5 things we learned: Old demons haunt Ravens’ new regime against Saints

The Ravens followed a tired script, blowing a fourth-quarter lead in a 24-17 loss to the underdog New Orleans Saints. Here are five things we learned from a dispiriting home opener.

The Ravens under Jesse Minter can lose just as stupidly as the Ravens under John Harbaugh.

We’ve seen enough dumb losses at M&T Bank Stadium to know the portents: three points surrendered in the waning seconds of the first half thanks to shoddy kickoff coverage; a blocked field-goal attempt; a blown challenge that erased a crucial timeout; a game plan that steered away from Derrick Henry in critical moments; a holding penalty that wiped out a key stop with the Ravens protecting a narrow lead midway through the fourth quarter.

Taken individually none of these failings was a death knell, but each weakened the home team enough that it was ready for the fall.

Focus, if you want, on the game-winning Tyler Shough touchdown that might never have crossed the goal line or on the final Lamar Jackson pass that sailed well over Rashod Bateman and into the arms of Saints safety Julian Blackmon. Those plays were beside the point. The Ravens had already turned victory into defeat with one excruciatingly familiar lapse after another.

Baltimore fans had taken to blaming Harbaugh for these water-torture unravelings. On Sunday, they awoke to the sobering possibility that their new reality under Minter might not be much different from the old one.

This loss hurt extra after nine months of talk about turning the page, of promises that the Ravens would be at their best when the moment called for it.

Fans who had bought into the renewal narrative filed forlornly out of a home stadium where the Ravens have lost more than they’ve won over the last two seasons. Sunday afternoon’s “whiteout” crowd was supposed to celebrate new uniforms but also, metaphorically, the blotting out of a franchise’s tortured recent past. Instead, the place was silent as a tomb by the end. Euphoria had given way to apprehension and, finally, exhaustion.

Minter and his players did their best to compartmentalize the loss, which, to be fair, could be a distant memory by December.

“We will own this,” Minter vowed. “We will look in the mirror.”

“The history really doesn’t matter,” added defensive end Calais Campbell, perhaps the most respected voice in a battle-scarred locker room. “In this moment, we didn’t get it done.”

We wouldn’t expect them to say anything else. Flushing the previous day’s disappointment is the pro athlete’s credo. But these determined words are just another sickeningly familiar component of the tired narrative haunting the Ravens.

They will undoubtedly play splendid games over the next four months. They might even convince us they’re good enough to win it all, as they did after a similarly mind-numbing loss to the Las Vegas Raiders early in the 2024 season.

What died Sunday was any belief that this team’s confounding inability to finish left town with the old coach. It was always too tidy a narrative. Now we know for sure the past cannot be buried so easily.

An improved pass rush still couldn’t close the door.

When the Ravens sacked Shough twice in three plays near the end of the third quarter, handing Jackson a short field and a golden chance to build on an eight-point lead, it was easy to believe we were finally watching a Baltimore defense built to smother a comeback.

That was the whole reason they gave Trey Hendrickson $112 million to be the alpha pass rusher they’ve lacked since Terrell Suggs’ prime. He would be their Mariano Rivera, the ultimate closer.

Hendrickson was responsible for one of those two sacks on Shough, and promising second-year edge rusher Mike Green had the other. A week earlier, the same pass rush had hounded Indianapolis Colts quarterback Daniel Jones in a Ravens romp. This was not your 2025 Baltimore defense, so incapable of crashing the pocket with a lead hanging in the balance.

Except that optimistic narrative curdled just like all the others as the Saints ran off 15 straight points in the fourth quarter. With Shough making a consistent effort to release the ball more quickly, the Ravens’ four-man rush stopped getting home. Sloppy tackling allowed check-down completions to become double-digit gains.

New Orleans converted on 10 of 17 third and fourth downs, way too efficient for an offense with an error-prone second-year quarterback. Worse still, the Saints did their greatest damage after left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. exited the game with an ankle injury.

“I think they did a good job of just getting the ball out really fast from that point on,” Minter said. “Obviously, you lose a tackle and so they committed a little bit to the run game on that next drive, and then when they were getting rid of the ball really fast, I would say, running some of those types of plays to get it out of his hands, things like that. So again, we will have to keep chasing rush and coverage being connected and working together. You know, that is the type of game where we need our rush and coverage to win us the game on those last two drives, and we did not get it done.”

Hendrickson credited Shough and the Saints with doing a lot right but acknowledged that “playing as a unit, we need to figure out what our 2026 Ravens identity is moving forward.”

“It’s rush and coverage together,” he said. “When we had good coverage, sometimes our rush wasn’t there, and sometimes when the rush was good, our coverage wasn’t there.”

The Ravens sacked Shough three times and pressured him at least 15, according to real-time data from Pro Football Focus. They have delivered evidence that their substantial investment in the pass rush will bear fruit, especially once defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike returns from a serious neck injury, possibly Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys.

