Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coach hiring: A sensible move, finally – NFL Feature
It is diffidently too late for them to mend their loss of American Football Conference (AFC) championship 2012; the hiring of the Indianapolis Colts’ former coach, Jim Caldwell, to coach their offence is a sensible move from the Baltimore Ravens.
It is going to have a long term positive impact on their attack. This reflects on that Ravens have finally come to their sensible realization that their dependence on defence alone is not enough to pull off victories against all sides.
The strategy might be well effective against teams such as the Houston Texans, they proved it by their playoff game win; it is not equally fruitful when they are up against a better outfit, such as the New England Patriots. Their loss of the championship
to the Patriots points out at it.
So, it is a welcome move from them to have someone of Jim Caldwell’s calibre to train and groom their offence line, which is led by their quarterback, Joe Flacco, who too had repetitively complained of being overshadowed by Ravens strong defence in their
most wins in the 2011 National Football League (NFL) regular season.
Caldwell, who is rather unfortunate to have been sacked by Colts, has been credited to grooming Colts’ QB, Peyton Manning, who is the only player around the league to have earned the title of Most Valuable Player (MVP) four times.
So, Ravens were also lucky to have someone of his calibre become available at the right time.
This is the move that they should have made quite earlier, given the fact that they have repetitively relied on their defence and it could not help them on wins when they were needed the most.
The last NFL season was consecutive fourth year that they were through to playoff round and beyond, and they could not have gone further than that even once. It has always been the defensive strategy that scripted their loss.
They had been drawn out towards the flaws of having one side stronger and completely ignoring the other. In the recent past, their attention was drawn to the fact by commentators without anything falling on ears of their managers and coaches.
It is probably unique characteristic of Harbaugh brothers, Ravens’ coach, John Harbaugh, and San Francisco 49ers coach, Jim Harbaugh; that they have traditionally relied on defence in most of their games.
Interestingly, both of them have ended their teams losing their AFC championship games, 49ers lost their game against the New York Giants.
So, the defence has always been a hallmark of their strategies. It was probably this strategy that Ravens have ended up losing against less strong oppositions such as Seattle Seahawks and Jacksonville Jaguars in the regular season.
This also left Ravens remain exposed in their road games, contrary to their perfect home record. It was their road-game weakness that they could not go beyond the playoff round in their past three berths into the postseason phase of the league.
Again their same road-game shyness that made them lose the AFC championship game, after having managed a win over the Houston Texans in their home game.
It is in this perspective and for many reasons that Ravens’ appointment of Jim Caldwell as an offensive coach is considered to be a right mover, irrespective to the fact that it should have come much earlier.
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