Quick Slant: Saturday Edition - To Find a Blade
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant
The Ravens are backed against a wall. They have a 9% chance at the playoffs. They cannot make the wild card; their only pathway to the tournament is to take the North from Pittsburgh. They play each other next week in what would become a winner-take-all scenario—that’s if the Steelers somehow lose to the 3-10 Browns, and if the Ravens can beat the 9-5 Packers Saturday night.
The Ravens are truly hemmed in with nowhere left to go. They face no choice but to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘you or us,’ then proceed to fight with everything they’ve got left—the only way out of this mess now is through the Packers to their front or over the cliffs at their back.
And now Lamar Jackson—their heart and soul—is doubtful. And before Ravens fans, filled with dread, fail to find hope, I’m reminded of a critical scene from The Sword and the Stone, by T.H. White:
They started for the tournament ground at a gallop. The streets were already crowded with people, and there was a great noise of shouting and music. But just as they reached the gates of the lists, and the first herald was beginning to blow his trumpet to announce the start, Kay stopped his horse so suddenly that the Wart almost ran into him. Kay’s face had gone quite white. He began to feel at his side, and his hand came away empty.
“I have left my sword at the inn,” said Sir Kay.
“You are a fine knight,” said the Wart, “to go to a joust without a sword. However, I will ride back and get it for you.”
“The door will be locked,” said Sir Kay. “You will have to go to the back door and see if the ostler is there. He will let you in. Here is a shilling for him.”
The Wart turned his pony and galloped back toward the street. The inn was closed. The people had all gone to the tournament, and the back door was locked as well. The Wart was in a passion of grief and fear.
“What shall I do?” he cried. “What will Kay do for a sword? He will be disgraced; he will have to go into the field without a weapon. Oh, Kay, I will find you a sword somehow. There must be some swordsmith or armourer in a great town like this, whose shop would still be open.”
He turned his mount and cantered off along the street. There was a quiet churchyard at the end of it. In the middle of the square there was a heavy stone with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was struck through the anvil.
He took hold of the handles with both hands, and strained against the stone. There was a melodious consort on the recorders, but nothing moved. The Wart stepped back from the anvil, seeing stars. “It is well fixed,” said the Wart.
He took hold of it again and pulled with all his might. The lights all about the churchyard glowed like amethysts; but the sword still stuck. “Oh, Merlyn,” cried the Wart, “help me to get this sword.”
The Wart walked up to the great sword for the third time. He did not ask it to come. He took the hilt as if he were taking a hand in a game. He handed himself into the effort, and the sword came out as gently as from a scabbard.
The math says the Ravens are essentially a ghost at the feast, haunting a playoff race they’ve nearly invited themselves out of. The Knight stands weaponless. With Jackson sidelined, Tyler Huntley, the unlikely squire, must pull a miracle from the frozen stone.
He has been here before. Ask the ’21 Bears; With Jackson falling ill, Huntley drove the Ravens 72 yards in the final minutes, scoring a go-ahead touchdown with 22 seconds left to save the season. And to be clear, the Packers will be without their star QB as well. Huntley doesn’t need to be a king Saturday; he needs to find a blade—to give the Ravens life before the trumpets sound and the season fades.
Ravens
Implied Team Total: 17.5
The Ravens’ real record is right in line with their Pythagorean expected wins. They are a middle-of-the-pack team in 2025.
The Ravens are slightly below average in offensive EPA, and about average in defensive EPA allowed.
Offensively, they are below average in dropback EPA and above average in rush EPA.
The Ravens rank 19th in offensive EPA per play and 18th in offensive success rate. They rank 24th in offensive EPA per dropback and 15th in offensive success rate on dropbacks.
The Ravens average 27.8 seconds per snap (26th). Their pass rate is 51% (31st). Their pass rate over expected (PROE) is -4.48% (31st). Their default setting is to run, which has been the case most years in recent memory. The Ravens average 59 offensive plays per 60 minutes (T-28th). They average 30 pass plays per 60 minutes, the lowest average in the league.
Part of the Ravens’ dilemma has been the health of their two-time MVP QB Lamar Jackson. After two of the best years of his career, Jackson entered 2025 where he left off, leading the NFL in fantasy points across all positions by a wide margin through three games. But midway through his Week 4 showdown with Kansas City, he strained a hamstring. This forced him to miss three games, and he’s never looked the same since.
