2003 Ravens: The Defence That Time Forgot
Even in comparison to the 2000 Ravens, this team has no peer. How come you don't remember them?
I’ve seen this picture pop up on Twitter recently, asking which of these three Super Bowl winning defences you would rather have:
I was astonished to see in the replies that most people were saying the right answer, which is the 2013 Seahawks. My expression of shock is not meant to bemoan the intelligence of the good people out there on Twitter willing to answer historical NFL questions, generally a much smarter Twitter community than all of the rest of them. Rather, it’s a comment on how pleased I am to see that the perpetually overrated 2000 Ravens are at last beginning to be buried by history.
That’s right. I just used that big O word to describe the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. Here are the cliff notes:
Extremely Weak Schedule: The best QB the Ravens faced all 2000 regular season was Mark Brunell. You may say that’s a darn good opponent, and I would agree with you, but this was not 1997 Mark Brunell. This was 2000 Mark Brunell. Big difference. Not that it mattered against the Ravens though. He threw for 386 yards and three touchdowns, and generated 0.294 EPA/Play despite four sacks and two turnovers. The second best was Jay Fiedler, who in 2000 was not as good as he would eventually become, but he also played very well against the Ravens to the tune of 0.255 EPA/Play in week three. Next on the list is Steve McNair, who has his breakout in 2001, but in 2000 remains a zero EPA/Play quarterback. However, a zero EPA/Play quarterback who (you guessed it) manages to have one of his better games of the season against the supposedly vaunted 2000 Ravens defence. The best QB who the 2000 Ravens both played, and did not get torched by, is likely Vinny Testaverde, who ranks as my 14th best QB in 2000. Not exactly elite stuff.
The offence was not as bad as you remember: The 2000 Ravens are remembered as the defence that dragged a really bad offence to the Super Bowl. While it is true that they had quite bad QB play (Tony Banks and Trent Dilfer rank 33rd and 36th on my 2000 QB tier list, respectively), this team had more rush attempts than pass attempts in 2000. With both Jamal Lewis and Priest Holmes, those rush attempts were often very productive. They had a top five rush offence this season. To me, if you’re top five in any offensive production category, you don’t get to be remembered as a bad offence. Don’t get me wrong. This was not a good offence, but they ranked 19th in EPA/Play, which is much closer to below average than bad. This is not the worst offence in the play tracking era to win a Super Bowl (2015 Broncos). It’s not the second worst either (2002 Buccaneers). Speaking of the Buccaneers…
These are not the 2002 Buccaneers: What I mean by this is that the Buccaneers changed the game. In 2023 and beyond, everybody plays defence like the 2002 Buccaneers. There are entire defensive schemes (‘Tampa 2’) named after the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That’s the reason those Tampa Bay teams were such a flash in the pan. They changed the game, and everybody immediately came back doing it better than they could. The 2000 Ravens did not change the game. In fact, they had to change their game once a few years had passed and Baltimore had become a middle of the pack defence. It’d become clear that their defensive style could no longer hack it.
That change is what I really want to talk about now, because the real subject of this article is my pick for the best Raven defence in a sea of good ones in the 2000s (2000 included), which is the 2003 version.
For the 2003 season, all of the key contributors to the 2000 defence were gone, with one exception, plus a slight push. The two faces that remain from the elite 2000 unit are the obvious: Ray Lewis is still here, and is still perhaps the top linebacker in the NFL, and the other man that remains is the forgotten man in the greatness of the 2000s Ravens defences, Chris McAlister, who was a 16 game starter as CB2 in 2000, but got no Pro Bowl votes or anything like that, but he has blossomed into the best CB in the NFL in time for 2003.
New to the squad is just about everybody else, including a second year Safety known as Ed Reed, who in 2003 is not yet quite what he will become (which is possibly the best Safety the NFL has ever seen), but is still Ed Reed. Also in new is Adalius Thomas (drafted, but did not really play in 2000), who much like Ed Reed is going to reach his peak on the awesome 2006 Ravens defence that led them to being the best team in the league that year, but is taking his first steps toward first team all pro status right now.
In addition to the players, what must be spoken of is the all-star coaching staff the 2000s Ravens were always able to put together. 2003 is no exception. In addition to the obvious: Super Bowl champion head coach Brian Billick, we begin with Defensive Co-ordinator Mike Nolan, who has been a DC in the NFL since before most can remember, and before long is going to be a head coach in San Francisco.
