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Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta sat in the corner of the locker room, hands clasped, elbows on his knees.
After last season, he led a hiring search to replace his friend John Harbaugh after owner Steve Bisciotti fired the long-time head coach. Harbaugh’s tenure ended because the team missed the playoffs and continued a habit of blowing double-digit second-half leads.
Seven weeks into Jesse Minter’s coaching tenure, nothing appears to have changed.
Despite what should be a star-studded lineup, the Ravens are falling below expectations. And, on two beautiful October Sundays, they have exposed their fanbase to what has become its greatest fear: a double-digit lead that disappears like a ghostly whisper.
Last weekend, it was a 10-point lead to the Browns. This time, it was a 13-point lead that turned into a 35-13 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. The Ravens are now last in the AFC North.
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They’ve also lost their identity, at least in part. Once lauded for pairing a ferocious defense with a methodical offense — ensuring nothing was given easily to the other team — the Ravens are now known leaguewide for wilting in the second half.
And a difficult month has the chance to get even more haunted in Week 8 as the Ravens head to Buffalo to face the 5-1 Bills on Halloween weekend.
The precariousness of the situation seems to be settling in. Whereas the locker room after previous losses featured quiet chatter and the occasional smile or joke, this one was hushed.
Players on the defensive line spent those moments staring down at their hands, their phones, the ground. Their leader, Calais Campbell, trudged off to face the same old questions from reporters. Campbell called the second half, in which the defense gave up 35 unanswered points, “quicksand.”
The linebackers gathered in a huddle with their position coach, a common sight, but this one featured red eyes and grim faces. Their leader, Roquan Smith, spoke later and said consistency is “like a missing piece we’re trying to figure out.”
Wide receiver Zay Flowers, who had eight catches for 137 yards and a touchdown, didn’t want to talk about his play, saying, “I like to win. The stats don’t really matter if you lose. That’s all I really got.”
Minter said his message to the players is that they’ve proven they can be really good. They even did it Sunday. The defense rattled Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow in the first half. The offense exploited weaknesses. Receivers blew by defensive backs. Everything was controlled; players were executing.
But, after the second half, Minter had no choice to deliver the other side of it. He told his players the Ravens have proven they can be a bad team, too. Everyone took the blame for that, with running back Derrick Henry calling his own performance “terrible” and Minter saying the second half was a “bad effort” from the defense.
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And so another game ended and the locker room filled with clichés that are even more worn than usual with this team. There was talk about players needing to look themselves in the mirror, watch the tape, hold each other accountable. But there was a lot of that talk last year, too, in the season that led to Harbaugh’s firing.
Smith is aware of that.
“It’s definitely something I’m tired of hearing as well, not just you guys,” Smith said.
Left tackle Ronnie Stanley said the blown leads of years past linger.
“I’m sure that can seep into the psyche of guys out there,” Stanley said. “Guys are humans, and that’s something that we’re trying to beat. We talk about it a lot. We can’t just live by momentum and what’s going on in the game. We have to just focus on our standard and what we expect.”
Campbell has been a part of good teams and bad, in Baltimore and elsewhere. He’s played more games than any interior defensive lineman in the NFL. DeCosta brought him back as much for his locker room leadership as his play. Right now, his advice to the team is: “All right, let’s relax, reset and get back to work.”
That line has been uttered by veterans throughout the room for years. Yet the Ravens keep finding quicksand, and then sinking. DeCosta — and his boss — hoped a coaching change would bring a fix.
It has instead delivered the same bewildered looks and strained answers as the last regime.
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