How the Baltimore Ravens turned around their defense and their season 

The 2024 Baltimore Ravens’ pass defense has turned from extreme liability to obvious strength. Here’s how it happened. 

Throughout the history of the Baltimore Ravens franchise – which goes back to 1996 – the team has generally been known for strong defenses above all. The Ravens have ranked first in Defensive DVOA in six different seasons – 1999, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2023. That doesn’t even include the 2000 Ravens, who may have put the greatest defense of all time on the field. That team ranked second to the Tennessee Titans.

That the 2023 Ravens topped the Defensive DVOA charts is more instructive for the purposes of this article. Defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, now the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach, did a brilliant job of getting career years out of more than half his starters. Everyone from Jadevon Clowney to Justin (now Nnamdi) Madubuike to Geno Stone to linebacker Patrick Queen all had the seasons of their lives, and Baltimore nearly got a Super Bowl defense out of it.

The transition from Macdonald to Zach Orr, the Ravens’ former linebacker, defensive assistant, and inside/outside linebackers coach, was not pretty at first – especially in the pass defense department.

In 2023, including the postseason, the Ravens allowed 433 catches on 706 attempts (61.3%) for 4,171 yards (5.9 yards per attempt), 19 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions. Only the New York Jets (believe it or not) allowed a lower completion percentage and passer rating, and the Ravens allowed the NFL’s fewest touchdown passes when you include the playoffs. Only the Cleveland Browns (again, believe it or not) allowed a lower Passing EPA per Play than Baltimore’s -0.16.

Orr said in his introductory press conference that he would keep most of Macdonald’s defensive principles, but the early results were not good at all. From Week 1 through Week 10 of the 2024 season, the Ravens allowed a league-high 261 completions in a league-high 398 passing attempts (62.6%) for a league-high 3,160 yards (7.9 yards per attempt), a league-high 22 touchdowns, just six interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 102.0.Baltimore’s Passing EPA per Play allowed of 0.08 was the NFL’s fourth-worst.

And then, in Week 11, everything changed. Radically. Since then, Baltimore has allowed 117 completions on 193 attempts for 1,142 yards, four touchdowns, four interceptions, and a league-low opponent passer rating of 75.5. Moreover, the Ravens’ Passing EPA per Play allowed of -0.21 isn’t just the league’s lowest – it’s the league’s lowest by a comical margin. The Denver Broncos rank second in that category at -0.10.

So… what happened here? How did the Ravens transform their defense from an extreme liability to a major asset literally overnight?

The Safety Dance has been brilliant for Ravens defense

Starting in Week 11, when the Ravens played the Pittsburgh Steelers in Pittsburgh, Orr and his staff made a crucial decision – they would move Kyle Hamilton from his usual “demon everywhere on the field” positions to more of a full-time free safety role.

As Hamilton explained to me in late November, the plan was to clarify roles from front to back. And who better to start with than a 6-foot-4, 220-pound athletic marvel with the closing speed of a guided missile, and near-perfect coverage instincts?

“The coaches, they just felt like for our defense, it would be best for me to kind of chill on a lot of the nickel stuff and dime stuff, and go back to playing safety,” Hamilton said. “Just kind of be that backstop for our defense. We were struggling against the pass, and I think we were kind of experimenting — trying new stuff out.

“I’m happy playing that position though, whatever the team needs me to do. If that’s going back and playing deep safety the whole game, then I can do that. And I’m excited to do so…

“I feel like our defense is kind of hitting a stride right now.”

There’s little doubt about that.

The other “safety dance” the Ravens made – and this really started in Week 8 – was to move Ar’Darius Washington to the other deep safety spot far more often. Washington, the 5-foot-8, 177-pound undrafted free agent, has been with the Ravens since 2021, and he’s never had nearly as many snaps as he has enjoyed this season – 671, as opposed to 157 in his first three NFL seasons. He missed most of the 2023 season with a chest injury, but the Ravens re-signed him to a one-year, $985,000 contract that has become one of the bigger bargains in Baltimore. Washington plays like a much larger human than he is – it’s one reason he made Secret Superstars this week – and his knack for making big plays when they’re most needed hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“He stabilizes that unit [and] stabilizes the defense in the back end,” Orr said in mid-December of Hamilton. “Those guys look to him for answers, and he’s a real smart player, so he gets everybody lined up quickly. And then, I just think the emergence of Ar’Darius Washington. He was our starting nickel last year. He was having a heck of a start to the season, then he had the unfortunate injury, and he just picked up where he left off throughout camp. I think when we finally gave him his opportunity, he went out there and made the most of it, and I think he’s really become a real good NFL starting-caliber safety. I think the combination of those two things – those two guys work well together. They both can [play] man coverage, play zone [coverage] and tackle really well, so I think the combination of that is really what you’ve seen.”

