BALTIMORE — I had the-umm-we’ll call it “opportunity” to check out some Diet Football from the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers Thursday night at M&T Bank Stadium.
It was neat. It looked kinda like football, it sounded almost like football, it even smelled a little like football.
Of course, we all know better. (We DO all know better, right?) That’s what makes the excitement of the team’s first offensive possession so frustrating.
I mean, just going back and READING the first possession is fun.
“Ray Rice six yard run. Joe Flacco to Dennis Pitta for 14 yards. Joe Flacco incomplete. Rice for five yards. Flacco to Jacoby Jones on a slant for 12 on 3rd and 5. Flacco to Kyle Juszczyk over the middle for 17. Bernard Pierce seven yard run. Flacco to Steve Smith underneath for nine yards. Rice off left tackle for six more. 49ers offsides. Pierce two yards for a touchdown.”
It’s like play-by-play porn. It was a 10 play, 80 yard, 4:59 box of magic goodness. For a second you kinda didn’t even care that it was the preseason. You just wanted to high five the person closest to you and say “DUDE I TOLD YOU GARY KUBIAK WAS GOING TO COME IN HERE AND FIX EVERYTHING! LET’S DO SOME JELLO SHOTS, BRAH!”
Just me? Sorry. I get carried away some times.
“It was nice”, Flacco said at halftime. “It felt good to get out here in a game-type situation and feel the nerves of a real game. I enjoyed being out there and doing it for real, and I thought we did pretty well. We moved the ball methodically, with precision and got it in the end zone.”
Nice? NICE? I’m going to need a little more enthusiasm out of you, Joe. It was a damn masterpiece! My snarky friends and I are going over to Steelers message boards tonight with the hashtag “LarryBrownMustDie” and start saying things like “You guys…I’m starting to wonder if maybe we should be worried about the Ravens. Did you see how well their first offensive series went now that they have Gary Kubiak?”
We’ll be doing it ironically, of course.
Things couldn’t possibly have gone better in the first view we had of the Gary Kubiak offense. There have been a multitude of opinions about the impact the former Houston Texans head coach could have on this team. Some have believed that Kubiak would be the perfect fit for a team that has historically been built on the running the ball. Some of wondered whether or not the Ravens have the offensive line and running backs to make his system work. Flacco’s role in a Kubiak offense has been hotly debated and we still didn’t know if the team had enough quality skill position players to make it work.
For a handful of plays, it all looked perfect. The O-Line blocked and the running backs ran (en route to over 200 yards rushing as a team for the night), Flacco was crisp in finding multiple targets, the receivers ran all sorts of routes using all parts of the field. It was as if Kubiak himself had walked up and whispered sweetly into your ear “it’s going to be okay.”
Every time we’ve wanted to believe this organization has turned a corner offensively things have seemingly blown up quickly. When we’ve thought a new quarterback, new receiver, new tackle or new coordinator would stabilize the unit we’ve instead been met with inconsistently a season, month, week or even a play later.
Ravens fans WANT to believe in that first drive desperately, and understandably so.
But alas, preseason. It doesn’t mean the offense won’t be adequate-or even quite good. It doesn’t mean the team hasn’t made great strides already in Kubiak’s system. It just means we don’t know. You simply can’t read much into ANYTHING you see in the preseason because it’s truly “diet football”. Nothing that happens is a real indication of what’s exactly going to happen when the football becomes real, but it’s not a guarantee it can’t be either.
Head coach John Harbaugh offered the best possible perspective at the end of the game.
“It was a good start for the offense” Harbaugh said after besting his younger brother Jim again. “To come back and answer and move the ball and execute like that, it’s a good first drive of the preseason.”
BUT….?
“But, you know what, don’t read too much into it. We’ve got lots of work to do…”
And against our wishes, we’ll have to do just that.
-G