Top four reasons why the Ravens lost to the Chiefs

Instead of the regularly scheduled recap following a Baltimore Ravens regular season game win, lose or draw, I’m just going to breakdown the top four reasons that they lost because describing in detail how they got embarrassed on Monday Night Football in a 34-20 defeat in front of a nationally televised audience and a socially distanced home crowd in M&T Bank Stadium would be cruel and unusual torture.

Here are the four most glaring reasons I observed that resulted in the Ravens’ first regular-season loss in primetime with Jackson at the helm:

Offense abandoned the run WAY too early

The Ravens have been the best team in the league dating back to the start of the 2019 season when playing with double-digit leads under Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman thanks to a dominating rushing attack that shattered several single-season records last season.

However, whenever they have fallen behind by any margin no matter if its merely three points or by more than one possession, Roman has shown the tendency to almost completely abandon the game plan that has built his unit so many insurmountable leads. It was the main component to their devastating upset loss to the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round of the playoffs last year and it cost them dearly again against the Chiefs in Week Three after a promising start early on.

On the opening drive of the game, the Ravens offense marched down to Kansas City eight-yard line before their drive stalled out and they settled for a 26-yard chip shot field goal but the way in which they made their way down there gave the impression that the Baltimore would be in control of the game.

The drive featured six runs to just three passes including three straight runs at the start that picked up 38 yards and was highlighted by a 30-yard run from quarterback Lamar Jackson. The Chiefs answered with a touchdown drive on their first offensive possession of the game but missed the extra point and held just a three-point lead.

Instead of going back to what got them down to the red zone in 10 plays and ate up over five minutes off the clock on their first drive, in what has become typical Roman fashion when they fall behind, they passed the ball three straight times on the ensuing drive. The Ravens not only didn’t pick up a first down on that drive, but they also lost four yards before punting the back to the Chiefs.

Kansas City responded with another touchdown on their second drive and the Ravens offense went on to punt the ball two more times, fumble the ball away, and take a knee in the second half. They got back to their bread and butter in the third quarter and were only down a touchdown entering the fourth but they only had the ball twice in the final stanza.

Their defense couldn’t stop the Chiefs offense and their pass protection, which I’ll get into shortly, didn’t hold up and they turned the ball over on downs on their first drive of the fourth quarter, effectively ending their push for a comeback. Had they stuck with the run in the first half, they would’ve kept Patrick Mahomes on the sideline longer and their defense wouldn’t have been on the field nearly as much or as often.

Defense lived and died by the blitz

It wasn’t a good night for Ravens Coordinators not named Chris Horton who is in charge of the special teams unit that accounted for 13 of the Ravens points on the night thanks to a pair of Tucker field goals and extra points as well as a 93-yard kick return for a touchdown to open the second quarter.

While Roman went away from running the ball way too early, Defensive Coordinator Don ‘Wink’ Martindale stuck with the overly aggressive approach of blitzing Mahomes way too long and it ultimately cost the Ravens in the end and it paid zero dividends as evident by the blank sack sheet that his defense posted.

He threw all types of different blitzes and pressure packages at the Chiefs offense and Mahomes took full advantage of fewer defenders in coverage and threw for over 200 yards and three of his four touchdowns against his blitzes.

Kansas City head coach/play-caller, Andy Reid, dialed up the perfect plays to take advantage of the Ravens over-aggressiveness on defense and especially picked on first-round rookie Patrick Queen at times in coverage on tight end Travis Kelce and his former LSU teammate Clyde Edwards-Hilaire.

Ordinarily, his game plan to rattle opposing quarterbacks and wreck offensive game plans with his aggressive scheme and creative blitz and pressure packages is extremely effective but against this particular quarterback and this specific team, it has yet to work out in the Ravens favor.

Mahomes has picked apart the Ravens defense at every level in each of their last three meetings since taking over as the full-time starter in 2018 no matter if the Ravens were in man, zone, or mixed coverage. Martindale has failed to get consistent pressure on the reigning Superbowl MVP with just four and has gotten mercilessly gashed when he decided to send more than that.

If and when these two top tier teams meet again in the playoffs, possibly with a trip to Superbowl 55 on the line, hopefully, Martindale will have the wisdom to not stick with his guns if they’re clearly not hitting the target, Mahomes in this case, and are doing more harm to the Ravens’ chances of winning than good.

Lamar Jackson couldn’t connect on deep passes

If there was ever a prime example for the hypercritical haters, skeptics, detractors, and doubters of the reigning league MVP to nitpick over and meticulously and mercilessly dissect his ability and progression as a passer, it’d be this colossal stinker. One game doesn’t negate all of the strides that he has made as a thrower and while some of his targets dropped some passes, he was clearly off his game on Monday night.

