The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

San Diego was the better team last night –no two ways about it. They were more up, they were more aggressive on offense, and outplayed us on defense. Credit them as they deserve it. I cannot even say we were flat as it was more than that. We just stunk compared to the Chargers. Hats off to them as they deserve it and the victory they easily earned.

The Good

Not much to talk about here. Ray Rice and rushing in general was good. Too bad we had to abandon it as early as we did given how quickly we fell behind. Sam Koch. He had a 46 yard net average, and downed a punt at the two. David Reed seems to have bounced back a bit. And that about wraps up the greatly abbreviated Good. Oh, Houston lost and we “qualified” for the playoffs based upon other teams losing…

The Bad

Joe Flacco had a bad game. He was throwing behind/underthrowing receivers and missed a critical, easy third down conversion to Rice. Not even going to mention the picks... putrid...

Boldin just seems off- he does not seem to be getting the separation he used to.

The in-game adjustments on both sides of the ball. I agree with sticking with something to try to make it work, but sometimes the opposition dictates the terms and last night San Diego did just that. I would have liked to have seen us on defense switch up our game plan a little sooner especially since a) we were not getting any pressure at all on Rivers and b) they kept hitting the medium routes with good YAC.

Cam just did not adjust the offense quick enough to counter what San Diego was doing on defense. Sometimes the coordinator, especially the OC, is involved in more of a chess match than a football game. San Diego came out effectively on defense and yet Cam was slow to counter what San Diego was doing. And once you fall behind by two, three scores, etc, you have to take notice of what the opposition is doing, change what you are doing to try to exploit whatever weaknesses you can. I think Cam gets a little tunnel vision at times: he focuses so hard on getting what they practiced the week before to work that he doesn’t see the forest for the trees.

By no means am I laying this loss at Cam’s feet. The Ravens just did not execute anywhere near where they needed to, and San Diego flat out beat us. I never thought we would get out-muscled in the trenches, and we got out-muscled in the trenches. By San Diego-!

The Ugly

The defense. Zippy pass rush. Horrible pass coverage zone and man. And Jimmy Smith was seriously exposed. I know he is a rookie and has missed some time due to injury, but I would have liked him to have performed a little better.

Pass blocking. Giving up six sacks is an absolute joke and our O-line should be ashamed of that performance last night. That was beyond ugly.

Cundiff. Missed a chip-shot 35 yarder and barely got a touchback on a kickoff. Another few inches to the left and that would have been a twenty yard swing –not that it would have mattered that much. But still quite ugly.

And Gaither. I know a lot of folks have ragged on Gaither and I did not have much faith in him this year, but I mentioned this in a previous post. Gaither has it within his capacity to stone a defender. And he did it all night long last night. I hope Gaither does not turn into another James Harrison.

Short week and that is probably a good thing as they need to remove the stench from last night as quickly as possible. I have seen diapers on my kids after they broke into the Hormel chili that looked prettier than last night…

Saturday the Ravens should be rather angry and the Browns should have packed it in for the season. Hopefully we can jump all over the Browns, get a 14 – 0 lead, and coast the rest of the game. The Cincy game in two weeks is now a pretty much a must win if we have any thoughts about the #1 seed or even hosting a playoff game.