News

For as inconsistent as the Ravens offense has been this year, it sits at No. 10 in the NFL in average yards per game at the midway point of the season.

But one aspect of the offense that hasn’t been as stout as expected has been the running game, which appeared to be the team’s bread and butter heading into the year behind a returning starting offensive line and Pro Bowl running back Justin Forsett.

Thus, Offensive Coordinator Marc Trestman will spend his bye week digging into how to get the rushing attack going in the second half of the year.

He’ll look at what the Ravens are doing when running the football, as well as what every armchair play-caller likes to debate: the run-pass ratio.

“We’re going to take a good, hard look at everything,” Trestman said Tuesday.

“We’re certainly not where we [want to be]. There was a point about four weeks ago when we thought we were moving in the right direction. We had a couple of very, very productive games running the football, and then it diminished.”

The Ravens are tied for 21^st in the league with an average of 99.3 rushing yards per game. Baltimore is 19^th in rushing yards per attempt at 4.0.

Those are both drop-offs from last year when the Ravens averaged 4.5 yards per carry (No. 7) and 126.2 yards per game (No. 8).

Baltimore has had to deal with some injuries along the offensive line. Left tackle Eugene Monroe has missed essentially five games, including Week 1 when he went down on the opening series. Center Jeremy Zuttah left in the second half of Sunday’s game against San Diego and left guard Kelechi Osemele has also been banged up.

But the Ravens dealt with injuries on the offensive line last year, too. Monroe started just 11 regular-season games and right tackle Rick Wagner went down for the year in Week 15. 

Trestman came to Baltimore with a reputation – albeit not an entirely fair one – of leaning more heavily on the pass than the run. He said he simply adapted to the personnel he had at each place he coached. Head Coach John Harbaugh affirmed that Baltimore would stay true to its running roots.

So far this season, the Ravens rank in the middle of the NFL pack (No. 16) in rushing attempts with 199. Baltimore was 11^th last year, so it’s not far off.

Baltimore is sixth in the league in passing attempts this season (325), whereas they were 17^th last year.

There are a lot of factors that come into play with passing and rushing stats. Week-by-week circumstances, from opponents’ strengths to game score, can affect that ratio. The 2-6 Ravens have been behind in many games so far in the fourth quarter, forcing more passes, for example.

Trestman said he’s not too worried about the run-pass ratio, although it is something he’ll look at.

“That will be one of our projects this week is to take a look at what we’re doing running the football, time on task in terms of the amount of runs we’re using,” he said. “It’s not how many times we run, but it’s the production we have when we’re running the football, and we want to do better.”

Trestman’s run-pass ratio raised some eyebrows last week against San Diego. The Chargers entered with the NFL’s  second-worst run defense. Yet Baltimore threw the ball 37 times compared to 26 rushing attempts.

Trestman said he felt like the Ravens had enough production at the end of the game to “at least mix the run and the pass and take some of the pass rush out of the game.” Early production leads to more runs later in the game.

The other issue against San Diego is that the Chargers stacked the box to stop the run. They committed extra players to defending the run versus pass with a lot of run-blitzes early on and bump-and-run coverage on the outside.

“Most importantly, we have to convert on third down, and that’s a big part of what we did a little better last week,” Trestman said. “We have to do a little bit better on third-and-the shorter distances to be able to get our percentages up much higher and get to roll over plays. That’s where you can run the ball and mix the run and the pass.”

With Steve Smith Sr. (Achilles) out for the rest of the season, opponents may devote even more resources to stopping the Ravens’ rushing attack, forcing them into third-and-long situations with a banged-up wide receiver corps.

That’s what Forsett, who has 562 rushing yards and two touchdowns, is expecting in the second half.

“It definitely helps when you’ve got a guy out there like Steve Smith that can open up the box a little bit,” Forsett said.

“I’m sure they will [stack the box]. But I don’t think that will deter us from trying to run the football. It’s a mindset and we can still wear defenses out. We’ve just got to stick with it, be consistent and I think we’ll still see big success for us in the running game.”