Ravens Must Rediscover Rushing Attack in Thursday's Tuneup Game vs. Browns

The good news in Baltimore is the Ravens' victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers last week snapped a four-game losing streak. The even better news is the win over their hated rivals thrust them into first place in a surprisingly disappointing AFC North.

The bad news is while a win is a win, the issues that caused the Ravens to drop four games in a row were still evident against the Steelers—issues that the team must figure out in a hurry to make noise in the AFC.

Chief among those: As the Ravens prepare to face the winless Cleveland Browns on Thursday night, the must get their floundering run game untracked before the weather turns cold.

Head coach John Harbaugh admitted to Garrett Downing of the team's website that while it felt great to beat the Steelers, there's a lot of work left to be done:

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What we have to focus on, really, is being a better football team. We've taken steps in the last couple of weeks to do that. We've cleaned a lot of that stuff up, but we still have a ways to go. That's the beauty of football, especially in the NFL. It's a long season and you have the opportunity to improve. Our guys are willing to do that. I really do believe we have the pieces in all three phases to be very good, but we have to find a way to make it happen and keep trusting in one another, and that's it.

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Nowhere is that need for improvement more pronounced than on offense.

Over a third of the Ravens' total offense against the Steelers came on a single play—a 95-yard catch-and-run by Mike Wallace in the first quarter. They scored their lone touchdown after halftime on a blocked punt and gained just 50 yards on 29 carries on the afternoon.

That's 1.7 yards a pop, folks. 

It isn't a new problem, either. Before peeling off a dismal 1.4 yards per carry against the Steelers, starting tailback Terrance West managed just 1.3 yards per tote in a Week 7 loss to the New York Jets. He hasn't gained at least four yards a carry since Week 5 and only has one 100-yard rushing game this season.

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The Ravens enter Week 10 ranked 28th in the NFL in rushing at 81.8 yards per game. In their last playoff season in 2014, the Ravens were eighth in the league. They were 11th in the NFL on the ground in their Super Bowl season in 2012.

The Ravens have long been built around running the football. Of late, they've done a rotten job of it. And asking Joe Flacco to carry the Baltimore offense with a so-so cadre of pass-catchers is a recipe for the offensive futility we saw against Pittsburgh.

This offense is already on its second coordinator of the season, with Marty Mornhinweg taking the reins from the fired Marc Trestman last month. Since then, the run game has gone backward.

As Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun pointed out, in five games under Trestman, the Ravens averaged 4.2 yards per carry. In three with Mornhinweg calling the plays, that number has free-fallen two full yards.

West told Zrebiec that despite the dramatic decline in rushing average, the Ravens are making progress. "Coach is game-planning, and it's been a more balanced game plan," West said. "That's what happened."

What needs to happen now is less talking and more walking. Fewer platitudes and more production. Teams that rush for less than 2.5 yards a carry don't make the playoffs in the NFL.

Luckily for the Ravens, they play host to the league's lone winless team Thursday. The Browns rank dead last in the AFC in total defense, allowing over 420 yards a game. Only the San Francisco 49ers have allowed more yards on the ground this season than Cleveland's 146.4 yards per game.

As an aside, the Niners are giving up 193...rushing yards...per game. That is not a typo.

The Ravens also might be able to goose their ground game with an infusion of new blood. After missing time earlier in the season, rookie Kenneth Dixon has been steadily eating into West's touches and snaps of late. Harbaugh told Ryan Mink of the team's website that he wasn't going to make any huge changes heading into the Steelers game, but the Ravens did plan to feature the youngster more:

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We're not going to have some big, monstrous change in what we're doing. We believe in the things we're doing. We just want to do them better, game-plan them better, scheme them better, block them better and all of those sorts of things. ...

I would like to see Kenneth Dixon play more. He is young, in terms of pass protection stuff, for sure. So sometimes it is a little harder to get him out the field when you are going no-huddle. That probably is part of it.

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Dixon's nine carries for 13 yards against the Steelers wouldn't blow a dandelion away, and he suffered a chest contusion in the game. But Dixon was back at practice Monday, and given that West hasn't hit two yards a carry since Oct. 16, it can't hurt to give Dixon more work. Give him a true shot to show what he can do.

Who the Ravens hand the ball to against the Browns isn't as important as them making a concerted effort to run it and having more success doing so than they did against the Steelers. Find a guy who can get you 3.5 yards a carry and feed him, whether it's West, Dixon, Buck Allen, a guy from the stands—whoever. Wear the Browns down.

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The Ravens managed only 80 yards on the ground against the Browns in Week 2—a game where Baltimore fell behind by three scores and had to abandon the run. That can't happen again. The Ravens should be hellbent on increasing that total by at least half.

Baltimore has its flaws. In an AFC North that's sprouting warts left and right in 2016, that's OK. The Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals have them too. The Browns are one big walking flaw.

The Ravens have also shown time and again the ability to get hot once the playoffs start and play their best football in the NFL's second season. The 2012 incarnation went 10-6 in the regular season before embarking on one of the great postseason runs in NFL history.

But first you have to make the playoffs, and as veteran stalwart Terrell Suggs told Downing, that's far from guaranteed right now: "It's always good to beat your division rivals, but what does it mean if we drop it Thursday? It means [nothing]. It's time. We've got to start doing what we know we are capable of doing and winning. So we've got some work to do."

Suggs is right. And while he can't do much to help the run game (although it would be, um, interesting to see him line up at fullback), that rushing attack will determine whether Thursday night is the beginning of a second-half surge for the Ravens or just more running into the pile.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter: @IDPSharks.