Ravens Insider: Ravens players reflect on shocking playoff-less season: ‘Hard to process’

ExtremeRavens · Monday at 10:16 PM

The sound of losing: It is silence, save for the rough edges of cardboard boxes sliding against each other as they are packed up, the crinkle of plastic garbage bags, the faint thud of a small locker door closing. There are monotone voices and sighs.

This is the cacophony of the Ravens this time of year.

Again.

After another stunning and dispiriting defeat, this time to the Steelers in Pittsburgh, where rookie kicker Tyler Loop sliced a 44-yard game-winning field goal attempt wide right as time expired in a de facto playoff game during the final week of the regular season, the agony feels familiar. Last year, it was a dropped 2-point conversion and trio of costly turnovers in the divisional round. In 2023, a fumble at the goal line in the AFC championship game.

This was worse, of course.

“I don’t think it gets any easier,” fullback Pat Ricard said Monday in Owings Mills, where players cleaned out their lockers and headed home with no more football to play for months. “It kind of just shocks you. The whole season comes down to one play, and just especially this year how we started out 1-5 and so many guys dealt with injuries early on in the year, and we were able to put ourselves in the position to make the playoffs to the last game, the last play of the game.

“It just hurts. I feel for the fans of the city. Just the heartaches after just years after years, and it always seems like the start of the year, we always have a great group that I feel like we underperform just with the talent that we have, and I feel like the fans deserve better. It’s just hard, it’s just hard to … Just seemed like it’s just one play that ends up just defining our season. But I mean it’s not, it’s never just one play. There’s 17 games that we felt like we should have won the majority of.”

Instead, Baltimore finished 8-9 for its worst record since 2021, which is also the last time the Ravens failed to reach the postseason.

It was a stunning end for a team that opened the year as the favorite to win the Super Bowl, never mind just get to it for the first time since 2013. For some, there was no reason to revisit the seared in missteps of another wasted opportunity.

There was no Lamar Jackson. No Ronnie Stanley. No Zay Flowers. No Marlon Humphrey. No Loop.

All spoke late Sunday evening. No need to relive it again perhaps.

Fourth-year tight end and free-agent-in-waiting Charlie Kolar did, though, letting the moment wash over his sleepless eyes and sagging cheekbones.

“It’s hard to process the day after,” he said. “Just didn’t do enough things consistently to win games this year.

“I feel like the last game is kind of like the encapsulation of the whole season. You know the saying, good teams find a way to win? We just didn’t do that enough this year. All three phases gotta find a way to play complementary football, help each other out.”

He added that it “hurts” and that it was “a tough year.” He carried the pain for Loop, too.

“Obviously we’re all hurting for Tyler right now,” he said. “You never want a season to end like that, especially for a guy who works so hard.”

The sting was real for Kolar as well.

“There’s no real word to put into it,” he continued. “It’s really hard to process. We all thought we were gonna win that game. Twelve hours later, team meeting, season’s over.

“We believed that we could contend and we didn’t do that. … Of course we underperformed. We were preseason Super Bowl favorites and we don’t make the playoffs. It’s hard to swallow.”

That was the feeling across the spacious but mostly desolate locker room.

Tight end Isaiah Likely — also scheduled to be a free agent this offseason — signed some jerseys for teammates. Center Tyler Linderbaum — another potential free agent — gathered up a few bottles of wine. Outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy, 34, searched for answers, about what went wrong and the possibility of a football-less future, at least on the field.

“For me, it’s not exactly a fun journey going through,” Van Noy said. “Just because we’ve been battling from just the standpoint all season, just behind-the-scenes stuff that no one sees and different things like that. If you don’t win the last game, it’s a failure, especially with expectations that we have for ourselves.”

He also said he’d like to continue to play and do so for Baltimore if the situation allows, something that seems unlikely.

“I don’t want to make any decisions right now, it’s too early to say, especially after an emotional game like that was last night, to say, ‘I’m retiring, or I’m going to keep playing,’” he said. “I think I’m just going to keep my options open and keep an open mind. Just have conversations, but I definitely would like to be back with the Ravens if that was a possibility. Hopefully, it will be. Conversations will be had.”

The mood, though, was the same as it has always been these past few years, soured even more by a regression from one to the next.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Linderbaum said. “Obviously, it’s not the season that we wanted.”

Added second-year right tackle and locker mate Roger Rosengarten: “It was definitely surreal going to sleep last night, but definitely waking up in the morning — this morning — it definitely hurt. It stung a little bit more, not getting another opportunity on a Sunday to get after it with the boys. That’s the worst part.”

So is the scar tissue.

Will the Ravens ever get over that proverbial hump?

“I guess it depends on the person,” Ricard said. “If anything, you just have to look at it as a lesson, something to fuel you [and] to drive you to improve so that when you get in those moments again, it doesn’t happen. But I think it depends on the person. Some people take it way harder. Some people need time. Some people might need therapy. Some people might need God.

“We all want a Super Bowl, and when we fall short, you have to look in the mirror and [at] yourself and try to think of what you could have done better.”

Perhaps one day that answer will come. For now, though, the Ravens’ locker room is silent again.

Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1.

Ravens quarterback Cooper Rush cleans out his locker Monday, a day after the team’s 26–24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night ended its playoff hopes. (Kevin Richardson/Staff)

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Ravens quarterback Cooper Rush cleans out his locker Monday, a day after the team’s 26–24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night ended its playoff hopes. (Kevin Richardson/Staff)

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Ravens Insider: Ravens players reflect on shocking playoff-less season: ‘Hard to process’

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