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October 3, 2024 9 mins
Jeff Zrebiec covers the Baltimore Ravens for The Athletic. He joined us to preview Sunday's Bengals/Ravens battle. 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
He's in Baltimore. Here's what I want to know first,
Which day is gloomier? The day after the Ravens loss
in the AFC Championship game last January or today the
day after the Orioles lost and got swept at home
in the American League wildcard round.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Wow, I think it would be the AFC Championship just
because you're so close to a super Bowl, and you know,
for you know, as far as the Orioles, they look
like dead, dead team walking for three months. You know,
I think most fans kind of hope that, look, the
playoffs start and a swip flip switches and it's a

(00:39):
different team. But that was not a very good baseball
team since late June and early July. Sort of they
look like they were sort of running out of gas
back then. But certainly there's a lot of disappointment with
that team. You know, it's not just they haven't won
a playoff series. They haven't won a playoff game. And
to win one hundred and ninety two games in two
seasons and not to win a single playoff game is

(01:01):
you know, is pretty damning, you know, so, but you know,
I think there's kind of getting a refrustration around these
parts about the lack of clutch gene in the playoffs,
and that certainly applied to the Ravens too.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, well, you know, those Orioles problems sounds like problems
we would like to have here. But everything's relative. So
Sunday night, the Ravens play a four quarter game against
the Buffalo Bills, and everybody here is talking about, well,
they've got to stop Derek Henry and we know what
Lamar Jackson can do, and it's sort of this rebranded offense.
The thing that stood out to me was they got
four quarters from the defense. So the first three games

(01:39):
some pretty uneven performances, was what was was was Sunday
surprising in that regard from a defensive perspective, specifically against
that Buffalo team.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, I think it was in terms of, you know,
just Buffalo and all the problems they represent, you know,
and and what they were able to do and limiting,
you know, limiting Josh Allen and consistently getting to him.
I mean, Buffalo, Buffalo's offensive line had been really good
coming into that game, so you know, all along, I

(02:12):
thought there would be a major adjustment with this defense.
I thought they'd be a lot better at the end
of the year. But you got a first year defensive coordinator,
you got I mean, there's a major brain drain from
that defensive staff. And you see it all around the NFL.
I mean Anthony Weavers coaching the Miami defense, and Denard
Wilson's coaching the Tennessee defense, and obviously Mike McDonald is

(02:34):
coaching the entire Seattle Seahawks team. I just fully expected that.
I thought the off season the coaching losses were going
to be a far bigger issue than the player losses,
which included Clowney and Patrick Queen and you know Gino
Stone with you guys. So and I think that played out.
I think there's clearly still an adjustment period going on

(02:55):
with new coaches finding themselves and also new players and
the bigger roles. So that certainly was a step against
the Bills. But even in the early couple of games,
you'd see it. They'd have periods a quarter and a
half of dominance and then they just fall apart in
the fourth quarter. But the fourth quarter issues have been
more of a John Harbaugh and a Raven's problem than

(03:17):
a specific you know, units problem. It's just been across
the board, special teams, offense, defense. They've just not been
a very clutch team late in games. And this goes
back several years. I mean, you guys remember it well,
the Tyler Boyd catch that one year and all that.
I mean, they just blow leads. That's kind of been
what they do. I mean, the one part about it

(03:38):
is they have a lot of leads. You know that
they've won a lot of games, but they certainly have
not been good finishers. And I think that was a
step in the right direction for the Ravens, sort of
team wide, and how they kind of kept the pressure
on the Bills and sort of didn't let down for
fourth quarters.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
You mentioned the name that I wanted to ask you about,
and the reason why I was I was reading what
you wrote about Zach Orr and what he's doing with
that defense, and they play the dime and there's a
thousand dbs out there, and I'm reading it going, well, okay,
So I guess I know why. Maybe Genostone was expendable.
I was excited about him coming to Cincinnati. We haven't
seen what we were looking for quite yet. It's obviously

(04:16):
only been four games. Kind of walk me through what
it was like to watch his development from a guy
who it felt like every single year the more they
asked them to do, the more heroes to the occasion.
And then obviously ultimately his departure.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, just a steady, smart, smart player, right, I mean,
that's sort of He had his strengths. He also had,
you know, not extremely physical or fast guy. So I
think his you know, his strengths as a player were
more his intelligence and knowing where to be. I'm not

