How Does the Marc Trestman Firing Impact the Baltimore Ravens' Offense?

After Week 3, the Baltimore Ravens were 3-0, and they looked like -- potentially -- one of the surprise teams of the year.

After two straight losses in Weeks 4 and 5, the Ravens have fallen back to Earth. The Ravens plummeted fast enough that they fired offensive coordinator Marc Trestman this morning.

The Ravens tabbed quarterback coach, Marty Mornhinweg, as the new offensive coordinator to replace Trestman.

With the Ravens offense struggling to score points on offense (ranked 23rd in points per game), will the promotion of Mornhinweg bring about the desired change?

Trest Fall

When analyzing the Ravens' offense, to look beyond just points per game, we can use our Net Expected Points (NEP) metric to see just how effective the unit has been.

We can also use this to look at how well Trestman-run offenses with the Arizona Cardinals, Oakland Raiders, and Chicago Bears have fared historically based on their schedule-adjusted NEP rankings.

Outside of 2002 and 2013, Marc Trestman has been a below-average offensive mind. In those years, his Raiders and Bears offenses featured some historically great players including Jerry Rice and Brandon Marshall.

This year, his offense bottomed out at 25th in Adjusted Offensive NEP, 29th in Adjusted Passing NEP, and 21st in Adjusted Rushing NEP before the Ravens' Week 5 matchup with the Washington Redskins.

While the rushing offense had a good day (3.49 Rushing NEP) in Week 5, the passing offense again fell flat (-8.80 Passing NEP) leading to a poor day for the offense overall (-4.28 NEP).

The Ravens were smart to get rid of Trestman as soon as possible; his reputation based on two good years, has shown to be far from true.

All Hail Marty

Now, the Ravens have turned to Marty Mornhinweg to salvage their offense this year.

Let's see how his offenses with the New York Jets, Philadelphia Eagles, Detroit Lions, and San Francisco 49ers have stacked up through the years, to see what he can bring the Ravens moving forward this year.

Unlike Trestman, Mornhinweg has been an above-average offensive mind overall, and for most of his years coaching, his teams have performed in this manner.

His most successful days were with the Eagles, where his offenses featured players like Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb, Brian Westbrook, LeSean McCoy, and DeSean Jackson among others.

Although Terrance West is no Westbrook or McCoy, he's performing admirably so far this year -- West has 327 yards (5.0 yards per carry) and 1 touchdown on 65 carries.

Furthermore, our NEP metrics backs up his performance as no fluke. Entering Week 5, West's 54 carries, at the time, ranked seventh for Rushing NEP (2.69), 10th in Rushing NEP per play (0.05), and 21st for Rushing Success Rate (40.74%) among 41 running backs with at least 25 carries.

West fared even better in Week 5 when he took 11 carries for a Rushing NEP of 2.99 (0.27 Rushing NEP per play) along with a 45.45% Rushing Success Rate. West again showed he has the ability to be a consistent running threat when featured.

We can expect that Mornhinweg will feature West moving forward like he did with Westbrook and McCoy in the past.

Additionally, and probably most importantly, he runs the ball more often than Trestman based on their history, which should help further add to West's volume.

Even though the pace should go down for the passing game, the efficiency should improve. With the Ravens scoring the second-fewest points per play (0.269), Mornhinweg has almost nowhere to take this team but up.

It looks like the Ravens are in line to see their offense -- especially the running game -- improve.