Ravens' Third Down Woes Sink Winning Streak

The Baltimore Ravens struggled on third down in both phases of the game.

Baltimore Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely (80) dives for yards as he is brought down by Cleveland Browns safety Grant Delpit (9) during the second half of an NFL football game at Huntington Bank Field, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Cleveland, Ohio. / Jeff Lange / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The story of Week 8 was simple for the Baltimore Ravens: unforced errors.

Riding a five-game winning streak and facing a 1-6 Cleveland Browns team, the Ravens shot themselves in the foot over and over again en route to a 29-24 upset loss. Drops, penalties, another slow start, you name it, the Ravens probably made that mistake on Sunday. It wasn't a completely irredeemable performance, just a very sloppy one, especially by Baltimore's standards.

Perhaps the biggest indication of the Ravens' uncharacteristically sloppy performance was their failure on third downs, on both sides of the ball.

On offense, the Ravens converted just two of their 10 third-down opportunities, both coming in the second half.

A huge reason for their low success rate on third down is that they put themselves behind the sticks beforehand. On their 10 third down attempts, they averaged 10.3 yards to go.

"[The Browns defense] was doing a good job of stopping us. We weren't converting on third down, obviously," quarterback Lamar Jackson said postgame. "Sometimes, we had a couple of penalties here and there to push us back further or a sack or something like that, [but] we just have to do a better job at sustaining that."

As an added bonus, the Ravens failed to convert on fourth down twice. The first came in a bizarre direct snap to Derrick Henry on their opening drive, while the second was essentially a Hail Mary on the final play of the game.

On defense, the Ravens allowed the Browns to convert eight of their 15 third-down chances. Keep in mind, the Browns converted an abysmal 23 of their 97 third downs (23.7 percent) in their first seven games. Even after Sunday, they still have the worst third-down conversion rate in the league at 27.7 percent.

Allowing that many conversions to this offense, especially with a new quarterback and play-caller, is just unacceptable, and reflective of the Ravens' failures on defense throughout the game.

At the end of the day, it's all about execution in the NFL. The Ravens didn't execute when they needed to, but the Browns did and they got the win because of it. There are many stats to illustrate that, but third-down rates really do tell the story.

"Honestly, it honestly goes back to execution, wide receiver Rashod Bateman said. "Whatever the play [was], somehow, someway, no matter what it [was], we beat ourselves. I don't know what [better] position [we] could have been in. It could have been [on] the receivers, [or] it could have been [on the] O-Line; you never know. But we are a team, and I just feel like we all failed when we should excel. We're very aware of that, and we'll just continue to work to fix those things."

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