The past three weeks have been dissappointing to say the least.  3 consecutive close losses and our once thrilling prospects seem much more mediocre.  Missing the playoffs feels like a real possibility.  Pro Football Focus has numerical assessments of every Ravens player to point, and I thought it would be cool to identify who has been struggling for the Ravens and what the solutions might be.

Offense

Marshall Yanda - Yanda is a very solid guard, but not really a fit for tackle.  He's been repeatedly dominated over the past two games in both the run game and the passing game.  He's playing out of position and we've got to get better production at RT.  The solution here is easy.  Jared Gaither gets healthy, Oher moves to RT, and we have an elite offensive line again.  This is not a serious concern.

Mark Clayton - Mark's a hardworking player who does the little things but has trouble getting separation and can drop some serious passes.  He had a great catch last week and will occasionally have those, but he's far from a consistent second WR.  The solution to this problem is not easy at all.  Washington and Williams have played well in limited opportunities, but no-one really believes they are ready to be the #2 WR.  Clayton is going to need to improve and consistently get open.  Signing Joey Galloway might be a solution but he struggled in New England.

Defense/Special Teams

Dwan Landry - He's been really bad.  Probably the worst player on the Ravens team according to 2009 performance.  I think it's bad enough that he needs to be benched.  Our corners are not strong enough to survive without help and Landry has just been a huge liability on the field.  It's time to bring in Haruki Nakamura or Tom Zbikowski.  Hopefully Landry can recover some of his skills in practice and make a comeback, but we simply can't afford for him to play at the level he's been playing at.

Chris Carr - Chris Carr is the other major competitor for the worst performing Raven.  He's already been benched on kickoffs for Lardarius Webb and Webb has clearly and overwhelmingly been an improvement.  Carr also has stunk in coverage, and has been an overall liability.  Frankly, I'd like to see him cut from the team and replaced with just about anybody.

Frank Walker - Frank's not as bad as he often seems, but the penalties are just too much.  I'm fine with him down the depth chart, but his tendency to draw far too many penalties make him a liability.  Again, with the major issues with the secondary!  This is a position that needs some serious work. 

Trevor Pryce - I think the Ravens are already on this with subbing in Dwan Edwards more.  Pryce gets held a lot and that hurts his performance and wears him out.  We need him to be fresh to get anything out of him, and even though Edwards is not great, he's an adequate substitute for an aging player.

Pass Rush - we don't have an elite pass rusher.  If you look at the defensive numbers, we've got tons of guys who are excellent against the run but very few guys who are solid against the pass.  It's a big issue.  This is probably on Coach Mattison at this point.  We don't have a superb pass rusher, and we need to adjust our scheme to get to the QB more consistently.

I think articles like this would be a fun addition to the Beatdown.  Mike Preston usually does something like this for the Baltimore Sun, but, inspired by Mike Tanier's excellent weekly article, I've decided to try my luck with it.  The idea is simple, I'm going to analyze several key matchups in the upcoming game.

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The most stunning result from this particular weekend is the results of the Ravens three draft day trades.  They traded twice with the New England Patriots and once with the Denver Broncos, and it was pretty much a cup game.  They literally walked out with more value than they walked in by almost any metric.  They walked in with 6 picks (#26, #57, #88, #123, #162, #198) and walked out with 6 picks (#23, #57, #88, #137, #149, #185).  Here's how it went down...

The Ravens decided that they had to have OT Michael Oher, and Bill Bellichek seemed to want no part of the first round.  So we traded a fifth round pick (#162) to move up three spots in the first round while the Patriots flew out of it.  I love this trade and pick, because Michael Oher was a player I had written off any chance of the Ravens getting.  I think he was one of the top 10 players in the draft and a huge steal for the Ravens at #23... but that's still my opinion, and only the beginning of the story.

Then the Ravens, when they were going to make their fourth round pick, chose to trade it and their sixth round picks to the Patriots for two fifth round picks.  This was picks (#123 and #198) for (#137 and #141).  A late fourth and sixth rounder for two fifth round picks, not bad.  Finally, when it came to #141, they traded it for a later fifth round pick plus a sixth round pick (#149, #185).  Finally, the Ravens had six picks, exactly where they started with.  But that's not all.  What this essentially means is that in order to move up and take Oher, the Ravens had to give the Patriots... 9 spots in the late 4th round of the draft.  That's it.  Move up 3 spots in the first round, move down 9 spots in the 4th round.  Wait, no, the Ravens weren't satisfied with that deal, they held out for getting to move up 13 spots in the fifth round and 13 spots in the sixth round.  There is literally no metric that makes any sense that could possibly argue against the fact that the Ravens walked out of the draft with literally better draft picks than they walked in with.

