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Todd Heap was talking about himself, but his words certainly can apply to the Ravens as a whole.
"The bye week couldn't come at a better time," Heap said after yesterday's 37-34 overtime win against the Bills.
Heap will use this upcoming off week to rest his injured neck and shoulder after leaving his second straight game with an injury to that area.
The rest of the Ravens' players and coaches will need to use the bye to regroup and figure out what's going on.
The passing defense has become a liability of late after allowing 558 yards through the air since halftime of the Patriots game last week. The pass rush has been nearly non-existent through that same time frame, and really, through much of the season overall.
The Ravens' run defense, traditionally a point of pride with this group, now ranks 18th in the league and is allowing opposing teams to pick up over 109 yards per game on the ground.
The return game is desperately in search of a playmaker who can run north-south and not put the ball on the turf, and while the offense has had stretches where it has looked like it's on the verge of breaking out, it still gets stuck in neutral a bit too often.
Baltimore looked tired and disinterested early in the game yesterday, and if not for Ed Reed's return and a stretch in the middle of the game in which they scored 24 points in 23 minutes, we might be talking about an embarrassing loss to a previously winless team today.
That said, entering the bye, the Ravens sport a 5-2 mark, and have reached a win total that only five other teams in the league can match.
They've played four tough games on the road, and still have home games with two of their division rivals remaining in the second half of the season.
No team in the NFL has everything working for it right now (although the Steelers sure appear to be clicking pretty nicely), but it's tough to get a read on the Ravens as we head into the bye.
Do they have an offense that can go shot-for-shot with any of the top scoring teams in the league, or are Joe Flacco and offensive coordinator Cam Cameron still a ways off?
Will the defense start to put it together and return to its top form now that Reed is back in the mix, or is this group just not as solid as those we've seen in Baltimore the last decade?
There are plenty of questions to be answered, and with the Ravens on a bye, we've got plenty of time to discuss them.
I'll toss this one up to you: What's your feeling about this team right now?
Are you choosing to look at the 5-2 record and say that the Ravens are in a good spot nearly mid-way through the season? Or do the issues I listed above give you reason to be pessimistic about where this team can go over the rest of the 2010 season?
What's your take?
