Was it the myriad of penalties, or the two missed kicks by Justin Tucker or the fact that Derrick Henry wasn’t involved enough? It certainly wasn’t because Russell Wilson found the fountain of youth. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss an ugly Ravens’ 18-16 loss to the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Nestor Aparicio and Luke Jones discussed the Baltimore Ravens’ disappointing loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, highlighting their penalties, turnovers, and missed opportunities. Despite the Ravens’ offensive struggles, they noted the defense’s improved performance, particularly the pass rush. They emphasized the importance of consistency and avoiding self-inflicted errors. The conversation also touched on the Ravens’ playoff prospects, questioning their ability to win consecutive games in January. Additionally, they mentioned the impact of injuries and the need for better special teams play, particularly from Justin Tucker.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Ravens loss, Steelers game, penalties issue, offensive struggles, defensive progress, playoff concerns, Justin Tucker, Marcus Williams, Eddie Jackson, Travis Jones, pass rush, special teams, Pittsburgh rivalry, home-field advantage, postseason performance
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
8
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We’re taking the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road this week. Finally, I will return to Hampstead. We’re going to be doing Carroll County, beautiful green mount station. Come on up. Sure they’ve trimmed up the tree up in Hampstead already. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. I’ll have Raven scratch offs to give away. We have the luckier than they were in Pittsburgh a Sunday ravens scratch offs this week. Also, we’re going to be a Cocos pub on December 4. I’m doing a whole litany of places, including our first ever. And you’ll appreciate this, Luke, you’ll appreciate this. I went to a me cheese with good friends on Friday down in Little Italy. You know, amicis is my favorite restaurant. We’ve been through this. It’s the best restaurant on earth. No offense to any of the other restaurants. It’s sort of my, my Arnold’s, my Happy Days Fonzie kind of place. And I went down there, and I realized I’d never done a crab cake tour there, but then I realized they don’t have a crab cake so I said, this might be the first time ever, we’re going to do a holiday stop where we’re just going to make the pane rotundo, an honorary crab cake, because it’s that good. So we’ll be doing that on December the 12th. I think I got all sorts of dates in December. I’ll be out. I’ll be about I’ll be a very available individual with these Raven scratch offs. Luke has been very available. Our friends at Royal farms. Put the gas in the car, put the chicken in there. Put the coffee in there. He did not drive Justin Tucker to Pittsburgh, but he was powered up by our friends at Jiffy Lube MultiCare. Luke Jones joins us now. On the backside of a discouraging result, I don’t think you know, I’m not Chicken Little here week after they lose to the Steelers. By, you know, two field goals that the sky is falling, but certainly this is, this is not a Super Bowl winning operation right now, Luke, that’s, that’s what I wrote in my columnist at Baltimore positive. Well,
Luke Jones 01:53
I mean, it depends how you look at that in a one off, in terms of how talented they are, sure I think they’re a Super Bowl contender. I think it’d be silly not to say that, but part of being a Super Bowl contender and being a team that can win a Super Bowl is to win three or four games in a row in January and early February. And from that standpoint, understanding your operation needs to be clean, you need to be consistent on both sides of the ball, you can’t be making you can’t be committing penalties to the degree that the Ravens have all year. And that’s something that’s been an issue even when they’ve won. That’s where you look at this and you say, do you really trust this football team to do that three or four times in a row? And now, when you’re a game and a half back on the Steelers in first place, or with the Steelers being in first place in the AFC north, it’s much more of a question of not the number one seed or not having home field advantage, whether you’ll even have a home playoff game. So that’s where it’s discouraging, and that’s where you look at this as poorly as they played in terms of mistakes, turnovers, fumbles, missed field goals, all the different things that we’re going to get into. You look on the flip side, and you see Pittsburgh was four of 16 on third down. They were over one on fourth down. They averaged 4.1 yards per play, which is bad. Russell Wilson was awful, right? He was awful. They
Nestor Aparicio 03:20
weren’t even really in third and long a lot. They weren’t in third and 28 to say they were four for 16, right? Yeah.
