Ravens Insider: 5 things we learned from the Ravens’ 26-23 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders

[ExtremeRavens]

The Ravens blew a 23-13 fourth-quarter lead in a disastrous home loss to the Las Vegas Raiders that dropped them to 0-2.

Here are five things we learned from the game:

The Ravens concocted the perfect recipe for a shocking defeat, and their season is already in peril

Here are the ingredients to a demoralizing loss that no one on the Ravens and no fan in M&T Bank Stadium saw coming:

• Eleven penalties for 109 yards, including a Derrick Henry false start that halted a fourth-quarter drive and a pass interference on Brandon Stephens that set the Raiders up for a game-tying touchdown from the 1-yard line.

• Two failed challenges from coach John Harbaugh — neither on a call that seemed controversial — that left the Ravens short a timeout at the end of each half.

• A missed 56-yard field goal from Justin Tucker, who has made one of his last seven attempts from 50 yards or more.

• A shanked 24-yard punt from Jordan Stout when the Ravens needed to pin the Raiders as far back as possible with the game tied in the fourth quarter.

• A defense that allowed 43 yards before halftime, 217 after.

• Lamar Jackson’s interception in the third quarter that blunted the Ravens’ momentum when they seemed ready to build on a 16-6 lead and handed a short field to Las Vegas’ sputtering offense.

• An offensive line that allowed Maxx Crosby two sacks and four tackles for loss, even though everyone in the stadium knew blocking Crosby was priority No. 1.

That covers about every corner of a football team’s operation. The Ravens can stare forlornly into the mirror together because almost every one of them contributed to this mess.

A last-second road loss to the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs? That hurt but in an understandable way.

“This one felt more self-inflicted,” Ravens left tackle Ronnie Stanley said.

And now this team that was the best in football less than a year ago, that fully expected to play deep into January, faces real peril. It’s not impossible to start 0-2 and make the playoffs. The Houston Texans did it last year, the Cincinnati Bengals the year before that. But the Ravens have dug a real hole, and their next two assignments — a visit to Dallas and a prime-time home game against the 2-0 Buffalo Bills — don’t look like an easy path out of the deep.

Jackson has never started a season like this. Everyone will look to him over the next few days. Will he change his message or shout it louder in hopes of creating a spark. “We are going to see; we are going to see,” he said. “I’m definitely going to talk to my guys, though, because we’ve got to find our mojo. We’ve got to find [it], and do what we do because that’s not us at all.”

With the loss to Las Vegas, Lamar Jackson is 0-2 for the first time in his NFL career. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff)

Harbaugh has confronted an 0-2 start (in 2015, when the Ravens finished 5-11), but it’s not familiar territory for him either. “We’re going to play a 17-game season, and we will be defined by the next 15 games,” he said, the only message left to him after the Ravens self-combusted in every phase.

The Ravens defense dominated — until it didn’t

Odafe Oweh left his blocker in the dust on the first play of the game, slamming into Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew II and knocking the ball from his grasp.

For more than a half, that play felt like an apt tone-setter for an afternoon of crushing defensive theater.

Anytime Minshew took more than a couple of seconds to look downfield, Oweh and fellow outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy were on him. No one could have guessed Van Noy fractured his orbital bone 10 days earlier. Not only did he get after Minshew; he set a tough edge, forcing Raiders running backs to the middle, where Ravens defensive linemen smothered them. Las Vegas averaged 1.8 yards per play in the first half.

The Ravens should have led by more than three at halftime, but no one sensed the Raiders were sitting on a big comeback. Perhaps we should have remembered last September when Minshew rallied the Indianapolis Cols past the Ravens with a pair of late-scoring drives after he ate five sacks. Just because the guy ain’t great, don’t assume he’s going away.

Minshew has real playmakers to work with in wide receiver Davante Adams and rookie tight end Brock Bowers. Once the Raiders created a little time by rolling Minshew out of the pocket, the Ravens could not stay glued to his top targets. Adams and Bowers combined for 18 catches on 21 targets for 208 yards, almost all of those after halftime. They exploited mistakes, but they also beat good coverage.

The Ravens had legitimate arguments against a few penalties, including a face mask on Nnamdi Madubuike that helped the Raiders dig out of poor field position on a fourth-quarter drive that ended with a field goal. Harbaugh felt Stephens employed good technique against Adams on the crucial pass interference call that set up the tying touchdown.

Ravens cornerback Brandon Stephens, right, is called for a pass interference penalty against Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams in the fourth quarter Sunday. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

But the Raiders carved up a proud defense enough that whistles won’t stand as a primary explanation. First-year coordinator Zach Orr and his top players are going to face difficult questions about why they haven’t carried over their dominance from last season.

“I think just extending the plays,” linebacker Roquan Smith said when asked what changed against the Raiders. “I think extended plays [and] penalties and some of [their] guys winning their matchups.”

We saw a glimpse of Derrick Henry as the hammer

When it looked like the Ravens would put their mistakes behind them and close out a win, Henry was the major reason. He carried five times for 34 yards on the drive that put them up 23-13, knifing through inside gaps and swinging around the edge with force. We even got our first glimpse of the vaunted Henry stiff arm when he galloped 29 yards down the sideline to set up a Zay Flowers touchdown catch on the first drive of the second half.

