‘We keep receipts’: Ravens All Pros vow defense will improve in second half of season

Roquan Smith and Kyle Hamilton talk about what has gone wrong thus far and how they will make it right moving forward.

Coming off a historic 2023 campaign in which their defense finished ranked first in sacks, takeaways and fewest points allowed, expectations were still high for the Baltimore Ravens on that side of the ball coming into this season.

Even after having multiple starters, key role players and coaches depart in the offseason with defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald being chief among them, they were still expected to field a fierce unit even if it wasn’t as dominant as last year’s. Through the first eight games, that has been anything but the case as the Ravens rank 25th in total defense, 26th in points allowed and dead last in pass defense with a gaudy average of 291.4 yards per game allowed.

A unit that gave many of the best quarterbacks in the league fits and made some even look mediocre last year has gotten consistently carved up by the elite and subpar alike this season and has allowed backup-level signal callers to put up impressive numbers against them. The Ravens’ 21 plays of 20-plus yards given up are the most in the league despite having multiple All Pros in their back seven.

While the sky appears to be falling outside the team facility as it pertains to how much of a liability the Ravens’ defense has been and it could hinder a potential Super Bowl run, the players themselves on that side of the ball are confident that they’ll be able to get things turned around. Not only are they not worried, but they are keeping tabs on all the negative narratives being created and disseminated about them and can’t wait to prove them all to be false.

“We’re going to be fine. There’s a lot of outside noise and there’s a lot of adversity as well, but you can’t get rattled,” inside linebacker Roquan Smith said Wednesday. “We keep receipts. At the end of the day, just got to make cats pay for it when the time comes. We’re going to be perfectly fine. We’ll look back at this interview pretty soon and you’ll be like, ‘You were right.’

Heading into this season, the Ravens’ secondary was being touted as one of the deepest in the league with the talent to be the best but they’ve been the main culprits when it comes to allowing so many of their big plays. Being ranked at the bottom of the league in an aspect of the game where much of the onus falls on them has been infuriating for the defensive backfield’s brightest star.

“I’m pissed to see it, because I feel like I’m one of the leaders in that room,” safety Kyle Hamilton said. “I feel like I kind of take a big part of the blame for that – guys not being on the same page and not executing. Obviously, especially if we had guys in the room that couldn’t do it, it would be a different story, but we have everything we could ever want in that room, so we know we have all the answers in the room. We just have to find them.”

Following their latest letdown performance in which they allowed the previously one-win Cleveland Browns to go blow for blow with their high-octane offense that ranks second in the league in points per game, no player was more upset with themselves than Hamilton. The All Pro defensive back dropped what would’ve been a one-point victory-sealing interception that was all but gift-wrapped by Jameis Winston on the play before fellow safety Eddie Jackson got beat over the top for what went on to be the game-winning touchdown from over 20 yards.

“I was obviously pissed about it after the game,” Hamilton said. “I was probably the most mad out of anybody. I feel like that’s part of being a good football player. You have to let the good stuff go, let the bad stuff go [and] just move on. I feel like I’ve done that, and I’m ready to go play the Broncos.”

One aspect of pass defense where the Ravens rank first in another negative way is in dropped interceptions. They lead the league with eight and nearly half of them came this past Sunday alone between Hamilton and Eddie Jackson’s two egregious drops. However, the players don’t believe that just making those types of plays more often as they did last season is a cure-all for their issues when it comes to consistently giving up big plays.

“Picks are cool, but picks don’t tell the whole story of the game, and we’re close to the bottom of the league right now in pass yards per game as a defense, and that’s something that picks aren’t just going to solve,” Hamilton said. “You’re not just going to go out and get a pick every possession. That’s something schematically and execution-wise [that] I feel like we can get better at, and I feel like we’re striving towards that.”

While the third-year pro believes they simply have to collectively “just have to run and hit better”, many of their mistakes and breakdowns have been a result of miscommunication which has made them look unsound and unorganized far too often. That fact that talent is far from the issue and rectifying those negative tendencies can be corrected by simply communicating and executing better has the Ravens’ defensive leaders feeling more optimistic about their prospects and potential during the second half of the season.

“Just trust the process. I’m trusting that,” Smith said. “I have the utmost faith in each and every guy that’s in the back seven, including myself, that we’re going to get things the way things need to be done. Just tune in Sunday.”