The next name that immediately pops out at you is Mike Pettine, also a future NFL head coach, but perhaps even more notable as the Defensive Co-Ordinator for the legendary 2009 Jets defence. Click here to read more about that team. Speaking of the 2009 Jets brings to mind defensive line coach Rex Ryan, who much like Adalius Thomas and Ed Reed is going to come into his own as DC for the 2006 Ravens, and who of course is going to be head coach of that Jets squad. Rex isn’t even the final future head coach on this squad, as this staff also has Mike Singletary on it to coach linebackers.
A coaching staff with this many future head coaches on it is rare, almost impossible to find in the NFL. It’s likely the key reason why this team, despite a lot of its players (exempting Lewis and McAlister) either not quite reaching their peak yet, or being slightly past it (like Peter Boulware), gets better defensive results than any other Ravens squad in the 2000s, 2000 and 2006 both included.
I’m going to give you just a few examples that illustrate how the 2003 version of the Ravens worked.
The first comes in week four, against one of the best collections of offensive talent I’ve ever seen in the 2003 Kansas City Chiefs. This version of the Chiefs’ offence is actually slightly worse than their 2002 and 2004 counterparts, because of the 2004 rule changes to make offence easier and 2003 Trent Green being slightly worse than 2002 Trent Green, but still (by far) the best offence in the NFL. It’s not really comparable to modern offences because of the aforementioned rule changes, but think of this collection of talent like the San Francisco 49ers of today.
This offence has three hall of famers in the starting lineup: offensive linemen Willie Roaf and Will Shields, and Tight End Tony Gonzalez. This comes in addition to one of the great stretches a running back has ever had in 2001-2003 Priest Holmes. There are worse players in the Hall of Fame than Priest, and even he comes in addition to perhaps the best pure returner of all time as of 2003 (Devin Hester has not come around yet) in Dante Hall, a man who has the power to burn you from any direction at any time, and let’s not leave out one of the NFL’s best QBs in Trent Green.
These Chiefs are tough to deal with, and the Ravens do not have the power to fire back offensively. After the 2000 season they decided to keep Jamal Lewis and move on from Priest Holmes. Considering I mentioned him above as being a real pick for the best three year stretch any RB has ever had, this was obviously a bad move. The Ravens were never any good at receiver to begin with. That hasn’t changed, and the QB play has also gotten even worse, as in the first three weeks of the season the Ravens have thrown first round rookie Kyle Boller out there to sink. Other than the horrendous start that ends Kurt Warner’s first career as an NFL starter, he’s been the worst QB in the NFL so far, and this is the beginning of the running theme for the 2003 Ravens.
Whatever you think the offence in 2000 was, that’s what the offence in 2003 actually is. It’s dramatically worse than it was three years ago, and that is going to consistently hurt the Ravens all season, despite somehow being even better on the defensive side.
This shows early against the Chiefs as the second pass of the game sees an immediate turnover (another running theme), but the defence manages to hold the Chiefs to just three first downs in the whole first quarter, only getting past their own 20 yard line once, so it doesn’t hurt too bad. This is a big challenge, and clearly this Raven defence is up to it.
The Chiefs’ first touch of the second quarter sees them get into Baltimore territory, but still not particularly close to scoring, but with Kyle Boller and the offence just going three and out over and over and over again, it’s only a matter of time before the Chiefs kick a field goal to go up 3-0, and even on this drive Ed Reed gets a clutch strip sack that could’ve kept points off the board, but the ball bounces into a Chief’s hands. These things happen.
Coming out of half, the Ravens manage to score two touchdowns, but have neither of them count as first and goal from the one turns into the eleven with a holding penalty and a fumble recovery in the end zone is nullified by an illegal shift penalty, so Baltimore must settle for three. The Chiefs immediately score in response to take a 10-3 lead, and both teams go right back to the three and out contest.
It’s hard to convey with words, because defence is not exciting, but this is three hall of famers, plus a back who deserves to be in the hall of fame, plus a top five QB in Trent Green, and they cannot go anywhere. These 2003 Ravens are getting the chance the 2000 version never got: to play against a great offence and show what they truly have, and they’ve got it right now.
