The Ravens bye week is upon us. Players are off to exotic islands to convalesce and get their minds and bodies right for the season’s homestretch. The coaching staff will take a different approach to the downtime. They’ll use the break to be reflective, to be introspective. What have they done well? How can they do it better? They’ll look at the season through a macro lens – to consider the balance of the regular season schedule in its totality as part of an effort to manage it most efficiently in order to maximize their postseason seeding. On Monday, amongst other things, defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald summarized the staff’s downtime objectives this way:
“The first big goal of the week is to kind of look at our guys and evaluation what they’re doing well [and] what things they can improve on an individual basis.