This is the last of the pre-season games for both teams. During the regular season last year it was the upstart WFT against the established Ravens. Washington put up a plucky fight. But, the Ravens were too much to handle. Another regular season matchup would be most interesting. Despite the 12-5 record and NFC Championship Game appearance of last year, this year’s squad has a number of questions surrounding it. Not so up in “Charm City.” This Ravens team is locked-and-loaded. It says here that Baltimore has the best top-to-bottom roster in the League. The position rooms all grade out in the top few. No other team in the League can say that. It is a pity that all we’ll see is likely to be backups. Spoiler Alert: Their backups are better than ours pretty much across the board.
The Wizard Ozzie
When the Browns moved to Baltimore the Pittsburgh Steelers owned the Division. Forget all the talk about Wild Cards. The goal of every team is to win their Division. How would the Ravens beat the Black and Gold? The answer was to be just like them. Their approach was to be Pittsburgh in a mirror only wearing ugly purple. Big, mean, and relentless were the basic tenets along with a commitment to consistency. Right now the two Head Coaches in the League with the longest tenures are Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Think that’s a coincidence?
Their General Manager was Ozzie Newsome. His drafting was effective and reliable. So was his personnel management. Drama has been essentially non-existent. The Owner might as well be invisible. If a franchise wanted to find a gold-plated winning formula it’s sitting on open display in Baltimore. They have been to the Playoffs some 16 times this century. Washington has gone to 6 Playoff appearances in the same time frame. Some guy named Snyder made a bit of a mess of things.
So, if you’re looking for something to feel sorry for, don’t waste your energy on the Ravens.
But, Washington does have one thing going right now that Baltimore does not: A Starting Quarterback who has won two Playoff Games in a row. Lamar Jackson has gone 3 up and 5 down in Playoff action. Young Jayden Daniels is 2 up and 1 down. So, there is that. Oh, and that Snyder guy is gone. Adults now run the organization.
The “53”
The final pre-season games revolve around the drama of who is going to make the final 53-man roster. In reality there’s little “final” about it. After today’s noon-time exhibition the teams have until Tuesday at 4:00pm EDT to get down to the 53-player limit. Nearly all of the teams have 90-head running around their facilities. So, what does Tuesday look like? Well, it’s messy. There will be ~1180 players getting pink slips. Less than half will be picked up on Practice Squads. At a limit of 16-players per team that works out to 512 total. But, of those 16 on what used to be called the “Taxi Squad” 10 have to be Rookies or Second-year players. That leaves more than 600 athletes to wait on a phone call…that in the vast majority of cases is not coming.
This simple math exercise opens up some interesting questions. If the system loses ~600 personnel a year how does it make that up? This year’s draft had 257-players entering the system. The balance comes from Undrafted Free Agents and unemployed former players. Washington has the Wide Receiver Michael Gallup, for example on the Training Camp roster. The brutal reality is that many of those being shown the door on Tuesday are going through the dance for the second or third time. A Camp Invitation is just for a visit in most cases.
But, all 1180-some of these players have one thing in common: They have all been scouted by the other 31-teams. Every Personnel Department has a file on every one of those guys. They each have “Wish Lists” and “Emergency Lists” of floating Free Agents. When the right names pop up on the waiver wire it’s time to grab them. For every one grabbed, one is let go. Just making the team on Tuesday doesn’t preclude being cut on Wednesday. There is precious little job security in the NFL.
Will Adam Peters add any “Camp Cuts” to the current roster? We will see. The problem here is that the waiver wire runs in the same order as the Draft. By the time it gets to Washington at #29 the odds that a jewel is in plain view are slim to none.
BRob
Whatever air Terry McLaurin left in the room with his hold-in was sucked out by the drama of the pending release/trade of Brian Robinson. That was finally accomplished on Friday with the trade of BRob to San Francisco for a sixth-round pick. Despite national pundits doing some hand wringing over the move it was there to see. Ben Standig, formerly of THE ATHLETIC and now on Substack called the situation long before anyone else. He claims he had no sources. It was just “Reading the Room.” After the trade word floated that the team had made their mind up, and made Robinson available during last year’s campaign. If true, and for reasons noted below, it makes Standig’s foresight on this an act of great perception. It also points out, once again, how tight a ship Adam Peters and Dan Quinn run. There was not an utterance of any dissatisfaction with Robinson coming out of the organization. Loose Lips may sink ships, but, they no longer work at Ashburn.
Here’s the deal with why the team soured on Brian. Look at the last 7-games of last year’s regular season. One game he went for over 100-yards. That was against Tennessee where his initial rushing attempt was for 40-yards and a touchdown. Leaving that outlier in the data set he still ran for a paltry 48-yards per game with 2-touchdowns, and a 3.9-yard average on 12-carries per game. The total yardage was 338-yards. That’s not exactly Bell Cow territory. Totally unfair though it may be let’s compare that to Saquon Barkley for his last 7-games: 1018-yards for an average of 144-yards, and 7-touchdowns. He AVERAGED nearly 100-yards more per game than Robinson. Saquon is the best Running Back in the League. There are tiers of Backs below Barkley. But, anyone thinking Brian Robinson was in an upper strata hasn’t looked hard enough.
One last thing about BRob: He didn’t play on Special Teams. All the other Running Backs do play on Teams. When it comes down to keeping players Steelers’ Coach Mike Tomlin is fond of saying it helps a lot to not be a one-trick pony.
The Sixth-Rounder from San Francisco gets the 2026 Draft Pick total up to six. One each in the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th Rounds with 2 picks in the 6th. As many analysts have noted Washington sent Robinson and a 5th to San Francisco for Deebo Samuel and a 6th. Both players are on expiring contracts. Peters also send $1.25 Million of Brian’s AAV to seal the deal.
The Game
There are not a lot of camp battles left to settle. The Defensive Line may be where to focus. There are three Tackles working for one spot: Goldman, Davis, and Day. Goldman probably doesn’t make it. He’s old, and his Camp has not been much to write home about. Clelin Ferrell is supposedly squarely on the bubble. Javonte Jean-Baptiste is a bit of a mystery as he is now just returning from injury. Remember, he is an Adam Peters draft pick albeit in the 7th-Round. AP has shown that he will cut one of his own picks already this Camp. But, normally the guy you draft is the more likely to be the guy you keep. It’s impossible to know what the afterguard thinks on this group. But, they have four cuts to make. The old saw is that the more snaps a player takes in the last pre-season game the more likely he is to be cut. That doesn’t always hold serve, however.
The fact is that players are not only trying to make this team a good number of them are trying to make any team. Film laid down is scanned by the other 31-team Personnel Departments. For as lousy a brand of football as this game promises to be the effort will be there. Tuesday at 4:00 pm awaits.
Pre-Season Game #3
Saturday, August 23 at 12:00pm
Local TV: WUSA-9 Washington; WBAL 11 Baltimore
Local Radio: 100.3 FM
Author’s Note: Next weekend is Labor Day. The NFL does not start the season on Labor Day weekend due to poor TV ratings. I will put up a piece looking at the 53-man roster composition. The years of poor drafting by the prior regime have created an unusual dynamic. A comparison to the juggernaut up in Philadelphia will be (fill in the blank).
