Ravens Must Make Major Gains In Explosive-Play Differential In 2026

There was so much to glean and learn from Rams head coach Sean McVay speaking about the evolution of modern offensive football on “The Daily Flock Show,” and he mentioned a metric that merited further discussion.

As I probed the future Hall of Fame coach on the import of taking under center, early down, play action deep shots, he hinted that he isn’t someone who is going to get super bogged down in analytics. But he obviously is aware of turnover differential and he is certainly at least keeping an eye on EPA (expected points added) and he casually threw in that explosive-play differential probably should be paid more attention to.

So we did.

“Everybody wants to talk about EPA,” McVay noted. “That’s a big thing that reflected in these EPAs – is your explosive play margin. Being able to prevent it defensively.

“And I think when you do those types of things, and you’ve got explosive playmakers, you know, the (Ravens receiver) Zay Flowers of the world, obviously Lamar’s always been incredible with his playmaking ability … Those opportunities to be aggressive on early downs, especially with the change in field position, the uptick in going for it on fourth down usually when teams are in the plus-50 or higher, it does change the way that you can be a little bit more aggressive. And I think teams have leaned into it.”

Hmm.

Lot of meat on that bone.

Let’s start with the fact I am not sure rookie head coach Jesse Minter is going to be want to aggressive on fourth down given how his coaching mentors play it – Mike Macdonald and John Harbaugh and Jim Harbaugh love them some punts. But rookie offensive coordinator Declan Doyle has been surrounded by aggro playcallers/head coaches in his career with Sean Payton and Ben Johnson.

Given how much Johnson and Payton (and McVay for that matter) implement motion, and McVay throwing Flowers into this discussion, I expect Doyle to fight quite a bit for match-ups for his one proven in-form pass catcher on this roster. Last year, the Bears used motion 61% of the time (7th) and McVay used it 63% (4th) and the Ravens were 18th (52%). In part because they are looking for chunk plays, and Flowers lacks prototypical size to win that way outside.

Explosive Differential Is Telling

Made sense to crunch some numbers on 20-plus yard plays created vs the number allowed, and it indeed paints a pretty clear portrait of success vs failure. And despite Baltimore’s offense still generating a top-10 total of 20-yard gains (68, down from 85 to lead the NFL in 2024), the defensive failings more than undermined them.

Top NFL Teams In Explosive Differential in 2025

Patriots +34 (85-51)

Seahawks +26 (74-49)

Bills +26 (77-51)

Rams +24 (84-60)

Chargers +15 (59-44)

Jaguars +15 (66-51)

Um, yeah, all made the playoffs and you can see the zone-heavy principles of Minter with the Chargers shining through there. And his mentor Macdonald is right there, too of course, with an offensive predicated on taking as many deep shots as anyone with Sam Darnold and keeping everything in front of them on defense.

And as you would expect, the most hapless teams in the NFL were near the bottom, like the Jets (-32) and Browns (-16) … and the Ravens were indeed bottom 10 in this metric at -8 (68-76). One team with a negative ratio (Texans -1) reached the postseason.

Minter is making this a massive focus of his defensive retooling, its something already at the very core of what he believes in, and the Ravens have a ways to go to get close to what Minter’s mentor is doing in Seattle or McVay for that matter.

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