Clearly, the Ravens are too polite to say publicly what was obvious during their resounding season-opening victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. The controversial decision to let go of popular and productive veterans Todd Heap and Derrick Mason was — for lack of a kinder, gentler term — addition by subtraction.
The theory that Joe Flacco needed to be untethered from his two favorite receivers to fully develop as an elite NFL quarterback was tested against the most fearsome defense in football, which is why it seems safe to say after only one game that general manager Ozzie Newsome's toughest decision of the offseason might have been one of the best decisions of his front office career.
Don't expect him to say that. Don't expect Flacco or coach John Harbaugh or offensive coordinator Cam Cameron to say it either. They will show the proper respect to a couple of terrific players who made tremendous contributions to the Ravens. But it was becoming obvious last season that Flacco needed to broaden his horizons, and he couldn't do that and keep his go-to guys happy at the same time.
The Ravens would rather focus on the here and now, so you're going to continue to hear a lot of quotes like this one from Cameron to explain why Flacco tried to spread the ball around to just about everyone but the equipment guy during the course of Sunday's brilliant performance by the new-look offense.
"We've got great guys … guys that want to play together," Cameron said. "It's a great group, a very unselfish group. Everybody knows that if they do their job, Joe will make the decisions he needs to make, whether it be in our alert game with runs to passes and passes to runs [or] throwing the ball to the first progression or the fifth progression.
"I think it's just a trust factor that everybody is working collectively. I think you're going to see this year, through the course of this year, everybody making major contributions. It won't be as steered to two or three or four guys. You're going to see five, six, seven guys involved, and Joe is going to drive that. I think that's going to be the most important thing for us."
That might be true, but isn't that an unspoken confirmation that last year's offense was far less diverse because of the deference Flacco paid to some of the bigger personalities in the huddle?
"No, not at all. … I don't think anybody around here is saying that," Cameron said. "This is a new year, a new group. Joe is a year older. Ray Rice is a year older. Our young players are a year older. I don't think anybody that's not here is in any way, shape or form about what's happening right now. It's more about who is here where this thing is being driven. I mean that sincerely."
Nobody can blame Cameron or anybody else at the Castle for wanting to rip the rearview mirrors off the Ravens bandwagon. This is a new year, and the focus this week is squarely on engineering the same kind of offensive onslaught on the road against the Tennessee Titans.
"There is no correlation between last year and this year," Cameron said. "This is a new team, a lot of new faces, a lot of familiar faces that have grown … that are guys who have gotten better. I think that's the thing that makes this team a potentially great team. It's a unique year, and we're all looking at this year."
Fair enough, but didn't Shakespeare have something to say about how much is revealed when you protest too much?
The Ravens might not see any value in comparing this year's offense with those of the recent past, but I don't think anybody is going to complain about the kind of comparisons that are being made, even if it is very early in a long season.
Perhaps the best compliment the Ravens got after their dynamic opener came from former coach and current Fox analyst Brian Billick, who led the Ravens to their Super Bowl victory a decade ago.
"The way the Ravens beat down the Steelers, given the normally close nature of these games, cannot be overstated," Billick wrote in his Week 1 analysis. "I'm on record as saying this might be the best Ravens team ever, and I still might have underestimated them."
Listen to Peter Schmuck when he hosts "The Week in Review" Fridays on WBAL (1090 AM) and wbal com.