For one beautiful Sunday afternoon in Indianapolis against my Pop’s stolen blue horseshoe, it appeared that perhaps the Baltimore Ravens really had changed.
New coach. New energy. New voice. Forty-one points. Lamar Jackson smiling. Derrick Henry rumbling. Defense attacking. A happy Jesse Minter presser and game balls for all of the boys!
And then came the New Orleans Saints and the fourth quarter in Baltimore a week later in front of the home fans.
And suddenly, the ghost of John Harbaugh was somehow wearing a headset again.
The Ravens lost 24-17 to a Saints team they led 14-3 in the second quarter and 17-9 entering the fourth quarter. New Orleans scored the final 15 points. Baltimore ran three plays on its only meaningful possession of the fourth quarter before getting the football back desperately with 1:21 remaining. The Saints possessed the ball for almost the entire final period and marched 68 yards for the winning touchdown after the Ravens failed on third-and-1 because, naturally, Baltimore decided Derrick Henry was apparently not the most useful human being in the stadium when needing one yard.
New coach.
8
Same movie.
And Baltimore has seen this movie far too many times.
Since 2019, the Ravens have now lost 15 games after holding a double-digit lead. And Sunday was their 15th loss since 2021 when leading after three quarters, the most in the NFL over that span.
John Harbaugh is gone. Jesse Minter is here.
But apparently the fourth-quarter demons stayed in Owings Mills.
This is precisely why changing the head coach was never going to magically fix everything that has haunted this franchise. Harbaugh deserved accountability for the repeated blown leads, game-management calamities and inexplicable late-game offensive disappearances of his final years.
But Eric DeCosta built this roster and Lamar Jackson still quarterbacks it. And the veteran core of Marlon Humphrey, Roquan Smith, Mark Andrews and Ronnie Stanley still exist with the weight of a lot of January heartache and bust.
8All “under new management,” which the fan base took as an upgrade but the New York Giants saw as a chance to pay Harbaugh five times more than Bisciotti is paying Minter to do the same job.
Minter and offensive coordinator Declan Doyle were going to be the missing pieces to “freshen” (and make younger) the whole operation.
And when the game arrived at winning time Sunday, some of the same maddening football decisions remained.
The operation failed against the Saints.
Henry carried 11 times for 51 yards and a touchdown in the first half. He carried five times for 17 yards after halftime. Then came the moment that will stick in every Baltimore football fan’s craw all week: tie game, fourth quarter, third-and-1 at the Ravens 35.
You employ Derrick Henry.
You need one yard.
8So what do you do?
Throw deep to Chris Moore…
Incomplete.
Punt.
And then watch New Orleans drive 68 yards and score the winning touchdown. Sixteen plays. Playing third and longs with matador defense.
The Ravens gained 312 yards, committed seven penalties, went 4-for-9 on third down and managed just three second-half points. Meanwhile, Saints quarterback Tyler Shough – previously the “Who?” in the WhoDey prior to coming and stealing the Ravens’ lunch that they were delighted to play with all afternoon – completed 27 of 34 passes for 252 yards without an interception. New Orleans converted eight of 15 third downs and both of its fourth-down attempts.
That isn’t bad luck.
8That’s losing football. Defensively. And that’s where the new ball coach – with the hands-on approach to defense and the playbook of the modern chaos design – was gonna get after the ass of the likes of Tyler Shough.
Yes, the officiating at the goal line was murky. Maybe Shough got across; probably he didn’t. The ruling stood.
Fine.
Good football teams – or their quarterback (hint, hint, No. 8) – don’t spend the Sunday postgame screaming about six inches of turf when they spent the previous three hours creating opportunities to make those six inches irrelevant.
The Ravens also had a penalty erase a stop on the Saints’ game-tying two-point conversion. They allowed another significant kickoff return after surrendering a 66-yarder in Indianapolis. Tyler Loop had a 49-yard field goal deflected wide. Ronnie Stanley left injured. Zay Flowers didn’t play. Nnamdi Madubuike remains absent.
Blah, blah blah…
There are always explanations.
8There were explanations during the Harbaugh years, too.
Eventually, explanations become part of the pattern of the losing.
Minter knows exactly what everyone in Baltimore is going to say because he said it himself afterward: everybody is going to call this the “same old thing” with the Ravens blowing another lead. His response was appropriate: own it, look in the mirror and figure out how to improve.
Good.
Because that’s the job.
I don’t expect Jesse Minter to exorcise seven years of fourth-quarter demons in two Sundays. I don’t expect a football team to go 17-0. And anyone who watched the Ravens dismantle Indianapolis last week knows there’s enough talent here to play deep into January.
But this isn’t about losing one football game.
8It’s about how they lost it.
An eight-point fourth-quarter lead at home against New Orleans should be money in the bank for a team with Super Bowl aspirations.
Instead, Baltimore got another Sunday afternoon of disappearing offense, exhausted defense, questionable situational football, special-teams problems, penalties and Lamar Jackson trying to rescue the whole operation in the final minute. His final throw sailed into the hands of Julian Blackmon with 21 seconds remaining.
Ballgame.
The scoreboard says Ravens 1-1.
And this is the toughest week of the year ahead with an all-nighter to Brazil lurking in 72 hours.
Nobody should panic; it’s freaking Week 2!
8But nobody in Owings Mills should shrug, either. Because changing the nameplate on the head coach’s office was supposed to change what happens when these games get tight. And that didn’t happen on Sunday.
Jesse Minter spent the summer preaching about finishing. The Ravens actually practiced late-game situations around the mantra of being at their best when their best was needed.
On Sunday, their best disappeared precisely when it was needed.
Next comes Dallas in Brazil.
And the first real test of the Jesse Minter era isn’t whether his Ravens can look spectacular when everything is going right. I saw that show in Indy last week.
The real test over the balance is whether they can finally stop looking like the old Ravens when everything starts going wrong.
New coach. New season. New slogans.
8Even new threads and drip…
Now change the ending.
