Like every revolution _ the successful and the unsuccessful, the significant and the inconsequential _ the Ravens offense will change by the day. Sometimes it will work, and other times it will not. It will zig one Sunday, then zag the next Thursday. Its outlines are hidden and nebulous, like some ancient treasure map, and still being drawn; quarterback Lamar Jackson said Wednesday that "We still get hit with new stuff."
The seeds of change were planted months ago in Baltimore, if not long before. But the public reckoning begins Sunday, when the Miami Dolphins will be the first team to face a fully operational Ravens offense that coach John Harbaugh has said is unlike any in NFL history. Most season openers measure how far a team has come and how far it still has to go. The Ravens' could be a referendum on perhaps the league's grandest offseason experiment.
Only those inside the team's Owings Mills headquarters know the exact parameters. But you don't need a team-issued tablet to imagine what the offense might look like. A year after the Ravens claimed their first AFC North crown since 2012 with a Jackson-led offense that turned back the clock, running the ball more than 60% of the time, there will be more balance. More passes. More of Jackson showing he has an NFL-level arm, too.
But this "revolution," as Harbaugh has called it, will start and maybe end on the ground. At the vanguard will be Jackson, who set NFL rushing records for a quarterback as a rookie. The offense he'll oversee will be appropriately unique, a fusion of "medieval" personnel groupings _ 300-pound fullback Patrick Ricard, three-tight end sets _ and new-age tendencies: work a defense's soft spots, get playmakers into space.
After an offseason of reinvention, the Ravens face an urgent question: Will it all work? The offense's last iteration managed just three first downs over the first three quarters of a season-ending playoff loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Defensive coordinators have now had months to prepare to stop Jackson, not just the week foisted on many last season.
And if it does work, where does that leave the Ravens? The NFL's five most efficient offenses last season, according to analytics website Football Outsiders, were also the five most efficient passing offenses. To be remembered as football revolutionaries like Bill Walsh and Joe Montana, the San Francisco 49ers icons whom Harbaugh invoked in a July interview on NFL Network, the Ravens have to effect change. And to effect change, the Ravens have to prove their new way is a better way.
"We have to be us," offensive coordinator Greg Roman said Thursday. "We're going to run it, and we're going to throw it. That will change every week; the degree of which is based on how the game unfolds. We feel confident doing both. It's always a challenge in this league. ... We need to be the most effective Raven offense. However that builds itself, we'll see."