Luke Jones 03:26
I mean, they just, they didn’t convert you. You look at their profile and you say, Oh, they lost the football game, until you start to see all the mistakes and the miscues and the self inflicted errors and everything that the Ravens did. So from that standpoint, it’s it is discouraging. And I think as I’m working on it at Baltimore positive.com I go back to when Marlon Humphrey intercepts the pass. I mean, a terrible decision, terrible throw by Russell Wilson, when they at least could bank three points there. And that felt very similar to what happened at Tampa Bay, what happened in both Bengals games, where Humphrey creates the takeaway, gets the turnover, and it kind of flipped the switch. It kind of ignited the Ravens. And I was thinking at that point in time, they’re going to come away with a win here, despite how poorly they played, and this is going to be a character building win, because all this team has heard about the last few years is specific, more specifically what’s happened in January and not being themselves in January compared to what they look like in the regular season. But also throw Pittsburgh into the mix here, and I get it, and I’ve been throughout the week. I was talking about the fact that Lamar had set out so many of those games for whether it was a coaching decision COVID Back in 2020 Well, you don’t
8Nestor Aparicio 04:47
think much of Pittsburgh when you’re boat racing, the lions and boat racing, the bills and boat racing, the 49 I mean, they both raced all the NFC for six years, right? So we’re not thinking like rivalry. Pittsburgh rival and. You don’t see them until the middle of November, and then they’re in first place when you get there, and you’re like, how the hell did they get here, you know? And then you get a look at them, and you’re like, defense, really good offense, nah,
Luke Jones 05:10
I’m with right? Well, but, but the point I was trying to make is you throw Pittsburgh into that same general category of in terms of when you play this team, or when you’re playing in the postseason, you’re not yourself, and you you deviate from things that you do so well, or you just make mistakes, right? Or you just turn the ball over. I mean, Derrick Henry hadn’t lost a fumble all year, right? I mean, you can’t plan on that, but you also know that those types of things can happen. And I’m not picking on Derrick Henry, it’s just it was the second play of the game, and it put them on bad footing, right? I
Nestor Aparicio 05:44
never think of him fumbling. Do you like? I didn’t I like when I’m like, Is that even possible? Because he hasn’t. He hasn’t had any if at all about him. I mean, level of confidence with ball security, eight, 910, weeks into this, I’m like, he doesn’t fumble, and then he does
Luke Jones 06:01
8well. I mean, he’s fumbled before in his career, though. I mean, right, right, exactly. And I, and I hear what you’re saying, and I was just
Nestor Aparicio 06:10
bringing Patrick mahomes lose on Sunday. I’m like, is that? Does he do that
Luke Jones 06:14
exactly? And especially when you’re Derek, Henry, Henry, and you’ve carried the ball as frequently as you have throughout your career. Justin
Nestor Aparicio 06:20
Tucker misses a 47 yard field goal. You’re like, does he allow? Did I miss those? I mean, points Justin Tucker, like, it’s just a it’s an outlier. It really is. But I think the Pittsburgh thing psychologically, they’re beneath us, right? I mean, they haven’t been as good as us in a long they’re beneath and then you don’t see them, and then you see them, and you’re like, oh, there are no Ravens fans there. It’s all it’s a real road game. It’s bearing down on you. Renegades coming in, and you’re the one making the mistakes. You’re the little brother with penalties. And look, the penalties in the yardage are one thing. Every one of those penalties represents an opportunity lost. It’s not the 10 yards, it’s not even the down, it’s the totality of the opportunity, the the the possession being flawed because of it. Yeah,
8Luke Jones 07:13
yeah. And it puts you in first and long and second and long and third and long. I mean, it’s it’s a problem. It’s absolutely a problem. It was more specifically a problem on the offensive side of the ball, but we’ve talked about it on the defensive side of the ball throughout the year, especially times where they’ve struggled. You know, they’ve committed a lot of penalties on defense. So it’s just frustrating, because you kind of throw this into the same category as those postseason struggles. To your point, you go up to Pittsburgh, hostile environment, not much purple there, very faint, oh, during the national anthem, all of those things. And it’s one of the closest, closest examples you’ll get to what a postseason game is going to be like. And you play, and it feels very much like that. It felt very much like playoff Lamar and playoff the playoff offense that we saw, quite frankly, back in January against Kansas City.
