Avery K. Tingle, The Gamer Author

This is September football. It’s the opening jabs of a fight or the first salvo in conflict. We don’t know where all thirty-two teams will end up when the season ends. We can only make educated guesses as to who will still be around for January football. Still, it’s hard to not become apprehensive of the Baltimore Ravens, who, like a handful of teams in the NFL, is sitting at 2-2 and squarely in the middle of the road at the end of September.

The record isn’t as concerning as how they got there. Following a decisive victory against the Flacco-led New York Jets in week one, the Ravens gave up what can only be described as the most complete breakdown in defensive history, allowing the Dolphins to storm back and win from a 28-14 deficit. 

I look at the box score and still can’t believe it. The Dolphins scored twenty-eight points in the fourth quarter alone. How much did the Ravens score, you ask? Three. They scored three whole points. 

The following week showed promise with the Ravens beating the Patriots at Foxborough. En route to a 37-26 victory, Mike McDonald’s unit forced a fumble and picked off Mac Jones three times. It always feels good to beat the vaunted Patriots in their own house. We had hope.

Then, history repeated itself. The Ravens built up a seventeen-point lead against the Buffalo Bills, one of the best teams in the league right now, and then just…stopped. John Harbaugh’s call to go for it on fourth down from the two will be eviscerated for days, but the truth is, the problems with this team run far deeper than that. This was evidenced by the enthusiastic exchange between John Harbaugh and Marcus Peters as the Bills proceeded to kick the game away.

Like it or not, the Baltimore Ravens are an average team with a lot of talent on the roster right now.

Let’s start with the obvious. John Harbaugh made the right call to go for it on fourth down. It just didn’t go the way we’d hoped. Lamar Jackson is an absolute phenom who will immediately elevate to legendary status when he gets over the playoff hump. Devin Duvernay is a solid pass-catcher (he was 4 of 5 for 52 yards in the Bills game alone). JK Dobbins has exploded in his return, and do I really need to say anything more about Mark Andrews? Sometimes, you call a play and the defense has your number. This was one of those times. Yes, Justin Tucker could’ve kicked the automatic field goal, Tyler Bass could’ve taken the game to overtime, or maybe Baltimore’s defense would’ve stepped up again and we’d all be in better spirits instead of gnashing our teeth. But when you have a generational talent on your team like Lamar Jackson, who is playing better than he did in his MVP season, you go for it on the two-yard line. I can’t even believe this is up for debate.

No, while Lamar Jackson and the offense have been far from perfect, as anyone who has seen this team play a second half can attest, the blame is not solely on them. We need to talk about this defense.

Put simply, I have no idea what Mike McDonald is trying to accomplish here. Best I can tell, this is a hungry, ball-hawking, feast-or-famine defense that is starving just as much as it is thriving. This defense throttled an aging quarterback in Joe Flacco and a young one in Mac Jones, but against more potent offensives, they’ve struggled. The reason for this is the great mystery of September. This defense has played the first half of every game exceptionally well. Then, when the team builds a double-digit lead, you literally watch them drop back into soft zone coverage and get devoured. We watched it yesterday with Buffalo. After the offense put seventeen points on the board, the defense stopped playing so close to the line. Josh Allen sent short shots up the middle before taking the top off the defense. When that didn’t work, he just took it himself. Let’s not omit Devin Singletary, who carried eleven times for almost fifty yards, capped off by a short burst that saw Calais Campbell visibly express his frustration. 

The ship is not sinking, but it’s not moving, either. It’s still just September. There’s a long season ahead. With the Bengals, Browns, Buccaneers, and Giants on the schedule, there’s plenty of time to get it right. But it needs to begin this week, and hopefully, they figure things out before taking on division rival, and current AFC North champion, Cincinnati Bengals at home next week.

Thanks for reading.

Avery K. Tingle, the Gamer Author is a recovering sex addict and trauma survivor. He writes science fiction, fantasy and about life from his perspective. The Rogue Christian espouses that God loves the LGBTQIA+ Community, equal rights, and what a woman does with her body is her business. An avid NFL and Baltimore Ravens fan, he resides in Las Vegas with his wife, a Seahawks fan, and their two cats.