ExtremeRavens Posted 12 hours ago Posted 12 hours ago The now 1-3 Ravens found a new nadir, losing to the Chiefs, 37-20, in a game that ended with more questions than answers. Here are five things we learned: Suddenly, the entire Ravens season hangs in the balance There he sat, the two-time Most Valuable Player, sulking on the bench with a hat replacing his helmet and tape swaddling an ice pack against his hamstring. Lamar Jackson looked over his left shoulder, up to the big screen at Arrowhead Stadium, the stadium where so many of his demons live, and watched helplessly. An injury yanked him from a long-shot chance at a comeback. Instead, backup Cooper Rush checked in for the final minute of the third quarter as Baltimore limped to the finish line, dropping the Jackson-era Ravens to 1-6 against the Chiefs and 0-4 at Kansas City. Coach John Harbaugh couldn’t offer much intel postgame. He could only say that it didn’t appear season-ending, while across the hall, his star quarterback limped out of the locker room to get medical treatment. The entirety of this Ravens season — which began with Super Bowl projections for a deep and talented roster — hinges on Jackson’s status. Perhaps Week 4 will be remembered as a blip in time, a loss that proves unsubstantial. Or, there’s a world where it’s immortalized as that fateful September Sunday when the Ravens’ hopes of a playoff run were flushed by an all-too-familiar opponent. Jackson hasn’t missed a game because of injury since 2022, sidelined for the last six weeks of that regular season and a playoff game for a PCL injury in his knee. He has missed one game since — an innocuous Week 18 matchup in 2023 with the division race wrapped up. Baltimore is 4-9 when Jackson has been sidelined over the past six seasons. Even before the injury on Sunday, Jackson didn’t look ready to get the monkey off his back. He fled back from a blitz in the first quarter and flung a duck to Mark Andrews against the right sideline that fell short, into the waiting hands of linebacker Leo Chenal — Jackson’s first interception this season. His turnover woes worsened a quarter later when he bumped into center Tyler Linderbaum and coughed up the football. In all, he completed 14 of 20 passes for 147 yards with one touchdown while taking three sacks. Jackson’s teammates love to lean on the truism that this team can do anything with No. 8 at the helm. If they’re without him for any considerable amount of time, it’s hard to fathom them going anywhere. ‘Something’s wrong’ with the defense The messaging has spiraled at record pace. Four weeks ago, the Ravens deemed themselves a team capable of striking fear in opposing offenses, returning to the standard set by their predecessors. Before Week 2, Pro Bowl cornerback Marlon Humphrey bluntly called the defense immature and, after a second loss, “just not very good.” Now, with most metrics showing Baltimore in the cellar of the league, All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton took to the dais inside Arrowhead Stadium Sunday night bearing a new look of despair: “The product that we’re putting on the field right now is not up to par,” he said. “Obviously, something’s wrong.” It was clear in Week 1, when the defense played a lead role in Buffalo’s 15-point comeback. Week 3 showed this team might not have what it takes against the cream of the NFL crop, like the Bills and Lions. Sunday night stamped what we now know to be true, which is this defense doesn’t have what it takes to be a legitimate contender — at least not right now. The Ravens only stopped the Chiefs from scoring twice in nine drives. One was a missed Harrison Butker field goal from 56 yards. The other forced backup quarterback Gardner Minshew into a fourth-and-long inside the game’s final four minutes. And Kansas City converted on all four of its fourth-down tries, one-upping Detroit’s 3-for-3 line last week. Such leaky defense this time culminated in the most lopsided Ravens loss since Oct. 24, 2021, against Cincinnati. As Hamilton maturely put it, “there haven’t been a lot of teams in Ravens history, since 1996, to underachieve to the point where fans felt disappointed in the season as a whole.” The latest disappointment marked the first time in franchise history that the Ravens have allowed 133 points four games into a season. Sunday night, those issues didn’t discriminate against any one position group. Xavier Worthy torched the secondary with five catches for 83 yards, the most of any single receiver against the Ravens thus far. Mahomes, who clocked his best outing of the year by throwing 270 yards and four touchdowns, spread the ball around to nine pass catchers. Five of them went over 25 yards. Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco, center, is congratulated by quarterback Patrick Mahomes after scoring a touchdown Sunday against the Ravens. (Charlie Riedel/AP) The secondary couldn’t do much to consistently contain them and the front failed to pressure one of the few escape artists in the same conversation as Jackson. Mahomes looked unbothered, perched back there in the pocket, protected as if his offensive line were a moat. Baltimore sacked him once (Tavius Robinson) and hit him thrice. Mahomes’ average time to throw was 2.70 seconds, according to Pro Football Focus, up four-tenths of a second from his season mark. “There were way too many times in this game where the Chiefs did what they do well,” Harbaugh said, “they get into third-and-short. And our goal was to try to keep them to third-and-six plus, and that just consistently did not happen.” Somewhere along the way, the Ravens must have ticked off the football gods. Their injury luck has been disastrous. By the fourth quarter of a must-win game against a fellow AFC juggernaut, the Ravens defense matched one of the game’s most brilliant quarterbacks with three practice squad elevations, an undrafted rookie and four more non-starters. The Chiefs punished that group, and the subsequent injury-filled one to follow, in total, for 382 yards of offense and four passing touchdowns. By game’s end, the Ravens’ injury report included 10 starters: Jackson, left tackle Ronnie