(04:50):
taking anything away from Geno Stone, who's a great dude also,
you know, but a lot of his interceptions were of
being in the right place at the right time and
just being and knowing how to be around the football,
rather than any display of unbelievable athleticism to get to
the ball or great ball skills when when the ball
was in the air. I think called warm to the

(05:13):
task a little bit. He's just he's a solid guy.
And I just think with the Ravens, they have a
ton of dbs, they were gonna lose guys. I mean,
I think they knew that Genostone was a number three
safety for him because they have a lot invested in
their starting safeties and it's just a matter of who
do you pay. I mean, you're not going to pay

(05:34):
a number three safety if you're the Ravens and you
have all these other needs that you need, you know,
to put money towards. So it was time for Geno
to go somewhere else. You got a nice deserving paycheck
coming off the best year of his career, and you know,
they miss him in a lot of ways. I mean
they resigned, or excuse me, not resigned, but they signed
Eddie Jackson, the veteran from the Bears, on the cheap

(05:56):
to pretty much do what Geno Stone was doing last year.
And you know Jackson hasn't made a ton of play
so far either, So you know, I just think it
was time. I mean, this is kind of what the
Ravens do. They develop players, and you know they're not
afraid to walk away from them when they kind of
get more expensive than their role here would have demanded.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
I've watched the last two Baltimore games, and I know
fantasy football owners are wondering what are Mark Andrews and
Isaiah likely going to get their catches? But I see
two tight ends who are still a real, real big
part of the offense. They're just not having football thrown
at them. It seems to me like they've really embraced
what's being asked of them in this new sort of
Derrick Henry rushing field offense.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, they a good point mode they really have. The
question is how long will embrace it? I mean everything,
you know it was weird this year. It's almost like
the first two weeks it was like, look, we want
to be more balanced. In the offseason they talked about
being a lot more balanced offensively, challenging other areas of
the field. You've got two stud pass catching tight ends.

(07:03):
You're not deep at receiver, but you've got three receivers
you trust who can make plays. And then of course
you've got what you have in the running game. And
it was almost like, Okay, how are you going to
incorporate all this? How are we going to make it
all work? And it's almost like in the first couple
of games, you know, they wanted to show what else
they can do. They wanted to pass the ball a
good bit, and we saw them pile up yards. I mean,

(07:26):
they got plenty of yards those first two games, but
there just wasn't an efficiency. There's some offensive line struggles,
there's a lot of penalties, and it was almost like,
you know what, we're all in two. We don't start
winning soon. This is gonna be a long season. Let's
let's stick to what we know we're really good at.
Let's go back to running the football using our you know,

(07:48):
our big back and our full back and our blocking
tight end. They're using a lot of big packages the
last couple of weeks, and we know we can win
that way, and that's kind of what we've seen. Ultimately,
I think they, oh, I think they know they're gonna
need to be more balanced. I think there's gonna be
times where you know, the run is limited, they're stopped altogether,
and they need to do more in the passing game.

(08:09):
But these last two weeks, it's almost like, if it's
not broken, why no, neither the cow neither the Cowboys,
either the Cowboys or Bills gave them any reason to
do anything different. So you're seeing a lot of play
action passes for Lamar, a lot of easy completions, and
then a lot of running and and yeah, the skill
position players have bought in. I mean even day Flowers

(08:30):
is doing crackback blocks and stuff like that. So I
don't know how long. That's gonna last, but somebody's gonna
have to stop it and force them to get out
of their comfort zone a little bit and have to
open up the passing game. And they just haven't had
to do that the last two weeks.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Jeff, I know you have a lot going on. I
always appreciate you giving us some time, man, Thank you
so much.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
No problem. I look forward to the game Sunday.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, me too, no question. Jeffs Rieber covers the Baltimore
Ravens Forthathletic dot Com. Lee Sterling makes us some money,
or at least try to. Next, it's The Ortho Cinsey
Moeger Show on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station, Cincinnati's

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