A Not-So Happy Birthday

[Slick]

Okay so I decided to make this a new topic because I ended up writing so much....
This was the first Ravens game I've attended in a while. My friend just got out of jail, and his birthday is on Wednesday, so I decided to buy us some tickets to the game. Obviously, it sucks that I took my buddy to a loss. In any case... here's what I have to say....

-I don't think that the O-line can be faulted, Yanda wasn't that bad in relief of Gaither. Flacco got pressured because he held onto the ball...which leads to my next point...

-Our receivers didn't get open consistently. Mason had a goose-egg today because he was covered well and nobody else seemed to be able to really step up and lead the charge. Flacco didn't have many targets and most of his yards came on check-downs to Rice, Mclain, and McGahee (with Todd heap finding underneath soft spots now and then too) Speaking of Ray Rice...

-This guy is a beast. If we gave him the ball every snap we probably would've won. All exaggerating aside... we don't use him enough. He has great balance (his TD today was remarkable) and has a great sense of where to go with the ball (and how to get there...this guy can [i]cut[/i]. Speaking of cuts....

-Cut Chris Carr. His pass defense = penalty heaven. When he plays without holding, blocking in the back, or interfereing....he gets beat. Speaking of getting beat...

-That's exactly what happened today. We got beat. The halftime stats were rediculous. It was something like around 70-80 passing and rushing (~150 t.o) for the Ravens compared to like 170 passing and 70 rushing (240 t.o.) for the Bengals. I think we had 3(?) drives that actually made it past the 50 yard line. The Bengals D found an answer for our 'O' and our defense had no solid answer for the Bengals' gameplan. For the first time in what, 3 years(?), we allowed a 100+ yard rusher. That's not necessarily because Cedric Benson is unstoppable, it's because the Bengals balanced their attack which had the opposite effect on our defense. The D was on the field WAYYYYYY too long and our secondary couldn't lock it up on 3rd down. The penalties at the end killed us... so you know where this leads...

-The officiating was good in the first half, but the second half got sketchy. I'd say the calls were correct about 50% of the time during the second half. The Ravens hurt themselves with some of those penalties, although I think some were obvoius BS. At least for the call on Ray near the end...I think they got it right. The ball was alright 5-6-7 feet past Ochostinko when Ray was barreling down on him. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Ray knew what he was doing when he decided to lower his shoulder anyway. I'm glad he did it, though. If I envision myself as Ray layin the smackdown on the Chad then it makes me feel a bit better in spite of what happened today.

In the end, the officiating wasn't what lost us the game by far. Today we straight up got outplayed. Maybe this will be a wake-up call that gets our team to perform at an elite level on a consistent basis or maybe it'll be the game that lays a foundation for other teams to follow if they want to beat the Ravens. Either way, I have a feeling that we'll get back on track. All hope is certainly not over for the season, and this team still has so much room to grow. If we're duking it out with the Bengals for division supremacy come the end of the year, then I'll feel much better about this loss. Last week I learned we can hang with the best of em (and beat em if we dont shoot ourselves in the foot) and if the Bengals are still contenders by the end of the year, then that means that today they were truly just the better team. But it's a new game every sunday, and anything can happen.

Don't get discouraged guys, today sucked, but we still have a really good team with loads of potential. Give 'em time and I'm sure they'll live up to the lofty expectations we have of them.

[Ed_Reed20]

I couldn't agree more with everything you said. As much people don't want to hear it, the team got outplayed, the receivers didn't get open and Carr is hot garbage.

[Slick]

Yeah today was by far the poorest overall team performance we've had since Harbaugh came in. At least he lives and dies by his team-first mantra. We win as a team, and we lose as one...

[Slick]

By the way, I want to add that the mistakes that we've shown are correctable in the near future. Weather it's the technique, the play calling, or the players themselves...as the year wears on things with iron out and we should be better than what we showed today. If there are still glaring holes in our team down the line then obviously we'll address that in the next offseason. It's not like this is the only year we have a shot. We're still finding our identity, and once we have it then we'll be dangerous.