Jeff Wolfson

Playing the ranking game

by Dan Kolko View Comments

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that the Ravens' offensive line was ranked as the third-best in the NFL by Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports.

Where does Cole rank the Ravens when it comes to the other positions?

Well, in his recently released defensive line rankings, the national writer slots Baltimore's D-line in as the second-best in the league.

Here's a portion of his comments on the unit:

"The true greatness of the Ravens line lies in their malevolence, led by right end Haloti Ngata. Simply put, Ngata can't be blocked by mere mortals. He is not a product of the human species. He is really a creation of a building contractor, made of cinderblocks and some type of flesh-like covering. Throw in Kelly Gregg at nose tackle and behemoth rookie Terrence Cody and you have something truly frightening."

You won't find any argument with those comments here.

In previous rankings, Cole had Joe Flacco and the quarterbacks as the 13th best in the NFL, Ray Rice and Willis McGahee as the fourth-ranked running back group, and the improved receiving corps as the 14th-best in the league.

The only ranking that I take issue with here is with the receivers.

There are a lot of quality receiving tandems in the NFL, but with Anquan Boldin, Derrick Mason, Todd Heap, Donte' Stallworth and Mark Clayton (Cole included tight ends in this set), I would definitely put the Ravens' group in the top-10, and possibly even somewhere in the seven or eight range.

Of course, that's just based on what the Ravens have assembled on paper. I guess you could say that until this group has a chance to prove themselves on the field, they might not be deserving of a ranking quite that high.

Thoughts? Anyone have any issues with where Cole has slotted each of the Ravens' position groups?

blog comments powered by Disqus