The cornerback group is a different animal entirely

In those first 10 weeks of the season, Baltimore’s cornerbacks gave up 12 touchdowns to four interceptions, and Marlon Humphrey had all four. Then, from Week 11, the Ravens’ cornerbacks have allowed no touchdowns, and Humphrey picked up two more picks. Humphrey is now tied with Byron Murphy Jr. of the Minnesota Vikings for the NFL’s most interceptions with six, and he’s allowed 49 catches on 79 targets for 479 yards, 190 yards after the catch, three touchdowns, those six picks, nine pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 61.0. Humphrey can be a problem for enemy quarterbacks both outside and in the slot, and overall, he’s proven to be one of the most valuable players at his position this season.

Following Baltimore’s 31-2 Christmas Day beatdown of the Houston Texans, Humphrey spoke about the factors behind the defensive turnaround overall.

“I think when I have conversations with some of the guys one-on-one, two-on-two, there were some tough conversations. We were just like, we still believed, but it did seem far away, because it just seemed like every single guy was having a mishap at just the wrong time. Like I said earlier in the season, it seemed like luck just was not on our side. I think when you watch defenses across the league, there are guys running open all the time and different things, but it seemed like whenever someone else had the inside leverage, and they ended up outside leverage, the ball went there. It seemed like every time we were out of position, not called right, we were getting hit on.

“I think football is a lot of skill, but sometimes it just straight up comes down to luck. The luck has been on our side, and we’ve also just been, like I said, doing our job. So, the good thing is earlier in the season, we kept being like, ‘What are we doing wrong? What are we doing wrong?’ And it was simple. We just needed to get all 11 guys doing their job, and so the coaching hasn’t necessarily changed. A couple pieces have shifted, and that’s kind of it there. It’s just getting 11 guys to do their job, and when we do that, we’re a really tough defense. When we’re not, we look average, and that’s not the standard. But today, I thought the standard was there.”

Another defensive back who had a new role in this defense starting in Week 11 was veteran Tre’Davious White. That was White’s first week on the field with Baltimore after the November 5 trade that sent him to the Ravens from the Los Angeles Rams. White had been dealing with an Achilles injury and some healthy scratches in L.A., and he was the one who asked permission to seek a new home. In four games with the Rams this season, White – who once upon a time was one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks – allowed nine catches on 13 targets for 151 yards, 25 yards after the catch, four touchdowns, no interceptions, two pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 147.8. In his six games with the Ravens, White has allowed seven catches on 13 targets for 56 yards, 23 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, no interceptions, two pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 64.9.

Add in 2024 first-round pick Nate Wiggins and veteran Brandon Stephens, both of whom have played better in the second half of the season, and you have a cornerback group that can hang with just about any in the league.

One meeting in November changed everything

The absolute nadir of Baltimore’s 2024 defense happened in Week 10 against the Cincinnati Bengals in a 35-34 loss. Joe Burrow ripped that pass defense to shreds, completing 34 of 56 passes for 428 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 108.3. Burrow had touchdown passes of 67 and 70 yards, and overall, he had four explosive completions. He had that defense on a string.

That was a Thursday night game. On the next Tuesday, as the Ravens prepared for the Steelers the next Sunday, Orr called an open forum meeting in which coaches and players talked about what had gone wrong, and how it could be fixed.

“We had to do some deep soul-searching,” Orr said of that meeting in December. “And it was a long meeting. I think it was good — from a player and coach standpoint — that we expressed what we wanted to get done; they expressed how they felt, and we were able to come together and figure out solutions, because that’s all we’re about. Everything that we do is trying to come to that solution, [and] I definitely think that meeting had a part in it.”

From then on, meetings became more about the group than about individual positions.

“The meetings were kind of changed in a way that we’re going through every single detail,” defensive lineman Brent Urban said. “It’s not like we’re passing things off to individual position meetings. We’re all gonna focus on what each guy needs to do. And that’s kind of brought about a bigger amount of accountability, too, just in terms of, we’re all there hearing what each other’s job is supposed to be. Because a lot of times it’s set up, we’re all in our individual position groups and that type of thing. [Orr] has done a good job of bringing us all together. I think that’s made things more cohesive.”

Orr held himself accountable, that took hold with the players – who also looked inside to determine what they could do better – and from then on (along with some important positional changes and the addition of Tre’Davious White), things changed in all the right ways.

“Excuse my language,” Ar’Darius Washington said, “but it was really like, ‘[Expletive] everybody. [Expletive] everything else that’s going around. Let’s play together as one.’ That was the main focus, for sure.”

It wasn’t that the Ravens had to change everything for this big turnaround. The run defense was just fine. The pressure was just fine. But this is a Ravens team that can put up some serious points up on your defense pretty much at will, and that invites a specific response. Only the Minnesota Vikings (604) have had to defend more passing attempts this season than Baltimore’s 591, so if the pass defense didn’t figure itself out, this could have been a very long season for a team with two legitimate MVP candidates in Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry.

Now, the long season narrative appears to apply to every quarterback the Ravens face. And it couldn’t have happened at a better time.