Last week, Jackson left a hotly contested game against New England with a severe back contusion. He is doubtful for Saturday’s game, which means he almost certainly won't play.
Earlier this season, the Ravens turned to former Cowboys backup QB Cooper Rush. However, after two disastrous starts, they turned to an old friend: QB Tyler Huntley, fresh from the television commercial circuit and back for his third stint with the team.
Huntley was famously a controversial Pro Bowl selection in 2022 as an injury replacement—one that most people cite as an example of the ridiculousness of the entire Pro Bowl spectacle. For his career, he has a 64.9% completion percentage, 6.0 YPA, 7.9 aDOT, 81.4 QB rating, and a win/loss record of 6-9 as a starter. He was a disaster in Miami last season while filling in for Tua Tagovailoa, but he’s always seemed to vibe better with the Ravens than anywhere else. For one, though nowhere near as good as Jackson, he’s the same archetype, so the Ravens aren’t forced to severely alter their preferred gameplan.
In games when Huntley has thrown for 10 or more passing attempts for Baltimore, they have really shortened up the passing scheme, which has led to a higher completion rate and fewer interceptions than we see with Jackson, but inversely, a lower yards-per-attempt and far fewer passing TDs. Essentially, they are less aggressive, so there are fewer negative plays, but at the expense of far fewer explosive plays.
Surprisingly enough, the Ravens don’t actually run the football more; they carry the exact 32.34 rushing attempts per game average, with almost the same rushing yardage. Of course, in the aggregate, they score far fewer points and win fewer games, as we would expect.
The Packers have allowed the eighth-most fantasy points to opposing QBs in their last five games. They will be without DE Micah Parsons, who is on IR, but they’ve performed admirably in his absence.
The Ravens have two players with a target share per game rate of at least 15% in their last five games: WR Zay Flowers (26.8%) and TE Mark Andrews (15.7%). TE Isaiah Likely barely misses the cut with a target share per game rate of 14.2% during that time.
Flowers has a near-elite share, but of what? The Ravens are a low-volume passing attack, mitigating much of Flowers’ rate of opportunity. Flowers has only three WR1 games, although he’s done it twice in his last three games. He’s also had two single-digit PPR outputs. The pass volume isn't likely to increase on Saturday with Huntley under center.
I called this out this past week, and Flowers scored a TD. Based on TDs/Yds touchdowns-over-expected (TDOE), Flowers pops as the most significant positive TD regression candidate among WRs.
WRs can beat the Packers. Opposing WRs have ranked fifth in PPR scoring against Green Bay in their last five games. They have surrendered the most significant amount of efficiency to the WR position during that span.
TE Mark Andrews has long been Jackson’s woobie, but he’s been super downbad for the past month or so, scoring single-digit PPR points in every game and finishing well outside of the top 24 in four of them.
Contrary to Flowers, who scores meaningful fantasy points despite not scoring an adequate amount of TDs, Andrews fails to score meaningful points most weeks and is still a negative TD regression candidate based on TDs/Yds.
That said, Andrews has a remarkable career TD rate of 8.2%, and he’s actually under that at 7.9%. This is a pretty decent-sized sample at this elevated rate, so I’d say not to expect Andrews’ TD production to level out toward league base rates. He’s just an elite TD scorer that his team loves to use in that role.
Likely has been enigmatic for most of his career; lately, he’s straight-up confounding. He had two TE1 games in a row in Weeks 13 and 14, and it felt like he was stabilizing after a slow start due to injury, and maybe even taking Andrews' job outright. Then, he up and goose-egged twice, including one game against abysmal Cincinnati, the best matchup for TEs this season.
As for Green Bay, they are not a good matchup for TEs. Opposing TEs have ranked 28th against Green Bay in their last five games. This is not the strongest set of games to draw such a deduction.
If we expect Huntley to play the short game, as his historical tendencies in Baltimore would suggest, all three players could have some utility, though to varying degrees.
In the short areas of the field, Flowers seems like he should be king. Though he can win anywhere, he already has a staggering amount of volume in the short areas and behind the line of scrimmage, including 21/23 in the middle underneath. Flowers was 7/9 for 63 yards in Huntley’s Week 8 start against Chicago.
