It’s no secret that the Baltimore Ravens have struggled to find and develop talent at wide receiver. This offseason, Baltimore once again blew up their wide receiver corps and is relying on young talent to carry them forward.
While many fans are excited to see what comes from this group, there are a number of concerns. If the Ravens are going to have a successful passing attack in 2019, the wide receiver corps will have to get past quite a few major question marks.
1) Lack of proven production
This offseason, Baltimore released Michael Crabtree and watched John Brown leave in free agency. Of the five main free-agent wide receivers Baltimore has acquired since 2016, just Willie Snead remains. So the Ravens turn to recent draft picks to fill out the depth chart and carry them forward.
The problem is there’s little to no proven production from that group. Of the 13 wide receivers on Baltimore’s roster right now, only five have caught a regular-season pass in the NFL.
Though many of the Ravens’ wide receivers were productive in college, franchise history pretty clearly tells us that might not mean very much in the NFL. Until young players like Jordan Lasley, Jaleel Scott, Marquise Brown and Miles Boykin start catching passes in real games, it’s a huge guess as to what they’ll actually be able to do.
2) Health
The Ravens haven’t been terribly lucky when it comes to their health in recent years. Since 2014, Baltimore has averaged 19 players a year on injured reserve.
Brown has missed all of OTAs and minicamp after having surgery on his foot to fix a Lisfranc injury. While he’s expected back at training camp, there’s no guarantee he’ll be ready when rookies report July 17. There’s also no guarantee Brown gets back to 100% this season. Even if Brown is able to get onto the field, we’ve seen players need a full year to recover from Lisfranc injuries. If that’s the case, it’s a massive blow to the Ravens’ passing attack right from the start.
Boykin has also missed extended time this offseason with a hamstring injury. Though it could just have been a precaution, any missed practice time negatively affects a rookie’s development. He’ll be starting things off behind the 8-ball, which could be big if other players are limited or out.
Scott was on injured reserve all of last season. As with Boykin, that lost time to develop could hamper his production.
3) New offensive scheme
The playbook changes every year for every NFL team. New wrinkles are added and plays that didn’t work the previous year are removed. But some teams, like the Ravens, go further by completely throwing out the old playbook and creating a new one.
With the promotion of Greg Roman to offensive coordinator came a totally new scheme. Throughout the offseason, Roman has talked extensively about his new vision and how it’s a reimagining from the ground up. But with a totally new scheme come some headaches.
It takes time to digest a whole playbook full of new plays, much less perfect them. Then add in new language for plays, hot routes, protection checks and every other little thing an offense does on every play. The fact the players realistically got the playbook at the start of organized team activities doesn’t help things out. It’s not a stretch to think the full playbook won’t be installed by Week 1.
On any given play, a small difference of only a few yards in where a wide receiver runs their routes can turn a successful play into an interception. So something like not knowing a hot route or an audible can be devastating for an offense. Even if there’s simple confusion, it can lead to timeouts being burned early.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson will be the one to get criticized for every bad play the offense has. But the reality is that every player on offense is in the same boat and a mistake by any of the other 10 players on the field can kill a play.
4) Lack of polish
Small things have derailed Baltimore’s offense in recent years. This is especially the case for the Ravens’ draft picks at wide receiver.
Look no further than former first-round pick Breshad Perriman. He had the size at 6 feet 3 and 209 pounds. He had the speed, with one scout clocking him at a 4.19-second 40-yard dash, according to the Ravens’ website. Yet an inability to stay healthy and make routine catches doomed Perriman to being cut last offseason and bouncing around the league.
Some of the team’s free agents haven’t been up to snuff when it comes to the basics either. Crabtree dropped passes left and right last season, ending the year with 11 drops on 102 targets, according to Pro Football Focus. In 2017, Mike Wallace dropped passes at the worst times, which led in part to the overhaul last offseason.
Catching the ball, running crisp routes, coming back to the ball and even running beyond a first-down marker are all the small things we’ve regularly seen Baltimore’s wide receivers fail to do over the years. There’s some hope new wide receivers coach David Culley will be able to fix these issues. But like everything else on this list, until it happens, it remains a major concern.
