Ever since they won their first Super Bowl 18 years ago, the Ravens have built their identity around suffocating defense.
That tradition continued in 2018 when another league-leading unit carried them back to the playoffs for the first time in four years. “Looking only at defense, the Ravens have become the NFL’s model franchise,” the analytics website Football Outsiders wrote this offseason.
But the links between the team’s current defense and the origins of that tradition are stretching thinner and thinner.
Ray Lewis and Ed Reed are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and only a few men who played with them remain on the Ravens’ roster. Haloti Ngata is retired and preparing to enter the team’s Ring of Honor next year. Terrell Suggs moved on to the Arizona Cardinals after 16 seasons in Baltimore. Even later-period leaders such as C.J. Mosley and Eric Weddle are gone.
Who will fill the void? Players and coaches have spent the offseason answering that question.
“Look, we love those guys. We loved them as players, we loved them as teammates, we loved them as friends, brothers, OK?” Ravens defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale said. “It’s the way this game is. It’s a business, and you’re seeing other people step up.”
The Ravens did not simply lose a heap of talented defensive players to free agency in March; they lost a substantial part of their identity. If they continue their defensive excellence in 2019, they’ll do so behind less familiar names such as Earl Thomas III, Marlon Humphrey, Patrick Onwuasor and Matthew Judon.
“It has sunk in,” said seventh-year defensive tackle Brandon Williams, one of the few institutions left. “ ‘Sizz’ [Suggs] is gone, Weddle is gone, C.J. is gone. There are a bunch of key pieces missing. Like always, there have been people who have stepped up; there have always been people. The next man up, that has been our philosophy. We still have great athletes. We still have people who can fill in those roles and can also do great things.”
Much of the change is deliberate. The Ravens rebuilt their defensive schemes from the ground up when Martindale took control after the 2017 season.
“We changed the way we’re built,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “I think the fans saw that on the field in the style of play, and we want to build on that. We have a lot of principles built into our defense that are very new to defenses. We want to keep growing that and continue on-track. We’re not too concerned about the naysayers or the critics that say we can’t do it. As a matter of fact, we welcome that.”
The Ravens shifted their spending priorities to make a massive investment in defensive backs.
When Mosley signed an $85 million free-agent deal with the New York Jets, the Ravens filled the hole not with a linebacker but with Thomas, who’s widely regarded as the best safety in the NFL when healthy. When first-year general manager Eric DeCosta went to work on signing the team’s younger players to extensions, he started with nickel cornerback Tavon Young. Meanwhile, DeCosta opted to pay veteran cornerback Jimmy Smith for the last year of his deal instead of cutting Smith to save $9.5 million to address needs at other positions.
With a budget of $58.1 million for their defensive backs, according to Spotrac.com, the Ravens are spending about $4 million more than any other team on their secondary and about $30 million more than they are on any other position group.
The Ravens have featured many star defensive backs over the years, from Chris McAlister to Reed to Weddle. But never has their identity tilted so clearly to the back end, where Thomas is already a strong Hall of Fame candidate and Humphrey is the team’s fastest rising defensive star.
The Ravens have the second-best cornerback trio and third-best safety duo in the NFL, according to the scouting website Pro Football Focus.
Thomas, who will pair with strong safety Tony Jefferson, might not be quite the vocal quarterback Weddle was, but he’s far better in coverage and far quicker reacting to the ball at this point in their respective careers. Pro Football Focus rates him the best safety in football heading into 2019, impressive for a 30-year-old player who made his first All-Pro team in 2012. The Seattle transplant quickly assumed a leadership position on his new team, delivering the final message in the Ravens’ defensive huddle after warmups for the preseason opener.
At cornerback, the Ravens have three starting-caliber players on the outside in Humphrey, Brandon Carr and the 31-year-old Jimmy Smith, who played sluggishly early in training camp but is theoretically the healthiest he’s been to start a season in several years.
They have talented young defensive backs, such as Anthony Averett, DeShon Elliott and 2019 fourth-round pick Iman Marshall, who might struggle to see the field because of the quality veterans stacked in front of them.
“We definitely have the potential to be the best [secondary],” Thomas said. “We have it all. We’re going to hit. We’re going to fly around. We’re very physical and fast. We have big corners on the outside.”
Meanwhile, the Ravens will rely on two undrafted free agents, Onwuasor and Chris Board, and 2018 fourth-round pick Kenny Young to patrol the middle ground previously covered by perennial Pro Bowl selections Lewis and Mosley.
They lost more talent from their pass rush than any other part of the defense. Za’Darius Smith, who signed a $66 million free-agent deal with the Green Bay Packers, was their most productive rusher in 2018, and Suggs finished right behind him along with Judon.
The Ravens believe they can maintain an effective pass rush relying on scheme more than individual talent.
It was not as if they had Khalil Mack or Von Miller last season. Suggs, playing his 16th season in Baltimore, posted just 1 ½ sacks over the second half of the schedule and did not lay a hand on the opposing quarterback in either the season finale against the Cleveland Browns nor the Ravens’ playoff loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Smith, meanwhile, was regarded as a marginal starter heading into his contract year, and the Ravens have generally proven correct when they’ve resisted breaking the bank for similar players.
Instead of relying on expensive stars, they’re betting some combination of Judon, Pernell McPhee, Tim Williams and Shane Ray from the outside and Willie Henry from the inside will be good enough to produce in Martindale’s creative and relentless blitz packages.
In his first season as the team’s defensive coordinator, the gregarious Martindale demonstrated a gift for keeping opponents off-balance. As Football Outsiders noted, the Ravens went from a bottom-10 blitzing team under previous coordinator Dean Pees to a top-10 blitzing team in 2018. Their attacks often came from odd angles or from sets that seemed designed more for coverage.
The Ravens allowed the fewest yards and second-fewest points of any defense despite having just one player, Mosley, make first- or second-team All-Pro.
In addition to their talent-rich secondary and Martindale’s creative blitzes, the Ravens will continue to draw strength from their collection of massive interior linemen, led by Williams and Michael Pierce and potentially supplemented by second-year defensive end Zach Sieler and rookie defensive tackles Daylon Mack and Gerald Willis.
Pierce will be one of the most interesting players on the defense as he works to overcome an early weight problem that caused Harbaugh to pull him off the practice field during minicamp. He lost more than 20 pounds in the run-up to training camp and will try to play his way into a life-altering free-agent deal or extension. The Ravens have thrived by rotating Pierce and Williams, who both play at more than 330 pounds, rather that wearing out either of their top run stuffers. Mack, a fifth-round pick out of Texas A&M, is cut from the same mold.
Meanwhile, coaches seem intrigued by the potential of Sieler, a 6-foot-6 strong man out of Ferris State, and Willis, an undrafted free agent out of Miami with eye-popping tools as an interior pass rusher.
Somehow, no matter what’s happening on the rest of the roster, the Ravens always restock their supply of gifted defensive linemen.
Despite the roster turnover, Humphrey said the 2019 defense will still be informed by those who’ve moved on. He’s pasted words from Weddle and Suggs on his bathroom mirror at home.
“I have some personal goals. ... Of course, Pro Bowl, but I can’t tell you all those other goals unless you’re at my house, which hopefully you won’t be,” he joked. “But I have them on my mirror — Eric Weddle, Terrell Suggs, things those guys have said in the past. They left a lasting impact on me, and every time I brush my teeth in the morning, I see those quotes.”