AFC Conference Championship: Ravens vs. Chiefs

[AngusMcFife]

The defense really started clamping down once they took Humphrey off the field. 

Edited January 29 by AngusMcFife
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[baltimoreRebel]

9 minutes ago, coordinator0 said:

Watching all this successful running in the NFC game is making me sick. 

But. Go Lions.

Just said this to my wife a couple minutes ago hahahah 

[RavensfanRD]

Didn't get to see most of the game, but sounds like a Ravens disaster style loss. I see we didn't run the football. I guess the ghost of Greg Roman had one more trick up his sleeve. I did see the replay of Flowers selling at the goaline and I instantly got sick. LJ8 just can't throw into triple coverage. This year's devastating end reminds me of 2006. We had destiny by the peanuts and sold.

GGs to a great season with a terrible end. Patty is still the man.

[Thomas5737]

5 hours ago, santiagomn8 said:

My bad everyone! I thought you were saying I had mental issues lol

Well they might now...

[diamondbull424]

No point

Edited January 29 by diamondbull424

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

After having a full night to think, I'm still just as sick as yesterday about how this loss echoes the 2019 Titans loss. We abandoned literally everything that made us successful for absolutely no reason.

We abandoned the tackle rotation, and Ronnie Stanley gets abused and Lamar gets strip sacked.

We abandoned the run against a team that is notoriously bad against the run.

We tried to just let our WR's win 1v1 matchups on long developing routes against a defense sitting in a 2 man shell all game long.

We tried to have Lamar play hero ball for 60 minutes when we know he will make mistakes doing that, especially in playoff games.

I just don't understand WHY this was the gameplan they chose to go with. If they thought KC was going to score 30 points, why didn't they adjust when the defense clearly started to clamp down? Even in "and 1" downs we still went shotgun pass. I mean for goodness sakes we were straight drop back passing from shotgun from our own 1 yard line!

How many more times do we need to see the same formula lose us playoff games before we actually just decided to stick to doing what got us here and see if that works? If you don't want to run the ball, at least throw some screens or quick passes - SOMETHING to keep the down and distance manageable. You saw Mahomes do it all game. If they had a bad 1st down play, the 2nd down play was a quick throw to set them up for 3rd and 3-5 instead of 3rd and 8-10 like we were constantly in.

I'm just sick. This defense balled out. They deserved better. This was 60 minutes of me going "Okay offense, now's your time, we need SOMETING" and time and time again they just tried the same things and failed.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

These 2 clips just sum it all up for me, offensively. We didn't do what we are best at (running), and instead just tried to play weakness vs strength for 60 minutes and got dominated.

[AngusMcFife]

Yesterday was a rough loss.

But let's keep in mind that 2023 was a wild success.

We went in to the year having no idea how Lamar would perform in a balanced offense with modern passing concepts. And Lamar ended up being 3rd in passer rating for the entire league on his way to likely winning the MVP.

Team building will be much easier now that WRs won't be afraid of coming here.

If in the Summer of 2023 with all the contract BS going on, if you told me Lamar would get to the Conference Championship but lose to Mahomes, and earn another MVP, that would have been a win.

[DreamKid]

My thoughts on the game:

- Just off rip, that season will go down as Baltimore's easiest opportunity to grab another ring. We will never have a cleaner path imo. A squandered opportunity of epic proportions. 

- The offense and Monken sold. Just swap out Zay Flowers for Marquise Brown and it's exactly reminiscent of those Roman era playoff offenses. We played to the Chief's strengths, became one dimensional when we didn't need to be, didn't use Lamar's legs enough, and the TOs were just icing on the cake.

- Obviously the non calls were an issue(Notably the Likely non call on the INT), but as I said earlier in the thread... we never expect to get those calls anyway and had the talent to win regardless. 

- A solid chunk of the Zay Flowers hate is unjust imo. That taunting call was BS, Flowers was being held around his knee far too long after the play was over. It was more of a confrontation between two players that should've been broken up by the refs than an individual action(taunt) that needed to be penalized. Apparently DB coaches should just coach their players to hold onto the grounded WR, so when the WR inevitably works his way back to his feet in frustration and drops the ball a taunting penalty can be awarded. It was also in line with what had been allowed previously by the refs throughout the game whenever a Chief made a play. Finally, the fumble was just an unfortunate low % play that hit for the other side. The DB didn't even know where his hand was relative to the ball and just kind of winged a slap around Zay's shoulder. Is what it is. 

