Ravens OC Declan Doyle Doesn't Have A Starting Center To Implement His Offense. I'm More Certain Than Ever

The Ravens do not have a starting caliber NFL center on their roster.

The entire league knows it. Surely, they must know it, too.

And, well, after pontificating about maybe trading for one the Ravens then pretended that they could evaluate their internal options (all back-ups or potential back-ups to this point in their career during OTAs, which including basically no real trench play whatsoever. So, they weren’t fooling anyone there, either.

Longtime NFL offensive lineman and elite NFL analysts Brian Baldinger came on “The Daily Flock Show” twice and begged them to sign free agent Ethan Pocic. Longtime top general manager Marty Hurney tried to calm me down a few times, agreeing that the answer to this problem is not on the current roster, but explaining there is still time to figure it out.

But this is a unique situation with Ravens offensive coordinator Declan Doyle just turning 30 and having never installed an offense or called plays before. A center is vital to that process in general, and especially when it is a sweeping change to the entire offense and there are very few players on the roster with any prior familiarity to the scheme.

Losing Pro Bowler Tyler Linderbaum to the Ravens in free agency coud be a significant setback. Of course you would want to have an accomplished center going through this process in OTAs and training camp with Lamar Jackson.

And especially given how much the Ravens are going to be changing their cadence and tempo and pace from years past, and with the potential for false starts and pre-snap penalties quite high during this transition. Doyle is going to be borrowing liberally from longtime mentor Sean Payton, Broncos head coach, so it made sense to probe Payton about how he evaluates and values the center position in his offense, given how Baltimore’s roster currently shapes up.

Ideally, you would want someone who has been bred to be the voice of an offense with experience as the primary center with a college pedigree in not one established in the NFL. But don’t take my word for it.

What Must a Center Master In This Offense?

“I always like a good communicator there,” Payton told me on “The Daily Flock Show” this week. “We’ve had a number of different body types there, athletes. I go all the way back to our first year (as head coach in New Orleans in 2006). You know, we’re drafting Roman Harper, we back up maybe four spots and we acquire Jeff Faine (traded 34th overall pick for the Browns starting center) and we essentially got two players with that move …

“I think the communication skills, just relative to the run game and protections, I think those (Doyle will) value, and then the athleticism. Our league has told us historically speaking that a player can have some different body statures, but I think its also told us there’s a certain level of football IQ, intelligence ad communication skill that exists.

“So I think that’s important relative to the timing of the snaps and the close to the ball, the more we value that type of thinker.”

So immediately when I ask about this, a future Hall of Fame head coach defaults back to his very start and details a vital transaction he made to land a 24-year-old proven center, for a pick at the top of the second round (drafting a center that high would have been viewed as ridiculous at the time), and risking maybe losing the chance to draft Harper (who would become a vital defensive back as they went on to win a Super Bowl) in the process.

Going out on a limb here and saying he wouldn’t have been looking for anyone on the Ravens roster as the guy to help him get Drew Brees going with the Saints. The current options for the Ravens are a jack-of-all trades backup for years with the Colts (Danny Pinter) and someone who has snapped the more than twice in an NFL game once in his NFL career (Jovaughn Gwyn). A hope-and-pray journeyman, at this point in time for this nascent offense, feels like a big ask.

And while there are obvious tampering and competitive balance questions that would prevent me from asking Payton more directly about the Ravens void at center, it seemed pretty clear to me that he would be telling Doyle to be vigilant about finding an upgrade at this critical spot ASAP. And in his own way, knowing him as long as I have, I believe he was doing just that here.

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