The Foundation of the Passing Offense is still Intact.

[The Excellector]

Do you remember Justin Harper? The guy got 5 yards separation routinely. And just as routinely, he dropped the balls right in his hands. That's NOT going to be rectified by the QB putting the ball right in his hands. So again...while I agree with the assessment of Boldin, and have stated the very same things myself, it does NOT automatically follow that the current group of WRs, including Reed, Doss, and others, are going to step in and fill the void. They've been in camp a week already, and not ONE of them has distinguished himself. No real surprise there.

These things take time. Pitta didn't establish himself right away. Neither did Torrey Smith.

[RavensRule21215]

These things take time. Pitta didn't establish himself right away. Neither did Torrey Smith.

Sometimes it takes time. Travis Taylor had 5 years of time and he never became anything other than a bust. Torry Smith established himself in college and made the adjustment to the NFL in a reasonable amount of time. Anyone else have Smith's credentials coming out of college?

[Bigfish]

They've been in camp a week already, and not ONE of them has distinguished himself. No real surprise there.

I'm convinced, one week is sufficient time, they are all bums.

Edit:

[RavensRule21215]

I'm convinced, one week is sufficient time, they are all bums.

Over react much, do you? There's 5 weeks to get ready for the season. 1 week is already gone. And it's not like this is their first training camp. But whatever. I'm done with this thread. There are plenty of things to be positive about regarding the 2013 season. To date, the WRs are not at the top of the list.

[Captain Offense]

To date, the WRs are not at the top of the list.

Ding, ding, ding !!! Since the season has not started yet, and the roster is not complete, the WR issue is still in flux. Whether or not the Ravens have the right personnel will be determined as the season morphs - not on August 2.

[JimZipCode]

I don't agree at all that this situation is comparable to the 2011 offseason, which a lot of you are saying. If it were, we'd have two mid/high round picks waiting in the wings to compete to start at TE and a BIG FA acquisition penned in at #2 WR ...
We don't have a Lee Evans (377 career catches, 5,900 career yards when we traded for him) waiting in the wings. We don't have two promising 2nd year players, one of whom made 3 starts his rookie season, waiting in the wings. We have Jacoby Jones, Tandon Doss, and Deonte Thompson.
... this is what we're stuck with.

It's the fact that the Ravens have not aggressively attempted to replace Boldin with a proven NFL caliber WR that I find highly questionable.

The thing that you guys are leaving out is, this was clearly what the Ravens planned to do. They're not stuck with Jones, Doss & Thompson by accident. They did not forget to aggressively attempt to replace Boldin with a proven WR. This was clearly their design.

We've been hearing for years that the coaching staff was high on David Reed (5th rd pick) and Tandon Doss (4th). We heard that thru Reed's injuries and even his trip to the doghouse after fumbling in that Seattle game. Then we heard last year that they were very high on Deonte Thompson, and also we saw in preseason that he looked intriguing as hell. Very talented. Harbaugh talked up these guys – which is routine, Harbaugh talks up all his guys, it's part of his coaching personal. But Ozzie and DaCosta also talked up these guys, and I don't think that's quite as usual. Hell, even Streeter, we heard occasionally all season or early offseason how much he was improving his route-running.

• We've been hearing for ages that the team thinks those guys can be "very good NFL WRs".
• Then the offseason starts, and as the first order of business the Ravens push Boldin out the door.
• Then they acquire no veteran replacement
• And instead stage an open competition among the in-house candidates for the position.

The obvious conclusion is that the Ravens were not lying, their coaching & scouting departments think someone among Doss/Reed/Deonte is a legit #2 WR, or better. They may not be right. But that seems to be what they think.

It's just like the 2010-11 offseason because the Ravens are letting an older star pass-catcher go and thereby opening the door for younger players on the roster. That year the goal was clearly to let Dickson/Pitta and Torrey Smith play (Torrey as the #3 WR). The Ravens said they wanted to get faster: they did. This year the goal seems to be to let Doss/Reed/Deonte play, as the #s 3&4 WRs (or 2&4, whatever). And to get faster, since all of those guys are faster than Boldin – one or two of them are much faster. And as srobert96 pointed out, Doss has actually shown more at this point than Dickson & Pitta had combined going into the 2011 season. He's a more proven commodity; and he's a mid/high round pick waiting in the wings to start at WR.