Nestor Aparicio 08:07
So it felt like a defense to punch him in the mouth, and they didn’t have an answer for the answer, and that’s unfortunate at this point, because that’s how they’ve lost. That’s how they lost to the Chargers. It’s how they lost to the bill. It’s how they lost those playoff games to say they didn’t have a counter punch in them, especially offensively. They they they couldn’t manufacture seven, and they did. They manufactured six, but not eight, I should say at the end. And you know, being held into the teens. I think you may have thought that to be not possible.
Luke Jones 08:40
I mean, you look at how this offense had played, even going back, go back to the Cleveland game just a few weeks ago. It wasn’t like that was that long ago, and you and I talked about that. I mean, you were praising the Browns defense, and look, Cleveland deserved credit in that game for how they played defensively. But I kept pointing out that they’re even still scored 24 points. It’s not as though they were shut out this game. You look at it and you say, Okay, well, I mean, you were under 20 points. That’s not good enough. And what’s frustrating about this game specifically, putting aside the big picture issues of the fact you’ve lost eight of nine to Pittsburgh, the fact that, you know, we talked so much about January, January, January, this team’s got to break through in January, it is the fact that their defense played well, right? I mean, the Ravens defense played well in this game. This was encouraging on a number of levels. From that standpoint, fully acknowledging that Pittsburgh is not a juggernaut offensively, and we knew that. But let’s face it, the Browns weren’t an offensive juggernaut. They scored 29 on this ravens defense, we saw Marcus Williams benched again. I think our Darius Washington is starting safety moving forward until we see something drastically different from Marcus Williams Dafoe at two and a half sacks. I mean their pass rush did the job on Sunday, although Russell Wilson, at times, holds the ball way too long. But. Well, you look at what they did defensively. That was encouraging. That was progress, especially considering they were put on short fields multiple times and to hold Pittsburgh the six field goals. On the flip side, the Ravens didn’t score 20 points, but they didn’t give up 20 points either. And you look at it, and you go into that game on Sunday and say, You’re going to hold them to 18 points. I’m gonna tell you, that’s a win. I mean, I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell you, I feel very confident about that. You know, I picked Pittsburgh to win, but 2623 right? So if you tell me they’re holding them to 18, I’m like, Oh well, the ravens, they’re gonna score that much at the very least. So it’s just frustrating again, because so much of this still comes back to the big picture, and we’ve talked about this. We talked about it throughout the off season. We talked about it back in week one, when they went on the road and lost to Kansas City in the fashion that they did. It’s all about January still. It really is, and that’s why you can’t judge this, this game, too harshly, one way or the other in the same way that you’re not, you’re not booking your your trip to New Orleans. Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 11:06
8I wouldn’t fit. And I saw the playoff look. If the playoff started today, and they don’t like get all that, they would be playing in Pittsburgh in week one, and then they would be playing in Buffalo in week two, and then they would be playing in Kansas City in week three. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t feel that. I don’t feel they rode version of this team, even with a healthy Lamar is going to win that trail, that that trail, maybe a Houston, Cincinnati, you know, Kansas City trail, fine. It’s not going to be that. You know what? I mean? Like, Cincinnati is nowhere. They the hardball bowls this week. So we get an extra day and a half to breathe the oxygen into that. By the way, I’m going to make a public service announcement for everybody listening to wnsd. Gonna hear a lot of music here later in the week, done a lot of music interviews in the modern era, as well as the old era. In the middle era, I’m talking about Baltimore Sun newspaper reporter era, and then on the radio in the 90s and the aughts, and then more modern, long form conversations. All of that’s going to run this week with the extra day, day and a half, and with the holiday coming up, and Thanksgiving and all that. So enjoy it. It’s all brought to you by our friends at curio wellness and foreign daughter for me with the pathway to January? I mean, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I mean, you know, I don’t disagree on much, not even Lamar Jackson, but the pathway for them to have a buy, take a week off, play at home, have home cooking, make Patrick mahomes come back in here. That’s all gone right? Like, I mean, there’s, there’s zero chance Patrick mahomes is coming to Baltimore in January. Maybe we go there. You have to earn your way, and it’ll probably