The Ravens biggest problem in big games is psychological.

[WrongBaldy]

Imagine if mcDaniels was the OC

[WrongBaldy]

There’s two ways to beat Kansas City.

1) with a consistent pass rush from 4 guys. Which we simply don’t have. Only a couple teams in the league have a good one to attack them this way.

2) Ground and pound run control game. This is our only way to beat them. Two huge drives. The one after their first TD when it was 7-3 and then 13-10 when we stopped them after the KR touchdown.
If those two drives resulted in something other than 3 and out, we have a slim chance to win this game.

But they didn’t and Mahommes took over. They have too much of an advantage on offense against our defense for us to not take advantage of those openings.

They just missed 2 FG’s (4 points), fumbled in our territory(safe to say at least 3) gave us the ball on the 50 from a failed 4th and 1 (which led to our lone offensive TD) and let up a KR for a touchdown and still thoroughly WHOOPED our ass.

(These 4 above happenings gave our team a 21 point swing in the positive direction. 21!!! And we still lost by 14 points)

If that doesn’t scare the people here that have Super Bowl hopes, which I assume is all of us, then I’m not sure what will.

I said it in the game thread that this game wasn’t even close

[John Reglarperson]

Here are some related ideas.

You mention "tense".

I'd say that Lamar gets too tense, and that tension effects his accuracy. Maybe the tension effects the pass catchers, maybe they are tense and they can't catch as well.

Maybe the tension effects the coaches in big games "we're not winning and it's the middle of the first quarter already, we have to ditch the run game and pass"

And then tense Lamar is passing instead of running (which he still does well even when tense) and Lamar is throwing a tiny bit less accurately, catchable but not perfectly thrown, and there are incompletions and punts and sack fumbles and interceptions.

Just keep running. run run run run run. The run stats today were pretty great and if they didn't throw as much, drives wouldn't have stalled. If the other team was actually able to stop the meat and potatoes, tried and true run game, there should be enough wrinkles, enough different run options to get the ball moved down the field.

[John Reglarperson]

Titans game and tonight the Ravens abandon the run far too early, and Gus Edwards gets under utilized yet again.

yup.

both this and the playoff game were screwed up by bad outcomes on pass plays. This game had NO bad run plays, and the Ravens passed more than they ran.

This and the playoff game were similar. Differences include - the Ravens were better than the Titans, and the Ravens should have won but they over gambled - always going for it instead of kicking FGs left a lot of points on the board. With the Chiefs, the Chiefs might just be better, and maybe the Chiefs cooled off a bit because they didn't need 41. More big turnovers in the Titans game. In the playoff game, the Ravens gave the Titans the ball in excellent field position due to their own errors. In the Chiefs game, it was the Ravens making fairly generic pass game errors and punting, and the Chiefs being a top offense, playing on point.

[John Reglarperson]

Let’s just admit that we got straight up destroyed tonight due to being out performed at almost every position on the field and off of it.

They didn’t lose this game from a psychological perspective, but this game will certainly leave a large majority of our team with mental scars for the rest of the year... because that’s how truly awful the defense played.

I think I read somewhere that the Chiefs have a very good offense.

Maybe the Chiefs scoring a lot of points had a lot to do with the Cheifs very good offense.

The Ravens RUN GAME was pretty excellent.

TEAM 21 158 7.5 0 30

compare Chiefs run game

TEAM 31 132 4.3 1 22

It seems like there is a near perfect correlation between abandoning the run game, and losing.

If you've got the QB with the most rushing yards in a season and an offense with the most rushing yards in a season, it would make complete and total sense to do that almost all the time. You're good at it, it makes you win. Running isn't hard. When your QB is the fastest of them all, you do that a lot, and defenses worried about ultrafast QB aren't quite as worried about very good running backs and fast jet sweeping wrs, and their jobs are made a little bit easier, and the run gains are a little bit bigger and you win.

[John Reglarperson]

There’s two ways to beat Kansas City.

