Jesse Minter Needs To Rethink His Defensive Fronts, Now

The Ravens may need to start recalibrating their approach to the line of scrimmage on defense.

Especially, the next three weeks. Starting Sunday against Tennessee.

This needs to be a get right spot for this defense before bigger challenges await with Joe Burrow and the Bengals and Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars. If Jesse Minter’s defense is still hobbling around late in games and lacking bite, and if their issues all of sudden stopping the run continue into the middle of the season, we could have real problems on our hands.

But already, not even a full month into the season, rookie head coach Jesse Minter may have hit an existential crisis. His overriding defensive principle – using the least manpower as possible at the line of scrimmage to neutralize the run while deploying the most defensive backs as possible to take away deep balls – isn’t working nearly as well as it did with the Chargers. Small sample size to be sure, and perhaps getting Nnamdi Madubuike back into heavy rotation will change things dramatically, but Minter also might need to rethink some of his aspirational goals.

Baltimore’s top corner, at least in terms of compensation, Marlon Humphrey, is struggling, and already hybrid defender Kyle Hamilton is starting to sneak back 10 or 15 or 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage with more frequency to help free safety Malaki Starks, who has not had the immediate transformation many had expected. The average NFL team has faced 13 dropbacks by a quarterback against dime coverage; the Ravens have faced 61, most in the NFL, and it hasn’t exactly been stellar for the back end and it’s definitely creating issues up front.

Time To Get Heavy

The Titans do not even really try to push the ball downfield, young quarterback Cam Ward is averaging just about the lowest yards per attempt in the NFL (5.7 yards per pass!) and they don’t have a real deep game. But they are slamming the ball on the ground with under center runs by Tony Pollard the last two weeks at 5.4/carry – yeah, same as their passing game! – and that’s working out well for them and the Ravens are 30th in Run Defense Expected Points Added against under center runs, and 26th in success rate.

Yeah, that could be a problem.

Minter is playing nickel or dime defense 90% of the time, and only the Rams are playing a higher percentage of dime coverage (six defensive backs), and a Cowboys team that couldn’t run on anyone carved up Baltimore for 25 carries and 139 yards at 5.6/carry with a touchdown when they had at least five defensive backs on the field. Change could be coming as we discussed with former NFL defensive back and personnel exec Bucky Brooks on “The Daily Flock” this week.

“We're seeing more under center play, more old school tactics,” Brooks pointed out. “And so you now have a defense that is not quite built for what the league is doing as people are going back to running the football and doing three yards in a cloud of dust. And so the great thing about the league, I believe every team changes every quarter after three or four games.

“You’ve got to kind of switch up what you're doing because the league will quickly catch up to what you're doing. You’ve got to stay one step ahead of the curve. And so the great coaches, the great teams, they have the ability to adapt and adjust to what they have or what they're facing. And so how soon will it be before we see Jesse Minter make some changes and tweaks to best position themselves to be able to win games?”

Again, it’s early, and QBs Tyler Shough and Dak Prescott do like to chuck the ball all over the place, but Minter has already ramped up his blitz rate by about 50% from what he did with the Chargers in order to get pressure, and that’s really the only time they are getting pressure and top edge rusher, $30M-man Trey Hendrickson, is out with a finger injury.

Baltimore’s pass defense is just 16th in the NFL in opposer passer rating allowed, so it’s not like this is working incredibly well in the secondary. And the overall run defense looks pretty putrid, especially considering the Colts trailed big in Week 1 and didn’t really run and New Orleans can’t run and Dallas wasn’t running on anyone for years before Sunday.

The Ravens have an overall Rush D EPA of -2.12 (30th) and have already allowed five rushing touchdowns and are 25th in success rate (56.5%). Things better improve quickly, with Bijan Robinson, maybe the best back in the NFL, looming in Week 5. Defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver tried to frame the issue as one of minutia this week, but I’d be quite surprised if the Ravens don’t start playing more 3-4 and even 4-3 fronts with Madubuike back.

“I thought we started slowly,” Weaver said. “A couple of times, I thought our guys had more of a pass mentality up front, and they were able to get some push off the ball. One of the things particularly, and again, this is not an excuse, we do not live in that world. But when you have a couple of walkthrough practices, particularly up front, you have to make sure, early — really in warm-ups — that you're setting your pads and you're playing with low pad level.

“It's like human nature to play a little bit higher, and I thought early in that game in particular they came out and they were lower than us, and they were knocking us off the ball, which can't happen. We adjusted — there was about a four- or five-series stretch that we played better. We're just chasing consistency throughout, making sure we start fast, and we finish stronger.”

Subscribe To "The Daily Flock" For Urgent Ravens Conversations And Content

Add us as a preferred source on Google