Ravens vs. Colts: 5 things to watch, including Lamar Jackson, Daniel Jones and more

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Jesse Minter has had a lot of time to think about Sunday. He was hired as head coach in late January. The Ravens’ schedule was released in May. And yet, all these months later, days away from Sunday’s season opener against the Indianapolis Colts, he couldn’t help but wonder.

“There is just that feeling of — there is a lot of self-thought during the week of, ‘Man, do we have enough? Do we have enough answers? Are we well prepared?’” Minter said Tuesday.

After an offseason of dramatic change in Baltimore, the Ravens’ long wait for clarity is almost over. Week 1 is finally here — and with it, a glimpse of the franchise’s new era.

Here’s what to watch in the teams’ matchup at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium. All stats are courtesy of Sports Info Solutions, Pro Football Focus and the NFL’s Next Gen Stats unless otherwise noted.

1. One of the biggest changes to the Ravens’ offense under new coordinator Declan Doyle could be obvious before the snap.

Over quarterback Lamar Jackson’s first eight seasons in Baltimore, he lined up primarily in shotgun and pistol formations. Last season, the Ravens operated from there on almost two-thirds of their offensive snaps.

But as the Ravens adopt more of an outside-zone-based rushing attack, they could look more like Doyle’s last offense. Under head coach and play-caller Ben Johnson, the Chicago Bears had an under-center usage rate of just under 50% last season.

Jackson should be well suited to the change. Over the past three seasons, he’s completed 73.2% of his passes from under-center drop-backs, averaging an elite 9.3 yards per attempt while posting 16 touchdowns and one interception.

“He’s very natural at it,” Doyle said early in camp. “He’s a quick mover. You would never notice that he hasn’t been under there that much. He has the ability to do all three — he can be under, he can be in the pistol, he can be in the gun. There’s a lot of versatility in his game. You want to mix all those things and make the defense have to deal with him.”

2. The Ravens’ remade interior offensive line is one of the team’s biggest mysteries.

It could also be its biggest weakness Sunday. On paper, Colts defensive linemen DeForest Buckner and Grover Stewart have the advantage over left guard John Simpson, center Jovaughn Gwyn and rookie right guard Vega Ioane. Only Simpson has ever started an NFL game.

But Indianapolis’ overall defense is even less of a sure thing. In the offseason, the Colts lost 51.7% of their 2025 defensive snaps with the departure of players like defensive end Samson Ebukam, linebacker Zaire Franklin, cornerback Kenny Moore and safety Nick Cross.

Indianapolis’ defensive spine could be especially vulnerable Sunday. Its projected starting linebackers are ​​Akeem Davis-Gaither, who signed a one-year deal worth just $2.7 million this offseason, and Jaylon Carlies, who has six career starts over two NFL seasons and played just three games last year. One of its projected starting safeties is rookie A.J. Haulcy, a third-round pick limited by an ankle injury in practice this week. The projected starting nickel back is Justin Walley, who missed all of his rookie season with a torn ACL.

Even the Colts’ impressive cornerback duo, Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward, require some projection. Because of injuries and Gardner’s midseason arrival in a blockbuster trade, they never played together last year.

3. To bolster one of the NFL’s worst pass rushes, the Ravens signed one of the NFL’s most productive edge rushers. Outside linebacker Trey Hendrickson’s first test of the season could be a useful litmus test of his 2026 potential.

Hendrickson is expected to line up primarily on the right side of the Ravens’ defensive line, as he did in Cincinnati, matched up with the left tackle. The Colts’ Bernhard Raimann allowed a career-high eight sacks last season, and he especially struggled on true pass sets — pass-blocking plays that exclude plays with fewer than four rushers, play-action, screens, short drop-backs and throws that are released in under two seconds.

Hendrickson had the upper hand in their first meeting. In 2023, Raimann’s first year as a full-time starter, Hendrickson had five pressures and two sacks in just 29 pass rush snaps as the Bengals blew out the Colts.

“There are going to be so many plays that he may not necessarily collect a stat on the stat sheet, but affects the play just by how he affects the quarterback,” defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver said of Hendrickson last week. “Sometimes just the sheer fact that he is out there is going to affect the quarterback. Sometimes he takes numbers because you have to account for him with a chipper, which works in our favor when you are trying to change the math.”

4. Colts quarterback Daniel Jones took nearly every first-team rep in training camp. He said last week that he’s fully healthy. He hasn’t appeared on the team’s injury report this week.

But Jones’ surgically repaired Achilles tendon still remains a question mark. Jones tore the Achilles in his right leg — his plant leg — in early December, missed offseason practices and did not play in the preseason.

“I think I’ve completed every phase of this process and, yeah, I guess the last part is playing in a game,” Jones told local reporters Wednesday.

The Ravens will test Jones’ ability under duress. Over the Colts’ first eight games last season, he was the NFL’s most efficient pressured quarterback, completing 61.3% of his passes for 607 yards (10 yards per attempt), five touchdowns and no interceptions while taking a sack on just 9.5% of those snaps. Through Week 8, Jones was the only quarterback to produce positive expected points added on pressured drop-backs.

Historically, though, Jones has wilted under fire. In 2023, he completed 51.9% of his pressured throws for 3.8 yards per attempt. In 2024, he averaged 4.4 yards per attempt on 44.1% accuracy. He had a combined three touchdowns and five interceptions over those two seasons.

“You always have to be prepared for him to look like his best version of himself,” inside linebacker Roquan Smith said Tuesday. “You never can go in and think he is a wounded animal by any means.”

5. The Ravens won’t be judged by how they start Sunday. They’ll be judged by how they finish.

In their season opener last year, the Ravens led the Buffalo Bills by 15 points midway through the fourth quarter. But they were outscored 16-0 over the final four minutes and lost, 41-40, the latest in a string of late-game collapses that would doom coach John Harbaugh.

Minter has made the Ravens’ performance in high-leverage spots a focus since taking over, urging players to be at their best when their best is needed. The team’s physicality will be tested Sunday, especially in the trenches.

After years of grueling training camp practices under Harbaugh, Minter held shorter workouts this summer, with seemingly fewer reps for his first-team offense and defense. The Ravens emerged from the summer relatively unscathed, but will they be sufficiently battle-tested? In previous years, some of Harbaugh’s former players pointed to their hard work in camp as a partial explanation for their strong Septembers.

“I think I’ve always just been about really efficient practices, and that means different things,” Minter said Monday. “Sometimes we’re getting the same amount of reps that maybe were gotten in a longer amount of time, [but] maybe it’s just moving faster, moving quicker, moving in and out of the huddle, not wasting time. … It’s trying to figure out what’s best for the particular team that you have and what gets the team ready to play, and again, we won’t really find that out until Sunday when the game starts.”