Charm City Calmdown: How Baltimore's Passing Offense Hit Rock Bottom

Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak has been kicked around plenty for his handling of Peyton Manning, who is having the worst statistical year of his career thus far. As shaky as they've looked at times, though, his Broncos are 6-0. It could be a lot worse, in other words. Consider, for instance, the mess that Kubiak left behind when he fled Baltimore for the head job in Denver.

MMQB's Peter King had the Ravens as a preseason Super Bowl favorite, and while I thought that was aggressive, they at least came into the year as a consensus playoff competitor if not a favorite for a spot. This is no longer the case. The Ravens are 1-5, tied for the worst record in the AFC with Jacksonville and Kansas City. They've allowed more points than every AFC team but Jacksonville, and on Sunday, they blew what seemed like a ready-made get-well game against a lost 49ers squad. Pittsburgh, even without Ben Roethlisberger, has opened up a 2.5-game chasm on the Ravens after six weeks. At this point, it seems unlikely that the Ravens will be able to cut into this lead. What happened, here?

There are simple answers for Baltimore's struggles. You don't allow 457 passing yards to Josh McCown if you've got a good defense. Obviously the loss of Terrell Suggs has not gone over well—the Ravens have already released veteran Jason Babin, and the pass rush has struggled overall. The only team Baltimore has held to a negative passing DVOA since the loss of Suggs was the Steelers, in Michael Vick's first game under center. It is, not coincidentally, Baltimore's only win.

While the defense has been the biggest culprit, the Ravens are also paying Joe Flacco franchise quarterback money. That caliber of quarterback would give them a fighting chance, regardless of how the defense performs, but Flacco hasn't been that quarterback for Baltimore this year. This is especially interesting because of how well Flacco had played under Kubiak. Flacco had career highs in DVOA and DYAR last year. This year, with new offensive coordinator Marc Trestman, Flacco has cratered by any objective metric. Here are a few:

To recap, this is what the Ravens are paying Flacco for the pleasure of creating these numbers:

This is not going to be a column suggesting that the Ravens are idiotic for building their team around Flacco. There is a reasonable debate to be had about building a team around him at his projected 2016 cap space, but a number of factors have conspired against him this season.

The Ravens let receiver Torrey Smith hit free agency, largely because of a constricted salary cap situation. This seemed questionable at the time, and has only come to look more regrettable since. Baltimore selected receiver Breshard Perriman in the first round of this year's draft mainly because they needed a replacement for Smith, but Perriman has been dealing with a sprained PCL, and hasn't even touched the field yet. This left the Ravens to depend on players like career special teamer Kamar Aiken. Here's how that's going:

Not shockingly, defensive coordinators appear to have caught on, especially in light of the fact that Baltimore doesn't have much receiving talent to keep the deep secondary honest. Starting running back Justin Forsett has been targeted 32 times through six games, fifth-most among all backs. Through Week 5, he'd had the lowest DYAR of any qualifying back. An unpromising 28 more passes have gone to the other non-tackle breaking players in the Baltimore backfield: Kyle Juszczyk, Buck Allen, and Lorenzo Taliaferro. That's a ton of short throws that have led to just about zero for the offense.That might seem like a really low target collection for wide receivers. And you'd be right, because Trestman believes in throwing the ball to his running backs early and often. So far, it hasn't added up to much.

The irony of that is that the running game itself hasn't been half-bad. The Ravens struggled a bit against the 49ers, in part because Forsett was playing through an ankle sprain. Still, coming into the game, Baltimore had a top-10 DVOA run offense. It's all small samples at this point, but it makes sense that the offense Kubiak left behind can still run the ball.

What doesn't make sense is that Trestman isn't taking advantage of that. Game scripts have shown that the Ravens haven't really been blown out of any game yet. The worst game script they faced all year was against Cincy, where they only averaged a 7.6-point deficit. It sure seems like the best way for the Ravens to compete would be to put less pressure on Flacco to throw to one good target. But this isn't how Baltimore has played offense this year.

The good news is that the Ravens pass offense probably won't continue to play this poorly. Flacco is not this bad, and Perriman may eventually come back to solve the hole at receiver. If not, we're likely to at least see one of the team's other receivers—one besides the ageless Steve Smith, who continues to produce even after a recent rib injury—step up and play better than they have so far. The bad news is that it may already be too late.

Baltimore falling short isn't just about talent—it's also a question of coaching. For all the heat Kubiak has taken for his work in Denver this year, but it's hard to look at how little Baltimore has gotten out of the talent Kubiak coached up last season and not conclude that he knows a few tricks.