Ravens Young Staff Wants Every Step Scripted For Lamar Jackson, But Certain Balances Must Be Struck

The Ravens’ new offensive staff is not expecting this to be an easy summer on their side of the ball.

They aren’t slowing down their install of a brand-new offense or trying to be as incremental and judicious as possible. They are challenging veterans and newcomers alike to embrace it and absorb it and dedicate themselves to mastering it over time. With so many first-time pros on this offensive roster, and with a lot of youth in the totality of the offensive line (and almost no one in this group with prior experience in a Declan Doyle/Sean Payton/Ben Johnson offense) that could naturally make the adjustment for the quarterbacks even trickier.

With the preseason debut this weekend, there has been no indication to this point that Doyle is flinching or stuttering in his approach to throwing as much as possible at this group to sort out who can do what. And ultimately the success of this offense will come down in large part to how two-time MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson processes and facilitates its core tenants and concepts, and how well he can work with a first-time staff.

This staff has been uniform throughout the spring and summer in their belief that the newness is bringing out the best in Jackson. Everything is different from how he takes his first step to where he is positioned (far more often under center) to the verbiage to the cadence and pace. It’s anything but stale or rote, and with the regular season now less than a month away, Doyle’s staff remains bullish on the gains being made, though essentially it's all still within a vacuum.

"I think it stresses you,” quarterbacks coach Israel Woolfork said of the impact on Jackson of learning a new offense. “I think as a competitor, he loves a challenge. So new verbiage. We changed a little bit of his footwork, motions, cadence — all different type of things were all new to him.

“You really have to do a good job studying. I thought this offseason the best thing he did — outside the building - really taking time to dive into this playbook, ask questions, and just continue to get better and understand what we are trying to accomplish as an offense."

One could certainly argue that giving Jackson a quarter of football or a half of football in the preseason would make sense. With everything around him a total reboot and so many new pieces on the offense and with Doyle having never even called a play before and not even sure of where he will station himself on gameday. Joe Burrow, with extreme familiarity around him in Cincinnati, played quite a bit Thursday night in their exhibition debut and Patrick Mahomes routinely plays a decent amount in the preseason.

We strongly suspect that many of the uber-conservative trends of the Harbaugh brothers, rookie head coach Jesse Minter’s primary coaching mentors, have rubbed off on him, and sitting so many veterans for the entirety of the preseason is another indication of such. The Ravens are essentially in a regular-season practice schedule already now – the number of padded practices will be scant – and they need to maximize the opportunities they have to hash things out as a first-string offense.

Working On The Tiny Details

Being under center more, and with this staff trying to emphasize what’s scripted in the playcall in a new offense rather than the improvisational genius that can take over when things break down, footwork is everything. If the new offensive line is going to be in sync with the quarterback and the offense is going to flow and the pre-snap penalties are not going to mount, then each step must be linked and the depth of the pocket precise.

It starts with his first step.

"He was just a right-foot-up quarterback,” Woolfork explained. “We switched to left. We take a time and step in our offense — it just helps with the timing of the different progressions and different route styles."

The drop-back passing game, more so in some ways than the shotgun based offenses with option principles Jackson was operating out of most of his career, requires that fifth and seventh step to be clinical, not just for his blockers but for the receivers to hit the exact marks in their routes. Deeper drops allow pass rusher more time to get home, too, and Jackson’s pressure rate has been higher than anyone would like – hence selected a guard 14th overall – and his sack rate soared last year, but not all of that is on the linemen.

“Looking at it, we tried to get on the same page with the O-line,” Woolfork said. “We are setting a depth in the pocket where we want him to be, so that allows the tackles to work on their drops and their sets to make sure they know where the launch point is.

“And that should avoid some things on the edges and up-and-unders because they know where 'L' is going to be in the pocket no matter what. I think also just knowing the offense — and when things do get dirty, where do I have my check-downs? Or, where can I work to get the ball out of my hand to avoid negative plays like that."

This staff is also going to have to learn how much to adheres to pre-determined plays and what they demand based on game plans, and how constrictively they might try to coach Jackson. Doyle already tipped his hand that he wants to script as much as possible (natural given how new this is), but he’s best quickly understands when to, frankly, get out of the way.

This quarterback brings unique attributes and in-the-moment problem-solving genius with his arm slots and touch and legs, that no play caller can account for. He just might know better, quite a bit.

Doyle’s scheme is still unwrapped, really – hermitically sealed and in a pristine state. It’s natural for young coaches to view it, unwittingly or not, as perfect in a way. Doyle’s never seen his own horrible first-down call put them woefully behind the sticks in a real game setting or have a sunken feeling like the opposing defensive coordinator is listening to their headset. It’s all theory and concept, undented by an opposing team (sorry, 11-on-11 at practice doesn’t count).

Learning When To Change

No matter how humble a novice playcaller/coordinator, that dynamic can be tricky to overcome. Veteran OCs Todd Monken and Greg Roman found out pretty quickly sometimes it’s best to let Jackson take over.

It will be fascinating to see how adherent this group is to their designs and plans. This is the first time in his career Jackson is infinitely more experienced than the guy he directly answers to and whose voice is in his headset, and it stands to reason he might quite often have better understanding of what needs to happen on the field than they do.

"I feel like he is … the best second-play quarterback in the NFL,” Woolfork said. “The biggest focus that I had coming into this job was, how do I get him better at the first play? I do not want to change who you are when things break down, but within the lines of what we are asking you to do, let us get through one, two, three and the progression — if it is for that.

“If he feels himself hitch twice, now it is time to go be special and do the things that you do. But, let us make sure we live within the lines of what we are asking him to do from a play-to-play standpoint. But, I do not want to change who he is and what he can do when things break down and his ability to be explosive after the first play breaks down."

A careful balance must be struck, and struck quickly, another area where preseason games might perhaps have been helpful.

Subsctibe To "The Daily Flock Show" On YouTube For The Thinking Fans Ravens Coverage:

Add us as a preferred source on Google