#RavensFlock

I’ve been a Ravens fan since 2000. They were the first football team I ever watched play on TV, and I’ve been riding with them ever since. Back in the day, no matter how bad things looked, I always believed we had a chance. Even when we were an average or bad team, we fought until the very end. We always found a way to hang around and make it a game. We could be down 40 points, and I’d still believe we could come back.

But these past few years have been different. It’s sad because now, even when we’re winning, I find myself expecting us to somehow lose the game. I never thought I’d reach a point where seeing my team leading at halftime or in the fourth quarter would make me nervous instead of excited.

I miss that feeling of knowing we were going to fight until the final whistle. I still love our team, and that’s never going to change. I just hope this game was the wake up call we needed. I want that Ravens mentality back. 🫡💪🏿

This is a failure in all 3 phases of the football. Unacceptable.

Jak has run 68 routes this season and has been targeted 13 times (19.1%)

Bateman has run 176 routes this season and has been target 26 times (14.7%)

We knew Jak was gonna surpass him eventually but it’s crazy it might have already happened 3 games into his career

I have a theory and people probably aren't going to like it. But I must speak my truth in a standalone thread so here we go.

The Ravens would be a lot more enjoyable if they were 7-0, 6-1, or even 5-2 instead of 4-3. I'm pretty sure everyone from ownership to fans actually knows this. So why can't they win more? Are they stupid or something? Answering that is above my pay grade. However, I really think we'd all be better off if they'd won more games up until this point than they have.

We've lost two division games early, so naturally it's time to making sweeping generalizations about the future of the season (and the franchise as a whole). Which of these two extremes is correct?

The Case For Being Fine

• Lamar is the most important player in the league, and when he returns, we're a completely different football team. The numbers don't lie on this one. The delta from Lamar to Huntley is cavernous, and every important offensive statistic in football goes from subpar to elite with Jackson under center.
• We already have 4 wins; we likely "only" need to go 6-3 the rest of the way to get a playoff spot. While the joke part of our schedule is done, we still have Carolina, Tampa Bay, LA Chargers, and the Browns left. We'll be big favorites in all those games with Lamar. So we need to get two from Pittsburgh, at Pittsburgh, at Houston, at Buffalo, Jacksonville, at Cincy. Not impossible by any means.
• We still have four division games remaining. The Bengals aren't anything special, the Steelers are a typical rolling ball of luck against bad teams, and the Browns are straight up terrible. 4-2 the rest of the way against the North is very possible with Lamar.
• The division isn't nearly as good as its record. The first-place Browns have a negative point differential and win coin-flip games against terrible teams; neither is sustainable. The Steelers have an abominable offense and were annihilated by the only decent team they played. The Bengals beat the Bucs (2-5), Dolphins (1-5), Texans (2-5), and us with Huntley. All of these teams are less talented than us and will lose games when they play better teams.
• The defense is too talented to be this awful all season. There are simply too many good players on the starting 11 to be giving up 30 points per game, even against good offenses. Minter did far more with far less in LA; he should be able to fix this.

The Case For The Season Being Over Already

• Lamar is hurt and won't be 100 percent for months. High ankle sprains are tricky injuries that linger. 70-80 percent Lamar is not enough for a team built around an elite QB. We'd be underdogs next week even with a fully healthy Lamar and have a tough time winning on a short week against Jacksonville.
• We're already 0-2 in the division with two terrible losses to crappy teams; we have no shot at the North. We've lost to the Browns and Saints, two bottom 8 teams in the league, and were annihilated by an average Bengals team. Yes, we have winnable games left, but we've already dropped a pair of games to the trash of the league; why on earth would we think things will suddenly change.
• The injuries have become too much to overcome (again). We've already lost Lamar for three games. We're on our fourth center. Our soon-to-be elite rookie guard might be out for a while. Our best LB is out for the season. Our best blocking TE is out for the season. And we still have 9 games left for other people to get hurt. Next man up is just a saying; talent is all that matters, and our talent isn't available.
• The defense is fatally flawed and cannot be trusted. They gave up 35 points in a half yesterday. They've allowed terrible QBs to have season-best performances against us. They don't produce turnovers, can't rush the passer, can't get off the field on third down, and can't stop huge completions downfield. Even 100 percent Lamar can't score the 35 a game required to make a lead safe.

FWIW, I fall somewhere between these two poles: I think the division is lost and we're gonna have to sweat out a playoff spot all season, but we won't be truly out of it unless Lamar gets re-injured.

He was solid last year but now I hardly hear anything about him.

It’s not even November and the Ravens are 4-3, yet it already feels like this season hinges on Jackson returning to save a team with a wildly inconsistent offense, a defense that folds in second halves and a special teams unit unable to create big plays.

