Patrick Queen is aware of this path. He walked it a yr forward of his Ravens teammate, Odafe Oweh.
You arrive in a hail of acclaim reserved for a first-round draft decide, possessed of chic bodily instruments however comparatively untutored within the finer factors of your craft. Your early performances converse to your items and your fierce need but additionally to that lack of polish. The similar individuals who feted you flip to judging you harshly, forgetting that even probably the most optimistic scouts stated you weren’t a completed product.
Queen lived by way of the heights and depths of this cycle earlier than he broke out final season. Now, he’s watching Oweh, written off as a failed decide by detractors, get pleasure from his second of candy, year-three launch.
“Everybody loves him now,” Queen stated Tuesday, with a subtext of I informed you so.
Perhaps it was an offseason of wholesome preparation. Perhaps it was the arrival of a brand new exterior linebackers coach, Chuck Smith, who occurs to be one of many world’s main academics of move rush as artwork. Perhaps that is merely the time when Oweh — a severe scholar along with a freaky mix of pace, size and energy — was meant to come back into his personal.
“It’s probably a mixture,” the 24-year-old exterior linebacker stated.
Regardless of the reason, Oweh has damaged out over the Ravens’ previous 5 video games, a stretch he capped with a career-high seven pressures and a sack within the crew’s 34-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
“Odafe, he worked incredibly hard at it, and he still on the ascend,” coach John Harbaugh stated. “He’s getting better all the time, and I don’t think he’s even scratched the surface yet about what kind of player he can be as a pass rusher, on run defense, all of it.”
The story of Oweh’s first two seasons in Baltimore was one in all stops and begins.
As a rookie, he pressured the fumble that clinched an elusive victory over the Kansas City Chiefs however completed the season on the shelf due to a foot damage. He appeared unblockable in camp the following summer time, with usually understated defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald saying he anticipated Oweh to change into a “dominant player.” Instead, his sacks and stress fee dropped barely in Year 2 as he didn’t stack standout performances. When it was over, he was requested if offseason shoulder surgical procedure had hampered his improvement. “I wouldn’t say hampered,” he replied. “But I didn’t have an offseason.”
Oweh hinted at a coming breakout with 4 pressures and two sacks within the Ravens’ playoff loss to the Bengals. But when would good well being and sharpened approach align for the man who’d set the NFL scouting mix ablaze along with his 4.39-second time within the 40-yard sprint?
He’s answering that query earlier than our eyes.
By a number of metrics, Oweh is an elite move rusher proper now. He’s high 10 amongst edge defenders (who’ve performed at the very least 100 snaps in opposition to the move) in each move rush productiveness and move rush win fee, based on Pro Football Focus, sharing a neighborhood with luminaries similar to DeMarcus Lawrence of the Dallas Cowboys, Maxx Crosby of the Las Vegas Raiders and Trey Hendrickson of the Bengals.
What concerning the consistency that eluded Oweh in his first two seasons? Well, PFF has graded him the perfect move rusher among the many Ravens’ edge defenders in 5 of the seven video games he’s performed this yr, and that’s with veterans Jadeveon Clowney and Kyle Van Noy producing sturdy seasons. Oweh has completed with at the very least three pressures in every of the six full video games he has performed. He’s pressuring quarterbacks on 18% of his pass-rush snaps, per PFF, up from 9.9% in 2022 and 11.6% in 2021.
He’s an every-week drawback for opposing offensive coordinators.
Given Oweh’s type, the $7.2 million projected price of his fifth-year possibility might be a relative discount for the Ravens after this season as they appear to take care of an economical roster round franchise quarterback Lamar Jackson.
“We already knew what he was capable of. Obviously, he was getting there as a rookie. [In] the second year, he was doing a hell of a job; he just couldn’t finish,” Queen stated. “It takes time for those things — just slowing the game down for him — and [he’s] just going out there now and balling. … I’m really proud of him, really happy for him.”
It’s a sentiment shared by teammates and coaches all through the group, who understand how badly Oweh desires to be nice.
“He’s put the work in,” stated cornerback Brandon Stephens, who was a part of the 2021 draft class with Oweh and shares the identical company. “I see him putting work in up in Austin in the offseason. I always tell him, ‘Just stay focused. Nobody cares about what you did last week. What are you going to do this week?’”
Stephens is preaching to the choir.
“I feel like there’s still so much I can get better at, in all aspects of my game because I started [playing football] late,” Oweh stated. “The place where I got drafted, obviously, it required a lot of expectations early, but I’m still very much in the developmental stage. I still have a lot to prove.”
Oweh famously went with out a sack in his final yr at Penn State, the place he requested to make use of his energy to stuff the run earlier than he swam upfield to search out the quarterback. He’s a noticeably extra subtle move rusher than he was as a rookie, with a deeper bag of spins and hesitations to capitalize on his uncommon mobility.
“The one-on-one moves have really smoothed out,” Harbaugh stated. “[The] spin move has smoothed out, not perfect a lot of times, but he has four or five moves — two or three go-to moves and probably four or five moves overall that he uses pretty regularly. That’s a big addition to what he was before, more just kind of a straight speed rusher when he came here.”
Oweh had identified for years he wanted to deepen his bag, and in Smith, who earned the nickname “Dr. Rush” as a non-public coach to a number of the league’s high sack artists, he discovered a perfect tutor.
Even when he has performed effectively, Oweh is aware of Smith can be ready with a listing of nitpicks after they meet to overview his recreation tape.
“He always harps on me every week on the little details, because if you have success a lot, you might forget about the little things that you were doing just to get to that spot,” Oweh stated, grinning. “It gets annoying sometimes because he’s always harping on me about the little things. But I’m really grateful for him always staying on me for stuff like that.”
In addition to the element work, Oweh has repeatedly credited Smith — who posted 58 1/2 sacks in 9 NFL seasons — for educating him to suppose like an elite move rusher.
“It’s just a mentality of what you’re looking at and what your approach is in your rush,” he stated. “Just always having a plan before the ball is snapped — that really helped me.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com