be the last stop on the trip, unless you really stink and you you get it early somehow. But I don’t like them on the road. I don’t like the pathway, I don’t like the way they’re playing. I don’t like their inconsistency. I don’t like the way their coach I don’t like their kicking game. I don’t like their defense. I mean, I was in the gym the other day, a good plan of fitness people recognize say hello to you. You know Guy. Guy said hello to me Saturday on the way out, one of my prediction on the game, my 10 seconds, you know, and I said, season’s more than halfway over, and the defense is the worst pass defense. That’s not an accident, that’s just not an act. And I don’t know how they’re clearing that up with a trade at the trade deadline, or a dafeo finds the fountain of really good or, you know, I, I don’t know they are what they are at this point. And I’ll leave you with this, because you love to talk strategy. See Kyle Hamilton playing 10, 1215, yards off the off the line of scrimmage most of the day. Like playing it like the one Landry. You know what I mean? Playing like a safety. It feels like they did something in laboratory the last 10 days to mix that up a little bit.
Luke Jones 13:59
Yeah. I mean, they did. That’s why I said it. And again, I’m not saying all their defensive issues are fixed. Let’s be very clear about that. They have to do this multiple weeks for me to feel better about that group moving forward, but it was a step in the right direction. Ideally, no, you don’t want to be playing Kyle Hamilton that far off the line of scrimmage as frequently as they did, although there were still, they still picked their spots where he was playing closer, but this is where they are when their safety play has been what it is, right? You don’t trust Marcus Williams. Who knows what’s going on with Eddie Jackson? He didn’t even make the trip. I mean, I don’t know if that was a personal issue. John Harbaugh didn’t even want to touch it, so I don’t know if there was a disciplinary factor there. We talked about that with Marcus Williams a few weeks back, right? I mean, the fact that the Ravens didn’t want to get into it, and
Nestor Aparicio 14:45
dude, they don’t want to get into it, means that there’s problems inside that building that they don’t want reporters like me sniffing around Pittsburgh while you’re in the on the podium room, I’m in the locker room, and somebody in there is telling me what happened to Eddie Jackson, because that’s the way we’re. Porting works. Chad. Chad, yeah, but you know, days like this, I get just so everybody knows I I’m not over you being there alone and driving up alone. And I’m gonna say that for anybody in the world to hear that, when we only have one person in the locker room, and you did a great job, there’s sound everywhere you go to Baltimore, positive. It’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful. Sashi Brown, it’s disgraceful. Chad Steele, John and Eric, you got your letters. You’re a disgrace. But that being said, the fact that reporters can’t sniff out truth, that people will ask, what happened to this, that the reporters have been intimidated around there, Luke. I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, so when people want truth and they see John’s lip, I mean, I could see that from right here on the screen that I’m I’m broadcasting to you on the same screen. I saw John arball You were five feet away asking him questions about penalties and discipline and the Eddie Jackson thing. I found that to be terse. I found that to be like there’s some disharmony going on out there. Above and Beyond losing, struggling, they don’t have a lot of injuries. I mean, a lot of times that’s the issue this time of year, but they they clearly have some disharmony. I’ll just say that. I mean, they’re leaving players behind the invention, players, no speaky. This has not been an easy season for John there, I would think,
Luke Jones 16:21
No. And look, I think that’s easy to draw that conclusion, but the point, point I was more making is, I mean, Marcus Williams and Eddie Jackson have been bad, pretty awful. They just haven’t played well. I mean, regardless of what might be going on behind the scenes, they just haven’t played well. So going back to Hamilton, you insert our Darius Washington into the lineup, and they’re your two safeties. I thought it was fascinating to see the Ravens incorporate tredavius White into the defense the way they did. They actually played dime defense with four corners on the field. Now Marlon Humphries was playing nickel. He played that almost exclusively, right So, and we’ve seen that. It’s not as though they haven’t done that. But we also saw them bring tredavius White in, in that version of the dime he’s playing on the outside. And they had Brandon Stevens moving inside. You know, they picked their spots to, you know, Humphrey, on a couple occasions, moved around a little bit, but for the most part, they like to stick the sides. But you talk
8Nestor Aparicio 17:19
communication problems on the back end, you bring a new guy in, right? He played, okay. He did.
