The Baltimore Ravens have won seven of 10 games during the 2024 NFL regular season, but Marlon Humphrey can’t enjoy the victories. Not when the All-Pro cornerback is part of a struggling defense that’s the poor relation to a high-powered offense.
Humphrey blasted his own unit after the 35-34 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday Night Football, calling the defense “little bros” to the offense. Speaking after the game on November 7, Humphrey declared two-time NFL MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson is “carrying us,” per ESPN’s Jamison Hensley.
Those are telling statements from a senior figure on the Ravens defense, but the criticism is justified. Especially after Bengals QB Joe Burrow threw for 428 yards and four touchdowns, with wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase accounting for 264 of those yards and three of those scores.
Numbers like those have become all too common against Baltimore’s league-worst pass defense, and Humphrey isn’t the only one unhappy about it.
Ravens Defense Not Meeting Standards Set By All-Pros
Humphrey summed up his unhappiness by explaining how “These wins are getting harder to enjoy based off what we’re doing in the pass defense. When I was a rookie, first year guy, second year guy, that’s how I looked up to the standard that was there. In the pass defense, we’ve really lost that standard. And, you know, I feel like that falls on me,” per Ravens.com Editorial Director Ryan Mink.
There’s no quick fix, but Humphrey insisted “We’re going to keep chasing at it. We’re going to keep working at it, because I’m just I’m not really satisfied with what I’ve built in the secondary, where it’s gone. I just don’t think playing like this, we can go far.”
That feeling of not being satisfied isn’t isolated to Humphrey alone. It’s also shared by another All-Pro member of the defense.
Defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike kept his assessment blunt and to the point. The 26-year-old simply said, “That’s not our standard of defense,” per Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic.
Madubuike earned the right to speak out after leading the Ravens with three sacks of Burrow. Generating pressure wasn’t a problem for what had been a struggling pass rush, but the improved efforts of Madubuike and Co. only underlined the growing problems on the back end.
Bengals Exposed Fatal Flaw on Ravens Team
Humphrey’s warning about how the Ravens won’t “go far” with this secondary shouldn’t go unheeded. That’s despite head coach John Harbaugh making light of the way Chase ran riot at M&T Bank Stadium.
Harbaugh told reporters, including Hensley, he wasn’t able to speak with Chase after the game, but “Maybe that was appropriate. I couldn’t find him either.”
Victory afforded Harbaugh something to joke about, but he wouldn’t have been so upbeat if the Bengals had won. Only a failed two-point conversion prevented the visitors from taking the W, and Chase’s brilliance was a big reason why the Bengals played it so close.
He torched an overmatched secondary, routinely getting the better of cornerback Brandon Stephens. The latter was already enduring a difficult season, but this game should be definitive proof Stephens cannot trail an opposing team’s best receiver.
That job should fall to Humphrey. Or perhaps to the former All-Pro the Ravens acquired before the NFL trade deadline.
Either way, first-year defensive coordinator Zach Orr needs a new plan because what the Ravens are doing not only isn’t working. It’s also threatening to wreck this team’s chances of getting over the Super Bowl hump.
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