The Ravens are in the midst of their first minicamp of 2009 and - at least at first blush - you have to wonder why they all seem so sure they will be a more potent offensive team than they were last season.
This is the team that came out of the AFC championship game supposedly desperate for a legitimate vertical threat at wide receiver, passed up the top wide-outs in the draft and now is auditioning a couple of veteran castoffs to help its depth at that key position. Yet general manager Ozzie Newsome has occasionally bristled at the notion that the existing receiving corps might not be up to snuff.
This also is the team that lost center Jason Brown to free agency and seems unsure of the role marquee running back Willis McGahee will play in its three-back system, yet everybody around the Owings Mills training facility makes it sound as if the offense - call it Cam Cameron 2.0 - will be light-years ahead of last season's model.
So, is that just the standard preseason pump-me-up that every team engages in to build excitement for the coming season, or do the Ravens know something you and I don't?
Of course they do. They know a lot of things you and I don't know because they are an NFL team, and NFL teams are so secretive that the National Security Agency calls them for advice on how to keep stuff from leaking out, but that's a separate issue. What they know in this particular case is what they didn't know a year ago.
To understand why everybody is so upbeat about this offense, you have to go back to last year's early minicamps, when Joe Flacco was preparing to hold a clipboard all season and the Ravens didn't know whether their offensive line would resemble the Swiss Guards or a giant Swiss cheese.
Think about it. Cameron might be one of the most imaginative offensive coordinators in the league, but I'm guessing he never imagined that Flacco would be the starting quarterback in his rookie season and fullback Le'Ron McClain would be the Ravens' leading rusher of 2008. What Cameron did know when he walked in the door was that the best offensive tackle in the league (Jonathan Ogden) was probably going to retire and that either Kyle Boller or Troy Smith was going to start behind a suspect offensive line that would require extra blocking help from the tight end position.
The players were in the same boat. The only thing they knew about Cameron was that he was a well-regarded offensive coordinator coming off a nightmarish first and last season as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.
"My first weekend here last year, I didn't know anything," Flacco said. "Now I'm a whole year ahead."
The same went for the veterans. Cam Cameron 1.0 was a fairly complex system that had to be installed incrementally. It wasn't a night-and-day departure from the Brian Billick/Rick Neuheisel model, but it was close. Everybody spent the minicamps adapting to the new offense.
It all turned out for the best. The offensive line was much better than advertised and got better this offseason with the addition of top draft choice Michael Oher. The Ravens also added tight end L.J. Smith to soften the workload on Todd Heap, and Pro Bowl center Matt Birk to replace Brown.
There are always new players, so this camp has a back-to-basics feel to it, but most of the offense already is comfortable in Cameron's framework, so the stage is set for the game plan to evolve.
"It evolves with the personnel," Cameron said Saturday. "We've gained some guys and we've lost some guys, and we'll look and see how we can fit them in the equation. We're not going to go out and run the exact same offense we ran this past year. ... Our offense, pretty much, is designed to attack the defense we play that week."
The Ravens took a giant offensive leap last season, but they'll have to take another one to go from AFC runner-up to the Super Bowl. Cameron seems confident they can do that if everyone continues to evolve and adapt.
"We're playing chess here - this isn't checkers - and I understand that," he said. "I think our coaching staff understands that. We have to be better coaches. We have to be better players. We have to give our players more tools, scheme-wise, to work with. And then we've got to master the fundamentals of those plays. That started [Friday]."
The difference this year is that they aren't starting from scratch.
Listen to Peter Schmuck every weeknight at 6 on 1090 AM and visit his blog, "The Schmuck Stops Here," at baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog.