Luke Jones 17:25
I mean, again, one thing about that deal, I mean, future seventh round pick swap. I mean, that’s as close as you get to a trade for cash considerations, like you see in baseball. I mean, that’s what that is. That trade was, let’s do this, or we’re just going to release him, right, and then he’s going to go on waivers, so the Ravens bring him in, and we’ll see what happens there. I mean, he talked, and he still doesn’t know the defense yet. I mean, he’s only been here a week and a half, basically, snaps. How
Nestor Aparicio 17:54
many snaps did he play?
Luke Jones 17:56
8It wasn’t 30. Let me look. Let me I had the game book right in front of me. He he, like I said, he basically came in in the dime as a fourth corner. He played, oh, okay, he played 24 snap. So more than I thought. I knew it wasn’t 30, but it was more than 10. So we’ll see what that looks like moving forward. I mean, obviously there’s still questions about Brandon, Brandon Stevens on the outside, and whether that’s going to hold up. You know, they did not give up too many big plays against Pittsburgh, but they did give up some plays, of course, but the pass rush
Nestor Aparicio 18:28
came, I mean, and Wilson, Wilson, they got him off his spot, and they he short. He couldn’t see. I mean, you could see he wasn’t even looking downfield. I mean, when he took that turn around the twirl, he’s taking his eyes off the field when he does that, right, right? So, and running for his life. I mean, the past Bucha has been better in the last couple of weeks, to some degree, to at least be to make them throw the football to and it’ll be the case this week against his brother on Monday night out in LA they’re going to have to get Herbert off his spot a little bit too. And, and that team wants to run the ball, yeah. I
Luke Jones 19:03
mean, it’s a Greg Roman offense and Jim Harbaugh. I mean, of course they want to run the ball, but, yeah, you look at it. And the other thing I throw in there, Russell Wilson can’t move. I mean, his mobility shot at this point. So that’s Pittsburgh. Look, Pittsburgh’s in first place. They’re obviously going to make the playoffs. You look at their schedule, it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either, especially, what’s Cincinnati going to look like coming out of their buy at this point? I mean, they’re four and seven at some point in time, the dam breaks there, and whatever competitive spirit they have starts to really wane when you just lose that many close games, the way that they have this year. So they still have two with them, but I think Pittsburgh, you just look at their limitations offensively, that defense is going to have to play at such a high level for them to win games and play deep in the January I think that’s a fair assessment, right? Unless Russell Wilson looks way better than he’s looked over. All, and even going back the last couple years. But hey, they won and the Ravens lost. And as much as we are talking about defensive progress, and that was good to see, I think, as we pointed out with the Cincinnati game, I think Travis Jones coming back the last couple weeks, although he had some, you know, had a couple moments in that game where he was laboring. We know that ankle has been an issue for him, but they’re a different front when he’s up front, even though he’s not the guy that collects the sacks and puts up the big numbers in the box score, I just think his presence and his ability to be disruptive, it makes Mada BK better, makes their edge players better.
