Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco says that with reigning Defensive Player of the Year Terrell Suggs facing a long road to recovery from a torn Achilles tendon, it’s time for the offense to do more.
“I want us to get in more of a mindset where we have to score points,” Flacco told the team’s website. “Should this be something that makes us do that? No. We shouldn’t feel any more pressure because we don’t have him. We still have a great defense and we still have a great team. But having said that, if it does put more pressure on us, if we do feel like we have more pressure on us and we need to score more, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
For more than a decade, the Ravens have been a team led by the defense, with the offense being merely competent in good years and lousy in bad years. But Flacco says this year he sees Baltimore being one of the highest-scoring teams in the league.
“I think we’ve got the talent around us, definitely,” he said. “I think we need to go out there and we need to make our minds up that we’re going to do that. I think we’re a team that should be able to go out there and put 40 up and not really look back.”
Even without Suggs, the Ravens won’t need to put up 40 points a game to win. But after they scored 13, 7, 17 and 14 points in their four losses last season, consistently putting up 20 points would be nice.