Ravens Lament 'Beating Ourselves' in 3 Losses This Season
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Ravens are tired of beating themselves.
In a season where they could easily be 6-0 and sitting comfortably for the postseason berth for the fourth time in five years, the Ravens are 3-3 and in a fight to make the playoffs.
From blown leads to turnovers to presnap penalties, the Ravens have set themselves up for failure several times this year.
“It’s frustrating because we lose the way we lost those games, but we’re not going to let it shy away our season," quarterback Lamar Jackson said. "It happened, it’s over with [and] we have to move on to the Browns. We just can’t keep beating ourselves up because that’s what it is; it’s not our opponent. Obviously, it’s an NFL team; they’re good, but I just feel like we’re just beating ourselves with little mistakes here and there.”
The Ravens are the 39th team in NFL history to hold a double-digit lead in each of its first six games, and the only of those squads not to have a winng record, according to ESPN.
The players are most frustrated about losing two of three games in which they led in the fourth quarter.
- Week 2 — The Ravens lost to the Miami Dolphins, 42-38, after leading by 35-14 in the final quarter.
- Week 6 — The Ravens led 13-10 before allowing two touchdowns in the final quarter en route to a 24-20 loss.
- The Ravens also led the Bill 20-10 in the second quarter before losing 23-20 in Week 4.
“I think we just can’t hurt ourselves," left tackle Ronnie Stanley said. "Looking at this game, we’ll look back on it, and we’ll see that we’re our own biggest enemy. Coach [Harbaugh] said it after the game; we just need to re-focus on ourselves and make sure we’re focused and locked in on what we need to do.”
"We keep doing things to ourselves, and it’s going to be on us to turn it around," guard Kevin Zeitler said. "We can’t keep saying it. We’ve got to go grind, meet, figure it out, whatever it is, and we’ve got to get it done.”
Despite the struggles, the Ravens are in first place in AFC North by virtue of a tie-breaker with the Bengals, who lost to Baltimore in Week 5.
"We could continue to finish in the fourth quarter, hopefully, get into four-minute situations where we run the ball in those situations, and then also when we’re in two-minute situations, we don’t put ourselves behind the eight ball; we’re tying to go uphill with shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties or little things that we can control at that moment,” running back Kenyan Drake said.
