Playoff Chances & More Continue Plummeting into the Red

With the division in their hands entering Thanksgiving night, the Ravens have played arguably their two worst games of the season and lost at home to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The Steelers game was particularly maddening because you were coming off the mini-bye, the defense was bad against a bad offense, and the offense only turned it over once (great by their standards).

The Ravens continue to be unable to get out of their own way and they just look like a broken, defeated team.

Of course, the same could have been said about the 2012 team. Thirteen years ago tomorrow, the Ravens fired Cam Cameron. Six days later, they lost by 17 to Denver. No one could have confidently thought that they would go on a run and win the Super Bowl that year. So, there is some level of hope if you can get into the playoffs that you can make a run but right now, this team looks to be going nowhere.

Much like after the Bengals game, there weren’t a lot of positives that came out of the game.

Stock Up

Zay Flowers

After a bad week against Cincy, Zay Flowers came back and had a big game. He was making plays all over and was one of the best players on the field. This is what he does. He is very up-and-down, but when he is up, he is a big time weapon.

Run Game

40 carries and over 200 yards. Keaton Mitchell, who hurt his knee after his long run (he’s day-to-day, so big relief there), provided a nice spark and it looked like they were using him for a series here and there as opposed to just spelling Derrick Henry for a play or two. I asked for that last week and hope to see it continue. And Henry got going as well. Lamar Jackson continued to look better physically, which will always make the run game better.

Stock Down

Daniel Faalele

Can Daniel Faalele‘s stock get worse at this point? He is terrible in pass protection and mediocre at run blocking. I have defended him some at times. Not that I think he’s good, but I think he’s more of a punching bag than he should be and some of it gets blown up because people look for and post a handful of his awful plays every week. We aren’t looking for those plays for anyone else (and it’s not like they don’t exist), so those players don’t get the same level of vitriol.

That said, he is a bad NFL lineman, and he is single-handedly allowing plays to get blown up on a regular basis. Going back to 2012, one of the key things they did at the end of the year was to insert Bryant McKinnie into the starting LT role and that really helped the offense. I realize we may not have a McKinnie-level guard just laying around but I think they absolutely have to try something.

Kickoffs

What is going on with our kickoffs?  Tyler Loop routinely kicks it way too short (or out of bounds) and the coverage has been mediocre as of late. Pittsburgh had three drives that started at the 35-yard line or better and all of them were as a result of bad kickoffs and/or coverage. They scored on two of those three drives. Loop did have some good kickoffs and that was obviously helpful, but the consistency is not there and that has got to get better.

Refs

I am not one who likes to blame the refs and even if the Ravens had won that game, I wouldn’t feel any different about the team than I do now.  That said, the refs screwed the Ravens. They admitted to John Harbaugh that the Travis Jones penalty was incorrect and the Isaiah Likely TD was clearly a TD to anyone watching that isn’t a Steelers fan. He got three feet down, extended the ball (which is a football move as defined by the league, and you don’t have to make a football move in the end zone anyway) and he had possession of the ball.  It was a horrendous call. Had they called it correctly and even if the Ravens get the two-point conversion, there is no guarantee they win the game but obviously, they would have been in position to do it.

2-minute offense

What was Lamar and the offense doing at the end of the game? You have about two minutes and a timeout and you not only don’t get points, but you ran out of time?!?!?!?  How is that even possible when you have a veteran offensive group? It was horrific to watch it unfold and the lack of urgency was astounding.

Look at this sequence, that used over a minute to go a total of eight yards.

Passes to the middle of the field are one thing, if they’re chunks. Short passes are another, as long as you get out of bounds. The Ravens, inexplicably, opted to throw short passes to the middle of the field. Players were in the wrong spot, Voorhees got a holding flag, Lamar wasn’t leading them, etc…It was just bad, bad football.

Playoff Chances

The Ravens playoff chances dropped by 30-40%. They have seven paths to get in but realistically, they must win three of the four games (they can lose at Green Bay) and hope Pittsburgh loses one of the next three games (which they will) and then set up the showdown in Steel Town for the division title, in what will probably be the SNF game.

But can this team beat Cincy on the road and New England at home?  They certainly can do it, but why should we think they will do it?

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