Through Week 7 there are four AFC teams in the top five of Football Outsiders’ DVOA ratings. The Ravens are one of the two of those teams with a winning record, as well as one of only two teams with a top-15 ranking on both offense and defense, along with the Chicago Bears.

Baltimore’s defense has been an incredibly interesting outfit this year. They’re one of three units in the NFL that has allowed fewer than five yards per play (4.5) and have the best pass defense on an average per-pass level at 4.9. However, they don’t create many big plays. They’re 10th in the NFL in percentage of defensive drives ending in turnovers. They’ve forced only four fumbles as a defense, tied for 24th in the NFL.

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The underlying statistics aren’t promising there either. The Ravens are 16th in pressure rate per Sports Info Solutions, so even though they are second in actual adjusted sack rate for defenses, they are generating more sacks than we’d expect by the pure numbers. They don’t have a top tier edge rusher, which we’ve talked about more than once already so I won’t belabor it again — but those are the sorts of players who create turnovers. Their top player by hurries (via SIS) is Matt Judon. Many players have more than a couple hurries, but nobody is dominating the quarterback.

Instead, what Baltimore’s defense does is … they sit on you. They’re not going to let you play in the short passing game, and they’re not going to let you play over the middle. Baltimore’s defense allows a league-best -31.3% DVOA (lower DVOA is good for defenses) over the middle. They allow a -21.3% DVOA on all throws that are 15 or fewer yards beyond the line of scrimmage, the third-lowest figure in the league.

In a time where NFL offenses are more and more about spacing and making defenses deal with horizontal play, the rules with Baltimore are much more simple. You want to throw it down the sideline on a corner route or a deep curl? They’re going to bet on Jimmy Smith and Marlon Humphrey to smother the player, and the pass rush to get to you first.

When I think of great NFL defenses, I think of physical domination, touchdowns, and turnovers. I think of Terrell Suggs bowling past a left tackle, sacking the quarterback, and the resulting fumble recovery going all the way to the house. Jacksonville, the league’s best defense last year, returned seven touchdowns via interception or fumble recovery in 2017.

The Ravens have zero touchdown returns. In a league where the answer that defenses have tended to turn to against college offensive concepts more and more often is “let’s just generate turnovers,” the Ravens are counter-punching against that conventional wisdom. They aren’t building their defense to make big plays, they’re building it to smother those college offenses in the 10 yards of space in front of the line of scrimmage that those offenses covet the most.

They’re taking the quick-throw quarterbacks and telling them “that’s nice, but can you hit the throws that were popular in 1994?”

In a year where most of the NFL’s defenses are struggling to make as much impact, and the yardage figures continue to climb higher and higher, Baltimore’s defense may not be creating results that are sexy. But they are creating results that are empirically great.

And if they can sit on spread offenses enough to get the other side of the ball 12 deep cracks at John Brown, that just might play them deep into January. The numbers are backing the Ravens as a legitimate playoff contender.

Rivers McCown
Rivers McCown

Ravens Analyst

Rivers McCown is a writer and editor who has written for ESPN.com, Bleacher Report, USA Today, and Deadspin, among other places. He’s edited for Football Outsiders, Rookie Scouting Portfolio, and Pre-Snap Reads Quarterback Catalogue.

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