Another week, another Baltimore Ravens meltdown.
The Ravens held a 10-point fourth-quarter lead before the New York Giants came storming back to win, 24-20, forcing two Lamar Jackson turnovers down the stretch.
Sunday marked the third time this year Baltimore lost a game in which it held at least a 10-point lead, which ties a Ravens team record for most such losses in a season (1996, 2016). The NFL record since 1925 is five such losses, per NFL Research (seven times, most recently by Detroit in 2019).
"We've made some mistakes, let some ballgames slip away," Ravens defensive end Calais Campbell said, via ESPN. "But we can use it as fuel to get better, to keep fighting, to not relax and to find a way to improve. Or we can just let it eat at you and make more mistakes. I think it's kind of just one of those places where it's still early in the season. We're not going to hit the panic button."
It's one thing not to panic and another to keep pounding your head against the wall doing the same things over and over to get beat.
The defense couldn't get off the field late. Jackson threw an interception leading to Big Blue's go-ahead score. Rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux then stripped the QB to seal the Ravens' loss. It's the formula we've seen lead to Baltimore's three losses.
"We just can't keep beating ourselves up because that's what it is," Jackson said. "It is not our opponent ... I feel like we just beating ourselves with little mistakes here and there."
The Ravens had a 93 percent chance to win the game in the fourth quarter, according to Next Gen Stats' win probability model. Instead, they yacked up another loss.
Baltimore (3-3) became the 39th team in NFL history to hold a double-digit lead in each of its first six games. It is the only one not to have a winning record.
Fortunately for Baltimore, none of its AFC North rivals have run away with the division while it figures out how to stop blowing big leads. The Ravens sit tied with Cincinnati atop the North at 3-3, while Cleveland and Pittsburgh are off to 2-4 starts.
At this point, no one in Baltimore is panicking despite the repeated collapses.
"We'll regroup, we'll go to work, and we're going to find ourselves as a football team," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. "That's what we have to do right now: find ourselves as a football team. We have an opportunity to be a very good football team. We can be as good as we want to be and decide to be."