Now, if the Ravens scouting was as good as the Ravens draft day dealing, this will be one hell of a draft to remember.

A lot of people don't really understand what a team's Big Board might look like, and I've decided that I can start an exciting conversation about the draft and explain what a Team's Big Board might look like.  First a couple facts.

A Big Board consists of a list of players.  Each player is listed with a position (or positions) that he would likely play on the team and a grade.  This grade will at least include what round value the team thinks the player has, but many teams increase that to "early 1st round" or "late 2nd round" separation for the early rounds.

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From Peter Schmuck, Brian Bass, David Pauley, Hayden Penn, Dennis Sarfate, Scott Moore, Felix Pie and Jeremy Guthrie are out of minor league options, along with Rich Hill if we trade for him.  Guthrie is obviously a non-issue, as are Pie and Sarfate, but this probably spells doom for Scott Moore.  If Trembley goes with the 3 man bench (probable), those three would almost certainly be a catcher, Freel, and a guy who can play shortstop, which leaves Moore plum out of it.

Brian Bass, Hayden Penn, David Pauley are all of course going to be competing for spots in the starting rotation.

Chris Ray, Jimmy Johnson, George Sherrill, Dennis Sarfate have a stranglehold on four rotation spots, leaving four left for the taking.

With a big win over the Redskins, the Ravens are still plugging along successfully on their way to a playoff berth.  That three game losing streak really feels distant right now doesn't it?  Unfortunately, once again, the only team that decided to help our Ravens out this week were the San Francisco 49ers, only increasing the debt of gratitude us Ravens fans have for the excellent coach Mike Singletary (I was so angry when people were trashing him after the drama of his first NFL game.  Anyone notice how well he's done as an interim HC.  Of course, I love Mike Nolan too, so it's bittersweet).

The 49ers beating the Jets helped the Ravens even more than I had expected, because while it gives us three opponents from the AFC East for the playoffs, the best of those three teams will be the Division champion, so we're only competing against the second best of the Jets, Patriots, and Dolphins.  Because the Dolphins and the Jets play eachother in week 17, those teams have a maximum of 5 games between them.  Also worth nothing that if either the Jets or the Dolphins go 3-0, then they win their division with certainty.

What this means for the Ravens is that if the Ravens go 2-1, they win a wild card spot with certainty, as they'll have a better conference record than the Patriots, and only one of the Jets or Miami can go 3-0 and that will make them the division champion.  This leaves the Patriots as our most dangerous competition for a Wild Card spot.  NE could easily go 3-0, and if that makes life difficult if the Ravens go 1-2.

Dallas, however, did us no favors in giving away that Pittsburgh game.  An awful 4th quarter meltdown makes it very difficult for the Ravens to take the division.  There are exactly two possibilities that would cause a division victory.  First, I'm excluding the possibility that a Ken Dorsey led Browns can beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh.  It's just not going to happen.  This means that we need to beat the Steelers, and we need the Titans to beat them also.  If that happens, we can take the division by beating the Cowboys and Jaguars.  Alternatively, we can take the division if we lose to the Cowboys by the Strength of Victory tiebreaker (we ABSOLUTELY have to beat the Jags).  SOV is going to be really really hard, we're better off winning out (but that's also going to be really hard playing the Cowboys in Dallas under their terms and conditions.  The Steelers got to play them at home with a freezing field and no Marion Barber to expose their passing game to turnovers).  SOV boils down to the combined records of the Raiders (3-10), Dolphins (8-5), and Eagles (7-5-1) being better than the combined record of the Chargers (5-8), Patriots (8-5), and Cowboys (8-5).  As you can see, the Steelers have a freaking 2.5 game lead in this tiebreaker.  Sheesh.

1) Patriots @ Oakland - If NE loses this game, they fall behind us permanently in tiebreakers, and the only way they could finish ahead of us in record is if they win their last two games and we lose all three of our games.  Also, this would give us a full one game boost in the SOV tiebreaker with Pittsburgh.  New England is the biggest threat to keep us out of the playoffs right now.

