The beginning of the 2025 season for the Baltimore Ravens feels like déjà vu with how their 2024 season ended against the Buffalo Bills in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. The Ravens lost to the Bills 41-40 Sunday night.
Once again, the Ravens came in confident that they were the better team, and once again, self-inflicted wounds and missed opportunities led to them leaving Buffalo with a loss.
In their Divisional Round loss last season, the Ravens had three turnovers and a dropped two-point conversion by Mark Andrews that would have tied the game. It was another notch in an increasing list of games that the Ravens couldn’t close out.
Finding Ways to Finish Games
The Ravens’ greatest Achilles heel over the last few seasons has been finding ways to finish games in the fourth quarter. In fact, this has been a persistent issue that has plagued John Harbaugh throughout his entire tenure as the Ravens’ head coach.
According to Associated Press writer Josh Dubow, “John Harbaugh’s 17 blown double-digit leads in the second half are most since at least 1991.”
Baltimore Banner columnist Kyle Goon asked Harbaugh in his post-game press conference about the Ravens’ inability to finish games that they have been in control of. Ravens.com provided the transcription of Harbaugh’s answer.
“Well, you have to make plays. You have to make plays on the ball; you have to get sacks; you have to turn the ball over,” Harbaugh said. “They got four downs, so it’s kind of hard just to play even.”
Harbaugh then emphasized the need for the defense to create a turnover or make a stop.
“You’ve got to come up with a turnover somewhere,” Harbaugh said. “You’ve got to knock the ball out, get a stop. The fourth-down stop would’ve been a play, but [Josh Allen] threw it back there, and they made the play on the extended scramble. So that’s what you have to do.”
“You have to make a play and get off the field,” Harbaugh continued. “You’ve got to extend [and] stay on the field. We’ve had situations where we have done that in the past, but there’ve been too many of them, but we’ll get ready for the [Cleveland] Browns.”
While the defense came up small, many were left wondering why the Ravens’ offense, which had already put up 40 points, was not trusted to finish out the game.
Lamar Cramped Up on Fourth Down
On 4th and 3, faced with punting back to Josh Allen and the Bills, who were running through the Ravens’ defense like a hot knife through butter, Harbaugh decided to punt the ball. The Bills only needed a field goal to win, which they marched down the field and easily put themselves in position to do.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson provided insight in his post-game press conference into why the Ravens didn’t put the ball in his hands to end the game.
“No, I was cramping,” Jackson said. “So that’s why I pretty much jogged off the field, because if I wasn’t [cramping], everybody in here knows I would’ve been trying to go for a fourth-and-3.”
According to StatMuse, the Ravens in 2024 converted 8 of 15 fourth-down attempts for a 53% success rate, which ranked them 20th in the NFL. However, their low number of fourth-down attempts and success rate were partly due to the team being third in the league with a 48.2% third-down success rate.
Still, even with Jackson cramping up, the Ravens had three timeouts to buy more time, and Derrick Henry, who, beyond his costly fumble, couldn’t be stopped by the Bills.
The Ravens will have the chance to get back on track this Sunday against the Cleveland Browns, another team they blew a fourth-quarter lead to last season.
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