Ravens Lose In Embarrassing Fashion In Cleveland

Nick Cammett. Getty Images.

What a shocking, embarrassing, infuriating football game. Just a freakish sequence of events. The Browns brought absolutely everything they had, and the Ravens brought so little. All they had to do was any one or two of a very large handful of things and they would have escaped with a win. Do more than a couple of those things and the Ravens win this game running away the way that they should.

I don't even know where to start. I guess the most directly impactful is the Kyle Hamilton dropped INT?

Could not put it more in the breadbasket. Jameis threw half a dozen easily interceptable balls in this game and the Ravens could not manage to haul in even one of them. Any one of them probably tips the scales enough where the ultimate result is different. This was the most catchable ball that's ever been balled and he Hamilton just….. ugh. It's a shame too because he's the only guy on the defensive side of the ball who really managed to make any semblance of a big play today with the strip sack before half.

Rashod Bateman…. come on bro. 

Just when a guy is really starting to cement himself as dependable, he drops an absolutely massive play down 3 in the 4th that would have almost certainly yielded at least 3 points on the drive if not 7. Brutal.

Overall… Lamar Jackson played a pretty solid game… but he was wobbly a couple of times in the 1st half where he also was fortunate enough to avoid any interceptions… but unquestionably… this is a throw he wishes he could have had back…

A swap of 4th quarter field goals also made a pretty big impact on the calculus coming down the stretch… you just don't expect JT to miss a kick like that, and his longer kicks were coming out weirdly low and left today. On the other side, Hopkins fluttered one that surely looked like a miss before wobbling back to the upright and doinking in. Because of course it did.

The Ravens also set the tone for this game on the opening drive by going wildcat with Derrick Henry on 4th and 2 inside Cleveland's 10. This is one of the most multi-dimensional "pick your poison" offenses in the history of football, and we straight up picked the poison ourselves. I'm confident going for it was the right call, but leaving #8 out of the equation is nothing short of idiotic.

We also goofed with that stupid tight end sneak nonsense and got called for a false start in a key spot. Luckily it didn't matter with us converting on 3rd and 5 the next play, but Todd Monken didn't seem to learn the lesson and ran a hokey pokey shovel pass inside the red zone right after that looked like a disaster from the start and ultimately resulted in a loss of 2. Again, the offense was explosive enough to score a TD anyway, but between those two drives, we came away point-less once. I really hope we're learning our lesson here.

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Lastly… and most importantly… this defense is an unmitigated disaster. It's not news, but they were especially horrendous today. I don't care that Marlon was out. You cannot consistently get shredded the way they did today and expect to beat good teams when the games matter most. Period. We seem to be content with the idea that they're a liability and we'll just offense our way to victory every week anyway. It's true that that formula will prevail most weeks, but when you fail to execute simple things across the board, your margin of error dwindles and you leave things up to chance. We left way too much up to chance today and paid the price.

Big picture… we're through 8 weeks now. We have a pretty clear sense of what this team is capable of. The pieces are there to win a Super Bowl… but holy fuck do they have a long way to go to become a championship team.

There are really two consistent themes of where John Harbaugh and Eric DeCosta need to look themselves in the mirror and get this shit cleaned up.

1. Simple execution. Like suuuuper basic things. Nearly every week, there's a myriad of dumb penalties, questionable challenges, poor clock management, dropped passes, dumb fair catch calls. This team simply doesn't play clean nor high IQ football. It won't win a championship until they make that a habit, and they've got a lot of work to do on that front.

2. Pass defense. I honestly can't decide if this is schematic, if it's personnel, if it's fundamentals, or what. But what is happening right now clearly isn't working. The pass rush is decent but is not exceptional by any margin. Ball skills seem to be seriously lacking. Lapses in communication (which ties into point #1) have also been happening far too often. And just generally speaking, guys are getting way too open way too often. And they're not even great receivers. Jerry Jeudy is talented but by no means is he Davante Adams. It's gotta be fixed and things aren't looking so hot for Zach Orr so far.

This offense is too talented for the rest of the team to just squander what they're capable of. I'm still optimistic about this team going up against any other team and winning that day. But you have to be consistent to win championships, and this team is so far from that and the first half of the season has gone by in a flash. We're going to be running out of time to fix things before we know it.

Disgusting, disgusting loss today. Be better next time. Just be fucking better.