This was the Henry we envisioned when the Ravens signed him in the offseason — a hurricane on two legs who would unleash hell on tired defenses and put leads in the bag. Send him behind battering ram fullback Patrick Ricard and watch them crumble.

Henry felt it too, disappointed though he was with the final result.

“I felt like we were starting to get momentum,” he said. “We were executing, moving the ball, and just things were going the way we wanted to, as far as in the run game. I thought Pat did a great job, and I thought we had a lot of momentum once we got going.”

It seemed like Ravens running back Derrick Henry, right, was going to close the game for Baltimore. Instead, Las Vegas erased a 10-point deficit and upset Baltimore. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

As we learned across his magnificent seasons in Tennessee, Henry is a good inside runner, but he’s an all-time-great outside runner. The Ravens made the right calls to unlock that facet of his game in the second half, which portends well for their offense in the coming weeks.

The Ravens adjusted to Maxx Crosby, but he got them in the end

With the score tied at 23 and 70 yards of field in front of him, Jackson needed breathing room to get the Ravens rolling toward a go-ahead score. Instead, Crosby stunted to the inside, flew past right guard Daniel Faalele, who might as well have been stuck in tar, and slammed Jackson to the ground for a 9-yard loss. The Ravens never recovered.

The one guy the Ravens knew they had to block made the defensive play of the game.

“I’m not the one who’s having to block [Crosby] or anything like that or talking on the line,” Jackson said. “But we had the right protections up. Sometimes, you’ve got to have those one-on-one fights. Sometimes we’ve got to win those.”

It was as close as you’ll hear him come to criticizing an offensive lineman.

That said, Crosby tormented many blockers on his way to two sacks and four tackles for loss.

Maxx Crosby played every single Raiders defensive snaps for a second straight week.

He saw chip blocks and RB help but finished the game with 5 pressures, 2 sacks, 4 TFLs, and a pass deflection pic.twitter.com/COkaUMk9BL

— Shawn Syed (@SyedSchemes) September 15, 2024

The Pro Bowl edge rusher lined up to attack right tackle Patrick Mekari and drew blood early, beating Mekari with a simple outside move to sack Jackson for a 6-yard loss that derailed the Ravens’ opening drive.

For all our focus on the Ravens’ inexperienced starting guards, the more seasoned Mekari has played just as unevenly over the first two weeks. He allowed four pressures in the opener.

On the Ravens’ second drive, Crosby bolted in untouched to drop Henry for a loss on first down. It looked like Andrew Vorhees was supposed to pull from the left side to pick him and simply did not make it.

On drive No. 3, it was tight end Isaiah Likely who could not stay in front of Crosby on another tackle for loss.

The Ravens got a handle on Las Vegas’ defensive star for a chunk of the game. Rookie Roger Rosengarten subbed for Mekari and did a nice job staying in front of Crosby, allowing Jackson to dance around the pocket long enough to find Zay Flowers for 21 yards. The Ravens kept Rosengarten in for their last drive of the first half, and he again neutralized Crosby.

Mekari came back for the beginning of the second half and held up better, sometimes with help, sometimes one-on-one.

That will be cold comfort when the Ravens watch film of Crosby flattening Jackson with the game hanging in the balance.

Justin Tucker missed another long field-goal attempt, and he’s getting tired of the subject

During a conversation last week about his recent misses from 50 yards and beyond, Tucker explained that he sees no value in dwelling on past failure. He’s a perfectionist. It makes him angry in the moment. He knows his peers at the top of the kicking profession rarely miss from any distance. But he can’t do his job if his mind is locked anywhere but the next kick.

Tucker maintained the same stance after he hooked a 56-yard attempt left — plenty long but seemingly outside the left upright all the way — against the Raiders. He also seemed agitated that he could not put this story to rest.

Justin Tucker missed his lone field goal attempt from beyond 50 yards on Sunday. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff)

“As simply as I can put it, it’s not my favorite topic of discussion, but I just missed the kick,” he said. “I don’t want to continue having this conversation. When I go out on the field, I’m confident that I’m going to nail every single kick, no matter where we are on the field. Today was no different. We got off to a pretty good start kicking the ball. The ball was coming off my foot pretty nicely. Nick [Moore] was throwing back good snaps and Jordan [Stout] was throwing back good holds. And then, I just misfired on the one from 56.”

He split the uprights perfectly from 48 and 42 yards. He hit from 70 in warmups and as mentioned, put plenty of mustard on the 56-yard attempt. So what gives? Why is the most accurate kicker in NFL history, the owner of the longest field goal ever, suddenly fallible from distances that have never bothered him?

As if to highlight Tucker’s struggles, his Las Vegas counterpart, Daniel Carlson, hit from 53 and 51 yards. That meant the Ravens operated from a deficit in an area they expect to dominate.

Nobody knows that better than Tucker, who has forgotten more about the craft of kicking than most of us will ever know.

“I left three points out there that we certainly could have used down the stretch in this game, but at the exact same time, trying to overanalyze or dwell on a mistake or a performance that is not up to our collective standard, that’s not going to do us any good,” he said. “What is going to help us is continuing to trust the process, and just come together as a team, and get to work.”

What else is there to say for now? The Ravens have no choice but to, as Harbaugh said, maintain the “utmost confidence” in Tucker.

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Week 3

Ravens at Cowboys

Sunday, 4:25 p.m.

TV: FOX

Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM

Line: Cowboys by 1 1/2

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