Thanks to an offense that’s struggling across the board, the Ravens defense has escaped the spotlight for much of the season but the lack of focus doesn’t change the underwhelming performance of the unit.
It wasn’t hard this summer to find defensive players talking up how good they’d be this season, but the results haven’t matched that hype. In particular, they’ve been steamrolled on the ground the last five weeks. They’ve allowed at least 166 rushing yards in four of their last five games and it’s not a big coincidence that they’ve lost all four of those games.
Linebacker Terrell Suggs doesn’t see those results as a sign that the defense is capable of less than the offseason chatter suggested. He was asked Tuesday if the team felt pressure to live up to those expectations.
“Hype, huh? Pow, shots fired,” Suggs said, via the Baltimore Sun. “Nah, we had Brandon [Williams] out a couple times. We lost [Brent] Urban. But we still can be historic. We still can be magical. [Forget] hype, you know what I’m saying? We know who we are and we know what we’re about.”
The Ravens host the Dolphins on Thursday night and they’ll travel to Tennessee in Week Nine before going on their bye week. More of the same from the run defense won’t be magical outside of the fact that it will go a long way toward making sure their playoff chances disappear.
