The Baltimore Ravens lost to the Buffalo Bills after blowing a 15-point lead, continuing a pattern of late-game collapses.
Under coach John Harbaugh, the Ravens have now lost 17 games in which they held a double-digit lead.
Despite regular season success and multiple division titles, this recurring issue has become part of the team’s identity.
ORCHARD PARK, NY – Let John Harbaugh tell us how his Baltimore Ravens will regroup and step out of the fresh mess marked by a stunning collapse on Sunday night. They opened a new season with a stinking old habit in blowing a 15-point lead in the final minutes against the Buffalo Bills.
History, repeating itself, already.
“We’ll go back to work like we always do,” Harbaugh said after the 41-40 setback. “We’ve been here before.”
Uh-oh. Clearly, this is not where they want to go again. At least not like this.
“This is how the NFL works,” Harbaugh continued. “It’s a tough league. You play tough games in tough environments, and hopefully you learn from it and keep getting better. You get better throughout the course of the season and become the team you’re going to be. It’s a long journey.”
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Convinced? As level-headed and assuring as those words were intended, that’s a tough ticket because, well, as Harbaugh put it, they’ve been here before and that theme has been heard before. Sure, on one level, Harbaugh deserves the benefit of the doubt. He’s won more NFL games as a head coach than Joe Gibbs, Paul Brown, Bill Cowher, Marv Levy and Tony Dungy – Hall of Famers, all of them.
The Ravens entered the season, again, as a sexy Super Bowl pick. Last season, they won 12 games and the division crown. They won 13 games in 2023 and claimed the No. 1 seed. Since Lamar Jackson entered his first full season as a starter in 2019, and Harbaugh retooled his offense to fit the skill set of his multi-dimensional quarterback, the Ravens have won three division titles. And zero Super Bowls.
Harbaugh’s track record also is bogged down by too many situations like Sunday night. According to Josh Dubow of The Associated Press, the Ravens have blown 17 double-digit leads under Harbaugh. Ouch.
Last year about this time, they blew a 10-point lead in losing to the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 2. In 2023, they squandered a 15-point lead against Cleveland and a 10-point edge against Pittsburgh. In 2022, it was 17 points against Buffalo and 21 points to Miami.
So, to say they’ve been there before just doesn’t cut it. Because that’s not a good thing. This has gone on for so long that it’s become part of the Ravens identity. What a far cry from the M.O. of the championship teams of yesteryear, with Ray-Ray and crew. They can play “bully ball” with Derrick Henry powering a physical rushing attack and they can produce explosive fireworks triggered by Jackson. But they are also among the NFL’s best at blowing big leads, which is hardly the identity of a champion.
“Banging our heads on the wall about it at this point,” Kyle Hamilton, the all-pro safety, said after the latest drama. “First and foremost, the offense put up 40 points. No way that we should be in that position as a defense. I don’t know. We just need to figure out how to win games. We are winning them for 45 minutes, but you have to win for 60 minutes.”
Of course, soul-searching is widespread. Henry, the dominating running back, blasted the Bills in rushing for 169 yards and 2 touchdowns. But that monster performance was marred by his fourth-quarter fumble – forced by Ed Oliver — that led to a Buffalo touchdown.
Henry apologized to his teammates in the locker room afterward and accepted blame for the loss.
“First of all, I have to take care of the ball,” Henry said. “I told my teammates after the game that the loss is on me. I own it like a man. We emphasize taking care of the football, keeping it high and tight. I got lackadaisical. They made a play, but I put this loss on me.”
That’s noble enough, but these big collapses are never determined by one play. On Sunday night, the Ravens were also stung by a fourth-down touchdown pass by Josh Allen late in the fourth quarter that was deflected by tight end Dawson Knox into the hands of Keon Coleman. And after Henry’s 46-yard TD run early in the fourth quarter, rookie kicker Tyler Loop (who replaced the highly-reliable-yet-scandal-ridden Justin Tucker) missed a PAT kick. Before halftime, the Ravens mismanaged the clock in setting up for Loop’s 49-yard field goal, allowing the Bills to respond with a field goal in 31 seconds. Buffalo was out of timeouts on that hurry-up drive yet still managed to stop the clock with one second left as tight end Dalton Kincaid stepped out of bounds after gaining 22 yards on a sideline pattern. The Ravens were so sloppy in that sequence.
One play, here or there, surely made a difference in the big picture.
There was a debatable decision by Harbaugh, too, to punt on a fourth-and-two with 1:33 remaining. The field position from the Ravens’ 39-yard line undoubtedly influenced the decision, but in retrospect they kicked to put the ball back into the sizzling hands of Allen, the reigning NFL MVP who passed for 251 of his 394 yards in the fourth quarter.
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Then again, the Ravens pass defense came up short, too, in failing to slow Allen’s roll. He scrambled to extend plays, then nailed 32- and 25-yard completions on the 66-yard game-winning drive capped by Matt Prater’s 32-yard field goal as time expired.
“We talked about it all offseason, how we struggled last season at the beginning,” Hamilton said of the pass defense in crunch time. “Then (we said), ‘It’s a new year, and it’s a new team,’ and then we come out and do that.
“We are saying something different, but we are doing the same things. I don’t know if there is something mentally that we have to get over or if there is a mental block, but I looked up at the scoreboard when they were about to kick the field goal and it said they had 400 passing yards or something. I’m about to throw up on the field. It’s something that we have to get fixed.”
With a long season ahead, there’s no need to panic. Maybe the Sunday night outcome will cost the Ravens a tiebreaker edge and a playoff home game. Maybe not. They need to keep it in context. It was Week 1. Teams have been blown out in Week 1 or otherwise stumbled out of the gate and won Super Bowls.
Still, the Ravens need to embrace some group therapy, given the pattern of way too many squandered leads, and have another reality check.
So, you want to become a champion? Well, just finish the game. For the Ravens that’s so much easier said than done.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on social media: On X: @JarrettBell
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