Andrews famously didn’t miss a beat with Huntley in 2022. Andrews won’t take anything behind the line of scrimmage, but he also wins in the short areas of the field, where we expect Huntley to play.
And Likely has been good there, too.
While we expect all three to have shorter aDOT games, Flowers has the best chance at putting up meaningful YAC since he’s got blistering speed. We can’t expect as many TDs to go around, but based strictly on rates, all three are viable.
Green Bay’s defense is below average in EPA per dropback allowed and above average in rush EPA per game allowed.
The Packers rank 18th in EPA per play allowed and 14th in defensive success rate. They rank 21st in EPA per dropback allowed and 11th in defensive success rate on dropbacks.
The Packers use zone defense at a rate of 79.9% (2nd), and two-high safeties at a rate of 52.3% (11th). They are multiple on defense, running only one alignment more than 20% of the time, Cover 3 (32.6%). They blitz at a rate of 19.8%, one of the lower rates in the league.
Fantasy Points’ coverage matchup tool assigns a zero-based matchup grade to each pass-catcher based on their opponent’s use of specific types and rates of coverage and how that pass-catcher performs against them. Positive numbers indicate a favorable matchup and negative numbers indicate an unfavorable one.
Based on this, Flowers has an unfavorable matchup (-6.0%), while Andrews has a very unfavorable one (-12.4%). Likely technically doesn’t have enough routes to qualify for the tool, but his coverage grade shows up as positive (+5.3%).
PFF’s matchup tool is player-based, pitting the PFF ratings of individual players against each other for an expected number of plays based on historical tendencies and rating on a scale from great to poor.
Based on this, Flowers and Andrews’ matchups grade out as good, while Likely’s grades out as fair. For what it’s worth, WR DeAndre Hopkins’ matchup shows up as good based on specific players in this one, but the 13-year vet has only three games all year with a market share of at least 15%, and, with a 14.6 aDOT, he isn’t a match for the short game we anticipate Huntley to play.
The Ravens’ offense has allowed a pressure rate over expected (PrROE) of 12.19% (28th). The Packers have generated a 8.43% PrROE on defense. The Ravens should be at a significant disadvantage in pass blocking, regardless of whether or not Parsons is playing.
On the other hand, the Ravens’ offense has generated 3.12 adjusted yards before contact (adj. YBC/Att, 1st), and Green Bay’s defense has allowed 2.10 adj. YBC/Att (14th). The composite is even more favorable to the Ravens in run blocking as it is unfavorable to them in pass blocking—the most significant advantage of the week.
The Ravens rank fifth in offensive EPA per rush and 18th in offensive success rate on rushes. The disparity between these essentially means the Ravens are prone to big plays but not great at consistency.
Obviously, RB Derrick Henry is the Ravens' primary back. In the last five games, he’s had 56% of the team’s rush attempts. This is not elite, but again, Baltimore has pretty high rush volume.
And the Ravens pick their battles with Henry, managing his workload while preserving him for more critical moments. Henry still ranks in the top 20 in high-value touches (HVTs), even without a significant pass-catching role, because of his green zone usage.
Henry has six RB1 weeks. He seems to lack the upside he’s had in the past, probably because of Jackson’s mobility issues (when both are at strength, they help each other by drawing some of the defensive attention). However, he Henry been over 20 points three times since Jackson’s injury. He also has three single-digit PPR games, but they all came in the first five weeks of the season. He is on a run of RB1 production in four of six weeks.
The Packers rank fifth in EPA per rush allowed and 22nd in defensive success rate on rushes. The inverse of the Ravens’ offense, the Packers are good at restricting big plays, but they are susceptible to long, sustained drives.
The Packers’ opposing RBs have only ranked 28th in their last five games against Green Bay. Teams rank 31st in fantasy points over expected (FPOE) against them during that span, demonstrating a lack of efficiency, even when their opponents try to run on them.
Huntley may not be as quick and fast as Jackson, but he’s still quick and fast. The lanes for Henry to run through will remain fairly wide as the Packers will be forced to respect this. However, anecdotally speaking, if the Packers are facing a Lamar-less Ravens, it seems clear what they will devote the biggest and best concentration of their resources to, and that’s Henry, so look for plenty of stacked boxes, QB spies, and a ton of zone coverage.