Quote Originally Posted by leachisabeast View Post
Ryan Grant also only had just over 100 receiving yards in 2009, and has never really been a great receiving back. That's another thing to Rice's game, he is like an extra weapon in the passing game for Flacco. Lets just say you lose Rice to injury, and you sign Ryan Grant and run a dual threat with Pierce, you basically have no receiving RB's in this case.
I don't think anyone here is going to argue against your point that Rice is an integral piece to the offense. I've done the legwork myself in other threads and on my blog I even wrote up a piece on what the actual value of Rice is compared to - arguably the best RB of last year - Arian Foster.

Rice accounted for something like 34% of the total offense (rushing & passing) over the course of the past 2 seasons. You can't replace that kind of contribution.

What you can do is mask it. No, Ryan Grant isn't the impact player that Rice is regarding the passing game, but if you can get 800 yards on the ground out of Grant, & 500 out of Pierce and between the two they have 500-600 yards receiving on the season combined, then you can see how you can quickly account for the loss of Rice's production by masking it with 2 players.

I want Rice as a Raven for the rest of his career. I do. I've been following the guy since he was at Rutgers. He's a fantastic player, but I will continue to stand on my point that if the Ravens are going to get to the SB and have a shot at winning it is going to come on the arm of Flacco. Not the legs of Rice.