In fact, after that one third quarter score, the almighty Chiefs will be able to find just one first down the entire rest of the game, for a grand total of four for the entire second half. Jamal Lewis does manage to tie this game 10-10, but the Ravens (like many before and after them) are bedeviled by Dante Hall, and lose what could’ve been their magnum opus on a special teams touchdown 17-10.
I’ll cut straight to the point. The Baltimore Ravens have just become the first team to hold the Chiefs (with both Trent and Priest in the lineup) to negative EPA/Play since week two of the 2002 season, when the Jacksonville Jaguars did it. That’s right. It’s been more than a year, and in that year there’s been a total of three games where the Chiefs have scored fewer than 24 points.
Make it four.
I’m going to all this expense to tell you that holding the Chiefs to this bad of an offensive performance in 2003 is just as hard (probably harder) as holding them to this bad of a performance now. It doesn’t happen to the Chiefs, but it happened today. Regularly this team scores 30 points, but today they barely got to ten, and ten is all the offensive points they got. If not for Dante Hall, this could’ve been a win for Baltimore against the NFL’s best offence around yet another atrocious Kyle Boller game.
I’ll say this one more time and hope that it sticks. This is the chance the 2000 Ravens never got. It’s not their fault. They didn’t make the schedule, but it is the truth. The best opponent they faced in any of the three facets of offence (pass, rush, and total) was the Pittsburgh Steelers and their eighth ranked rush offence. These Kansas City Chiefs are not as bad as eighth in any offensive production category. They haven’t been for years, and they won’t be for years, and these Ravens held them to 15 first downs and ten offensive points.
Remarkable.
If the Ravens had even passable offence they would’ve won, but they don’t, so they fall to 2-2, but this pattern looks to be turning around as the Ravens score 26, 26, 26, and 24 points in the next four games to climb to 5-3. You may notice there is a loss in this stretch, as the Ravens’ defence does show a chink in their armour as Jon Kitna has a career defining performance with his starting job on the line in a week seven 34-26 loss against the Cincinnati Bengals. Read more about that game in Jon Kitna’s His Year article.
Without doubt, it sucks to be the 2003 Ravens and lose despite your offence scoring 26 points, but when a man at the climax of his His Year article is working against you there’s not much you can do about it, and 2003 Jon Kitna is better than 2000 Mark Brunell, so even if we’re comparing times we got torched this is a win for the 2003 Ravens over their 2000 counterparts, but this is not the game I’d like to go in depth into. Not at all.
The next game I want to talk about is week ten in St. Louis against the Rams. 2003 is part of an odd holding period for the Rams. With Kurt Warner gone, and Marc Bulger not yet what he will be in 2004 and beyond, the greatest show on turf has been put on hold for a little while, but this is still a good offence. How can it not be with all these great players?
Marshall Faulk, Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, Orlando Pace. You name them, they’re still here. This is an offence that despite being nowhere near what it once was is still going to finish second in the league in scoring, and finish 12-4 on the season. Don’t kid yourself. The 1999 and 2001 St. Louis Rams are two of the greatest NFL teams of all time. Are the 2003 Rams dramatically worse than those two? Yes they are. Are they still great? Yes they are.
With all that being said, this is going to be a high scoring game, but there are two ways to have a high scoring game. The first is to have both offences playing on point with neither side able to stop the other. The second is to have both offences be so awful that they continually put the other side in positions to score. With Kyle Boller and this 2003 Raven defence involved, take a guess as to which one we’re going to find right here.
I suspect you’ve guessed the right one, now let me explain to you how a game can feature 55 total points, despite being one of the best defensive showcases you will ever see.
True to form, this game opens with a Kyle Boller interception, immediately giving the Rams awesome field position, which they capitalise on to hop out of the gate to a 7-0 lead. From here there’s some more return shenanigans, giving the Rams a 14-0 lead just five and a half minutes into the game. Coming into this game as seven point road underdogs anyway, all seems lost already for the Ravens, and it would be very easy to fold up the tent and quit trying so hard, because you just know in your heart your offence isn’t going to come back from this, but these 2003 Ravens don’t do that. They lock in.
At 4:39 of the first quarter, the always suffocating Ravens force Marc Bulger to throw into triple coverage, and it’s an interception to Ray Lewis, giving the offence the ball inside the red zone, but these are the Ravens so of course they fumble the ball and no score comes out of this. The next time the offence touches the ball is also in great field position at the Ram 33 due to giving up just one first down after the fumble inside the red zone. A field goal (combined with one earlier) narrows the score to 14-6.
