It's almost a waste of time playing the Ravens in the preseason. You won't get any fundamental work done for your offense by working against Rex Ryan and his blitz-happy defense.
If the Birds refuse to game plan for the Ravens they're wasting their time playing them in the presason. All of those blitzing create chaos and it wastes time because many of the younger players come out of the game with nothing to build on. A.J. Feeley made a couple of good throws but they never got totally into the flow because of the blitzing and the inability of the "O" line to block for the running game.
They did get a chance to see Brent Celek work against man to man coverage and he did a good job. This clearly showed that he can help them this year. He's smart and has mastered the offense in a very short period of time. With L.J. ailing it gives the Birds some insurance, plus Andy and Marty are very good at drawing up multiple tight end packages. Multiple tight ends is a very good run blocking set, and when you add in tight ends who can run routes and catch the ball, it's very effective in short yardage and goalline.
I regret the fact that they didn't get a good look at Tony Hunt. He's the guy who can help them this year. They might be able to put together a solid and effective short yardage and goalline running set with Hunt as the ball carrier. Hunt needs to do a better job of picking up the blitz. He's got to use his hands. You can hold in the National Football League, as long as your hands are inside. He's big and strong enough to block any defensive back if he will use his hands.
They weren't able to get into a rythym because Baltimore uses all those exotic defenses and blitzes. It's not beneficial to developing players early in the pre-season. It's not a total negative to work against them because we found out that Kevin Kolb can take a pounding, not panic and keep calling the plays. This says something about his temperament but we already knew that. We're not going to benefit from Kolb this year so it's not a priority during your preseason games.
Why did they take Gocong out of the game so quickly? He did some decent things but can use addition repetiions.
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