Nestor Aparicio 20:35
To me, like he’s playing before he was dinged up here lately, he was playing at a level where Mata BK was, like, two years ago, like, sort of really coming on and saying, sending, you might have to pay him at the end of next year if he’s going to play the way Matt abikey play. Look, nobody around here thought we’re paying Mata BK two years ago, right? Like, that kind of money, right? Yeah. So when guys come on like that, and they start taking on double teams, and you have two of them. I remember when Adams and Sarah goossa were both cast offs, right? Adams was, you know, Sarah goose had bad knees and was fat and sand, and Adams was nuts, and you couldn’t get him, you couldn’t get the motor going all the time. And you put both of them in there, it changed everything in the middle, when you have two. Matt AP case, I mean, for lack of a better expression, yeah, and,
8Luke Jones 21:20
and, really, I mean, they’re different style players, I would even say, and I’ve even talked with some others out, you know, in the building, and some other people who cover the team about this Travis Jones, from a skill set standpoint, I’m not in all implying that he’s this guy. He might be the closest skill set and profile they’ve had to a hello de nada kind of player. I mean, it’s not like not a had 12 sack seasons or anything like that, but he was a true nose tackle, kind of, yeah. I mean, at times a nose tackle, but a lot of times three technique as well, but, but the point is just that kind of physical presence, but also athleticism to go with it. I mean, Matt abike is a pass rush guy. I mean, Matt abika is kind of an Aaron Donald, like, guy. He’s not Aaron Donald going to the Hall of Fame, right? But he’s that kind of guy, I think, with a little more pass rush juice. But, you know, Travis Jones is important to what they do. I mean, he really is. That’s why, a couple weeks back when he was going through the worst of that ankle injury, playing through it, but you could see he wasn’t himself. You know, he ended up in that Denver game only, only played, I think, one play on special teams, 350
Nestor Aparicio 22:29
pound guys who leverages everything and not having an ankle it. Yeah, I mean anyone. I mean any player who from here to the bathroom when my ankles turn right, like,
Luke Jones 22:40
I mean, unless you’re a pocket passer, like, like, like, Tom Brady, you know, and you just tape it up and you just stand back there, no one with an ankle injury like that is going to play very well regardless of the position, but, but, yeah, you look at this defense, it was a step in the right direction for them, and it was disappointing they couldn’t get off the field at the very end to give the offense one more chance, of course, but I don’t come out of this game feeling discouraged by the defense. I don’t come out of it saying everything’s solved and everything’s fine either. Let’s be clear. But if you’re looking for the silver lining, but the frustration here, and I, you know, even asked Marlon Humphrey and a couple other guys in the locker room about this is that, you know, this team’s just in a position where I think everyone sees how good they can be. The offense has been outstanding. Sunday aside, has been outstanding. The defense has had its issues. The special teams continues to have its issues, but on Sunday, you get that kind of a performance from the defense on on on the heels of the fact that they had made some changes personnel wise, and you say, all right, that looks better. And then the offense has a day like it did on Sunday. It’s just very frustrating from that standpoint. And to go back to your overall point here in terms of January, look, I think the Ravens on paper can go out there and beat anybody, right? I think they truly can on paper, not talking about Kansas City’s, they’re talking about their pedigree, right, not talking about what they’ve done over the last six years now, but just on paper in terms of talent, but when you just look at what happens over the course of these games, and the mistakes they make, and you know, even even their wins, you know, even talking about games where you know, like the Dallas game, for example, how a blowout suddenly turns into a one score game at the end and and you’re failing to recover an onside kick. And just, you know, some of the silliness that we see all on occasion, the glitches that we talk about where, whether it’s a bad snap on offense or inexplicable penalty, or special teams continuing to commit penalties, beyond just the Justin Tucker factor, you just look at this, and that’s where you look at it and say, Is this team going to get to a place where they can. To put together three or four straight games against other playoff caliber teams in the tournament and be that sharp three or four weeks in a row and put it all together three or four weeks I haven’t seen the
