Ravens vs. Giants final: Staff reactions to the another fourth quarter double-digit blown lead

The Baltimore Beatdown gang share their instant reactions to the Baltimore Ravens losing their third game this season after going up by 10+ points, losing to the Giants, 24-20.

Just an all-around awful game for the Ravens. This was one they had and needed. But a perfect storm of dropped passes, piss-poor penalties, terrible decisions and failure to execute ends in a 24-20 loss to the New York Giants and Daniel Jones.

Now, the Ravens are 3-3 with all three losses being double-digit blown leads in the fourth quarter. At this point, why watch the first three quarters of a Ravens game when the final few minutes will be figuring out if they can hold on? — Kyle Barber

The Ravens .500 start falls squarely at the feet of the front office. Lamar made an awful decision today but no player in the NFL is asked to do more with less on a weekly basis.

The club’s series of win-later decisions, coupled with an endless quest for value and floor raising depth, has left the roster lacking at the premium positions that decide close games in the 4th quarter.

Quadrupling down on the devalued position zig-zag, despite lacking proof of concept in the postseason, was a mistake considering the level of difficulty across the win-now NFL landscape. Unless General Manager Eric DeCosta adds a difference maker or two at the trade deadline, the Ravens conference championship game drought may extend to a full decade. — Vasilis Lericos

The Ravens were discombobulated against a well coached Giants team. The Ravens demanded that Daniel Jones beat them, bottling up the No. 1 rushing offense in the NFL, but Jones played a consistent and clean four quarters despite a lack of options.

The Ravens had 400-500 chances to ice the game offensively, but a sloppy cocktail of pre-snap penalties and indecision led to a tighter game than it needed to be.

Lamar Jackson had one of the worst games of his career and was simply lost with the game on the line turning the ball over in back to back possessions. However, every game doesn’t have to be a sweeping referendum of the quarterback who was missing a top receiving option and has done enough to keep the Ravens in every single game this season.

3-3 feels cold but with a plethora of players that have been injured or come back from serious injury, the Ravens lose a game against a non-AFC opponent on the road that moved to 5-1.

Lost will be the fact that Brian Daboll has taken a young and overlooked team to back to back wins over legitimate talented teams and navigated through uncanny poor expectations into a team that’s primed to make the playoffs.

John Harbaugh and Lamar Jackson will face another week of criticism while the Ravens remain atop the AFC North and don’t face a difficult schedule. With several key players still returning from injury, it will be interesting to see where the Ravens make an addition to bolster a team that has yet to decisively win or lose. — Spencer Schultz

The Ravens have plenty of issues to work through following yet another late-game collapse. It’s hard to point the finger at one player, coach, or side of the ball. Lamar Jackson has to play better than he has over the past three weeks. Penalties have been a killer on both sides of the ball. Baltimore must find an identity to hopefully ride into the playoffs from this point forward. Getting wide receiver Rashod Bateman back from injury will help the offense, but until Jackson starts playing like his usual self and penalties are cleaned up, this team will not be considered a legitimate Super Bowl contender. The good thing is that the season is still young. General Manager Eric DeCosta is no stranger to big mid-season trades and more calvary is on the way in the form of more injured players returning. — Dustin Cox

It’s difficult to react to this game so quickly. But in my preview, I said the Ravens should win by 20. I still believe that should be true. For the most part, the Giants looked like they had no answer for the Ravens offense when it was moving. But self-inflicted wounds and erratic play from Lamar Jackson caused the Ravens to beat themselves. After being one of the least penalized teams so far, the Ravens had 10 penalties for over 70 yards. It’s hard to keep any momentum when constant mistakes hinder your progress. While the snap wasn’t Lamar’s fault, making the awful decision to throw the ball was and the interception was one of the ugliest I’ve seen from him. He’s now thrown four interceptions in the last three weeks and hasn’t played a good game of football in those three weeks.

Hard to blame a defense that held Saquon Barkley to under 4.0 yards a carry. Against a team with massive wide receiver injures the game plan was to bottle the running game and hope your secondary can hold. Unfortunately, a few too many times, receivers got open and Daniel Jones played a clean game with few mistakes and made the throws needed. Still the defense held the Giants to under 250 total yards and if not for some costly late turnovers, probably would have held them to under 20 points.

Now at 3-3, the Ravens go into a lighter part of the schedule with the chance to stack wins and gain momentum, possibly make a trade. Despite all that’s happened through the first six weeks, I still believe with a wide receiver acquisition and maybe a cornerback, this is a Super Bowl talent level roster. They’ve yet to truly lose a game they haven’t handed over to their opponent. They’ve had the talent to be 6-0 so far and just have yet to play complete, clean games. If they can put it together, they should still win the North and make a playoff run, obviously depending on health. — Zach Canter

It feels like all year, both in games and in a macro sense, it’s been one step forward, one step back for the Ravens. Every time the offense seems to unlock something and get things rolling, the defense comes undone and keeps games unnecessarily close.

Conversely, when the defense looks to have locked things down, the offense ceases to get anything going.

While today felt more like the latter, there’s plenty of blame to go around for all parties. At different points, it seems like crucial mistakes by players and coaches cost them in all three phases of the game. My ultimate feeling is that the Ravens should’ve won this game going away, and really wound up beating themselves thanks to a comedy of unforced errors.

The good news is that’s something that theoretically can be controlled, and ideally will start to fall by the wayside as this team gets more comfortable. Ditto for the fact that they have multiple key players returning from injury as a consolation. But the reality is the Ravens are a .500 team that appear way too talented to be in that position; only time will tell if that’s actually the case, or if this is just who they really are. — Jake Louque