The Baltimore Ravens haven’t been good enough. 2-1 or not, they’ve played some incredibly sloppy football through the first three weeks of the 2026 NFL season. It’s the kind of sloppy play that’ll ruin them if they don’t clean it up.
The two glaring problems? Penalties and missed tackles.
It feels like every time there’s a big play, every time there’s a crucial moment, a flag or missed tackle comes back to bite them. They’ve especially been issues in the late stages of the game—that disastrous duo of troubles played a huge role in a blown lead in Week 2, and what was almost a blown game in Week 3.
This trend can’t keep trucking along. I get it, there’s a different leadership group at the helm, but this is largely the same group of players. They have to figure it out if they want to be taken seriously.
Baltimore Ravens must clean up self-inflicted wounds
Self-inflicted mistakes are agonizing, especially for teams as talented as the Ravens. They became a constant trend of the John Harbaugh era over the last few years, leading to the shift toward the Jesse Minter era. Unfortunately, the players are still making the same silly errors.
That’s not Ravens football, and team captain Kyle Hamilton knows it. He made that abundantly clear when discussing the defense's struggles in Week 3.
“[The offense] shouldn’t have to go out there and score 30 points for us to win,” Hamilton said. “We were in position as a defense to get off the field, win the game…it’s unacceptable to be saying we’re a Ravens defense, whatever that means at this point, and us going out there and [blowing it] every time we got a lead.”
The penalties have been a problem from the get-go, and this team has yet to solve that. They’ve drawn the fourth-most penalties at 26 flags for 198 yards. In their most recent game, they drew 9 penalties for 78 yards in a heart-attack win over the Dallas Cowboys.
Baltimore isn’t showing any sign of improvement there.
13 of those total penalties have fallen on the offensive line’s shoulders. That group has struggled as it is, and the penalties make it obvious there are technique and communication issues up front. Hopefully offensive line Dwayne Ledford can slowly but surely erase those from the equation.
As for the missed tackles, Baltimore ranks near the bottom of the league in that category, too. Their 19 missed tackles are tied with the Washington Commanders for the ninth-worst mark in the NFL.
What makes this so much worse, though, is when these missed tackles are happening. Many of them have come down the stretch or on third downs.
In Week 2, Juwan Johnson and Chris Olave were problems after the catch and kept Baltimore’s defense on the field. In Week 3, CeeDee Lamb and Brevyn Spann-Ford had notable plays in the open field to keep drives moving. And in all of those situations, the missed tackles seemed to come in bunches.
That’s an area where Minter will be relentless in trying to fix it. He spoke about those challenges in his press conference on Monday.
Ravens coach Jesse Minter was critical of the players missing tackles.
— Jamison Hensley (@jamisonhensley) September 28, 2026
"We're not detailed enough in our tackling," Minter said.
He added, "We need to coach them better."
Week 4 should offer the perfect opportunity to fix those flaws. The Ravens square off against the 0-3 Tennessee Titans. If they can’t clean up the penalty and missed-tackle problems against them, it might be a long while before they put it all together.
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