As the season rolls on the Baltimore Ravens continue to befuddle us all. They will play great defense and then inexplicably leave people wide open. They will move the ball for a while and then forget how to catch. Third and long seems to be our weekness once again as that is when we give up our biggest plays.
There are so many reasons to like this team but special teams is not one of them. Baltimore has not had a consistent returner all season and Billy Cundiff seems to have regressed from all the progress he made last year. David Reed all but lost the game for us in the first half with his two fumbles and stupid penalty. We have turned the ball over in our own red zone this year more than I can remember the Ravens ever doing.
Joe Flacco did not play a horrible game but he is still constantly overthrowing wide open receivers. Every game there are a couple of throws (usually in the red zone) where Joe will launch one over everyone on the field. He won't have pressure, receivers may not even be covered, but for some reason Flacco seems to think the end zone is 20 yards longer than it really is.
For the second week in a row our pass rush was virtually non existent. Tarvaris Jackson was hitting tight ends and running backs in the flats for big conversions all evening. I'm not sure what has changed from our previous seven games to the past two but with the time we are allowing any NFL quarterback will make completions.
Even with all of the early turn overs and missed field goals the Ravens still had a chance to come back and win the game in the fourth quarter. It is hard enough to come back and win games two weeks in a row in the NFL, to ask for a third would have been a bit much. The Ravens have once again blown a great chance to secure the division lead and once again have dropped a very winnable game to a very bad team. As great as last weeks game was this equals it the other way.
I hate this, I want to believe in this team so badly but every time I do they fall apart against a team they should walk all over. Our coaching has been suspect in every one of our loses as was our play on the field. At least we had some balls on a fourth and five on our own 40. An in the end it was our vaunted defense that could not stop Seattle when our special teams had them pinned inside their own five yard line.