No defense for brutal loss
CB Carr says there’s only one path forward: ‘Fix it all’
As reporters buzzed around a fastemptying Ravens locker room late Sunday afternoon, looking for answers from a defense that for 60 minutes had had almost none, safety Tony Jefferson emerged to to say his piece. He was more disappointed than agitated. There had been failures in the Ravens’ communication, he said calmly, and in their execution. A historic debacle had done nothing to shake his confidence.
The comments were not prepared, but Jefferson spoke as if he’d answered these questions before — the week before, and maybe the week before that. “Well, we have,” Jefferson said after the 40-25 loss to the Cleveland Browns, the Ravens’ second straight defeat after a 2-0 start. “We just have. So what are we going to do?”
That is the unexpected question that hangs over this Ravens season like an anvil tethered to a wad of chewing gum. Through four weeks, quarterback Lamar Jackson has a 105.5 passer rating. The Ravens likely will enter Week 5 as the NFL’s only team averaging 200-plus rushing yards per game. Their special teams have been often exceptional.
And yet the very thing that the Ravens were supposed to depend on this season, the pride and joy of this franchise, has imploded in less than a month. For the third straight game, a defense that finished last season as the NFL’s No. 1 unit played more like it was No. 32. There were coverage breakdowns and missed tackles, wide-open running lanes and shut-down blitzes. It has become a sickness, a crisis.
“Fix it all,” cornerback Brandon Carr said after the Ravens allowed 500 yards in consecutive games for the first time in franchise history. “Take it one day at a time. Chip away. You see it, we know what’s going on. We see it as well. There are a lot of areas we can improve on: up front, in the middle, on the back end.
“We all have our work cut out for improvement. We can’t point fingers at each other. We all have different things that we can get better in to make this defense better. It’s just going to take all hands on deck.”
There are fewer able men now than when offseason prognosticators hailed this Ravens defense, depleted though it was by offseason defections, as one of the NFL’s best. Slot cornerback Tavon Young was lost for the season after a training camp neck injury. (His significance to this defense has seemed to grow with every successful seam route.) Cornerback Jimmy Smith is out with a knee sprain. And on Sunday, defensive tackle Brandon Williams was inactive for the first time in nearly two years, out with a knee injury.
There is still enough talent. Too much, really, to allow 530 total yards of offense, the second most they’ve ever surrendered at M&T Bank Stadium and fourth most overall in franchise history. Too much to all but hand the Browns (2-2) a share of the AFC North lead.
It didn’t matter that Cleveland quarterback Baker Mayfield had been sacked 11 times in his first three games, that running back Nick Chubb’s longest run all season had been 19 yards, that star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was held to two catches for 20 yards Sunday. Outside of Miami, this Ravens defense is a cure-all.
Mayfield, who entered Sunday’s game with a 70.3 passer rating, among the worst in the NFL, returned to Cleveland with his third 300-yard passing game against the Ravens in as many meetings (20-for-30, 342 passing yards, one touchdown, one interception, 102.4 passer rating).
“It’s disgusting,” Jefferson said. “Y’all look at the tape, it’s not good.”
Chubb finished with 20 carries for 165 yards and three touchdowns, the most dispiriting of which was an 88-yard fourthquarter run on which he wasn’t touched. Safety Earl Thomas eased up before giving chase, not wanting to risk a hamstring injury on a doomed-from-the-start play that sent a six-point game into a spiral.
Beckham’s most notable contribution might have been a third-quarter throwdown with top Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey, but even his mere presence disfigured the defense. Humphrey seemed to blame himself for a coverage bust that allowed tight end Ricky Seals-Jones to streak down the seam uncovered on a 59-yard catch-and-run early in the third quarter. He was paying attention to Beckham; unfortunately, so was Jefferson.
“I can’t be doing that,” Humphrey said of the play, which one play later was followed by Chubb’s 14-yard rushing touchdown. “I have to know the coverage, know what we’re doing, how we’re playing it that week and execute it. I think that’s the biggest thing that’s hurting us right now. I’m averaging a few busts a game, so I’ve got to be better.”
There were other plays that will make the Ravens’ film review about as pleasant as a colonoscopy. Crossing concepts and rub routes often turned the Ravens’ defensive backfield, the NFL’s highest paid, into onlookers. Wide receiver Jarvis Landry broke two open-field tackle attempts by Jefferson and inside linebacker Patrick Onwuasor on a 65-yard catch-andrun and was perhaps unlucky not to score. Mayfield wasn’t hit over the game’s final 59 minutes.