3 weeks is a pretty small sample size to determine that the Ravens have turned the corner because of Caldwell. It could be a number of factors, or even as simple as "Torrey Smith has been waking up on the right side of the bed lately". Hard to say. Disregarding why the turnaround happened, though, it's pretty clear that they've been playing better football on the offensive side.
Personally, the stat that really jumped out at me was that, pretty late in the Denver game, Joe Flacco was averaging over 20 yards per completion. That's ridiculous, and speaks to a pretty severe reliance on the deep ball. That's not a bad thing - when it works it's devastating, and it means that you don't really have to have a high percentage of successful plays to be successful in the whole.
What it does mean, though, is that shutting down Torrey Smith probably becomes priority #1. It also means that the game plan that every other team tries to use against the Pats--keep Brady off the field with long, sustained drives--probably isn't in the cards for Baltimore. Even if their gameplan succeeds, it looks like their defense is going to be on the field a lot (in the neighborhood of ~40 minutes), and for one of the oldest teams in the league, with no linebacker depth and that just played a double overtime game in sub-freezing Mile High, that's a bad ****tail.
By the second half of this game, the Ravens' defense will probably be as gassed as any defense that we've ever seen. If they want to win, they're probably going to have to use the 49ers as a blueprint. Score early and often with big plays, force turnovers, and build up a 3+ score lead early. Then hope they can hold on, with some timely assists from their special teams.
