The 14-2 Baltimore Ravens have seen their season come to an unfortunate end. Where does the blame lie for this season’s early exit?
There weren’t many outside of Tennessee that saw the Baltimore Ravens coming up short against upstart Titans this past Saturday night at M&T Bank Stadium.
The 28-12 loss left the city of Baltimore stunned and searching for answers in a season that was supposed to end in Miami. The past few days have been littered with takes on what went wrong and who was most at fault for the 2019 season coming to a crashing halt.
Let’s start with folks that are putting this loss on John Harbaugh resting his starters in Week 17 leading to a three-week layoff between games. These are the same folks that would have lambasted Harbaugh had he played his starters and had one of them get hurt. The right decision was to protect key starters in the finale whether it “worked” or not.
The most common complaint from Saturday is in regards to the Ravens offensive play distribution. This gripe certainly has legs as the Ravens dropped back to pass 70 times in Saturday’s defeat. They had the most dominant rushing season in the history of the NFL. It’s worth exploring why Baltimore’s running backs received nine total carries.
I’ll start by saying Mark Ingram shouldn’t have been on the field. He didn’t look to have any burst and in my opinion should have been held out of the contest. Gus Edwards totaled just 20-yards on three carries Saturday night with a long of 19. How is that possible?
Looking at the two minute end of first-half drive plus everything that followed the Titans going ahead 28-6, the Ravens attempted 42 passing plays, were sacked three times, scrambled three times, and ran Jackson twice. Those are pretty much must pass moments when you are in hurry up and when you fall behind that far. This doesn’t excuse the first half play distribution. Greg Roman and company got away from their bread and butter and should be held accountable for that. They never established the consistent running game that got them to 14-2.