Ravens lost 18 consecutive games when trailing at the half

[BustOfPallas]

This is a dumb stat because LJ has only lost 3 regular season games in his entire career.

Lamar Jackson has lost almost as many playoff games as he has regular season games and he's been in the league 2 years and been to the playoffs twice.

Let that sink in.

These are Joe era losses mostly.

[organizedchaos21]

This is a dumb stat because LJ has only lost 3 regular season games in his entire career.

Lamar Jackson has lost almost as many playoff games as he has regular season games and he's been in the league 2 years and been to the playoffs twice.

Let that sink in.

These are Joe era losses mostly.

I believe the intention is to use the stat as a condemnation of Harbaugh, not Lamar.

[Cleo&Dilly]

This should put to rest the "its all Lamar's fault" thing. It takes imaginative and creative coaching to come from behind in football game.

[HbgPARavenfan]

No one who watches the team is shocked. Harbs is not and x and o guy. If the game doesn't play out lie expected, he struggles.

[LC_Ravens_87]

If your opponents have gone 2-36 when trailing your team at the half and your team has gone 0-19 when trailing the opponent at the half, the obvious thought -- too me -- is that it's a difficult thing to do in the National Football League. It's a meaningless stat.

That said, you can certainly fault Harbaugh for poor in game decisions and game management on Saturday specifically. He along with his OC and QB, got caught up in the negative momentum and forced the issue too much. He was too aggressive when he should have been slowing everyone down.

[G54377]

Important to note too, Free Agency comes before the draft. So no “guarantees” we can just draft our guy and let the FA WR sign elsewhere.

[PurplePill]

Jesus, I knew it was bad but had no idea HOW bad. I know it's tough for any team in the NFL to come back from being down at half, but 19 freaking times in a row...... Ouch!

[Jfoh]

Joe’s games can’t be counted against LJ. That’s maybe a Harbs era stat but not a LJ one.

LJ is what 20-0 when ahead at halftime? 0-4 when behind. Best is that he tends to start fast, scores a lot of points in the first quarter. Unless they let him call his own plays it’s the coaches who need to adjust the game plan.

It comes down to adjustments as we all understand. But to adjust you need enough talent at skill positions to make the adjustments. We’re getting there but not there yet. We were so bad at wr, TE and rb we were starting players from practice squads or castoffs. It take three drafts to rebuild a side of the ball. TE two years ago a FA slot Webin Snead, wr last year with a rb free agent. Now they need another wr it get 80 up to speed. I’d draft one and work on him as well. If they draft well this team will be much better next year.

[organizedchaos21]

If your opponents have gone 2-36 when trailing your team at the half and your team has gone 0-19 when trailing the opponent at the half, the obvious thought -- too me -- is that it's a difficult thing to do in the National Football League. It's a meaningless stat.

That said, you can certainly fault Harbaugh for poor in game decisions and game management on Saturday specifically. He along with his OC and QB, got caught up in the negative momentum and forced the issue too much. He was too aggressive when he should have been slowing everyone down.

As the streak gets longer and longer, it's harder for me to agree that it's meaningless. The odds of winning a game when trailing at the half are roughly equal to the odds of correctly predicting the roll of a fair die. You expect to take ~6 rolls (games) to be successful. Harbs + the Ravens have now rolled more than 3 times that many without being successful.

Now, I think it's a bit sloppy and unfair to mash all these games together. Let's look at only 1 score games (8 point deficit or less). That will limit the Ravens current streak to 10 games, but it will also improve the league-wide NFL record. NFL teams have a .288 winning percentage in those games since 2016 (link). Two teams (GB and SEA) are above .500 in those games.

So, the odds of an NFL team coming back from a 1 score halftime deficit are roughly equal to odds of correctly predicting the suit of a card from a normal 52-card deck of playing cards. You'd expect to be successful after 4 attempts. The Ravens have 2.5 times more attempts without a success.

