I Can't Decide Who Fucked Over The Ravens More: The Officials Or The Ravens Themselves

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What a despicable loss in so many ways. I flip flopped the entire walk back to my house from the Bank as to whether I wanted to rage blog more at the Ravens themselves or the officials. I've decided the answer is both.

Part I of this blog:

There is no question the Ravens played about 40 minutes of dogshit football that put themselves in a serious hole. They got beat deep on numerous occasions, they lost Jaylen Warren on a key 3rd down (and Friermuth was even MORE open than he was), and continued to look listless offensively. It looked no different than how they played last week against Cincinnati, and pretty similar to how they played on a run of narrow wins against bad teams.

The result was a 27-16 deficit that felt like 3 touchdowns. To the Ravens' credit, the defense stepped up in a big way repeatedly in the 4th and the offense finally found a little bit of a groove to make the game competitive… but yet again they proved to be totally incompetent in big spots. In the 4th quarter, the offense failed on:

- 3rd and 4

- 3rd and 2

- 3rd and 8

- 3rd and 5

- 3rd and 2

- 4th and 5

- 3rd and 10

- 3rd and 1 (sack to end game)

Granted, a couple of those 3rd down failures ended up resulting in 4th down conversions, but that list above is a great microcosm of this offense's struggles. Lamar's offense the past couple years have cooked in these scenarios. Recently they have not. 

In the last 18 minutes of the game, the Ravens ran 40 offensive plays for 210 yards to the Steelers 9 plays for a whopping total of 3 yards. The Ravens only outscored the Steelers by 6 during that stretch. That screams incompetence in situational football.

Worst of all was that the Ravens still got the ball down 5 at their own 26 with 1:56 left and 1 timeout. More than enough time to drive down the field and try to win the football game.

Somehow… the Ravens used 1 minute and 25 seconds AND THE TIMEOUT to move the ball 16 yards down the field and earn their first first down of the drive. THAT IS WILDLY UNACCEPTABLE. The holding flag on 1st down was crippling (and a little ticky tacky), but poor decisions to pick up minimal yardage in the middle of the field were compounded by a total lack of hustle and organization to get on the ball and get the next playoff. 

Some have pointed in recent weeks to Lamar's recurring practice absences to why the offense hasn't been as sharp. I don't discount that having an effect and he still doesn't look totally right physically, but the 2 minute drill is training camp stuff. You sharpen that shit in August and reinforce it throughout the year. Lamar and the guys looked totally lost out there. A major portion of the blame has to go to the coaching staff in terms of having the guys prepared, but it's also astounding that it's year 8 for Lamar and this is what his 2 minute drill looks like. One of those things where if you don't have it down by now, why would you expect to have it down in the future. Baffling.

This team has such a tendency to melt in big moments. This is going back years and years now. It's in their DNA. The Likely TD (more on that shortly) is one thing, but they had every opportunity to respond and make that not matter. They didn't. Low-hanging fruit but Mark Andrews didn't have catch until the 2nd to last play of the game. Get a contract extension, gotta show up more than he did. Rashod Bateman red zone drop on 3rd down. Loser ball. Panic INT by Lamar. Loser ball. Kicking a FG to cut an 11 point lead to an 8 point lead. Loser ball by Harbs. Missing an extra point and kicking the subsequent kickoff out of bounds. Loser ball.

Let's just call these guys what they are. They're losers.

Part II:

All of that said….. THE RAVENS WERE FUCKIN ROBBED YO.

I mean where do I start. We all know the big one, but there were some small ones along the way too. The deep ball to open the game for Pittsburgh's offense looked awfully a lot like the same type of contact that Zay Flowers got flagged for OPI on against Cincy last week. Each of those plays were on my end of the stadium where I had a very good view of the ball in the air with the corner running a half step behind the receiver, and then the hand-fighting magically turned a half step into a full step and a half of separation. I'm not here to say it was OPI today or it wasn't, I'm just looking for a little consistency on what's getting called.

The Steelers were also gifted a fresh set of downs in the red zone after an "unnecessary roughness" call on Travis Jones hitting the long snapper on a field goal attempt.

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If the snapper's head is up, he's not defenseless. Jones is also working through the A gap and attempting to block the kick, and the left guard puts his helmet in his gut which pushes him over into the snapper. Incidental contact to the snapper is one of those things that's a "pick and choose" when to call it type of thing. They picked and choosed there and it gifted the Steelers an extra 4 points.

The Rodgers "catch" and Likely catch can go hand in hand. The rulings on those make no sense when juxtaposed, and John Harbaugh made a great point of that in his postgame presser. I mean the Likely one is common sense. He took 3 steps with the ball. Period. Even if you want to say he didn't take that 3rd step, he took 2 steps and extended the ball away from his body… which the rules actually explicitly state as something that qualifies as a "football move". So the play was over and that was a touchdown.

On the other hand, Rodgers "caught" the ball and his knees were down… but he also did not complete the process of the catch by maintaining possession through the ground… which means the ball was anyone's, and it was clear and obvious it was the Ravens who had the ball. Which, by the way, was the original call on the field.

It's just fucking lunacy that this is what very well may decide the AFC North. The Likely one was more important and was far worse a call. I just can't fathom how we can operate under this whole "irrefutable evidence to overturn" standard and change that call. It's so fucking bad and people should lose their jobs over it.

Whatever though. We're 6-7 and have a long road ahead of us… which is probably moot anyways. I just know this. The Steelers walked away from that game knowing they got away with one, and I can promise they don't want anything to do with Week 18 in Pittsburgh being meaningful for the division. But also I'm sure Goodell will fuck us raw that day too. So what does it matter.

Garbage game, garbage season, garbage league.