WILD ONE IN DUVAL: The Catch Rule Is Back Under Fire And Turns Out There IS A Limit For Justin Tucker's Greatness

What a dumb fucking game I just watched. For the 2nd week in a row, the Ravens played with their food for 3 quarters against a trash opponent before taking control of the game in the 4th quarter. It was frustrating as hell to watch but it looked like once again they righted the ship when it mattered most to take a 2-score lead. This time though, they failed to close it out, much like the woes that haunted them in September.

It's hard for me to sit here and point tons of blame at the officiating and the call at the end. I'm not really sure what to say about that one. It feels to me like referees have been trained in recent years to allow touchdowns to stand as the call on the field to allow the play to be reviewed. Yes, I understand it would have been reviewed regardless inside of 2 minutes, but that's something that seems to be engrained into referees' psyches these days. Maybe it played an impact on the touchdown being called on the field initially, maybe it didn't. But I do feel strongly that if the call on the field initially was incomplete, it would have stood that way too. And one more thing. The ball DEFINITELY moved in Jones' arms when he hit the ground. It wasn't mentioned by Steratore nor by anyone else on the broadcast. It wasn't mentioned by the referee when he declared the call stands either. Maybe they reviewed that part of it, maybe they didn't. Who knows.

The right tackle was also never set, which is a 10 second runoff...

But again, the Ravens fucked around for 59 minutes and 48 seconds before that play. They constantly threw up on themselves in the red zone and should have had this game put away in the 2nd quarter. Lamar missed a couple of easy TD's and deep balls and the cough up by Gus in his own end was totally unacceptable. They also should have had the Jags put away when Lawrence was sacked early on that final drive, setting up a 3rd and 19. But of course, they gave up a soft 15 in the middle of the field and weren't able to stop em on the subsequent 4th and 4. Nor were they able to make any plays on the rest of the drive to ultimately close them out. That's a failure in every way.

Nobody in Baltimore is feeling all that confident about the Ravens right now. Their schedule the rest of the way is relatively cushy, but they continue to let bad teams hang around in games they don't belong in. The offense is not humming by any means (although they showed a ton of life with their backs against the wall late) and now the defense is leaking oil again. I'm confident that this team is capable of doing great things but they have to start putting it together and playing cohesively again. Getting Ronnie Stanley back will help. Same with Kyle Hamilton, Marcus Williams, and JK Dobbins. But we shouldn't need those guys to beat a 3-7 Jaguars team.

Lastly, gotta give a shoutout to Justin Tucker. Guy gave that thing everything he had and kicked it pure. All you can ask for. Would've liked Lamar to have thrown something quicker in the middle of the field given that we had two timeouts there. JT's kick was good from about 62 I'd say, another play to get 5 more yards would've been the difference.

Now the AFC North is back in the Bengals crosshairs. We have the H2H tiebreaker but that means nothing given that the Bengals have the opportunity to even that up in Cincy week 18. Can't say we're in the drivers seat there anymore and that is tragic.

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Tough one to swallow. Maybe it serves as a wake up call. But right now it just feels gross.