The Ravens love to blitz. That might be good news for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs
The Ravens have the most distinctive offense in the NFL because they have the most distinctive player in the NFL.
Simple enough, right?
Nobody in the league plays the game quite the manner in which quarterback Lamar Jackson plays it, which has caused Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to say he “hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep this week.”
But the uniqueness of this Ravens team — one that finished atop the AFC regular season standings in 2019 and has yet to lose in 2020 — doesn’t rest solely within the offense.
It’s the defense, too. It’s especially the defense. The Ravens blitz like none other — a complete outlier from 31 teams — which is the polar opposite from what the Chiefs have seen over the last two weeks.
“These guys are going to get after us,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said. “We’re preparing as if it’s going to be a blitz drill.”
Remember all that conversation of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes settling for the short and intermediate routes? His growing comfort with taking what the defense will give him?
Yeah, scratch that Monday night when the Chiefs visit Baltimore.
In Weeks 1 and 2, the Texans and Chargers settled into two-deep safety shells, erasing the Chiefs’ big-play threats. Mahomes completed only one pass that traveled 20-plus yards in the air over the opening two games, a 54-yard touchdown to Tyreek Hill.
The Ravens take just a bit of a different approach. Forget predictable. Prepare for chaos. They brought at least five pass rushers on 48% of their opponents’ drop-backs in 2019. No other team topped 40%. (They generated pressure on 51% of those snaps.)
It comes from anywhere. It comes from everywhere. When the Chiefs hosted the Ravens last season, for example, Mahomes said they brought a blitz he had seen only once before on tape.
“When you play a defense like this that does a lot of different things — very multiple, a lot of different blitzes, a lot of different coverages — you have to make sure that you’re ready to go and have answers for everything,” Mahomes said. “I’ll just try to do whatever I can to make sure I’m prepared for everything they can show us. And whenever they give us a non-scouted look, (I’ll) try to have a positive play and then get to the sideline and figure out the best way to go about it for the rest of the game.”
A matchup of the two favorites in the AFC isn’t short on battles within the battle. This one just looms as perhaps its more important. Or at least its most intriguing.
If the Ravens stick to their convention.
Because while they love to blitz, Mahomes sure doesn’t mind seeing it. He has destroyed blitzes over his career — a 122.3 rating against them in 2018, a 116.8 rating in 2019 and a 116.1 rating through the first two weeks of 2020, per Pro Football Focus. In all three combined, he has thrown 25 touchdowns when blitzed. He’s thrown one interception.
And if you think, well, hey, he destroys most coverages, consider that each of those quarterback ratings top the numbers on snaps in which he’s not blitzed from the same season.
That probably explains his success against the Ravens. In two previous matchups, Mahomes has thrown for 374 yards and three touchdowns in one game and 377 yards and two touchdowns in the other.
It’s also probably why Ravens defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, the architect behind this scheme, told reporters Friday that the Chiefs “could’ve paid (Mahomes) a billion, and I’d still think he’s underpaid.”
Martindale could switch all of this up. Could go against his preference and sit back and make Mahomes take the underneath stuff for another week. Maybe his talented and deep front-four is all they need to generate pressure the way the Chargers did a week ago.
But the Chiefs aren’t counting on it.
“Every play, we’re going to expect pressure,” Bieniemy said. “Our guys, we’re practicing the exact same way — not necessarily saying, hey, they run this blitz or this blitz. We’re pulling pressures of all numbers in different situations for which they’ve shown different types of things.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM.