Quote Originally Posted by sflegend89 View Post
Enlighten us how the Ravens are going to beat 8 man boxes in the playoffs without having a legit X receiver. Teams give us the boundary, give us single coverage on the outside, cram bodies in the box and they sit on the run + middle of the field passing game where they know Lamar wants to go with the ball... and it works really damn well for them
Just to play devil's advocate, the Bills did this and it took the Ravens offense quite a while to simply have their TE or slot guy simply run a 7-yard stop route and have Lamar simply throw over the blitzing linebacker. Hell, they could have had Orlando Brown in that role and it would have led to completions.

It also took Lamar stop pressing and trying to throw the ball deep into the quarters defense, rather than simply check down to the open receiver or RB in the flat.

And lastly, the offensive line was a sieve against the Bills' packed box and blitz approach. Dobbins, in particular, was terrible picking up the blitz. (For instance, Hollywood was wide open for an easy touchdown in the redzone on the play before the pick six, and Dobbins wiffed badly, so Lamar could not make the throw). It's why we saw Hill getting snaps.

You could go as far as saying the opposite is true about situations when you need that dominate wide out. If a team is going to rush four and drop seven into coverage, that is when you want a coverage busting wide receiver who can still make a play.

When a team does the opposite, with 7 or 8 in the box, even an average receiver should be able to get open, and the critical factor is whether the offensive line can still protect and the quarterback can correctly diagnose the open man will be, and get the ball out quickly.

That said, no one, including me, is going to say they wouldn't prefer a great WR over an average WR, regardless of what the defense is doing. I won't complain if they upgrade.

But—after it took me a while to listen to what others here were saying—I've concluded that, with limited resources available to any team, a dominate interior line on offense would help them more than a dominate wide out.