Stanley (ankle), fullback Patrick Ricard (calf), defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike (neck), defensive end Broderick Washington (ankle), nose tackle Travis Jones (knee), outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy (hamstring), linebacker Roquan Smith (hamstring), Humphrey (hamstring) and Nate Wiggins (elbow). Not all of it unraveled at Arrowhead. On Wednesday, the Ravens practiced without the entirety of their interior defensive line. By week’s end, Madubuike and Washington both wound up on injured reserve, meaning they won’t return for at least another three weeks. Jones practiced but was later ruled out. Van Noy was unable to go, too. That left Brent Urban, C.J. Okoye and Josh Tupou, all of whom were on the practice squad, veteran John Jenkins, and rookie Aeneas Peebles to hold down the fort. “That’s a part of the game,” said running back Justice Hill, who accounted for both of Baltimore’s touchdowns. “Not everything can be sunshine and rainbows.” It certainly wasn’t this weekend. Humphrey hurt his calf on a touchdown throw to JuJu Smith-Schuster in the second quarter and never returned. T.J. Tampa, who was once a bubble defensive back but has played well in spurts this season, slid up the depth chart. As did undrafted rookie Keyon Martin. Shortly after, Smith limped off the field (under his own power). Trenton Simpson backfilled there, weeks after losing his starting job to rookie Teddye Buchanan. And Stanley, who was limited in practice this past week, exited early after trying to play through an ankle injury. When CBS Sports sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson asked Harbaugh at halftime about the slew of injuries, the longtime coach flashed a fallacious smile, “Next man up. We’re playing well.” By night’s end, his defense leaned primarily on rookies and glorified minor leaguers. Lamar Jackson no longer believes the Chiefs are his ‘kryptonite.’ Steve Spagnuolo might disagree. Fourth-and-1 with three minutes before halftime. Harbaugh took a risk to go for it from their own 41-yard line. The ball was snapped and one-Mississippi later, there were three red jerseys ready to topple Jackson. Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who is considered the mastermind behind rattling this two-time MVP, sent a six-man rush that forced Jackson to his back heel, flinging a no-shot ball out of bounds. Even before the injury, Jackson and the offense appeared as out of sorts and mistake-prone as they have all season. On the drive before, they were flagged three times on a four-play sequence. Two of them were delay of game penalties, no doubt influenced by the roars of Kansas City’s noisy, bright-red pressure cooker. Harbaugh called that “really out of character for us.” The third was intentional grounding on a second-and-long that saw Jackson scramble for his life and dirt the ball 16 yards behind the line of scrimmage. They punted two plays later, and the Chiefs turned it into points. After a first-drive touchdown that looked like an effortless ride upfield, the offense had difficulty getting started. Longer-yardage situations left offensive coordinator Todd Monken straying away from the run, despite the ground game being “a big part of the plan” going into Sunday, according to Harbaugh. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is sacked by Chiefs defensive tackle Jerry Tillery, left, in the first half Sunday. (Ed Zurga/AP) Derrick Henry finished with just 42 yards on eight carries, his fewest attempts and second-fewest yards in a single game as a Raven (at least he didn’t fumble). “Yes, I mean that’s playcalling. I am not going to sit here and say I’m happy about it, at all,” Harbaugh said. “I am sure that Todd is not happy about it either. None of us are. You have to look at that and decide what you want to run there, in some of those circumstances and situations. “Maybe we just need better plays, plays that are going to pop open. Maybe we have to do a better job of game-planning in those plays. That’s what I would say. I think that we need to put our guys in better positions and give them opportunities to make plays in those situations, because in a game like this, you have to be aggressive, you have to go for stuff. We didn’t get it done.” Baltimore’s offense has been at the top of the league for so long because of Jackson. But it seems Spagnuolo still has his number. Ravens are 1-3 with a steep climb ahead of them Take out the panic button. Set it on the table. Flip up the glass covering, like it were the “Deal or No Deal” buzzer. Don’t touch it. But keep it within arm’s reach. The Ravens’ season will be defined by how they respond to this 1-3 start, their worst since 2015. How concerned is Harbaugh? “I’m concerned,” he said, “but I’m not overwhelmed by it. The three losses are against probably three of the top teams in the league, for sure. That’s just the hand we’ve been dealt, but it doesn’t really matter. We have to win the next game. And then once you win the next game, then you have a chance to start stacking some wins.” He’s right. Their schedule eases up from here, staring down three teams with a combined six wins after four weeks. All of which are in Baltimore. And they have the luxury of an early bye to address the unusually cruel health issues. But it’s worth reckoning with the fact that chances like this don’t come along often. The Ravens, who are judged by how they match up against the upper echelon of the league, failed at their last chance to take down a Goliath. They’re now 1-6 against the Bills, Chiefs, Eagles and Lions dating to the start of last season. So yes, they’re right to narrow their view of this season to one week at a time. As Robinson put it, “You have two hours where we could sit here and drown in the water, or we can pick ourselves up.” The overwhelming response out of the visiting locker room was, “There’s still a lot of season left.” “Bring it on,” Henry said. “We are 1-3. Nobody is going to come out and do it for us.” They have to. Their season depends on it. Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn. 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