BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 The Baltimore Ravens entered the 2026 season with a new head coach, a revamped roster and fresh hope for success.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Baltimore still appears to have the same old habit of blowing fourth-quarter leads.<\/p>\n
The Ravens were poised to win their home opener Sunday before an enthusiastic sellout crowd, leading the New Orleans Saints 17-9 with 15 minutes left. The place was buzzing, and the offense was clicking and first-year coach Jesse Minter was seemingly making all the right moves.<\/p>\n
Then the game turned into a rerun of many years past. Controlling the clock with two methodical drives, the Saints scored a pair of touchdowns to pull out a 24-17 victory.<\/p>\n
It was a throwback to the days of John Harbaugh, who was fired after the 2025 season in part because his teams failed to make a late lead stand up.<\/p>\n
The loss Sunday was Baltimore’s league-high 15th since 2021 when leading after three quarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s going to just say the same old thing of having a lead, things like that,\u201d Minter said. \u201cSo man, you know, we will own this. We\u2019ll look in the mirror. We\u2019ll figure out what we can do to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baltimore (1-1) had the ball once in the fourth quarter \u2014 going three and out \u2014 until its final drive began with 1:21 left. By the time the Ravens started their second possession of the period, their eight-point lead had become a seven-point deficit.<\/p>\n
Lamar Jackson, who had such a marvelous game in a 41-23 season-opening win in Indianapolis, had his final throw of the day picked off to seal the Saints’ first win of the year.<\/p>\n
So, same old Ravens, right? Not necessarily, said defensive tackle Calais Campbell, who played with Baltimore previously before returning this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistory doesn’t matter,\u201d Campbell said. “It\u2019s just in this moment … we have to execute to win the ball game, and we didn\u2019t get it done, right? You can talk about it from a story standpoint, but at the end of the day, in this moment, we didn\u2019t get it done, and our history is irrelevant to the future of where we want to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson has endured most of those late collapses. He shook his head when asked to come up with the reason for the repeating disappointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings just don\u2019t go our way sometimes at the wrong time. That\u2019s what I believe,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Minter has put a high priority on immediately fixing this flaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s early in the season. We\u2019re missing a few key guys, you know,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that\u2019s a game we need to find a way to win, especially when we have a lead like that. So look at ourselves first, try to get better this week, and then go to the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full NFL coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE (AP) \u2014 The Baltimore Ravens entered the 2026 season with a new head coach, a revamped roster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1006309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[184,4755,7,10097,2909,895,896,55,2572,2571,6,27878,27876,95291,120436,131751,397],"class_list":["post-1006308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-orleans-saints","tag-baltimore","tag-calais-campbell","tag-football","tag-jesse-minter","tag-john-harbaugh","tag-lamar-jackson","tag-new-orleans","tag-new-orleans-saints","tag-neworleans","tag-neworleanssaints","tag-nfl","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40779-ap-delaware-maryland-sports-only","tag-product-40789-ap-louisiana-sports-only","tag-ravens-saints-score","tag-saints"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117305962889105698","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1006309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}