The Ravens obviously think they have NFL caliber WRs on the roster. It might seem questionable for them not to have hedged their bet, like they did in 2011 with the Lee Evans deal. But (1) as someone pointed out, that deal came later in camp, so we haven't gotten to that point in time yet; and (2) the Ravens may feel that they've already hedged their bet. If all 3 of Doss/Reed/Deonte are legit, then the Ravens have a built-in hedge in that they only need one of them to pan out, because they also have Jacoby and Torrey. Heck, they could use two primary WRs with Pitta and Dickson on the field (prior to Pitta's injury), and really not be depending that much on the new WR: he can be the #3 or share time with Jacoby as the #2. The Ravens really have multiple hedges on this bet: the built-in hedge if they think Doss/Reed/Deonte are all good; plus the possibilities in Streeter and LaQuan, perhaps Mellette; and the formation flexibility from having 2 other experienced starting WRs + 2 good TEs (before Pitta's injury) + a solid power-I alternative with Leach and Rice/Pearce.

(In that sense, it's even more like 2011, with the Pitta injury mirroring the Lee Evans injury in forcing the Ravens to give more looks to a young WR. Less use of 2 TEs probably means more use of 3 WRs.)


The way I see it, the disagreement in this thread about how the Ravens have handled their WR situation is between you guys (bmorecareful & RavensRule) on the one side, and the Ravens coaching & internal scouting depts on the other side. The Ravens seem to think that Doss/Reed/Deonte are so good that they HAD to make an opening for (one of) them to get on the field. And we'll be impressed when we see him/them in action. You seem to think that the Ravens are wrong. Or that they should have done more to guard against the possibility that they're wrong, or something.

The rest of us don't have a clue. We're hoping the Ravens are right (as you are too); otherwise we're just trying to read the tea leaves. It seems like the organization has been excited by those young WRs for a while, and is looking to put a speed-based group on the field with Caldwell's play-calling and Joe's newfound decisiveness. I think that the Ravens think they're going to unveil a new Greatest Show On Turf, and they can't wait to spring it as a surprise on the rest of the league. That's tantalizing to me, and to some of us in this thread. Even ~80% of that would be amazing.

But I understand your fatalism about crappy WRs from the Ravens past. I feel like this is a new era; that they've learned some lessons in drafting & development, and that it's not the same-old/same-old with them and their drafted WRs. Certainly Torrey looks better than any WR drafted by previous Ravens regimes. I think even the ones who haven't (yet) made an impact in the passing game, still seem different from prior Ravens drafted WRs: more fluid, more physical on spec teams, just better football players.

I guess we'll start to see in a few weeks. :-)

[JimZipCode]

It's been covered before by others but the idea that Ozzie "can't draft WRs" is total bunk. He had a couple of busts in Patrick Johnson and Travis Taylor, a solid, but unspectacular number 2 receiver in Clayton who put up decent numbers anytime he had an average or better qb, a potential superstar in Torrey, and a bunch of guys who were picked late and didn't pan out in our decidedly non-aggressive offensive system.

He's 1 for 3 basically, and frankly it would be 2 for 3 if ...

2 for 4, or 3 for 4. I know I'm alone in this, but dammit, Marcus Smith was a good player. He would have made a capable WR for us.

He had a whopping total of *4* targets in 2008, but he still managed to produce a little, even with zero receptions. He drew a DPI in the end zone to set up a TD for us; and he made a circus catch on a tipped ball, that was called back by a holding penalty. He was wide open on that play in the AFCC where Joe threw the 4th Q INT intended for Mason; if Joe had pump faked to Mason and lofted it to Smith, Smith would still be running. Our gunner on kick coverage, he was one of our best spec teamers.

Tore up his knee covering a kick in the preseason game against the Skins in 2009, lost the whole season. When he came back in 2010, we were going with the all-old-guy WR corps: Mason, Boldin and TJ Housh. Smith didn't get another chance – it's possible he didn't come back 100% from the knee. He was out of football the next year.

Marcus Smith is one of the guys I'm thinking of, when I say that I think the Ravens are doing a better job in recent years of drafting WRs who have a chance to be good – guys who are good football players. It didn't work out for him, but that wasn't because he sucked.

I think our WR draft stats will get better this year too. :-) But I don't know which guy it's gonna be, who steps up,

[JimZipCode]

What I expected was for the Ravens to replace Boldin with someone better, not rely on the WRs they had on hand.

That's it exactly. You think that the Ravens have nothing in their young WRs, and the Ravens think they do. One of you is right, I guess.

Anyone else have Smith's credentials coming out of college?

Doss comes close. The other two had about 2/3 the number of receptions. Did Torrey & Doss start as a freshman, and the other guys did not?