You can probably add mental toughness and resilience to the list of Ravens’ concerns, and you likely wouldn’t get much of an argument from first-year coach Jesse Minter or many of the players, given their comments following Sunday’s mess.

They all but admitted the team’s propensity to melt down has gotten in their heads as they struggle to fight through adversity.

“In every game we’ve proven that we’re good enough to be the type of team that we want to be, and we’ve proven that we’re bad enough to be a not very good team as well,” Minter said. “There’s a consistency level that we need to find where it’s less riding the wave of momentum and more about staying even-keeled and finding a way to have each other’s back and finding a way to pick each other up. You can look at really all three phases in the second half of completely momentum-losing type of plays. That is what it is.”

And that’s what it’s been.

“I think we’re just too much [in our] heads [during] the game,” left tackle Ronnie Stanley said. “We have one bad drive and they have one good drive, we start to feel something happening in the game. For us, it’s just a refocus and just focus on our identity and what we need to do, and really just not look at the scoreboard. That’s something that we talk about a lot, but I don’t think that we’ve really put that into action.”

I’ve sat in the same seats for my entire life (since 1996). Not the first one to admit that it’s changed a lot throughout the years. Never in my worst nightmare would I imagine being told to quiet down by a stadium employee. The issue? Being loud on defense during 1st and 2nd down. No profanity, no disrespectfulness, and no anything. Simply yelling and smacking our chairs in an attempt to disrupt the opposing offense. Word for word what the M&T Bank employee said, “Y’all can be loud on third down, but please keep calm and a little more quiet otherwise.” Allegedly some Bengals fans complained a few rows back. I’m about ready to sell my PSL’s.

I found the play Vega got hurt. He went to help block for Hill down the field on the dump off on 2nd and 21 and caught a helmet to the Right knee.

He grabbed it as he went down, got back up and played another snap and did decently well and then walked to sideline.

Hopeful it's not serious and this does indeed give me hope.

Not sure if anyone’s brought this up before but I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. I genuinely think we need a sports psychologist working with this team.

This has been happening since like 2021. Only a handful of guys are left from that roster, we have a whole new coaching staff, and it’s still the same thing every time. A couple of plays go wrong and the whole team just folds. Up 13-0 at half today and then we give up 35 straight?? That’s not talent, that’s in their heads at this point, the first big gain from the second half must have melted some guys minds already.

And honestly I’d bet the staff has already talked to them about it in meetings, like “we can’t keep collapsing” or whatever. But if it’s handled that way it probably just makes it worse, especially for the younger guys who weren’t even here for most of it. Now they’re carrying the weight of years of choking without knowing how to deal with it.

Idk how the players would feel about it, but weekly sessions where they can actually talk this stuff out could help a lot, especially after a game like today.

What do you guys think?

First off I’m not saying Snoop shouldn’t be our starter, but like after they scored say 28 unanswered points maybe give him a shot? Even if it’s just so he gets some in game reps. Let him get some experience because if Snoop does go down he’s the guy.

Lamar Jackson said he regretted playing through injuries last season because his production wasn’t good enough. Is he right?

Since the start of last season, Jackson’s efficiency has fallen sharply when he is listed on the injury report. Huntley’s starts over that period fall between Jackson’s injured and healthy results.

The drop in Jackson’s production when injured appears concentrated within last season, as the table attached indicates.

The 2025 splits back up Jackson’s reasoning in a league where players have long worn playing through injuries as a badge of honor.

Read more for free:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7726069/2026/10/26/ravens-lamar-jackson-injury-bengals/?unlocked_article_code=1.LlE.2jrU.XctNLCK2Ruk_&source=emp_shared_article&smid=url-share-ta

I couldn’t watch the entire game on Sunday, but I did catch most of the first half. I remember this drive when we were up 10-0 believe at the time or maybe it was 7-0 we were in the red zone had a false start and a pre-snap illegal formation penalty. Seems like we’ve been having a lot of offensive pre-snap penalties that set us back behind the sticks, which sometimes isn’t as big of a deal with Lamar, but without him it’s more difficult to overcome 1 &15 or 2 and 20.

Subject speaks for itself. We have a .500 winning percentage at home during our last 20 games. That will never get it done in this league.

Lamar has only missed 4 of the 20 games. His record would be 9-7 which is slightly better at .563 but is still not good enough. You cant expect greatness if you cant even win your home games.

This is clearly a bigger problem than Lamar being out if we're only winning 56% of the times with him.

Looks to me like we all see our team as being better than they really are. When you take off the purple glasses, we are an average team

Every single weekend, the Steelers play these ugly 16-13 games, yet more often than not, they make that one big play that wins the game.

Us on the other hand, play a very exciting brand of offense but choke games away at the end. Its so frustrating

What are we missing that they have? Our roster is clearly better, so what is it?