BAL @ NE 1:00pm ET
These are not your older brother's Baltimore Ravens. Not only have they lost the majority of their Super Bowl-winning defense, they've lost a lot of the players from the second coming of that defense, the 2004-6 unit that included Adalius Thomas and Bart Scott. Thomas is on the other side of the field today; Scott is on the Jets; their defensive coordinator's gone the same way. They're no longer a defense-first club.
They're also not the B
altimore Ravens of the beginning of the season. Let's see who were listed as inactive last week: Tavares Gooden, Justin Harper, Marcus Paschal, Keith Fitzhugh, Kelly Talavou and John Beck. Ed Reed was a gametime decision, and Mason was out. Of course, this week is more nebulous. Heap, Mason, and Flacco are all "probable" but are expected to play; it's hard to say if Jarret Johnson is in their category or in Gooden's. Look, while I'm not quivering in fear when I hear the Steelers are going to have to face the Ravens with John Beck active, it's still substantial to be short a backup quarterback, and it's certainly something to be short a pair of defensive backs and potentially several safeties.
Looking at all this, it's hard to say whether or not the Ravens are more wracked by injuries than the Patriots, who, curse them, have guaranteed that there will never be an interesting week seventeen game ever again. Clubs in wildcard contention will grab their MCLs in fear and throw their practice squads at each other. Welker is on IR. Brady has a broken finger and apparently some rib trouble, but will play. Center Dan Connolly is questionable. Nick Kaczur is probable, and Randy Moss was spotted looking hobbled at Friday's practice. Having gotten a week's rest, I can't imagine Wilfork and Warren not playing. But playing hobbled, as Moss and Brady will be doing, is still something: expect a couple more errant throws, a couple more bobbles, and so forth.
Ray Rice has had a fantastic season, and I think the Ravens have realized that he's a more reliable weapon than the downfield passing offense they were prepared to rely on at the beginning of the season. I think that that transformation will lead to a more effective attack against the Patriots; their earlier game was decided by six points and saw twenty Flacco incompletions and only eleven Ray Rice rushes. That won't happen again, and the Ravens will be able to move the ball with some consistency.
Football Outsiders observes that with Welker out of the game, the Ravens will be able to send Chris Carr on corner blitzes more frequently (since they won't be double-covering Edelman). I'm also skeptical of Sammy Morris's ability to run the ball effectively against the Ravens (the first game saw three running backs have five, six, and seven rushes and twenty-two, twenty-one, and twenty-five yards: none particularly effective, and Morris would have been five for nine if not for a lucky missed tackle). Without a running game, Brady is going to have to be flawless, since there's much less margin for error.
When Brady had no one to throw to in 2006, he made Jabar Gaffney and company far better than they'd have been otherwise, but he didn't look like a he was a miracle worker. When he had Moss and Welker and Stallworth the next year, he looked untouchable (barring an exceptional defensive line, like the Giants). He's still not the same as he was in 2007; his mobility is still recovering from his knee injury. But most notable is his confidence, which isn't at all the same, and will take a further hit when he has to maintain an almost impossible level of consistency without his safety valve, Welker. The Patriots won't sustain any long drives today: they'll score, certainly, but in quick five or six play drives.
I'll take Baltimore in a close one; let's say 27-21.
In my elaborate fantasyland (some might say I have a rich inner life), the outcome of this game could well make Arizona more likely to select Tim Tebow. After all, Arizona has the most religious quarterback in the league, an old, repeatedly concussed quarterback, and a quarterback with a really fast release: quite the three-for-one deal, that Kurt Warner. Assuming that Matt Leinart really isn't the quarterback of the future (and while it's true that some of his poor performances have come off the bench, where second-string quarterbacks are always weaker due to a lack of reps with the first team the previous week, several have come as a starter), the Cardinals could really use Tebow.
They have no running game to speak of (in particular, no short game); they have no tight end to speak of (they brought in Anthony Becht from St. Louis this year, and subsequently threw to him seven times this year, for good reason; his backup, Stephen Spach, has played more recently and has another four catches); they have no quarterback if Kurt ever takes too hard a hit. Why not draft Tebow as an H-back today and a quarterback tomorrow, once Kurt Warner of the quick release works with him a bit? I know, a man can dream.
In any event, the whole "Kurt Warner is totally valuable to the Cardinals" point plays into the biggest argument for discounting the result of the regular season game between these teams: Warner threw six passes, and former Steelers third stringer Brian St. Pierre threw the only touchdown as Leinart went 13/21 for ninety-six yards and two picks. Green Bay stacked the run, they managed forty-eight yards on fourteen attempts (cut the two long runs, and they have twenty on twelve), and the result is a Green Bay landslide.
I would suggest that Leinart's performance is an indication of the strength of the Green Bay defense rather than Leinart's inadequacy, but that Green Bay unit has been struggling of late. In a game against Baltimore, it committed more pass interference than it made tough plays. In a game against Pittsburgh, it surrendered 503 yards through the air (none of them in garbage time).
The story of last year's playoffs for Arizona is how they got a pass defense to complement its already relatively stout run defense, and then went on a tear. Through the regular season, both its units have been generically below average (in yards, twenty-third against the pass, seventeenth against the run; advanced stats roughly agree). Similar improvement, in order to compete with playoff teams, is needed and probably won't be forthcoming.
The story of this year's playoffs may well be how Anquan Boldin being likely unable to play against the Packers left Kurt Warner without a possession receiver to rely on (no tight end, again; teaching Steve Breaston how to run a crossing route, extend for the ball, and then get plowed by Atari Bigby is more reminiscent of Three Men and a Baby than Mulan). That could well be his doom; Beanie Wells is a pretty efficient receiver out of the backfield, but that's when there's Boldin as a distraction: Warner's checkdowns will become predictable quickly, and flat routes are easy to jump. What happened in his six-turnover game against Carolina? The story of the day was this: Fitz motions across the formation to the strong side of an offset-I, the ball is snapped, Warner sees nothing and checks down to Wells running a flat route, Julius Peppers returns an interception for a score.
Arizona will certainly score more than it did in week seventeen, with Warner able to do more with his wide receiver corps minus Boldin than Leinart can do with the whole package. But there'll be more turnovers, too: Green Bay has been waiting for this.
I'm much more bullish on Rodgers than I am on Ryan Grant at this point. Green Bay will be able to move the ball through the air pretty easily, while the ground game will be somewhat more of a struggle for them. It won't be a particularly interesting struggle, though, since if the ground game dries up, they can abandon it, or use it sparingly, without fear. If the Arizona corners have strengths, it's playing man to man against the deep ball. If there's a team in the league content to throw at most the occasional deep ball (probably to Greg Jennings) and mostly throw short timing routes to Donald Driver, it's Green Bay. (Given his recent play, Matt Hasselbeck's only qualm about throwing to Donald Driver is that he's not A.J. Hawk.)
I'll pick Green Bay by a decent margin: let's say 31-21.
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