BALTIMORE — You can play the “what if” game with the Baltimore Ravens if you’d like.
You can bemoan the reversal of what was initially ruled a go-ahead 13-yard touchdown catch by tight end Isaiah Likely, or the reversal of what the Ravens thought was a fourth-quarter interception of Aaron Rodgers. You can go back even further and question why nose tackle Travis Jones was penalized for an unnecessary roughness call on a Chris Boswell field goal attempt, leading the Pittsburgh Steelers to take 3 points off the board and score a touchdown on the next play.
Maybe there’s a handful of offensive or defensive play calls you want to blame for the team’s latest setback, too.
Or you can just be resigned to what your eyes are telling you about the Ravens for the better part of the past three months. They just haven’t played well enough to deserve to be in a playoff position. They seem allergic to playing complementary football and don’t do enough things consistently well to harbor legitimate aspirations of making a postseason run.
They can’t win at home either, which might be the biggest referendum of all. After their 27-22 loss to the Steelers at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday in a battle for first place in the AFC North, their fifth home loss this season, their hopes of even making the postseason are on life support, too.
At 6-7, they will enter Week 15 as a losing football team.
For a team that never once this year has seemed to have its offense, defense and special teams in peak form at the same time, that feels appropriate.
“Four games left,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “The season is not over.”
When Lamar Jackson was sacked at the Steelers’ 38-yard line as the final seconds ticked away, the Ravens’ feeble attempt at a two-minute drill coming up short, the quarterback angrily ripped off his helmet. Veteran left tackle Ronnie Stanley threw his helmet before he even reached the sideline. The rest of the team trudged off the field with a stunned look.
“You can’t blame it one way or the other (on the calls),” Stanley said. “We know even with those calls, we still should have made enough of a difference to win this game.”
If Baltimore blowing a 15-point lead in the final four minutes against the Buffalo Bills in Week 1 was the easiest loss to lament this season, Sunday was a close second. The Ravens led for less than four minutes in the first quarter. They were in battle-back mode throughout, first from a 17-3 deficit late in the second quarter and then from a 27-16 hole late in the third.
However, they had the ball three times in the fourth quarter when they could have either tied the score or taken the lead with a touchdown. Two of the three times they drove inside the Steelers’ 20. One touchdown and they might be headed to Cincinnati next week in sole possession of first place in the AFC North.
Yet, all they could muster was one field goal. They committed costly penalties, had one really poor breakdown on third-and-2 from the 5, and struggled to finish drives. They didn’t show the requisite sense of urgency after taking possession at their own 26 and had 1:56 to go and a timeout to score a touchdown or at least take a shot at the end zone. They did neither.
“Divisional game that just came down to the last second and the last minute,” said Jackson, who played much better as the game went on but was unable to make the decisive plays late. “We have to finish and find a way to put some points on the board. They beat us by 5 points. We have to find a way to get a touchdown on that last drive.”
Or not allow it to get to that point. To be clear, all three units played a part in that. Offensively, the Ravens managed just 3 total points on their first four drives, and an unforced Jackson interception during that stretch led to a Steelers touchdown. Even when the Ravens found an offensive rhythm for the first time in weeks, scoring on four consecutive drives, they stubbed their toe in the red zone, scoring on just two of six trips.
Defensively, the Ravens allowed Rodgers and the Steelers’ downfield passing attack, which has been dormant for weeks, to get on track. Pittsburgh had five plays of more than 25 yards, including Rodgers’ 38-yard touchdown pass to Jaylen Warren, where the Ravens totally botched their coverage, leading to middle linebacker Roquan Smith yelling out toward the sideline in frustration. Heading into the fourth quarter, the Steelers had scored points on five of the first six full drives.
Then, there were special teams. Tyler Loop missed an extra point and sent a kickoff out of bounds. The Ravens got nothing from their return game. Keondre Jackson’s holding penalty before the Ravens’ final drive cost Baltimore 18 yards of field position. Then, there was Jones’ 15-yard penalty in the second quarter as Boswell was converting a 32-yard field goal. The Steelers took the points off the board, and Kenneth Gainwell scored on the next play.
Referee Alex Moore told a pool reporter after the game that Jones made “forcible” and “unnecessary” contact with the long snapper, which is against the rules. That seemed a harsh ruling, especially since Jones was initially locked up with the left guard. Regardless, it was called, and it was part of a very poor game from the Ravens’ special teams.
In many ways, it was a microcosm of the season. The offense finally starts to play better, and the defense reverts for three quarters to how it looked during the 1-5 start.
“I just think we need to win,” said running back Derrick Henry, who had 94 of Baltimore’s 217 rushing yards. “It’s the most important thing — win these games, play complementary football in all three phases. Take advantage of the opportunities when they are given and just execute, which we’ve been saying every week.”
Henry and the rest of Baltimore’s locker room thought Likely had scored the go-ahead touchdown with 2:47 to go.
“Common sense would tell you that’s a catch, but it is what it is,” Stanley said.
Likely caught the ball streaking across the end zone and took two steps with it firmly in his hand. As he attempted his third step, Steelers cornerback Joey Porter Jr. knocked the ball out of his hand. It was initially ruled a touchdown, but a quick review overturned it. Three plays later, and after a miscommunication on third down resulted in a Henry 3-yard loss and a declined penalty, Jackson’s pass to the end zone fell incomplete.
“At the end of the day, they made a call, and we have to go with it,” Likely said. “We have to put points on the board after that.”
NFL vice president of instant replay Mark Butterworth said that, for it to be a touchdown, a receiver has to maintain possession of the ball through three steps. Likely had the first two with control and his left and right foot down. However, he didn’t fulfill the third step with an “act common to the game.”
“Before he could get the third foot down, the ball was ripped out,” Butterworth said. “Therefore, it was an incomplete pass.”
Asked what would have constituted an “act common to the game,” Butterworth said Likely “completing his third step.”
Harbaugh didn’t vehemently protest that call after the game, but he acknowledged that he didn’t like the overturned interception for Rodgers about midway through the fourth quarter. Rodgers’ pass was batted by Ravens nose tackle C.J. Okoye. Rodgers and Ravens inside linebacker Teddye Buchanan grabbed the ball, but the replay booth overturned it into an incompletion.
Butterworth said Rodgers had “initial” control of the ball with a knee down and was down by contact.
“When you’re making a catch, you have to survive the ground,” Harbaugh said. “He didn’t survive the ground. He’s not down by contact. He was catching the ball on the way down with another person, so you have to make a catch there and survive the ground. I don’t know why it was ruled the way it was on that one.”
The rulings will provide good talk show fodder over the next few days. What it shouldn’t do is distract from the reality with the Ravens. They simply weren’t good enough Sunday to win a football game at home against an also-vulnerable team.
Now, they might have to win their final four regular-season games to make the playoffs. That would include beating a Bengals team on the road that beat them by 18 points on Thanksgiving, beating the 11-2 New England Patriots and the 9-3-1 Green Bay Packers and then winning in Pittsburgh in Week 18.
Such a run is hard to fathom after watching the Ravens on Sunday and over the last three months. No wonder Jackson described his frustration level as “through the roof.”
“The Thanksgiving game, we shouldn’t have lost that,” Jackson said. “It was turnovers, unfortunately. This one here, I don’t know what happened.”