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The Missed Tackles, the Injuries and the Special Teams

rmcjacket23 said:
There's two common denominators I saw in the three losses:
1. Sloppy with the football, with Lamar being at the forefront of that
2. Oline getting whooped by superior defensive fronts

The latter part is somewhat concerning, given that its happened multiple times. However they're not getting consistently beat, which is a good thing. And PIT and CLE, especially, have very strong defensive fronts.

Honestly beyond that the losses are sort of dissimilar. Steelers game was about dropped passes. Browns game was about getting dominated in the trenches on both sides of the ball and poor tackling.

Still focused on this season, but we've sort of run through the "gauntlet" of what areas need upgrades for next season. Started the year with Corners, then we moved to RBs, now we're onto Oline.

Oline is a big ? for me going into next season. Both Guards are FAs. Stanley could be out if they think he can't return to form from his injuries. Moses is getting older and would seem to be an obvious cap casualty with Mekari and Faalele cheaper and on the roster.
Lot of things can change in that group.
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I don't even want to think about next year's rosters moves considering how thin we are at about 4 positions. Voorhees being good would be huge but wouldn't have any idea until camp.

I'm using my one time for this Thursday. Don't care how the game goes as long as we win and leave the game healthy. Mini bye before LA then the guys finally get to rest before the last stretch. Think the team needs the bye a lot more than they've let on.
 
The is the first game this season where another team beat us up physically more than we beat them up.

And it wasn't close.

That was not Ravens football.
 
ravenslord said:
I just cant believe that Cleveland's backup offensive tackles manhandled our D.
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Tank said:
Did they though? I think we got a lot of pressures but Watson did a great job of eluding much of it.
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They mauled us in the run game. We did well getting pressure on Watson. He was just exceptionally good at extending plays. Better than Lamar was.
 
stroud tore up cinci defense with the deep throws, pretty sure they weren't expecting him to actually throw deep. this game might be where lamar finds his deep ball
 
Militant X 1 said:
Really? The Ravens lost to the Colts, the Steelers, and the Browns yesterday in a similar fashion of being up at least by 2 scores but unable to close out their opponents.
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That's a thing that happened and has been happening for a few years now. I hate it, but is there a football reason behind it?

The common thread in this season's losses seems to be really strong D lines getting more dominant against our O line as the game has gone on. Buckner, Watt and Garrett & co shut down our scoring as we slowly got pulled back.

Yesterday, Monken seemed to call a really optimistic game in the 2nd half. He seemed to think the Gus power run would start working again and kept returning to it for 2 yard carries. He seemed to think the O line was going to start holding up again and called a lot of drop back fairly slow developing passes.

He tried to impose our will on the Browns rather than adapting to them blowing everything up. That was a mistake in hindsight. Where was the quick game we saw so much of earlier in the season? Where were the runs to the outside with Mitchell or Hill?

The reason I'm not too pessimistic is that Monken might not have changed course in-game to get the offense going, but he's been pretty good at changing the plan from week to week.

I'm hopeful we'll face the next dominant D Line with a better plan.
 
Right now I would rather sign younger players like Queen and Madibuike to extensions than Stanley and Humphrey.

Not sure what the contract situations are with Stanley and Humphrey. Maybe someone can post it here.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
Fully agree with the last part. Classic overreaction Monday.

Take a walk around the AFC. Just yesterday, Bengals got beat by Houston at home, and the Jags got thumped at home by SF. Steelers continue to look completely inept on offense. Miami hasn't beaten a good team this year, and KC has obvious flaws.

And yes, Cleveland is a good team. When Watson plays bad, they're average. When Watson plays pretty well, which he did yesterday, they're a top 3 team in the AFC. Would beat Miami. Would beat Jacksonville. On par with the Chiefs, Bengals, and Ravens.

We didn't play well. Got bullied. Were sloppy with the football. Had some significant in-game injuries. Got beat on a last second FG.

The alternative could be JAX, or DET, or SEA, which is when they don't play well, they get boat raced by 30.
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Hopefully after Thursday the bengals are removed from that sentence, I don’t think their defense is good at all, but we will see I suppose
 
ravenslord said:
Right now I would rather sign younger players like Queen and Madibuike to extensions than Stanley and Humphrey.

Not sure what the contract situations are with Stanley and Humphrey. Maybe someone can post it here.
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That's a bit harsh on Marlo, who has always been good and healthy until this season. Injuries happen. He's on the roster for the next 2 seasons, based on dead cap anyway.

Ronnie has had some bad losses, he's not the player he was, but he has been part of some pretty good O line performances this season. He hasn't been a total disaster. He has a lot of dead cap next season so he'll probably be here, probably with a rookie behind him, ready to step in when the inevitable injury happens.
 
Here's my rant :

It's okay that we lost this game. No one wins every game in the NFL, it doesn't work like that. The Chiefs lost to the Broncos two weeks ago.
It's also okay to admit the Browns were the more physical team and just played better than us in the second half. Call it a comeback if you want, they deserved to win that game.

I've also learned in my years watching this sport that every loss hurts really bad. I've seen my soccer team lose countless times, it doesn't even compare. So on some sunday evening you feel like absolute shit. But that's the way this sport is made.

Also, comebacks are just a part of this game. It's litteraly made to favour it. Leading for much of the game doesn't mean you're the better team, just that you got a headstart.

Here's the thing though : this is the only way I've seen this team lose recently. They've never been beaten for 4 quarters, they never lost a slugfest or a shootout. They've always had a nice headstart before getting caught from behind. On a Win Loss basis, I don't care. But if I'm thinking about the playoffs ? That's gotta be fixed.
If we're in Arrowhead in january, and we lead by 10 at the half, we need to learn how to keep the game in our control. If Pat comes out and scores right out of the gates, we need to learn to not shit our pants.

Which falls on Harbaugh, Lamar, McDonald, Roquan, and everyone. Guys need to make a play when the opponent starts showing life. If we don't there's no hope in the playoffs because we're not winning those games 38-3.
 
GodIsGreat said:
wasn't simpson cut from the raiders?
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He was but he's improved in Baltimore. He's been solid.

There's an O line shortage around the league. D lines everywhere have the upper hand.

Our O line has been well above average this season so we can't really complain too much.
 
OURavensFan said:
I’d blame him or Monken for not using Mitchell more after it was clear he was making a difference
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Clearly they are limiting his snaps and working him into the offense slowly, but I wish they would accelerate that a bit. I mean they didn’t even give him a chance to redeem himself for the dropped pass in the EZ.
 
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