Zay Flowers closed out a rookie season for the Baltimore Ravens that is promising overall but will come with a disappointing end. Even in a game where Flowers finished with 115 yards and a touchdown, the talk will be about the potential of him costing his team the game with a multiple-phase sequence that made him look foolish.
Baltimore Ravens are not coaching Zay Flowers to learn the finer details
First, he had a taunting penalty after a big 54-yard catch, trailing in late in the third quarter. It set them back 15 yards. Then, he made up for that with a big catch as well but fumbled the ball while reaching it out for the goal line. The two plays compounded for a turnover when the team easily could have scored seven points in a seven-point loss.
The issue is that it is so predictable for everything that Flowers has done this year. Against the Indianapolis Colts, he cost his team by fielding a punt and going out before the two-minute warning. Had he just wasted another second as a return man, the Ravens would not have to run an extra play, and the Colts would have struggled to beat them.
They still won against the Los Angeles Chargers, but Flowers showed a lack of maturity when he scored instead of going down and putting the game away then and there. He forced his defense to play an extra series.
It is getting obvious that Flowers did not learn from his lessons. Flowers are produced in a big way, but the Ravens need to focus on the fine details and maturity of Flowers. After blunders in the regular season went unpunished, you wonder if the team failed to get the message across.
The Ravens as a team were sloppy and had ugly penalties in big moments. They lost composure in a tight game. This appears to be an issue across the team, and seeing it highlighted with the first-round rookie shows that it is not being addressed right now. Are the Ravens a tight enough group, and are they holding each other accountable enough?