Transcript of Ravens Chargers Preview

All right, we'll go from that primetime game to another. It's time for a hot matchups presented by Wingstop, the Baltimore Ravens, a two and a half point favorite at Sofi Stadium on Monday night football against the Chargers with an over under a 50. Joe Buck, Troy Oekman, Lisa Salters on the call. Greg, we saw a score fest against the Chargers last time out. In comes a hurt Baltimore Ravens defense. They couldn't stop anybody when they're healthy. Uh-oh. Are there 80 points scored in this football?

Patrick not happy with this defense. They're coming off one of their better games of the year, at least. I've been saying all year when this Ravens team loses that great teams respond, and I expect them to respond, and they have. After that, Raiders lost. I guess they didn't in weeks one and two. But they bounced back in the last two games after a loss. And I think they will here as well. I just want to know, can the Chargers and their pressure group, and Cleo Mac wasn't out there last week. He would help a lot if he returned. Joey Bosa looked better. He played a lot more last week, so that helped them out a lot. Can they consistently get pressure? Can they be as disciplined as the last two teams that have faced the Ravens? Because if they can, and they've been quite good at getting pressure, then I do think they have a chance in this game to hold that Ravens' offense down.

Well, it's really amazing what the charge are doing. They're starting two rookie corners, two fifth-round picks on the corners, one in the slot, one outside, Kam Hart. And Kristenrishnan Fulton the other corner. They've held up, and they played great against Joe Burrow in the fourth quarter. Now, Joe had some unbelievable plays, too, to get him to tie it up. But Deion Henley is a guy that, I don't know if people talk about him out there enough. I don't, nationally, don't. But he's a phenomenon. He never comes off the field. And he wears number zero for the chargers, second-year player. He does everything for him, including blitz. And so when they want to get extra pressure, they will blitz him. They will bring Derwin James off the edge. They'll do what they have to do because they feel like they're tackling much better in the secondary, and they're holding up in man coverage much better than they were at any point under Brandon Staley.

This is why you got to listen to NFL Daily. Even going back to training camp, I was at Chargers Camp. I asked our guy Matt Moniesmith, who's the Chargers player standing out that they look? And his name was Deion Henley, that this guy they really think is going to be the dude. I thought that was interesting because they drafted someone, they brought in free agent, but he was right on it in early August. That's why you got to listen, Patrick.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Of course. Of course, I listen to NFL Daily. Glad to be a part of this franchise, Greg.

I think he leaves everybody in the charges by over 40 tackles in total tackles so far this year.

This is a game for him to have another big performance in prime time going up against this Raven's offense that has accumulated 598 yards before contact on outside runs. This season, as they got the O-line situation figured out early. We were waiting for them to get the defensive situation figured out, Greg, where Justin Herbert, when he is not pressured, averages 3.2 more yards per attempt when you don't get pressure on Justin Herbert, and this team has struggled to generate pressure. I think back to the Broncos game where Bo Nicks was back there forever in the first half. And now we see Herbo with Quentin Johnston really coming on, Baldy. People overrated those drops in his rookie season. Turns out if you can get open, it's still a valuable skillset, and he's been able to do that. So it's hard to picture anything other than just a whole bunch of points here in this game, just from both teams. I love a scorefest. I prefer to not have to stress, but scorefest, why not?

Valdee, Patrick is a closet, Raven fans. He's no longer in the closet. How do you think his defense, the secondary holds up here?

I announced that game in Pittsburgh last week with the Ravens. Derrick Henry got it knocked out of his hands by nick Herbig on the second play of the game that led to points. Payton Wilson, the rookie, ripped the ball right out of Justice Hill's hands on a wheel route. They got three takeaways, which really, really helped the Steelers in their offense in the points. Justin Tucker, I'm not sure what to think because he's missing extra points and field goals regularly right now. But the thing that's bizarre to me about this team is if they're behind or if they want to throw it, they take Derrick Henry off the field. And there's long stretches of games, games against Cincinnati this year where they had to win late or in overtime or even last week where Henry's not on the field. Honestly, I mean, Justice Hill is fine. He's a good player, but he doesn't scare you. Maybe Keaton Mitchell, well, he didn't get much play last week, but I thought they got good pressure on Lamar last week, enough where it really affected the the way that he played. I think that's the key. When you can pressure Lamar and make him try to be Houdini back there regularly, when you take the threat of Derrick Henry in the big runs away, they seem to look a little bit more pedestrian than what the statistics say right now.

That's a great point. I just think there's too many penalties from this team, Baltimore, on both sides of the ball. They're leading the league. Just a little sloppy See if they can get it going. One mismatch in this game, I think, is when the chargers run the ball. They just haven't been consistent in terms of their success rate, consistently being able to run. Ravens have been able to stop it. I think it's going to have to be all Herbo. He's shown that he can do it. He's going to be going up against Trey White, who has had some good snaps for the Ravens last week. We'll see how that goes. Before we move on, I do want to play this clip of Jim Harbaugh in the locker room after last week's game. If there was any doubt about how much this team is buying in, you can forget about it now.

This is going to be one of the best high fives ever. Give each other a high five.

Dermot James is so intense about this.

Where he's a jolly good fellow, where he's a jolly good fellow.

We wish nobody can deny.

I mean, they've got them. They're just like, That's the good stuff, right, Baldy?

Well, it's interesting. Obviously, J. K. Dobbins finished that game off with 18 seconds ago with that shutdown run. There'd be a lot of coaches, maybe that one in Chicago, that says, All right, we got the ball at the 26-yard line. Let's just kick the field goal. And he runs another play, and J. K. Takes it to the house, and game over. Chicago goes, and they just kick a field goal with 30 seconds to go, and they get it blocked. There's just something about the way That hard ball just has their pulse and knows when to be. They're not a big crazy, fourth down, go 14. They're not like that. They take the points that are there. They kick field goals, all that stuff. But there is an attack mentality that he still does. You're seeing the ball to Will Disley last week. I never thought Will Disley could run a seam route. I never seen him run. They hit him on two of them last week. All of a sudden, the ball is going down the field. I thought, as much as I want to see the chargers win and pull it for a hard ball and it's good for LA, LA sports, all that, I thought, this is a showtime city.

You got to put some points on the board. You got to be fun. They're starting to look a little bit more like Showtime right now, the way they played that game last week.

Yeah, and the crowd was jamming. Some of the videos that came from that, that was probably the best moment in Chargers. Sofie, it's brief history, I think was that J. K. Dobbins. I think you're right. Touchdown because they went absolutely crazy. I love it. I love that the atmosphere there. It has really taken taken.