Jackson targeted speedy second-year receiver Marquise Hollywood Brown six times in this game but only connected on two of them for just 13 yards. Brown could’ve had a massively productive outing had his quarterback been more on target. There were at least two different occasions where he burned a Chiefs’ defensive back off the line of scrimmage and was streaking down either sideline with more than few steps on the nearest defender and Jackson either threw it too short or too far ahead.

It was a curiously surprising considering those are the exact type of areas where relentlessly worked on this offseason and showed the most growth in the Ravens first two games of the season. The overthrow to Brown deep down the left sideline on Baltimore’s first drive of the second half could’ve gone for a touchdown but the drive still ended in points via a field goal. However, it wasn’t nearly as costly as his underthrown pass to Brown deep down the right sideline on their only real offensive possession in the fourth quarter.

The Ravens were trailing by two touchdowns with just under eight minutes left in the game and on the third play of the drive, he didn’t put enough air on a pass to a Brown who burned his man like toast off the line of scrimmage once again and would’ve waltzed into the end zone and cut Kansas City’s lead to just a single touchdown with plenty of time for their defense to get the ball back with all three timeouts still left to work with. He was sacked twice for a loss net yardage of 18 yards and turned the ball over on downs after a failed last-ditch heave to Miles Boykin on fourth-and-24.

Brown wasn’t the only Ravens pass catcher that Jackson was off-target throwing too. He was routinely throwing a little behind or a little ahead of his attended targets all night. Jackson barely completed over 50 percent of his passes (15-of-28) for a career-low 97 yards passing yards in games where he has attempted a minimum of 19 passes.

This one bad game shouldn’t damper anyone’s expectations of the Jackson and the Ravens’ passing game moving forward. It is just Week Three and there is still plenty of time to show that it was nothing more than a blip or abirritation on what will be another fantastic season for Baltimore’s franchise quarterback. He and Brown will be back in the lab on a short week and will be back to connecting in deep bombs down the field in no time.

Porous pass protection strikes again

The Ravens offensive line has struggled to keep the reigning league MVP upright when he has dropped back to pass through the first three games of the season. Including, Monday night’s loss to the Chiefs, Jackson has been sacked four times in each of the last two games.

His pass protection sprung leaks in the first two games but because the Ravens won both contests, the lapses were chalked up to the growing pains of a unit that is still getting used to life post the retirement of future Hall of Fame guard Marshal and not entirely healthy. However, as I mentioned above, they crumbled when they needed to hold up the most in the fourth quarter as the team was trying to mount a second-half comeback.

Last week against the Texans, they had trouble stopping three-time Defensive Player of the Year winner JJ Watt from being his usual disruptive self and he corralled Jackson for a pair of sacks. The week before that in the season opener they had problems on the edge with Adrian Clayborn and Myles Garrett of the Browns.

On Monday night, they allowed Chiefs’ Pro Bowl defensive tackle Chris Jones and edge rusher Frank Clark flush Jackson out of the pocket and into scramble situations all night and the two wound up accounting for three of Kansas City’s four sacks on the night (two from Jones and one from Clark).

Jones’ strip-sack of Jackson late in the second quarter ended what looked like the start to a promising two-minute drill drive that had picked up 25 yards and a first down on three plays. Jones continued to be a handful for the interior of Baltimore’s offensive line for most of the night and finished in addition to his two sacks with five total tackles, another forced fumble that rolled out of bounds, two quarterback hits.

Taking over for Yanda’s vacated right spot at right guard to start the 2020 season has been rookie Tyre Phillips. The team drafted him in the third round out of Mississippi State where he played left tackle but they believed he would project better as a guard in the pros. After a solid showing in Week One, both he and veteran center Matt Skura have noticeably struggled to keep interior pass rushers at bay the last two games.

Phillips is a rookie coming off the weirdest offseason of all time due to the global pandemic and Skura is still working his way back to 100 percent from major knee surgery he underwent late last season. Nevertheless, the Ravens need better protection from their starting offensive line both on the interior and on the perimeter where their stalwart tackles haven’t been playing up to their usual standard either so far this year.

Even though they like Phillips and see growth from him with each start accrued, they might a more experienced option at right guard they could sub in for a time in veteran DJ Fluker who has 88 career starts to his belt and has seen just about everything there is at the pro level and wouldn’t need as long of an acclimation period. He competed with Phillips for the starting spot in training camp and is serving as the swing tackle after not winning the job.

There isn’t a more experienced option to relieve Skura at center but there is a healthier player that the team could turn to for a spell until he can regain as close to his pre-injury form as he can. Now in his second season, Patrick Mekari could come in for Skura at center as he did as an undrafted rookie down the stretch in 2019 when the fourth-year pro suffered his serious leg injury.