Another easy three and out for us gives the offence great field position for the third time in a row at the Ram 45, and this time they do convert it into a touchdown and a 14-12 score after a failed two point try. We actually force the Rams to go backwards on their next offensive try, but nonetheless find ourselves two possessions behind again on a Kyle Boller strip sack and return touchdown, and you can actually feel the eye rolling on the defensive end of the sideline, but miraculously enough the offence manages to score a touchdown on a full field to narrow the score to 21-19 as we go into halftime.
This is what I’m talking about with this 2003 Raven offence. In the first half, the Rams have two first downs, 30 total yards, and a turnover, but have 21 points. Whatever you remember the 2000 offence doing, it was not this. This is what that team managed to avoid doing, and that (combined with a bit of luck) is why they won the Super Bowl. This is so bad that luck cannot help us. Quite frankly, the defence could not have played much better than this, and it leads me to wondering if there’s any resentment brewing on the defensive side of the locker room.
It’s very possible that somebody somewhere demanded a change, as we hold the Rams to just four yards in forcing them to punt again, and the offence comes out with Chris Redman in at QB. It goes better at first, scoring a field goal to take a 22-21 lead, but they go straight back to going three and out. The Rams have spent his whole game going three and out, so no problems there, but when we go back to the turnovers that’s where it all goes off the rails again.
Redman throws an interception to give the Rams the ball deep in our territory, but Ed Reed comes up with a clutch goal line interception to keep points off the board, but the offence just cannot accomplish anything. This cannot continue forever, and eventually there’s a 24 yard catch and run from Bulger to Dane Looker. This is the Rams’ first first down since the first quarter, and accounts for more yards than the entire second half so far, and they get no further after this, but it’s enough on its own to get the Rams a field goal to take the lead back 24-22.
It’s only a two point deficit, but it feels like a total disaster, especially when Redman turns the ball over again, giving St Louis the ball deep in our territory again, and they get points without requiring so much as a first down.
Again.
Even refusing to give the ball to the QB doesn’t work, as just a few plays later Jamal Lewis fumbles, giving the Rams the ball on the Baltimore 35. They go three and out, but score a field goal anyway to go up 30-22 despite having three first downs in the whole game.
This is the worst nightmare ever. Why won’t this quit happening? How can this keep happening? That is now four separate scoring events (two touchdowns and two field goals) that have happened without the benefit of the Rams’ offence going far enough to get a first down. One first down. This is so bad it’s nearly funny, but I guarantee you nobody is laughing.
Does anybody think on their last try that this offence is going to make up an eight point deficit? No. They go 12 yards backwards and punt the ball away immediately. At least they didn’t turn it over this time, but just to slap the defence in the face that little bit more the special teams unit gives up another big return and the Rams get the ball on our 35. They get a few first downs and another field goal to bring us to our final score of 33-22.
That folks is how you have a game with 55 points, despite it being the worst offensive performance you will ever see in your life. Can you believe they put this game in prime time?
That was pain, but as far as our purposes here go our defence has now shown out against the first and second best scoring offences in the NFL. No defence can overcome seven turnovers plus two big punt returns, but with a second half lead we got scarily close, and we held this slightly worse but still great version of the Greatest Show on Turf to -0.449 EPA/Play, which when you multiply that by their 51 total plays means they scored approximately 22.9 fewer points than they should have.
In a game where they scored 33 points.
That’s a hell of a way to hold the team in the game, but unlike the 2000 team all of these defining performances are continuing to come in losses because the offence just can’t hack it. This loss drops the team back to 5-4, and causes them to fall behind in the division, meaning we need a win next week.
Unfortunately, next week is on the road in Miami, and it’s another place I want to stop and exhibit this defence.
The Ravens are done with the Kyle Boller experience, so it’s Anthony Wright in at QB, and with Jay Fiedler out hurt it’s Brian Griese in for the Ravens. There will be no 55 points this week. Both QBs refuse to play that badly, but it will be an entirely different (and actually quite exciting) showcase of putrid offence.
