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The big story leading into this Sunday's Ravens-Broncos game is the matchup between Baltimore's pass defense, which is ranked No. 1 in the league, and Denver's passing offense, also ranked No. 1 in the league.
We'll get into that more later in the week.
But another side story here is the comparison between the Broncos' passing numbers and their rushing totals. Denver has posted a whopping 339 passing yards per game so far this season, but they're last in the NFL in rushing yardage at just 55 yards per game.
The ratio of pass-to-run has worked out OK so far, as the Broncos stand at 2-2 a quarter of the way into the season, but Denver quarterback Kyle Orton isn't necessarily happy with what his team has been able to do on the ground.
"I think we'll be a better offense once we can create some balance," Orton said during a conference call with Baltimore reporters today. "That's what this offense is designed for, to have a nice balance. And we're working hard to get to that point."
Orton has been asked to put the ball in the air nearly 44 times per game, second-most in the NFL. He eclipsed the 50 passes mark during last Sunday's win over the Titans, completing 35 passes for 341 yards.
Quarterbacks often like having the ball in their hands and slinging it around a good bit, but Orton says he'd like to see more of an emphasis on the run when the Broncos take on the Ravens this weekend at M&T Bank Stadium.
"What it would do is take a lot of pressure off of everybody," Orton said. "Like I said, we're working hard. Just because it hasn't happened the first four games of the season doesn't mean we're out of time. We can kind of create whatever identity we want on this offense, and hopefully, we can get to that point."
Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels agrees with his quarterback, saying for his offense to be successful, more needs to be done on the ground.
"The Colts have certainly showed that you can [be successful being one-dimentional], but we're certainly not trying to do that. We're not going to have great success long term if we stay one-dimensional in terms of our effectiveness. We've run the ball 25, 26 times a game, but certainly nowhere near as effective as we needed to be. We're going to try to continue to work hard to fix those problems."
The Ravens have been hot and cold against the run so far this year, allowing an average of 116 yards on the ground per game. They gave up 173 yards to Browns running backs two weeks ago, but just 84 rushing yards last Sunday at Pittsburgh.
