The Baltimore Ravens enter 2025 after a record-setting 2024 season that proved they have one of the most dangerous offenses in recent memory.
Look no further than their total offensive yards gained in 2024: 7,224, the third most ever logged in a year by an NFL team. It's a total that exceeded the mark posted by the 1999 St. Louis Rams (7,075 yards), a team remembered as the "Greatest Show on Turf." And while we live in a pass-first era of football that often produces gaudy totals, Baltimore's output was nothing to scoff at.
One contributor from this group -- wide receiver Rashod Bateman -- believes the numbers could be even more astounding for one or two of his teammates if the Ravens' goal was to obliterate the record books. Take receiver Zay Flowers, for example; the second-year wideout led Baltimore in receiving with 1,059 yards and four touchdowns in 2024, but Bateman thinks that total could be much higher if he was prioritized.
Prioritization, however, simply isn't the objective.
"What he's doing in the league is beyond special to me because of how we play football, of how the Ravens play football," Bateman said on a recent episode of the team's The Lounge podcast. "It's not like we're just targeting, targeting Zay, put him on this. We do what's best for the team and how we play.
"Zay could have 1,300 yards, easily, if that was the goal. Derrick Henry can rush for 2,000 easy if that was the goal. It's just never the goal. I wish people understood that."
Bateman might not have to try too hard to convince doubters of this possibility. All he has to do is point to 2024, a season in which Lamar Jackson became the first quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards and rush for 800-plus yards in a season and did so by spreading the ball among Flowers, Bateman, Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely. In that same campaign, a 30-year-old Henry ran for 1,921 yards and 16 touchdowns, too.
Bateman and the rest of the Ravens know their strength lies in numbers -- not the goals they write on their whiteboard, but in the many options they have at their disposal. It's what makes them incredibly difficult to defend and strikes fear in the hearts of opposing defenses.
Sure, Flowers might be able to put up 1,300 receiving yards, but if it reduced the Ravens' offensive potential, it would be counterproductive. After all, Baltimore has already built a reputation as being a regular-season juggernaut that repeatedly fails in the postseason. The discourse that follows Jackson proves it.
If the Ravens are going to silence those critics once and for all, they'll likely do so without logging lucrative (and disproportionate) totals in the stat sheet. And when the final whistle blows, those numbers won't matter anyway; the only digits that will carry significance will reside on the scoreboard, where the Ravens hope to finish on the winning side in the season's final game.