The first time we touch the field our offence has done a pretty good job of backing up the Dolphins to their own 20, and we give up one 16 yard run and nothing else. Our second series is much tougher, as we get backed up against field goal range, but barely manage to keep them out, forcing a fourth and 12 punt from the 41, but then we go back to St. Louis.
The first play of the offensive series is a turnover giving Miami the ball on our 23. We do give up a meaningless first down, but in the end it’s a field goal and a 3-0 Miami lead. A kick return all the way to the Miami 15 immediately gets this deficit back to a 3-3 tie, but even on the Miami 15 the offence can do nothing but go backwards.
They best find a way to do something soon, because we cannot shut down Miami in the way that we did St. Louis, once again backing all the way into our own territory to do so, but barely managing to get Miami off the field scoreless. Our offence responds by getting a personal foul to knock themselves out of the field goal range they’d ground themselves into as we go into the halftime break, and I can just imagine how happy the defensive guys are about that.
Back out we go in a tied game.
Coming out of half, not much has changed. We cannot force a three and out this time either, allowing the Dolphins to go all the way to our 39, but once again by the skin of our teeth we barely hold them off the scoreboard. I’ll repeat that this cannot continue very much longer. This is a clutch defence that makes clutch plays, but my goodness. How long can you expect us to keep this game tied?
For once we do manage to force Miami to three plays and a punt, but when our offence does the same we’re right back on the field again, and this time Miami gets that one extra first down they need to get themselves into range to try a 52 yard field goal to give themselves a 6-3 lead.
It takes a couple tries, but our offence eventually (miraculously) does respond with a field goal to tie the game at six at 7:49 of the fourth. At 5:56 we at last get the big play we’ve needed, an Ed Reed to get the ball at the Miami 36, but Anthony Wright immediately gives this back, and we have to rely on Olindo Mare missing a 48 yard try to get us into overtime tied at six.
Overtime goes the same way this whole game has been going. The Dolphins get across midfield but no further, but just as everybody is allowing the thought of a tie to creep into their mind, disaster occurs.
A Jamal Lewis fumble gives Miami the ball on our 33 yard line. We don’t let them get any further than this but they don’t need to get any further than this. As the field goal sails through the posts, and we’ve lost 9-6, it’s quickly becoming evident that our horrendous offence is going to keep this Super Bowl calibre defence from even reaching the playoffs.
It’s somewhat humourous (although not to the Ravens) that the team we’ve fallen behind in the playoff standings is the Cincinnati Bengals, led by that same His Year Jon Kitna I spoke briefly on when these two teams played back in week seven. The funny part of this convergence is that I have the 2003 Cincinnati Bengals with their 0.077 EPA/Play allowed in the pre-2004 rule change offensive environment as the second worst defence of the new millennium, with only the 2001 Detroit Lions being worse, and by far the worst defence in the 2003 season.
The fact that a team with a defence that bad can be outdoing a team with a defence this good in the standings is a testament to just how bad this offence is, and how it’s killing the entire squad. They do fight back against this somewhat by hosting Seattle and winning 44-41, but as we learned in St Louis, you do not have to play great to score lots of points given the correct circumstances, which is how the Ravens scored 44 points in week 12 despite generating approximately zero EPA/Play, but it’s a win to keep pace nonetheless.
Another excellent win to keep pace happens in week 13, where this defence holds a past his prime but not to be underrated 2003 Jeff Garcia to -0.72 EPA/Play, perhaps the worst game of his career, as the offence at last holds up their end and Baltimore takes the game 44-6 to move to 7-5.
The AFC in 2003 is stacked, so even with a 7-5 record through 13 weeks, a wild card spot isn’t going to happen (barring the possibility of winning out of course). The only route to the playoffs for the Ravens must be through the AFC North championship.
That means one thing. This week 14 game at home against the Cincinnati Bengals is do or die. This is once again a position the 2000 squad never found themselves in. There were no do or die games for them. The entire season saw them one game behind the division lead, but comfortably ahead of everybody else. The 2003 team does not get this same luxury. If we lose this game to fall two games behind the Bengals the season is all but over.
We must also remember that the last time these teams played six weeks ago it turned out to be the game of Jon Kitna’s career. I would argue that one game is the reason he ever got to start in the NFL again, and you can bet that of all the teams in the NFL, the Baltimore Ravens are the very most pissed off that they allowed a QB to make his name on their back.
They will not allow that to happen again.