So, I guess the question I have is, would you ever be concerned? For example, if the Ravens lose 50 consecutive games when trailing at halftime, is the stat still meaningless? 25?

I, for one, am tired of hearing about this stupid stat, so (a) I hope the Ravens win in week 1 of 2020 after trailing at halftime, and (b) I'll try to spend some time this offseason doing some further analysis.

One final note: in all the links above, the Ravens have 2 victories (the Browns are the only team in the NFL without a victory when trailing at halftime). Those 2 wins came in 2016, both against the Browns. The losing streak started after the second of those wins (the Ravens are 2-20 overall in those games since 2016).

[JimZipCode]

I, for one, am tired of hearing about this stupid stat, so (a) I hope the Ravens win in week 1 of 2020 after trailing at halftime, and (b) I'll try to spend some time this offseason doing some further analysis.

One final note: in all the links above, the Ravens have 2 victories (the Browns are the only team in the NFL without a victory when trailing at halftime). Those 2 wins came in 2016, both against the Browns. The losing streak started after the second of those wins (the Ravens are 2-20 overall in those games since 2016).

The Pats, who have a winning record in basically every split you can think up, are 8-13 (.381) in such games since the start of '16.

So, I guess the question I have is, would you ever be concerned? For example, if the Ravens lose 50 consecutive games when trailing at halftime, is the stat still meaningless? 25?

Ah, that is an interesting question.

My initial answer is, probably not concerned. Reason I lean that way is: the full seasons covered by this "streak" are 2017-18-19. Our records in those seasons are:

9-7
10-6
14-2

36-19 (.655) if you go back to the last games of '16, starting right after the last win. So over the period of time covered by this streak of supposed failure, we're playing at a .650 clip, with two division titles, and what looks like an ascending team.

I'd be a lot more focused on the overall # of games we're winning/losing. If we're winning 12+ games and the division, I don't think I care that much about the halftime scores of the few games we're losing. As long as it really IS just a "few" games, and remains so. If we're doing well overall, winning a good # of games (incl playoff games, which obvsly is not the case currently), then this streak could go on forever and stay very low priority for me.


I am sympathetic to the idea that the first cracks in the dam are small, hairline ones. But I'd need these cracks to be a little bigger – needs to show up in the overall won/loss record etc – for me to take it as anything other than a statistical oddity.

[JonAB]

Back to back AFC North Champions, 14-2 season, likely coach of the year and MVP. You guys keep screaming tho

[veritas]

I went back to look at these 18 games to see what sort of deficits we had at the half and whether we ever managed to get a lead. Only 4 times out of 18 did we ever get ahead but in two of those games we got two score leads and still lost. We were within one score at the half in 10 of the games. The only common denominator during this stretch (12/25/16 to 1/11/20) is John Harbaugh. People can make of that what they will but I'm not sure it should be totally dismissed. Anyway, here are the games followed by the halftime deficit, the final deficit and our biggest 2nd half lead, if any:

12/25/16 @Pittsburgh -1, -4, +9
1/1/17 @Cincinnati -17, -17, no lead
9/24/17 Jacksonville (London) -23, -37, no lead
10/1/17 vs Pittsburgh -19, -17, no lead
10/15/17 vs Chicago -7, -3, no lead
10/22/17 @Minnesota -3, -8, no lead
11/5/17 @Tennessee -10, -3, no lead
12/10/17 @Pittsburgh -6, -1, +11
12/31/17 vs Cincinnati -7, -4, +3
9/13/18 @Cincinnati -14, -11, no lead
10/7/18 vs Cleveland -3, -3, no lead
10/28/18 @Carolina -17, -15, no lead
11/4/18 vs Pittsburgh -8, -7, no lead
12/9/18 @KC -7, -3, +7
1/6/19 vs LA Chargers -12, -6, no lead
9/22/19 @KC -17, -5, no lead
9/29/19 vs Cleveland -3, -15, no lead
1/11/20 vs Tennessee -8, -16, no lead