OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Before the Baltimore Ravens play the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, the team took an extra day to move past their disastrous season-opening 41-40 loss at the Buffalo Bills. The Ravens understand, especially on defense, that they have something to prove after another fourth-quarter collapse.Pro Bowl cornerback Marlon Humphrey said Wednesday that coach John Harbaugh delivered a blunt message in the team meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said we\u2019re just not mature enough as a team yet,\u201d Humphrey said. \u201cIt\u2019s very clear we\u2019ve got great players on both sides of the ball, but defensively, we have to work on our maturity, too. It doesn\u2019t matter what our offense is doing. We have to go up there and win the game. Right now, our maturity level, sadly, when we get in those situations, it\u2019s just not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Baltimore led by 15 points with four minutes remaining Sunday, Humphrey remembers giving a look to middle linebacker Roquan Smith that signaled \u201cLet\u2019s go win the game.\u201d Instead, for the fifth time in the last five seasons, Baltimore lost after leading by double digits in the fourth quarter.The most frustrating part was Baltimore had the perfect calls for Bills quarterback Josh Allen and had gone over many of the scenarios all throughout training camp, according to Humphrey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why the loss hurt so bad,\u201d Humphrey said. \u201cWe knew exactly what they were going to do in a couple different situations, and all 11 guys couldn\u2019t get together. So, that maturity, we\u2019re still working on it, and we\u2019re looking to build on that maturity on Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ravens outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy, who is in his 12th season, learned over his career that there\u2019s a 24-hour rule to either celebrate or vent over games. After Sunday\u2019s loss — where Baltimore failed to hold a 15-point lead with four minutes remaining — Van Noy believed it warranted 48 hours to get over.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the Ravens defense had a dinner together. It had been planned before the season opener, but the players used the time together to move forward and focus on the Browns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to go into details,\u201d Van Noy said, \u201cbut just know that we\u2019re doing everything we can to try to right the ship and get it going in a place where everybody\u2019s excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This rough start is not unusual for the Ravens defense. Last season, Baltimore gave up an average of an NFL-worst 284.5 yards passing through the first 11 weeks of the season. Then, in the final seven weeks, the Ravens allowed an average of 170 yards passing, which was the fewest in the league over that span.<\/p>\n
Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr made it clear to the players this week that the team is not going to have \u201crepeat offenders,\u201d according to Humphrey.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be a situation where somebody\u2019s been doing something wrong, and nothing gets said, or we think this, that and the third,\u201d Humphrey said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to get into a situation similar to last year where we kind of mask over this and try to do this and protect this guy or protect that guy. The guys that do it right are going to play. It\u2019s really just that simple. I think we\u2019re just too talented of a team to continue to have those collapses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ravens have shown the ability to bounce back. Since 2022, Baltimore is 12-2 (.857) following a loss. That\u2019s the second-best record in that span.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to find a way to come back and play the next week and improve,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cThe opportunity of failure or disappointment is the opportunity that brings into sharp focus all of the things that you need to get better at because every single person is looking at every single thing that they didn\u2019t do as well as they wanted to do in their mind. We have accountable guys saying, \u2018That\u2019s on me. If I\u2019d have made that play, if I\u2019d have done that better, if I\u2019d have made that decision,\u2019 Whatever it is — for all of us — that would\u2019ve been the difference in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Before the Baltimore Ravens play the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, the team took an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[1742,49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-138462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-baltimore-ravens","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}