2) Bills @ Jets - The Jets have much better tiebreakers against us than Miami does, which makes them a dangerous team also.  An upset win for Buffalo will be a big help.

3) 49ers @ Dolphins - Please keep up the good work Mike Singletary and the SF 49ers!  Still, we have the tiebreakers over the Dolphins and a Dolphins win would give us a .5 SOV gain on the Steelers.  By far the least important of the 3 NFC East games.

4a) Giants @ Dallas - Gives us .5 a win in the SOV tiebreaker, plus another loss for Dallas might cause a meltdown in that fragile locker room.

4b) Browns @ Eagles - Watch the Browns, after failing to win any games that might have helped us out, beat the Eagles to give Pitt a .5 SOV gain.  Still, with the way McNabb/Westbrook/JJ are performing, this is a likely .5 win for us.

4c) Chargers @ Chiefs - The Chiefs are one of the weirder bad teams in the league, but we can't expect them to beat the Chargers, as they are still terrible.  Still, where there is life there is hope.

7) Titans @ Texans - If we beat Pittsburgh, but the Titans beat the Texans, they will have no incentive to play hard against Pittsburgh, having clinched home field advantage.  Maybe Fisher rests his starters, maybe not, but we absolutely need the Titans to beat the Steelers to have a shot at the Division Title.

8) Lions @ Indy - The "Keep Dreaming" game of the week.  This is actually not very important anymore.  As shake n bake said, we are basically competing with Indy for the #5 seed.  If we can win some games, we'll be able to stave off the AFC East teams.  If we can't, than Indy losing games won't help us because they still have the tiebreaker over us.

This should be an exciting weekend for football, and a win against the Steelers will be by far the best help we could give ourselves heading into the final stretch.  Nevertheless, I'd love to see some help from these eight teams this weekend.

While the Ravens win was great, it's safe to say that last week did not go as well as we would have hoped.  Indy, Miami, and Pittsburgh all won, although we still gained some distance in the playoff hunt due to NE losing to Pittsburgh.  If we could find a way to make those two play every week, that would be great.  We are now essentially holding onto a 1.5 game lead for the sixth seed, with NE and Miami trailing.

1) New England @ Seattle - It's not likely to happen, but getting distance between us and New England would be huge for our playoff chances.

2) Miami @ Buffalo - Slightly less big of a deal because Buffalo is also in WC contention and has better tiebreakers, although they are a game behind.  Nonetheless, i'd rather see Miami lose and let the tiebreakers fall where they may.

3) Cincinatti @ Indy - Right, this won't happen in a million years, and it will be difficult to pull ahead of Indy regardless as they have the tiebreaker and the easier schedule.  However, and upset by Cincy will be a great boost at helping us pull ahead of them and get some more distance in the Wild Card race.

4) Dallas @ Pittsburgh - Obviously we really want Dallas to beat Pittsburgh, but that still doesn't help us much in the Division race.  The Ravens have to win out to have a shot at the division and I don't really see that happening.  Alternatively, the Steelers have to lose 3 of the next 4 games (presumably Dallas, Baltimore, and Tennesee), and while they could easily lose any of those games they are just too good of a team to lose them all.  Nevertheless, a Dallas victory is probably necessary for us to win the division, but it wouldn't be close to sufficient.

5) New York Jets @ San Francisco - San Francisco was the only team that gave us help last week, knocking Buffalo back a game in the standings.  The Jets probably have the division title in hand , and have worse tiebreakers with four AFC conference losses (the Ravens only have 3), but if the Jets do fall back into the Wild Card hunt for some reason, they will be the most dangerous team from the AFC East against us matchup wise.  A loss to SF helps us pull ahead of them as well, but doesn't hurt their tiebreakers at all.

6) Cleveland @ Tennessee - Again, TN is clearly going to win that division, but an upset loss to Cleveland keeps them fired up to play hard in the last two weeks of the season, against Pittsburgh and Indy.  It's worth something, but not much.  Cleveland, incidentally, were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention with a loss to Indy.  We know they will be behind Baltimore, Pitt, Indy, and TN due to record and head to head tiebreakers.  This also means that the Ravens by default will be the 1st or 2nd place finish in the division.  Most likely second, unfortunately.

Denver will win the AFC West, and SD will come nowhere close to sniffing a WC, so we can stop thinking about those teams.