Nestor Aparicio 25:12
8operation look good on the field, defensively or in a penalty way on the offense all year. I mean, they have not really the Buffalo game, you know, you’d say that, but they have not consistently stopped having penalties or consistently defensively made the kinds of plays in the passing game with a pass rush that against good teams that I I wrote, I don’t think that they’re a Super Bowl winning operation right now. It’d
Luke Jones 25:40
be tough to argue. And part of this is also, I mean, there’s seven and four. Look, seven and four is fine, right? I mean, seven and four is perfectly on track to be a playoff team. We all understand that, right? But they’re not 10 and one, like like the lions right now are the lions nine and one, one loss. They’re not a team that feels as consistent as they should be or as they could be. So, yeah, you look at it through that lens, and
Nestor Aparicio 26:08
there’s no way you wake up right now and say, if they had to go play in Pittsburgh next week and win, and then go play in Buffalo the following week and win and then go to Kansas City The following week and win, that that’s the pathway to the Super Bowl right now. That is, if you were told me that in April, I just said they there, no, no, no, no. They’re they’re going to be nine and two now, and they’re going to be the two seed fighting for a one seed with an opportunity to play there. There’s no there. There’s no daylight to be a one seed. There’s no daylight to be a two seed. For them, there’s some daylight to win the division. I’ll give you that, yeah, and that daylight is about other teams beating the Steelers now, including you a month from now. But their pathway, they put themselves in a if you’re writing Purple Rain free on Valentine’s Day and you’re down in New Orleans with a lampshade on your head and beads, um, they’ve done something, you know. I mean, from where we sit here Thanksgiving week, not just that, they lost the Pittsburgh. They lead the world in penalties. They lead the world in bad defense. Their kickers unreliable, their coaches. I don’t know. I mean, I, you know, I think they’re well coached until I don’t think they’re well coached in some ways, right? And because of the pedigree of all of it, and they don’t have an easy schedule the rest of the way. They have really, really rocky scheduling times they have to go to Houston on Christmas. They like, I don’t love the way they smell right now, if you want, if you love them, to win the Super Bowl, bet it right now. You’ll get value because they they’re not in the kind of position that you’d want them to be in the middle of no, it’s alarming. It should be alarming to them that this is now their pathway, and they’ve put themselves behind the eight ball. They haven’t even had the kind of injuries that John could come up to me at the owners meetings in March and say we were really injured this year. Now, dude, you underperformed. Your kickers underperformed your coaches have underperformed your your offense to some degree against what you’d like it to be, has underperformed because the penalties. So this is an underperforming unit right now, if I’m Joe Enoch, I’m giving this a C on the season, a C, not even a C, plus it’s a c7, and four. That’s a 72% on your test, that’s not good enough for me. Seven and four Well, I
Luke Jones 28:25
mean, seven and four is it’s good, but it’s not special, right? And I’ll just, I’ll push back a little bit. Their offense has been outstanding. The penalties have been an issue across the board. That hasn’t been specific to the offense just, I mean, they’ve had penalties in all three phases, depending on the week, right? That’s just been a problem in general. But I mean, the yards, the yards per play, the number of points they’ve scored, all that Lamar Jackson Sunday aside, the season he’s having, their offense has been outstanding. But when you’re talking about pedigree, when you’re talking about the little things, yeah, when you look at this, I mean, you mentioned the defense, the special teams unit, collectively, not just the Justin Tucker factor, which is a big part of it, but still, special teams have been very unspecial, right? They’ve been anything but special. And I mean, they have a penalty on every other kick return, it felt like on Sunday. And that’s happened a lot, so I’ll say this, though. And I said this tongue in cheek, but I also meant it with some sincerity when we talked about it at various points in the off season and in the aftermath of last year. At some point in time, you kind of look at it and say, they’ve been the number one seed, they’ve had the best record in the NFL. They’ve had