Season in a microcosm....one play

[camdenyard]

As a fan, I hope the team is in playoff contention through Week 17. And they have met my expectations, obviously.

Sure beats being a Browns, Lions, etc. fan.

[lovefootball]

Been a different year with more then enough losses, but it's been exciting. Ravens have been in it except for 2 games(Denver,Pats). If Harbaugh(and I say again, this season's results are on him) kicks field goals earlier, last 6 minutes would have been different. Tucker missing was the death blow, showing the game plan was horrible. Harbaugh needs to stick to scoring whatever is given to him. Pushing the OL to do something it hasn't done all season and asking Rice to do the same is crazy. Last nights game reminded me of the game at Denver last season. Coaching has to be better and Flacco needs to be healthy, the knee injury was a problem(ask Phil Simms LOL). Been a good year, with what the Ravens have had to deal with.

[Firststater]

Agree for the most part, particularly about what truly constitutes "failure". However, I'm sorta curious about this "mass exodus of talent" to which you are referring.

Most of the talent that we lost was replaced with equal/improved talent. This wasn't about losing Reed, Kruger, Cary Williams, etc. Those loses really haven't hurt us.

This was about so many of our backbone veterans regressing at the same time, mainly on offense (Oher, McKinnie, Rice, Flacco, Yanda).

More than that, though, this season has been about utter failure by our coordinators. I've never seen the Ravens play so scared and conservatively and predictably. Yet, when the situation calls for conservative, unflashy play, they suddenly take a needless gamble.

In watching the Patriots yesterday, it was a reminder of how a well-coached team plays. Corner blitzes. Varied defensive looks. 6 yard passes on 3rd-and-4, not 20 yard passes. Attacking the middle of the field. The Ravens are so vanilla is annoying.

Lastly, yesterday was my first time watching Tom Brady live. Brady is remarkably good at not locking in on one receiver. He sees the field so well. If there is ever an open receiver, the ball is there timely and accurately. Flacco missed so many wide open receivers yesterday that it was agonizing. Even a few of his completions to Torrey Smith came when Smith was open for a full 3-4 seconds before Flacco finally found him. It resulted in a completion, but not a big play. Flacco was so inaccurate yesterday that when he did find an open receiver, the ball was frequently behind the receiver, causing him to slow down and reduce the YAC.

Oh yea, one last thing, in my mind, it's UN-fucking-excusable to not have Tyrod Taylor in on short yardage plays and ALL plays inside the 5 yard line. I really don't care about Flacco's ego. When our offense is struggling the way it did, and we have an instant energizer on the bench not being used, that's yet another coaching failure.

One of the best and most comprehensive posts I have ever read on this board..