Breaking Down the Ravens' Receivers

So Derrick Mason may or may not be retiring. All right, let's suppose he does --- where does that leave the Ravens' passing game?

The first thing to ask is how good it was expected to be even WITH a healthy Mason catching passes in 2009. And I don't imagine too many fans were so drunk on the purple Kool-Aid as to expect our passing attack to have finished in the top half of the league. We're bringing back pretty much the same cast from last year, when we ranked 28th in the league with a mere 175.5 yards/game. Even accounting for the continued development of Joe Flacco, Ray Rice, and that young offensive line, that's a heckuva lot of ground to make up. Unless Demetrius Williams finally becomes the vertical threat this offense hasn't had in over a decade, you're not going to shoot up that many spots riding an aging possession receiver, I don't care how good he is.

The second thing to note is that Mason had already all but ruled himself out of training camp as he rehabbed a shoulder injury that basically reduced him to playing with one arm for much of last season.  Which means that---no matter how confident the company line---there was a very real chance Mason would have started the season on the PUP list, which means the Ravens would have found themselves in the exact same boat they're in now.  That's why I have to believe Ozzie Newsome, John Harbaugh, and Cam Cameron have already considered what the offense would look like without Mason and his customary thousand yards, and have planned for that possibility.  That doesn't mean they didn't seriously look into upgrading the talent on the roster via trades, free agency, or the draft.  But it does mean that perhaps the current situation isn't as dire as it might seem.

That situation is as follows.  Absent Mason, the Ravens' starting wideouts are Williams and Mark Clayton. 2009 was going to be a make-or-break year for both men anyway.  I'm willing to give them passes for their first few years in the league, when they were playing in that atrocity Brian Billick claimed was an offense.  This will be their second year playing in a legitimate NFL offense, coached by one of the league's most innovative offense minds in Cameron.  If after this season, they continue to underwhelm, I suspect that one or both will be cut and the team will go back to the drawing board.

For Williams, the goal begins with staying healthy for 16 games, something he has been unable to do for two years now. For Clayton, the goal begins with consistency.  Last year he produced a 164-yard game and a 128-yard game. He also had two games in which he failed to catch a pass.  From all I've read, both men appear to be hard workers and determined to make good on their potential. Whether they can do so remains to be seen --- the history of wide receivers in Baltimore suggests they will not, but if Joe Flacco could break the quarterback barrier in 2008, why can't 2009 be the year we finally get a legitimate, home-grown wide-out?

Still, it's one thing to be a fan and hope these things happen; it's another to be general manager and count on them happening.  Should Clayton or Williams stumble, the depth chart behind them looks pretty shallow. Two guys --- second-year players Marcus Smith and Justin Harper --- have never caught an NFL pass. A third, Yamon Figurs, has caught a total of two in his brief career, and he faces an uphill battle just to hang on to the return specialist job he was drafted to fill. And when was the last time Kelly Washington did anything worth nothing?

In Troy Smith, Cameron has an athletic option out of the Wildcat formation, but Smith has been adamant that he is a quarterback, not a "Slash," and anyway, Cameron indicated last season that he is reluctant to use trickery against the league's better defenses. Ray Rice and Willis McGahee (assuming he's healthy and focused) are both attractive options out of the backfield and useful "safety valves" for Flacco --- Rice in particular showed a brilliant knack for slipping tackles last year --- but nobody wants to confuse running backs with wide-outs.

The same is true of tight ends, though in Todd Heap and L. J. Smith the Ravens have two potentially great ones (though again, injuries have robbed both of their effectiveness in recent years), and though Quinn Sypnewski flashed some skills at the end of 2007, he missed all of last season on IR and is another possibility to begin the year on the PUP list. Sixth-round pick Davon Drew has intrigued some people in town, and the Edgar Jones experiment still could pan out, but again, none of these guys are wide-outs.  Expect the Ravens offense to feature a lot of short and intermediate passes to backs and tight ends in 2009, but that's not going to keep many defensive coordinators up at night, and it's certainly not going to excite many fans.

So what is left for Newsome, if in fact he is willing to make a trade or sign a free agent?  Stay tuned, good reader ...