The Baltimore Ravens shocked the world when they scored 33 points at Gillette Stadium in the Wild Card round of the playoffs last season when they upended the New England Patriots. As the 2010-11 playoffs are set to begin, a lot of pundits, Ravens fans and NFL spread betting experts might be just as shocked if the Ravens can anywhere near that total.
Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron has come under fire recently as the offense has struggled in the final month of the season. Even after adding a premier wideout like Anquan Boldin, the Ravens offense ranks 22nd in the NFL and is searching for answers right now.
The Ravens offense has dropped 10 rankings over the last six weeks and is coming off of a performance where they produced just 199 yards, which is the second-lowest output in the John Harbaugh era.
What’s perplexing is that quarterback Joe Flacco appears to have shown some nice progress in his third season, setting new highs for passing yards and touchdowns, while setting a franchise record for quarterback rating. Running back Ray Rice pumped out 1776 yards from scrimmage and the Ravens have a very capable, versatile and reliable trio of wide receivers.
But when you start doing the math, the Ravens are actually the lowest-ranked offense of the six AFC teams.
Over the last three games, Flacco has thrown less than 20 times per contest and over that same span, Boldin has just five catches for 26 yards.
So what’s really the problem? We know this team is capable of much more.
The bottom line is that the Ravens need to get the Flacco-Boldin connection early as this offense is much more explosive when they are both in the game. And if they can start with that, stretch the defense early and then feed Rice, they should be just fine.
Regardless, if they fail in Kansas City this weekend and continue their downhill trend on offense, Cameron could be cut loose as the Ravens have the talent to be much better than the league’s No. 22 offense.
Keywords: Baltimore Ravens