1) with a consistent pass rush from 4 guys. Which we simply don’t have. Only a couple teams in the league have a good one to attack them this way.

2) Ground and pound run control game. This is our only way to beat them. Two huge drives. The one after their first TD when it was 7-3 and then 13-10 when we stopped them after the KR touchdown.
If those two drives resulted in something other than 3 and out, we have a slim chance to win this game.

But they didn’t and Mahommes took over. They have too much of an advantage on offense against our defense for us to not take advantage of those openings.

They just missed 2 FG’s (4 points), fumbled in our territory(safe to say at least 3) gave us the ball on the 50 from a failed 4th and 1 (which led to our lone offensive TD) and let up a KR for a touchdown and still thoroughly WHOOPED our ass.

(These 4 above happenings gave our team a 21 point swing in the positive direction. 21!!! And we still lost by 14 points)

If that doesn’t scare the people here that have Super Bowl hopes, which I assume is all of us, then I’m not sure what will.

Well the fact that the run game was going great - and was great the entire game - and the Ravens still only ran 21 times - that's the scary part.

The Ravens should hire a coach whose job it is to get a laminated card made up that says "run the ball" on it, and when the other coaches Harbaugh? Roman? want to start passing a lot, he holds up the laminated card with "run the ball" on it. And Harbaugh and Roman would've had to have seen that laminated card before, know what it means.

As a fan of running QBs and a potent run game based around running QBs, it's really quite annoying to see the team that I'm rooting for lose because they're doing something that I don't like and they're really not all that good at, which is passing. Lamar's excellent passing from last year was due in part to being able to throw in good contexts for throwing and run the rest of the time. Throwing when you're against good teams in high pressure situations after you've abandoned the run game hasn't been working well at all - leading to the rare losses.

[Capt. Atari]

The Bottom line concerning this team and teams like the Chiefs is this: The Ravens aren't built to beat a team like this. Not now anyway. You can't Run your way over KC. That only works if you a have defense that can Slow down their Offense. We don't and we aren't by ourselves as most of the NFL doesn't either. Since you can't slow them down you have to keep up and that's a problem for a run heavy team. Eventually they will take the running away. We saw Tennesee do it and tonight KC did it by going up two scores. This is it. Another is the Ravens O'Line has looked better than it actually is because of Lamar. Well that is beginning to change because defenses are slowly catching on. Against better defenses you will see less running yds over the course of the season from Lamar. Defenses are picking their poison and they rather have us passing. Why? Cause you can get pressure on our QB. He may be elusive but if you scheme it right he won't get way and run you to death. So there is really no great mystery as to why we lose against this team or against better defenses. It's not because of a lack of Ray Lewis. (That was more of a Rookie thing anyway) It's not because of coaching per see. The Ravens need a better O-line for passing. The Ravens still need an up the middle pass-rush. They need to get pressure with 4 guys against teams like KC. In short we got holes to fill. with all that said This team is still good enough to Win 11 or 12 games and this division but don't assume a Superbowl championship is happening this season. Anything is possible but a lot of people are going to have to improve a great deal over the next 60 days.

[sflegend89]

It's Harbaugh. Shouldn't even be the HC if it weren't for Lamar dragging the entire team on his back out of irrelevancy in 2018. John & Jim are both hacks that peaked 10 years ago and haven't been able to keep up with the football world since.

Harbaugh has to go. Bienimy or McDaniels would be at the top of my list

[LAMAR]

This game was painful but it could be useful. We can now see what the problem is. It wasn't a bad luck or a "bad day" like we thought after Tennessee or the Chargers. It's not that the team isn't good enough. (They never even played like the Ravens all night. If they had passed like they did against Cleveland or ran like they did against Houston, this would have been be a close contest.) It's not because we don't have AB, Earl, or Dez. (Please!)

The problem is psychological. I don't know whether it comes from Harbaugh, Roman or Lamar himself* but the whole team, and the offense in particular,gets tense for big games. The team seems to try too hard and the playcaller tries to get too clever. Whoever is to blame, the problem now seems undeniable.