As of now, however, we can’t say they’ve found their closing defensive formula.

Zay Flowers’ absence was felt in the end.

There’s no replacing Flowers, who did not play against the Saints because of lingering hamstring discomfort. He’s the one Raven who can torment a defense from any point on the field, as he did with 150 receiving yards on just 20 snaps in Week 1.

Without him, the Ravens lacked the quicksilver efficiency we saw against the Colts. Jackson connected on just two explosive plays, a 47-yard bomb to Devontez Walker and a 22-yard touchdown pass to Rashod Bateman. Both came in the first half, when coordinator Declan Doyle’s offense at least moved the ball consistently, rolling up 228 yards at a clip of 7.4 per play.

That’s plenty good enough to win. But the Ravens managed just 84 yards — one successful drive out of four — after halftime. They stopped handing the ball to Henry, most obviously on a pivotal third-and-1 play, when Jackson fired a deep attempt to Chris Moore. The pass was bold and beautiful, but Moore couldn’t wrestle it away from Saints cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry. That turned out to be the Ravens’ last, best attempt to put New Orleans away.

Would they have even been in such a tense spot if their top wide receiver were on the field?

Bateman, who played well with seven catches for 88 yards after an empty first week, did not want to hear it. “We just came up short,” he said. “We have come up short with Zay on the field before. We have come up short without Zay on the field. That is football.”

“Certainly, the availability of players — whoever that may be — shapes how you game-plan things,” Doyle said Thursday when asked how Flowers’ absence might affect his play-calling. “I think that really is what being a good play-caller [and] a good play designer is — being able to adjust. Throughout the year, most of the time, not everybody is ready to go. You have to be able to work around the players, work around the availability. You have to be flexible, because in this league it just is what it is.”

Flowers practiced Friday. He probably would have played Sunday if the game had been a must-win. So we won’t have to wait long to see if he can reignite Doyle’s attack.

Ronnie Stanley’s injury is an ominous cloud over an offensive line that badly needs him.

Stanley’s availability was in question after a toe injury, the bane of veteran NFL behemoths, kept him off the practice field Wednesday and Thursday. Minter credited the 11-year veteran for giving “everything he had” in playing deep into the third quarter.

The injury ultimately took Stanley off the field, leaving lightly tested Carson Vinson to protect Jackson’s blind side in the fourth quarter, when the Ravens were trying to protect a lead and then mount a desperate final drive.

Vinson “did an OK job” in Minter’s words, but Stanley’s absence was the last blow the Ravens could afford, given their difficulties with interior pass blocking. They struggled to contain the Saints’ top edge rusher, Chase Young, and collapsing pockets contributed to their overall lack of offensive rhythm in the second half.

After much of his prime was derailed by injuries, Stanley started 33 of 34 games in 2024 and 2025. He’s the only proven left tackle on the team, not to mention a coach on the field for his younger line mates. He’s one of the least replaceable players on the roster.

Minter did not sound overly concerned when discussing Stanley’s injury after the game. Perhaps this is a relatively minor problem the 32-year-old will manage for a few weeks and then move past. But the greatest offensive lineman in Ravens history, Jonathan Ogden, retired because of chronic turf toe. Left tackles are dancing bears with nimble feet that belie their massive frames. Bum toes rob them of that remarkable agility.

Stanley played well enough when he was on the field Sunday, and the Ravens have to hope he’ll continue doing so, because they’re not built to win without him.

This offense is built to showcase Derrick Henry but not if the Ravens forget to feed him.

Everything about Doyle’s plan — zone blocking, more under-center snaps, emphasis on attacking — dovetails beautifully with Henry’s once-in-a-generation strengths. We saw it against the Colts. The more the Ravens used their great running back, the more unstoppable he became.

We seemed on track to witness another Henry showcase against the Saints. He carried 11 times in the first half, including a touchdown run off a direct snap, and though he didn’t break a big gain, that seemed a matter of time.

And then he carried just five times for 17 yards in the second half as the Ravens grasped for explosive plays that never came. With no Flowers, it seemed obvious Henry should be the man. Instead, the Ravens again forgot to use one of the greatest runners in NFL history as a tense game slipped away. You’d think their 2024 playoff loss in Buffalo, in which Henry carried just 16 times, would have put an end to this particular line of futility. Nope.

Minter tried to explain what happened Sunday: “You know, we started to get some of the looks of them cheating down to stop the run and have a chance to really open it up.”

There’s always some explanation, often logical in a narrow sense, for why the Ravens’ offense goes elsewhere.

Henry was asked about the third-and-1 play on which Jackson threw deep to Moore instead of handing off to him. He refused to second-guess, as his wont. “We are going to ride with [Declan] man,” he said. “He called a [play], [he] wanted to take a shot, and it didn’t work out this time.”

Fair enough. But someone in the offensive booth needs to post a sign that reads: “We have Derrick Henry. Keep it simple, stupid.”