In college:
Player	Rec	 Yds	TDs	Rush	Yds	TDs	Returns	 Yds	TDs
Torrey	152	2215	19	 21	 66	 1	123	2983	 3
T Doss	154	1854	13	 42	290	 2	 66	1549	 0
Deonte	101	1446	 9	  1	 -2	 0	 -	 -	 -
D Reed	106	1615	11	  5	 19	 1	 33	 796	 0

Kind of buried in those stats, David Reed's return avg is almost a yard better than the other guys, though on fewer opportunities. His yards-per-catch is also the highest among the 4. Is he faster than Torrey, maybe?

[Bigfish]

Impressive post Jimzipcode. Personally, I have complete faith in the front office. The panic on the board a few months about was all about the defense, now that has been silenced the panic is focused on the offense.

The offense is intact except for the loss of Birk and Boldin. Losing Pitta was an unexpected injury that no one can place blame for that. Really, the entire meltdown is about Boldin. I won't repeat what your posted, but I'll point to it as a reasoned response.

What happened with the defense this offseason is the stuff of legends. Spears, Canty, Huff and Smith are FAs that were underrated and easily fit into a tight CAP. Adding Dumervil seems unfair. Call it lucky but 30 other teams could have made a play for him too. Most of the draft picks went to the defense and people are predicting this will be one of the best drafts for the organization. It's hard to believe what transpired after the dream of winning a SB. Even the national media is now praising this defense and predicting they will be better.

Ozzie has nothing to prove to anyone and is already considered the best in the business. Instead of resting on his laurels with safe moves he's building on his legacy by making bold moves no one could have predicted. He's playing chess against a league of checker players. Harbaugh is hungry to expand on his already historic run as a head coach with a staff of top notch assistants. And we have an owner who is as savvy and classy as any. These guys are definitely in it to win it. The salary cap was supposed to create parity, our FO is focused on tilting the table by being smarter than everyone else and working harder. Something special is happening. It's a good time to be a Ravens fan and yet some people are sadly incapable of enjoying it.

[Haloti92]

The Ravens seem to think that Doss/Reed/Deonte are so good that they HAD to make an opening for (one of) them to get on the field.

There is no real evidence this was the Ravens' thinking. In fact, there is clear evidence against this being their thinking and that is the fact Ozzie's 1st preference was Boldin remaining on the team for a salary cap hit of $5.5M (vs. $7.5M).

And when Boldin didn't capitulate, he was traded. And I think it is reasonable to think Pitta was the "backup plan" to pick up most of the slack from Boldin's departure (certainly in terms of 3rd down conversions).

Now that Pitta is also gone, we are very far removed from Ozzie's #1 and #2 preferences when the 2013 league year started. As for #3, we'll see if any of these other guys pan out in camp or whether another Evans-like move is made.

[Raveninwoodlawn]

2 for 4, or 3 for 4. I know I'm alone in this, but dammit, Marcus Smith was a good player. He would have made a capable WR for us.

He had a whopping total of *4* targets in 2008, but he still managed to produce a little, even with zero receptions. He drew a DPI in the end zone to set up a TD for us; and he made a circus catch on a tipped ball, that was called back by a holding penalty. He was wide open on that play in the AFCC where Joe threw the 4th Q INT intended for Mason; if Joe had pump faked to Mason and lofted it to Smith, Smith would still be running. Our gunner on kick coverage, he was one of our best spec teamers.

Tore up his knee covering a kick in the preseason game against the Skins in 2009, lost the whole season. When he came back in 2010, we were going with the all-old-guy WR corps: Mason, Boldin and TJ Housh. Smith didn't get another chance – it's possible he didn't come back 100% from the knee. He was out of football the next year.

Marcus Smith is one of the guys I'm thinking of, when I say that I think the Ravens are doing a better job in recent years of drafting WRs who have a chance to be good – guys who are good football players. It didn't work out for him, but that wasn't because he sucked.

I think our WR draft stats will get better this year too. :-) But I don't know which guy it's gonna be, who steps up,

Sorry, but lol...
Marcus Smith sucked.

Anybody can cherry pick a few good plays by almost any WR.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

[JimZipCode]

Sorry, but lol...
Marcus Smith sucked.

Anybody can cherry pick a few good plays by almost any WR.

Yeah, but those were pretty much the only plays Smith had. Check out his number of targets from 2008 again, if you can find them on PFF or somewhere. They are absurdly low.

Also he was for a while our most important spec teams player – gunner on kick coverage. He would have been worth a roster spot even without contributing as a receiver. The knee, and TJ Housh, ended his window. From a combination of factors, he never really got a full shot.

Anyway, I know I'm the only one who thinks this. I guess it's ok. But I will forever footnote Marcus Smith in any thread I find a reference. I disagree with ALL of you about this.