The Ravens must admit that they tighten up in big games before they can try to fix it. Get in sports psychologists, hypnotists, treat it like any other week, whatever it takes. They must alter their prepapration for important games before the playoffs.

( * It might be Harbaugh because - we went missing in key regular season gmaes against Pittsburgh and Cincinatti before Roman and Lamar arrived.
*It might be Roman because - 49ers fans used to accuse him of trying to get too clever in big games. SOund familiar?
*It might be Lamar because - he's never played well in the biggest games. The coaches might be trying to minimise the effects of his tension.
Who knows? )

ignoring the fact that Lamar Jackson is in a 12th House profection year until 01/07/2021 (bad personal year for him, but if we make the playoffs, he will be in a 1st house year/at his best come super bowl LV) since most people on here probably think that astrology is pseudo-science (message me if you want more details), so outside of that, I will say that whenever the media favors us or when we have home field advantage, we play terribly. We are, simply put, an "against the grain" team. Remember 2012 and how basically every media figure picked the 49ers to demolish us in the super bowl? I don't even need to lay out the undercurrent theme of 2000. Basically, Harbaugh needs to find a way to integrate this into the psychological preparation for big game matchups like this one. It's hard to not have the media love you when you're an offensive team, so I think it sets up part of the challenge for the coaching staff in the psychological preparation.

[Raveninwoodlawn]

They had good talent on defense too. I might be in the minority but im not a fan of winks defense. zero pass rush, but still.

I think Wink does what he feels he has to do because the FO can't figure out how to get guys in here who are good at winning one on one pass rush reps with offensive linemen. I get why they felt we needed to keep Judon on the tag, but at this rate, they might as well have lighted that tag money on fire.

[John Reglarperson]

The Bottom line concerning this team and teams like the Chiefs is this: The Ravens aren't built to beat a team like this. Not now anyway. You can't Run your way over KC. That only works if you a have defense that can Slow down their Offense. We don't and we aren't by ourselves as most of the NFL doesn't either. Since you can't slow them down you have to keep up and that's a problem for a run heavy team. Eventually they will take the running away. We saw Tennesee do it and tonight KC did it by going up two scores. This is it. Another is the Ravens O'Line has looked better than it actually is because of Lamar. Well that is beginning to change because defenses are slowly catching on. Against better defenses you will see less running yds over the course of the season from Lamar. Defenses are picking their poison and they rather have us passing. Why? Cause you can get pressure on our QB. He may be elusive but if you scheme it right he won't get way and run you to death. So there is really no great mystery as to why we lose against this team or against better defenses. It's not because of a lack of Ray Lewis. (That was more of a Rookie thing anyway) It's not because of coaching per see. The Ravens need a better O-line for passing. The Ravens still need an up the middle pass-rush. They need to get pressure with 4 guys against teams like KC. In short we got holes to fill. with all that said This team is still good enough to Win 11 or 12 games and this division but don't assume a Superbowl championship is happening this season. Anything is possible but a lot of people are going to have to improve a great deal over the next 60 days.

I'm not sure that you really understand this "you have to keep up and that's a problem for a run heavy team."

If the Chiefs don't have the ball, they can't score points.

If you're not going pass, pass, pass punt and giving the Chiefs the ball right back, the Chiefs have fewer opportunities to score.fter a

But in the first half? Just run down the field, at whatever pace you want and score a TD. After that drive, your defense should be a little more rested. Run first, fewer drives, fewer opportunities for both teams to score. If the run first drives work better, get converted to points better, that's a better chance to win.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/playbyplay?gameId=401220153 there's the play by play. a lot of incomplete passes in short drives giving the ball back to the Chiefs.

[Paintballguy]

The problem is coaching. Gus is averaging almost 10 ypc, and you pass all 3 downs. And ok I don't have a problem with passing but the shit they were calling was ridiculous. Moving pockets and receivers running routes well short of sticks. Guys running into each other.