the top point differential, they’ve had Lamar Jackson as the MVP. They’ve had 12 other guys make the Pro Bowl, like they did back in 2019 and that didn’t get them to a Super Bowl. So maybe this team, if you’re trying to envision the path for Purple Rain three, envision the path for this team. In New in New Orleans in early February. Maybe it is to go through these factors, and to go through growing pains during the season, and to be in a position where you’re not being viewed as one of the top, elite Super Bowl favorites. Maybe, maybe it the path is going to be for this team similar to what it was for the 2012 team, which was not nearly as good, in my opinion, as the 2011 team. We’re going to see what happens. And certainly they need to. They need to get there. They need to take care of business. They need to get back on track Monday night, going into not a hostile environment, but an environment that’s on the other side of the country, and understanding you’re going to be going up against a staff and organization that knows you pretty darn well, although the Ravens could say the same thing about a lot of their personnel. Oh,
8Nestor Aparicio 30:50
stakes are high for them too. I mean, they sure they got it out. They blew a big lead and gutted it out on Sunday night, yeah, well, and
Luke Jones 30:57
I didn’t get it I was driving home from Pittsburgh. I listened to the entire game. I mean, what? What a crazy game that was. But, I mean, for the ravens, again, you don’t want to make too much of this. The sky is not falling through the lens of, oh my gosh. Are they going to make the playoffs? Is the season falling apart? No, I don’t. I don’t think we’re there. This Raven Steelers thing is weird. We know that news flash. It’s weird. Weird things happen to
Nestor Aparicio 31:23
LA and playing your brother on Monday nights, weird too. And coming home seven and five for Thanksgiving would be even weirder, sure, if that happens, and then Philadelphia, right? No question. I
Luke Jones 31:34
8mean, that’s why that’s a really important football game on Monday night. There’s
Nestor Aparicio 31:38
no somewhere when I begin my comedy career saying, hey, they got by. They’re not going to lose to them, you know so well, yeah, Luke, let’s take a break. We’re going to talk kicking with Justin Tucker. We’re going to talk locker room. Luke was in the losing locker room in Pittsburgh as our W N, S, D representative. I remember that locker room I I’ve been in there a few so last locker room I ever went in, and the last football player to ever say hello to me and be kind to me. Was Colace Campbell in the Pittsburgh locker room. Also the last time Tony Sarah goose ever took off a shoulder patches in that locker room. So Luke Jones was in that locker room. You can read his work at a Baltimore positive. You can read my work. Uh, Mike column ness is out. It is Music Week around here. A lot of folks don’t know Friday’s International Music Day. And I sort of took this to heart. I have amalgamated and and cataloged all of our music conversations which still hold up. There’s no game on Sunday. If you want to hear from Jeff hawks from the Greg hawks from the cars, or you want to hear from Todd rungren, or a whole bunch of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, I think I’ve had 72 Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. I think is the number I’ve counted. So I’m adding it up because, like Debbie Harry’s in the Hall of Fame now, who knew, right? So lots of folks have gone in and interviews that I have literally never listened to, never unearthed and have never been played. Will be played on am 1570 this week. So enjoy that our friends at the Maryland lottery sending us out on Thursday to green mount station. We will be in Hampstead, Carroll County eating a delicious crab cake. Uh, I’ll be bringing home some ribs as well as some desserts. Up there. Stop by. You can bet the games. You can say, hello. It’s Thursday night football going on there as well. We’ll be there in the afternoon. My friend Karen Fauci is going to come by and talk about leadership as well as David Richardson is going to talk about the horse racing industry and the new Pimlico and everything that’s going on with the Maryland Jockey Club that happens on Thursday, green mount station. All that brought to you by our friends at Jiffy Lube, multi care. They power up. Luke, you’ll be in Owings, Mills for the extra time this week. Ravens out in LA horrible just the third one, the fourth one. And maybe I don’t know, I’m losing track. It was a long time ago the San Francisco 40 Niners. I am Nestor. He’s Luke. We got plenty of football and then plenty of music. We are W, N, S, T, A M, 1570 Towson, Baltimore, we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
