The 2025 Baltimore Ravens didn't just disappoint. They authored the single largest year-over-year combined-unit EPA regression in the NFL — and then, halfway through the season, they staged one of the league's sharpest turnarounds. Both stories are true. Both are visible in the data. And the fingerprints of both are on Lamar Jackson.

Table of Contents

1. The collapse, in one number
2. Lamar's 18-spot fall
3. The mid-season resurrection
4. What to make of it

1. The collapse, in one number

In 2024, Baltimore's offense finished #1 in the NFL at +0.219 EPA/play, and its defense finished #8 at −0.039 EPA/play allowed. In 2025, both units cratered: the offense slid to +0.034 EPA/play (12th) and the defense to +0.024 EPA/play allowed (19th).

Combining the two swings — offense delta plus (negated) defense delta — Baltimore's net EPA/play fell by 0.248, the largest combined regression in the league. The next-worst regressions belonged to the Jets (−0.238), Commanders (−0.230), and Bengals (−0.191). Every other team in the league was inside −0.15.

The offense's pass game led the fall: pass-EPA/play collapsed from +0.321 in 2024 to −0.035 in 2025. The run game held up better — actually still a plus, at +0.100 EPA/play on the ground — which is a hint about what changed and what didn't.

2. Lamar's 18-spot fall

The single cleanest fingerprint is at quarterback. Among QBs with at least 200 dropbacks:

• 2024 Lamar Jackson: 0.327 EPA/play, +5.08 CPOE, 4,601 pass yards, 45 pass TDs, 5 INTs, .515 success rate — 1st in the NFL in EPA/play.
• 2025 Lamar Jackson: 0.020 EPA/play, +1.76 CPOE, 2,549 pass yards, 21 TDs, 7 INTs, .456 success rate on 338 dropbacks — 19th in the NFL.

That is an 18-spot rank drop and a −0.307 EPA/play swing for the reigning MVP — and it happened on roughly 200 fewer dropbacks, which itself is a story. Jackson didn't take a snap in Weeks 5, 6, or 8; Cooper Rush started Week 5, Rush and Tyler Huntley split Week 6, and Huntley started Week 8 before Jackson returned in Week 9. (Week 7 was the bye.)

3. The mid-season resurrection

Here's where the "Ravens were bad" narrative breaks. Splitting Baltimore's season at Week 8 — Jackson's last missed game — produces two teams that barely resemble each other.

Weeks 1–7 (322 offensive plays, 395 defensive plays):

• Offense: −0.037 EPA/play
• Defense: +0.161 EPA/play allowed

Weeks 8–18 (634 offensive plays, 681 defensive plays):

• Offense: +0.070 EPA/play
• Defense: −0.055 EPA/play allowed

The defensive swing alone is enormous: from bottom-of-the-league (+0.161 allowed) to comfortably above-average (−0.055 allowed). The offense went from a negative unit to a positive one. If you graded only the Weeks 8–18 Ravens as a full season, you'd have a team playing like a legitimate contender on both sides of the ball.

And the low point inside the low point: across the three games Jackson missed (Weeks 5, 6, and 8), Baltimore's offense posted −0.333 EPA/play on 114 plays, while the defense simultaneously allowed +0.207 EPA/play. That's not just "bad" — that's, on a rate basis, the profile of a bottom-three team in football. Losing an MVP-tier quarterback for three games is supposed to hurt; losing him and watching your defense also cave to +0.20 EPA/play allowed is what actually blew a hole in the season-long numbers.

4. What to make of it

The tidy version of the 2025 Ravens is "they underperformed." The data version is messier and more useful:

1. Baltimore posted the NFL's worst combined-unit regression from 2024 to 2025 (−0.248 in net EPA/play), and it wasn't especially close.
2. The regression was concentrated in the passing game and in Jackson's numbers specifically — an 18-spot EPA/play rank drop that no other MVP-caliber QB in the sample suffered.
3. The season-long numbers are a blend of two very different teams — a historically bad Weeks 1–7 group whose worst stretch coincided with Jackson's absence, and a Weeks 8–18 group that graded out as a legitimate two-way contender.

The full-season EPA rankings understate how the Ravens looked once Jackson came back but the second-half rankings almost certainly overstate how easy it will be to hold that level across a full 2026. But if you're picking a lens, the Weeks 8–18 team — with a healthy Jackson and a defense that stopped hemorrhaging EPA — is a much better base rate for what Baltimore actually is than the 2025 season totals suggest.

The 2025 Ravens weren't one team that fell off. They were two teams sharing a jersey — and one of them was still very, very good. Disclaimer: This analysis doesn't model in year-over-year coaching changes.