Hope springs eternal this time of year in the NFL. The Ravens have good reason for it.
After 10 practices during voluntary organized team activities and this week’s mandatory three-day minicamp, they enter the six-week summer break ahead of the start of training camp in late July largely healthy.
Aside from second-year running back Keaton Mitchell, who suffered a torn ACL against the Jacksonville Jaguars in mid-December and won’t be back until sometime during the season at the earliest, there are no known long-term injury concerns.
That includes what is perhaps the league’s best safety tandem, All-Pro Kyle Hamilton and Marcus Williams.
While Hamilton has been sidelined through most of the offseason workout program with an elbow issue, coach John Harbaugh said it’s merely a “two-to-three-week deal” and that he expects the 2023 Pro Bowl selection to be back on the field for the start of training camp. Williams, meanwhile, appears to be fully healthy again after a pair of injuries limited him last season.
“Injuries happen in the year, and you’ve just got to overcome those injuries and just push past them, which I think I’m pretty good at doing,” Williams said Thursday. “I’ve been myself. This has been me.”
Staying on the field has been easier said than done for the 27-year-old Williams, however, since Baltimore signed him to a five-year, $70 million free agent deal in March 2022.
Over the past two seasons, the 2017 second-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints has appeared in just 21 of 34 regular-season games. Last year, he missed three straight games after suffering a pectoral injury in Week 1 against the Houston Texans and three more after injuring his hamstring in Week 6 against the Tennessee Titans in London.
It could have been worse, but Williams, who led Baltimore with four interceptions in 2022, decided not to have surgery after his pectoral injury and instead opted for rehabilitation. Had he chosen the former, it would have cost him most of the season, if not all of it.
Still, there were signs that something wasn’t quite right with his pectoral muscle once he returned, and it appeared to impede his ability to tackle.
Williams played on, but some of his performances, along with the data, signaled trouble. His seven missed tackles, per Pro Football Focus, were up from two the previous season. The 76.7% completion rate he allowed when targeted was the worst of his career. And there were obvious struggles as well, including in Week 15 against the Jacksonville Jaguars when he winced in pain while tackling wide receiver Christian Kirk near the end of the first half and had to be helped to his feet by linebacker Patrick Queen to keep the clock running. The following week against the San Francisco 49ers, he whiffed on a tackle as tight end Georg Kittle rumbled for a 58-yard gain.
In all, Williams’ 55 tackles were the fewest of his career, though he only appeared in 11 games and played the fewest defensive snaps (636) of his career as he and the Ravens tried to manage a long season that would stretch to the AFC championship game.
Williams simply carried on, saying in November, “I feel good.”
It was also a stark contrast with his career in New Orleans, where he missed just four games over his first five seasons.
Despite Williams’ struggles at times, however, Baltimore still boasted one of the league’s best defensive backfields last season. The Ravens’ secondary ranked second in the NFL with a 93 grade from PFF and tied for the third-most interceptions in the league at 18. While safety Geno Stone — now with the Cincinnati Bengals — accounted for an AFC-leading seven of them, many were the product of right place, right time and thanks to a collaborative effort.
Now healthy, Williams’ impact could be even greater and more important with Stone gone amid turnover in the secondary.
“It’s not about showing anybody anything,” Williams said when asked if he’s out to prove what he can do when healthy. “It’s about showing myself what I can do. I never worry about showing anybody what I can do. I just stay true to me and go out there, perform to the best of my ability no matter what’s going on, and that’s just … as football players, you’ve got to overcome adversity and face that, look it in the eye and just never give up.”
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t much care for what rankings say about what the best safety tandem in the NFL is, either. In his mind, he’s already certain.
“Rankings don’t mean anything,” Williams said. “Performance from last year is not performance from this year. We know what we could do. We know what type of players we are. We’re confident in ourselves. I think I’m the best. [Hamilton] thinks he’s the best.
“Our expectation is to be our best, to excel past our best and go out there and perform and help us win some games.”
