One burning question for each AFC North team ahead of the 2024 season: Ravens, Bengals, Browns & Steelers in focus

There's been a lot of change in the AFC North as all four teams vie for the division in 2024. All teams not only believe they can win the North in the upcoming season and there are potential Super Bowl windows in various stages of opening and closing to discuss. Let's take a look at one question for each team in the AFC North:

One burning question for each AFC North team

#1, Baltimore Ravens

Can all these young pieces make up for the departures they’ve had?

NFL: Cleveland Browns at Baltimore Ravens (image credit: IMAGN)

The Ravens just hosted the AFC Championship as the conference’s number-one seed, with the MVP at quarterback and the league’s number-one defense by DVOA.

They do bring back last year’s leaders in passing, rushing, receiving, sacks and total passes defensed. I’m not worried about them completely falling off, but they did miss a huge opportunity to advance to the Super Bowl when they had a vulnerable Chiefs team at home. Also, I don’t think people realize how many significant contributors are no longer in Baltimore.

While he never lived up to the $15 million they paid him for one season, Odell Beckham Jr. is gone, and so are the top two running backs on the depth chart heading into the year. They traded their starter at right tackle for the last couple of years, and let both starting guards walk in free agency.

The same is true for Pro Bowlers defensively on the edge, at linebacker and safety between Jadeveon Clowney, Patrick Queen and Geno Stone. It certainly doesn’t help that the latter two have now switched to division rivals or that they lost their defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald and one of their key assistants in Anthony Weaver.

This obviously isn’t new for contenders who pay their quarterback near top-of-the-market money and lock up a defensive player like Justin Madubuike for nearly $100 million over the next four years, with three-quarters of that guaranteed. However, this is definitely one of those situations, where a lot of contracts ran out in the same year for them and they need their newest draft class to contribute fairly early.

They did sign one of the all-time great running backs in Derrick Henry, who will be looking to defy recent history at the position as a 30-year-old. The Ravens have finished top three in rushing yards all six years since they drafted Lamar and have been number one in half of those.

What the King could provide as a legit difference-maker handling the majority of carries will be important to control games, as they have new starters – and a few of those quasi or actual rookies – acclimating to the pros.

#2, Cincinnati Bengals

How do they cut down the number of explosive plays on defense?

Unless Tee Higgins ends up holding out or something similar, I feel like we have a pretty good about what this offense should look like. They’ve put together a big O-line to run their gap-scheme stuff from shotgun and will get the ball out quickly in the passing game.

Then we’ll see if they do convince Joe Burrow to go under center a little bit more or if they can construct a play-action game from the gun to hit vertical shots out of, as the number of explosives went down recently. Something on that side of the ball that I’m very interested in is what their usage of tight-ends will look like.

We’ve seen guys like C.J. Uzomah and Hayden Hurst become meaningful contributors for this offense and be featured more heavily in key matchups, when opposing defenses were more focused on slowing down those weapons at wide receiver. They signed more of a power forward and red-zone target in Mike Gesicki, but also drafted a couple of guys I like in the middle rounds.

Instead, however, I’m more focused on putting less pressure on the offense to constantly score, after they shockingly turned into one of the most vulnerable units across the league when it comes to surrendering big plays – which they had been one of the best at avoiding those and giving the AFC’s top quarterbacks trouble with the way they’d change the picture on them post-snap.

Last season, they finished 25th in EPA per play on defense, they allowed a league-worst rate of pass plays to gain 20+ yards at 12.9% and they were one off a league-high 18 explosive runs. Losing those two veteran safeties that had been the key communicators showed up with coverage busts, they lost Cam Taylor-Britt as their top guy in man and too many of those young guys they relied upon, didn’t step up.

So now bringing back Vonn Bell and pairing him on the back-end with former Raven Geno Stone, coming off a season where he intercepted seven passes, you address the defensive interior with Sheldon Rankins and a couple of day-two draft picks. Personally, I think DC Lou Anarumo will figure this out – with the majority of their issues having been on early downs.

#3, Cleveland Browns

Does Deshaun Watson finally look anything like a franchise quarterback again?

This feels very much like a lay-up, but I just had to take it here. There may not be another singular player who provides a higher range of outcomes individually and in terms of his meaning for team success than Deshaun Watson on the Browns.

Solely due to the variance on the defensive side of the ball, they may be in for some regression after finishing number one in EPA per play, third-down success rate and several other major categories. However, other than wondering if Jordan Hicks can replace Anthony Walker at that MIKE linebacker spot, they bring back pretty much the entire unit.

The crux with them is what we saw in their wild-card round loss to the Texans, when C.J. Stroud and company really attacked those single-high safety structures and generally had a lot of success against a fairly predictable back-end. So as good as they were and the role DC Jim Schwartz played in their rise to an elite unit, can he bring in some change-ups and challenge opponents in different ways when they get to those pivotal singular matchups?

Now, back to what has really held this team back, the quarterback position. Through week 12 in 2022 with Jacoby Brissett under center, this was the number six offense in EPA per play, and even last season, Joe Flacco went from his couch to winning Comeback Player of the Year thanks to the advantageous looks Kevin Stefanski created for that unit.

Yet, among the 58 quarterbacks with 200+ dropbacks over these last two years, Deshaun ranked 44th individually in that metric. Whether it’s feel for/comfort inside the pocket, decision-making or accuracy, he simply hasn’t found any type of consistency.

This past season, they tried to sort of merge the under-center wide zone stuff they previously majored in with more of a spread-out shotgun look to make their quarterback comfortable, but it never quite happened. They traded for Jerry Jeudy, which will be interesting as he’s not the type of timing-based receiver you typically think of in that offense, and Nick Chubb is coming off a major knee injury. So it’ll be interesting how willing this coaching staff is to put more into the hands of the QB.

#4, Pittsburgh Steelers

Is this offensive line a strength by this season already?

Over the last one-and-a-half calendar years, no team in the league has invested more resources into that unit than Pittsburgh, even if they didn’t own a top-10 pick or threw big money at a free agent.

Last offseason, they signed a 17-game starter at left guard in Isaac Seumalo, a swing interior guy in Nate Herbig and drafted Georgia’s Broderick Jones in the middle of the first round. Jones started once on the left side and then the final 10 games at right tackle.

This offseason, they’ve focused more on the draft, where they spent their first, second and an early fourth-round pick between Washington’s Troy Fautanu, West Virginia’s Zach Frazier and South Dakota State’s Mason McCormick.

The expectation is that Fautanu and Jones man the tackle spots, Frazier takes over center (where they’ve really struggled to get consistent play since the later years of Maurkice Pouncey five seasons ago already) and McCormick battles for the primary backup gig at both guard spots.

On paper, that unit has a chance to become one of the better front-fives across the NFL. The question now becomes how quickly they’re ready to perform at that type of level. Looking at Jones’ rookie numbers from the PFF database, he only surrendered more than three pressures in one game and was penalized just twice.

With the rookie class this year, we don’t have any sample size in the pros. But you’re talking about the Pac-12 Lineman of the Year with well over 1000 pass-blocking snaps alone over the last two seasons, a back-to-back All-Big 12 center who has mastered the art of outside zone (which will be primary run schemes they’ll be using under new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith) and a perennial All-FCS guard with 57 career starts.

So in terms of collegiate experience at least and how my scouting reports on them looked like, they should be about as pro-ready as you’re going to find.