Baltimore Ravens’ QB Joe Flacco

The Baltimore Ravens practiced the no-huddle offense during training camp. They practiced it so much that they became pretty good at it and “no-huddle” became a new buzzword for them.

While they did an outstanding job with it in the week one game against Cincinnati Bengals, it nearly disappeared in the week two game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

After losing the game and seeing the offense fizzle, one can only question what happened. Definitely too early to hit the panic button, but what happened? Will we see the explosive offense again? Let’s hope so.

They used the no-huddle 22 times vs. Cincinnati, but only six times vs. Philly. Head coach John Harbaugh believes it was sidetracked, but it will return:

“I don’t feel like [the no-huddle] was tabled,” Harbaugh said. He went on to say, “We were still in it to some extent. Our pace was what we wanted it to be in terms of we were in more run-pass [checks], we were at the line calling plays quite a bit. We were in the huddle a little bit.”

The Ravens especially stumbled with the no-huddle after quarterback Joe Flacco was sacked and the ball was recovered by the Eagles.

They abandoned the no-huddle in the second quarter. Crowd noise made it hard to hear the audibles, especially when the score was as close as it was.

The offensive line is partially to blame for causing Flacco to take a lot of hits in this game, especially in the second half. He struggled after he was sacked and pressured and had issues moving the football down the field.

Two players are responsible for most of the hits to Flacco, rookie tackle Kelechi Osemele and right guard Ramon Harewood.

Osemele allowed one quarterback hit and four quarterback hurries while Harewood allowed two quarterback hits and two quarterback hurries.

They had a total of nine pressures in the game vs. three in week one.

It was the second NFL start for both of them and Philly is loud and a tough stadium to play in.

Despite the lackluster performance, Harbaugh believes the group played “pretty well”.

The Ravens are far from perfect and I don’t expect them to be, but I do expect that them to learn from their mistakes. I liked what I saw in the no-huddle and I hope they not only bring it back, but rock it again.  More teams are using it and the Ravens needs to use it to stay in the mix.

I hope the offense comes back to life on Sunday and the O Line does a better job at protecting Flacco.