive fronts could prove costly in the postseason?
“Let’s say you win the wildcard and you get Houston on the first round. That’s Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter, that’s hard. The flip of that is that their offense hasn’t really gotten it going this year so you still probably outscore them anyway. That’s hard front, Pittsburgh you’ll face in the playoffs and that’s a hard front. The Chargers you would think are but they’re not really this year because (Joey) Bosa and (Khalil) Mack can’t seem to be healthy at the same time. The Chiefs don’t have as much pass rush as they should other than Chris Jones. Buffalo has got good pass rush. They’re going to face quality pass rushes, there’s now question about it.”
Are you a subscriber to the Derrick Henry usage win-loss theory?
“No. We’ve done research on this for 20 years. It’s the winning that leads to carries, not the carries that leads to winning. You give Derrick Henry carries because if you think he’s going to get four, five, six yards a carry, then that’s good and it’s going to put your offense in good position on second down and you want to have a balanced offense. All of those things are good but all of those stats about their 5-0 when he gets ‘x’ number of carries, it’s because they’re 5-0 that he’s getting the carries. He’s closing out the games by running out the clock in the fourth quarter with a lead.”
Do you have any issue with their pass-happy play sequencing on offense at times in close games?
“They’re just trying to mix it up and get it going. The problem is if you incomplete on first (down), it’s second and 10 and running on second and 10 is not usually a good strategy so want to throw another pass and then it’s third (down) and you throw another pass. So it looks like you’re throwing too many passes but really, it’s trying to avoid running on second and long. It especially depends on the box. Derrick Henry has seen more men in the box than Barkley has so sometimes the decision are being made by Jackson based on the number of guys in the box. It’s not like (Todd) Monken is deciding what the pass-run ratio is going to be. It’s Jackson making the decision based on how it looks on the field.”