Posted by Myles Simmons on September 15, 2022, 2:11 PM
EDT
USA TODAY Sports
Last year, Miami’s defense solved
Baltimore’s offense on a Thursday night in November.
The Dolphins played a lot
of cover zero, sending multiple defenders to blitz while leaving defensive
backs in one-on-one matchups with receivers. They limited the Ravens to just
4.3 yards per play while picking up five tackles for loss, four sacks, and a
total of seven quarterback hits. Quarterback Lamar Jackson finished the game
26-of-43 passing for 238 yards with a touchdown and an
interception — that was scored late in the fourth quarter — and
an interception. He rushed for 39 yards.
Plus, Baltimore was just 2-of-14 on
third down in the frustrating 22-10 loss.
The two teams meet again this week, this time in Baltimore for the
Ravens’ home opener. And Jackson
is confident his team has a better plan for what coordinator Josh Boyer’s defense
will bring to the table on Sunday.
“They just caught us off
guard, really. We hadn’t really gone over defenses doing all-up zero against us
— like, just all-up flat-out zero,” Jackson said in his Wednesday press
conference. “But I feel like we’ll have an answer for it this year. We watched
film — watched a lot of film on those guys— because we don’t want it to happen
again.
“Other teams did zero, but it was just the way they did it that
kind of affected us. But like I said, we’ll have an answer this time around if
they do the same thing.”
In his own Wednesday press conference, Ravens head coach John
Harbaugh said, “We would have been negligent if we hadn’t” worked on scheming
against cover zero, which elicited some laughter from assembled media.
“It was something we needed to get a lot better at, and we studied
it the whole offseason,” Harbaugh
said. “We’ll have a plan for it and hope it works, because these guys are
probably the best in the league at doing it right now. They do it more than
anybody, they do it better than anybody and it’s just something they’re
committed to. I have all the respect in the world for what they’re doing
defensively.”
We’ll see if the adjustments Baltimore’s made to combat Miami’s
blitzing scheme are effective on Sunday.