It does not start very well, with (where have I heard this before?) an offensive turnover giving Cincinnati a free field goal to begin the game with a 3-0 advantage, but after a muffed catch on a punt return which leads to a Baltimore touchdown, everybody knows the Bengals are in trouble. These Ravens will not be taken twice.
There is one Bengal touchdown in response to another Raven turnover, but beyond that one blip there is a single Bengal first down in the whole of this first half, and after allowing three first downs and a field goal coming out of half to narrow the lead to 14-13, there will be only six more, with most of those coming in garbage time with the Ravens up 31-13.
Most of the way through the third quarter this game was still up for grabs. That is until five consecutive Bengal drives end in a strip sack by Terrell Suggs (at this point a rookie who barely gets on the field, yet another coming of age story for 2006), a punt, two interceptions in a row, and then another strip sack. The Raven offence manages to at least generate zero EPA/Play against one of the worst defences I’ve ever seen, and this game ends with that same 31-13 score.
This is a statement victory. The 2003 Bengals may not seem like the toughest opponent in the world, but that didn’t stop them from blowing the Ravens out the first time. Jon Kitna was their Mark Brunell. It was embarrassing, but it’s not embarrassing anymore. The Ravens have snatched the division lead back, and will not be giving it up again. We do lose next week (one guess who’s to blame for that), while the Bengals win to bring the standings back even, but in the end week 16 is the deciding factor.
A blowout 35-0 win on the road in Cleveland in conjunction with a blowout loss for the Bengals ensures that the Ravens are going to the playoffs and the Bengals aren’t. Defence has triumphed over offence, and just for funsies the Ravens play a 13-10 overtime grindfest against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final game of the season, just to show what they can do.
In the end, in the seven games following the St Louis loss, the Ravens have allowed just 99 points. That’s just 14.14 points per game. They’ve also allowed opponents to generate -0.247 EPA/Play over the final seven weeks. Opponents are costing themselves a quarter of a point per play on average, because they can’t figure out how to do anything else against these suffocating Baltimore Ravens.
On the whole for the 2003 season, the Ravens allowed 281 points. That’s only sixth in the NFL, and well well above the 2000 Ravens and their 165 points allowed.
How can I possibly justify my claim that the 2003 version was better?
The answer is simpler than you think. It actually takes just one word.
Offence.
You see, although I’ve made it fairly clear that the 2000 offence was better than you remember, I’ve held off of detailing just how much better that 2000 offence was than this 2003 one because I wanted to discuss it right now. First, the 2000 defence was on the field for just 924 plays, compared to this year, where we had to play 1026. That’s an offensive stat, not a defensive one.
102 extra plays is almost two full games’ worth of additional action, and goes a long way towards explaining the extra 116 points allowed, but it doesn’t go the whole way. Let’s dig a little deeper.
What the 2000 offence was good at was not turning the ball over. They finished the season with just 26 turnovers, which was ninth in the league that year. This meant that Ravens opponents had to go the whole length of the field much more often if they wanted to score. You’ve probably been able to tell by now, but by 2003, the Ravens had become horrendous at this, their 38 total turnovers ranking them 30th in the NFL, meaning that it was much easier to score against the Ravens, even without the offence accomplishing anything.
Look at the Rams game, where St Louis had seven scoring plays (three touchdowns, four field goals) and seven offensive first downs. That was a uniquely bad game. We all understand that, but it was also representative of why this Ravens unit got scored on so much more than the 2000 version. It’s not their fault. To truly see which is better, we must break down the factors the defence was actually in control of.
In 2003, the average offensive drive against the Ravens lasted 4.8 plays, went 19.9 yards, and scored 1.19 points. In 2000, these numbers are 4.9 plays, 20.4 yards, but 0.79 points.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
The average drive against the 2000 Ravens featured more plays, went further, and yet scored dramatically fewer points than the drives against the 2003 version. This does not happen by itself. This is why the offence can be such a problem when you’re a team built around defence. To me, if your per drive plays and yards allowed are lower than the team I’m comparing you to, that makes you a better defence, no?
If the basic stuff isn’t enough to convince you, I’ll also get advanced about it. The 2000 Ravens allowed -0.221 EPA/Play, which on the surface seems better than the 2003 Ravens and their -0.195, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. If it did, we’d be looking at the 2013 Seahawks and their -0.151 EPA/Play Allowed and calling them mediocre.
