Baltimore Ravens Roster

Baltimore Ravens Roster, As the defending Super Bowl champions, the Baltimore Ravens have really gotten faltered in ways they didn’t during the 2012 season; they are garbage in close games this year.

The Ravens have lost by six points or less five times this season. With all of the struggles the Ravens have had on offense with Joe Flacco being inconsistent, Ray Rice having a hard time finding room to run, and the offensive line being a total mess, the team hasn’t been good in football games. They can’t close it out. But when you have the multiple issues the Ravens have had over the course of the season, those problems will glow in close games.

However, the Ravens’ defense certainly isn’t perfect. In those five losses by six points or less, the defense has failed to close in the fourth quarter, allowing a Hail Mary against the Cincinnati Bengals, a late field goal to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and failing to get the Cleveland Browns as well as the Green Bay Packers off the field to give the ball back to the Ravens’ offense late in the fourth quarter.

All these things compound themselves, and it looks like it isn’t going to get better anytime soon.

“In the end, it comes down to winning a tight game and doing the things you have to do to win a game and a tight game in tough conditions, making the plays you need to make and not giving them opportunities that they don’t need to have,” Ravens head coach John Harbaugh noted via Baltimoreravens.com.

Maybe it is the nature of the league. Maybe the roster turnover was too much for the Ravens to overcome. But I will continue to believe that the Ravens have no excuses. They believe it is Super Bowl or bust every season. November and December are usually their time to shine, and I think they will do just that.

Baltimore Ravens

Baltimore Ravens, A blessed few hours remain before the Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens are called to disorder at Heinz Field, which means the mandatory hype-a-palooza is over save for a few dozen multiple-hour pregame shows that literally cannot emphasize enough that these are a couple of teams that don’t like each other.I get it.

I’ve seen it. And while I appreciate Steelers-Ravens for its intensity (if not always its borderline pathological violence), it’s not as if every other NFL game is a mere tete-a-tete between two teams of one heart who love each other very, very much.

Besides which, we’ve spent the whole week flogging the wrong cliché. As the two acidic rivals meet still again to direct the playoff traffic in the AFC North, the working dynamic is not their mutual contempt. Regrettably, it’s the far more mundane two-teams-going-in-opposite-directions deal.

I hate to invoke this one because it enlivens an obvious if unrelated truth about the very nature of the sport. All football games are between two teams going in opposite directions, one toward one goal, the other toward the other. Hockey and basketball have the same arrangement, two teams going in opposite directions, with the exception being baseball, which is two teams going in the same direction, but at different times.

Nevertheless, the more relevant reality is that Pittsburgh is peaking while Baltimore is squeaking like some ratty chew toy discarded by a pack of diffident Jaguars and very nearly soiled by some low-flying Cardinals.