The Browns Beat the Ravens Because they were BETTER.

While locally my Browns vs Ravene post-game analysis has been repeated by others to my freinds and family members who avoid this Blog, on NFL Radio, they are wondering what's wrong with the (perennially overrated) Ravens.

They weren't wondering this after the Chiefs whupped them the previous week, since it was Pat Mahomes and the Chiefs.

But now that the Browns dominated them in Baltimore, there must be something wrong with the Ravens!

The Ravens kicked the crap out of the Dolphins and Cardinals to open the season, and verily, Lamar Jackson has radically improved as a pure Quarterback.

But while everybody was bitching about how overhyped the 2019 Browns were, the Ravens hype (as usual) got even more extreme as they knocked off 2 tomato cans.

The analysis stunk to high heaven.  The Browns domination of the Jets and blown win against last year's NFC Superbowl team were brushed off like dandruff, while the Ravens competitiveness vs the Chiefs was taken seriously.

Why?

The 2019 Chiefs' Defense has been upgraded (check), but isn't in the same class as the Browns' D.  Read: The Browns' Defense was the nastiest one the Ravens had to face.  

All I read pre-game was that Ward and Williams would be out (nobody seemed to notice Damarius Randall coming back, or the existance of Carrie, Whitehead, or Mitchell...or the fact that Steve Wilks was running the defense...like I said, the analysis was superficial and dismissive.

1: It's irrational to dismiss everything Baker Mayfield accomplished as a rookie based on 3 games vs 2 badass defenses in an inexplicably altered offensive scheme.

And the hell with what Mayfield himself says in defense of Freddie Kitchens: Not until the Ravens game did anything the Browns' offense did look anything like what they did in 2018.

Freddie took his Offense back.  OBVIOUSLY.  Baker is being a good soldier and good for him, but it's partly because Mayfield believes in Freddie and wants him to stay in charge.

2: The Wilks defense doesn't rely on press/man coverage.  The simultaneous losses of Williams and Ward didn't phase him (especially since he still had Rodney Mitchellfield to "man up" here and there).

All these injuries did was put Wilks back where he came from, before he had any "shut-down" man corners.

DUH!  Of course Carrie, Mitchell, Whitehead etc worked out fine!  

Meanwhile, the pregame analysis barely mentioned the fact that the Ravens' secondary was all but wiped out too.

Anybody with a brain who reads this Blog knew that the Ravens secondary backups were inferior to their Browns' counterparts.

Every Browns' "backup" was a starter somewhere else, and all except Burnett are young and ascending.

Blah blah Ravens defense blah blah they always kick the Browns ass (*even that is idiotic: check out the last 3 seasons.  What tf does 2017 and before have to do with the 2019 Browns and Ravens?  Harbaugh check........*).

The Ravens have a solid Offensive Line, but it wasn't a match for the Browns' front four.  This didn't matter to most analysts.

They have good WRs, but the return of Randall and the Browns' quality depth didn't matter either.

The Ravens had sledge-hammered their way through 3 games (including vs the Chiefs) averaging nearly 6 yards per carry (by the way: the other guys are good, but Ingram is better).

While the expert analysts on NFL Radio paid lip-service to how these 200+ rush yards per-game helped Brett Farve Lamar Jackson out, it never occured to any of them that the likes of Garrett, Ogonjobi, Richardson, Vernon, Schobert etc could slow them down considering (you know) the awesome run defenses the Ravens had faced, right?

Sorry guys, but you just don't get how stupid this alleged pregame analysis got, and how in general they always overrate the Ravens.

Many of us aren't too surprised by this dominating win.

People were wanting Kitchens to quit calling plays?!?.  AB and Ryan were bashing Mayfield.  I (and almost nobody else) was telling Freddie to take his offense back.

Mayfield was "regressing"; Defenses "had his number".

So much bullshit: 

Vs the Ravens finally the 2019 Browns offense looked like the (Kitchens) offense.  

Hopefully, the "collaboration" is over, and I assume that Todd Monken accepts that Freddie has a better handle on things than he does here.

In my opinion, Freddie Kitchens just wanted to "make a living".  Once he saw that he wasn't going to be a pro QB, he aimed at coaching.

It beat the hell out of a real job, and had some upside.

Imo Freddie Kitchens was never ambitious.  Being a football coach looked like a way to make a living that wouldn't suck, and he could maybe paint houses or something in the offseason.

This lack of ambition probably has something to do with why Freddie Kitchens remained an assistant coach until the middle of 2018.

All the while, naturally, he daydreamed (or more accurately planned) what he would do if he was in charge.

Suddenly, he was in charge!  And he had BAKER MAYFIELD (and Chubb and a top 5 OL and Njoku and Landry and stuff)...

Stay tuned.