To do an analysis like this, you must adjust for the leaguewide offensive environment, especially because these two teams are on opposite sides of the offensive boom that happened in 2002. Thankfully, both are before the even bigger offensive boom that happens in 2004, but there’s still a difference between the offensive environments these two teams played in.
In 2000, the average NFL play generated -0.034 EPA/Play. This is actually the same as in 2003, but for the 2003 season the good defence had become a lot more spread out. In 2003, 22 teams held their opponents to negative EPA on an average play. In 2000, this was just 19 teams.
What does this mean?
What it means is that 2000’s defensive environment was characterized by great teams at the top, and 2003’s was characterized by mush in the middle. It’s actually much harder to be great in a population of average than it is to be great in a polarized population where some are awful and some are great and there’s very few in the middle. This is because there are no easy weeks. If every week you’re facing an okay offence, it’s much harder to be great than if you faced two awful offences in exchange for one great one every three week span.
Taking this into account, in conjunction with the much tougher schedule the 2003 Ravens faced, I come to the conclusion that the 2003 Ravens were 86 percent better than the average NFL defence in 2003, 20 percent better than the second placed Patriots. Meanwhile, the Ravens in 2000 were 77 percent better than the league average defence, just 11 percent better than the second placed 2000 Tennessee Titans.
Both of these numbers are great. It’s hard to get this far ahead of the curve in the NFL. 86 percent above average puts the 2003 Ravens fourth all time on my list. 77 percent puts the 2000 version eighth all time, so for those who think I’m a big time 2000 Ravens hater, eighth all time isn’t bad. It’s just not as good as they would eventually become, and not as good as you remember them being.
In terms of yards per drive, plays per drive, yards per play, era adjusted EPA/Play, and several other defensive metrics, the 2003 Ravens were better than their 2000 ancestors, so why does nobody remember them? I can give you the one word answer again. The dramatically worse offence meant it was much harder to get the team success component, but I truly think there’s a bit of Josh McCown in Chicago going on here.
If you haven’t read Josh McCown’s His Year article, in it I make the argument that Jay Cutler got his nine figure contract based largely on work that Josh McCown did, showing the Bears’ brass just how well that offence could operate. I think a little bit of the same thing is happening here.
Because the 2000 version is the one that won the Super Bowl, people look back and glom a lot of the stories and accomplishments of the Ravens’ defence in general onto the 2000 version. For instance, I believe that a lot of the memories of the supposedly horrendous 2000 offence bleed over in people’s memories from this 2003 season to that one, because only in this season did the offence truly hold the defence back. Tony Banks and Trent Dilfer were not great, but they were head and shoulders better than Anthony Wright and Kyle Boller. The awful unworkable offence that you remember was in 2003, not in 2000.
Another, much simpler instance is one I mentioned above: remember that great QB the 2000 Ravens beat?
No. You don’t remember that.
The Ravens did shut down Drew Brees and Trent Green and Marc Bulger and Jeff Garcia and His Year Jon Kitna in the second try and league MVP Steve McNair in the playoff game that I feel no need to mention was only lost due to offensive ineptitude, but they did that in 2003, not 2000.
Chris McAlister was elite in 2003, not 2000.
All the Ravens you remember (Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, and countless others) aside from Ray Lewis were not even on the 2000 team. They were here.
You see what I’m getting at?
I know you may be saying: it’s the same team man. Who cares whether we give proper credit to the 2000 or the 2003 version? They’re still getting it.
I would respond to that by saying there are three defensive starters (Lewis, McAlister, Boulware) in common between the two teams. It’s not the same team, merely the same logo. This is why I analyse every season individually instead of in clumps. You’ve even seen it in this article (treating 1997 and 2000 Mark Brunell like different people, for example). Every individual team deserves their own credit, and I don’t think the 2003 Baltimore Ravens get theirs.
As you move forward in your football life, keep in mind whenever anybody tries to pump up the 2000 Baltimore Ravens to you that they’re not all that. You don’t have to treat them like they’re all that, and when you see a graphic like the one all the way at the top, it’s okay to pick the 2013 Seahawks.
It’d be even better to pick the 2003 Ravens, but I digress. When I see this team on a Twitter graphic, I will at last feel vindicated.
Thanks so much for reading.