- Props to the defense, they had a special year. It was pretty amazing how all of the parts came together and created such a strong unit. Historically I'd imagine it's a unicorn with how many cheap journeyman contributed to it's high level success. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

To end on a positive note, I thought Lamar was much better in the playoffs this year and going forward I expect him to continue to ascend.

He's essentially in the same shoes as Flacco where he just lost an AFC championship game at 27 but has a great core(much younger than the one Flacco had too) around him and should contend for years. EDC built a juggernaut coming off a handicapped offseason and even with all the inevitable departures I think we're going to be really excited about what the team looks like in the coming years.

[Ray Reed]

@AngusMcFife say something nice about Jordan Stout. Dude was a MONSTAR yesterday. 66 yarder, 58 yarder, another 50+ yarder that perfectly died inside the 6.

[diamondbull424]

16 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

No point

Yeah so I won’t be as expletive laden as what I edited out. But IMO this loss was similar to the Bills game a few years ago in the divisional round.

Chalk this up to the OC. It was such a terrible terrible gameplan. Only its worst because we had the talent to get this done and he squandered it.

No motion to get guys mismatch opportunities. No hot routes afforded, all long routes when everyone knew Lamar would be blitzed heavily. No run game with heavy formations to take advantage of the small KC corners like McDuffie and Snead. Why were Andrews, Kolar, Likely, and Ricard not utilized to plow over their small DL and small corners?

We had the personnel to dominate them at the LOS. Yet this gameplan was inexplicably dumb. The defense setting up with going zone for the whole half when it was clear it was getting torched and yet it took numerous possessions before they adjusted.

And it’s hard to crucify Lamar and Zay for their critical mistakes because they were easily our best offensive players yesterday. The strip sack on Lamar is a part of the game. When you have long developing routes and going for big plays against cover 2, hanging in the pocket and going for the deep ball requires time that he wasn’t afforded on that play.

The INT he threw was a terrible throw and he nearly had another that just threaded threw the defenders hands and wasn’t caught by the WR. He also didn’t scramble on opportunities that he could’ve. He also didn’t look to house that 4th and 1 play like he would’ve in 2019.

So Lamar didn’t have a great game, but it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t even average. It was solid to above average. He played well enough to win the game against a non top 5 defense and Mahomes. Zay played well enough to win the game if it were a team like Miami that would’ve likely given up the TD.

This was the worst loss in franchise history IMO. Or at least it sits right there with 2011’s “team of destiny” whereby it felt like everything was going right for that team as well. Only we won the ring the following season and so the sting of that loss didn’t permeate as deep as it might’ve otherwise. But this season was no questions asked the best team in Ravens history. It had the leaders, the veterans, it had the plays and big moments… like Lamar LITERALLY completed a pass to HIMSELF for crying out loud… and yet that was it? If the Ravens sees another one of these next season, Harbaugh needs to be replaced. He’s a great coach, but just like Philly got it done without Reid, Harbaugh is just at a point where he’s not getting it done and motivating the team and getting them right for the big moments. He’s too much of a players coach now perhaps. New blood might be necessary.

[AngusMcFife]

1 hour ago, Ray Reed said:

@AngusMcFife say something nice about Jordan Stout. Dude was a MONSTAR yesterday. 66 yarder, 58 yarder, another 50+ yarder that perfectly died inside the 6.

Yes he came to play yesterday. I can't hate.

[M.10.E]

Not gonna win many games when your qb and coaches perform below average. Simple as that. 

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

2 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

Yeah so I won’t be as expletive laden as what I edited out. But IMO this loss was similar to the Bills game a few years ago in the divisional round.

Chalk this up to the OC. It was such a terrible terrible gameplan. Only its worst because we had the talent to get this done and he squandered it.

No motion to get guys mismatch opportunities. No hot routes afforded, all long routes when everyone knew Lamar would be blitzed heavily. No run game with heavy formations to take advantage of the small KC corners like McDuffie and Snead. Why were Andrews, Kolar, Likely, and Ricard not utilized to plow over their small DL and small corners?

We had the personnel to dominate them at the LOS. Yet this gameplan was inexplicably dumb. The defense setting up with going zone for the whole half when it was clear it was getting torched and yet it took numerous possessions before they adjusted.

And it’s hard to crucify Lamar and Zay for their critical mistakes because they were easily our best offensive players yesterday. The strip sack on Lamar is a part of the game. When you have long developing routes and going for big plays against cover 2, hanging in the pocket and going for the deep ball requires time that he wasn’t afforded on that play.

The INT he threw was a terrible throw and he nearly had another that just threaded threw the defenders hands and wasn’t caught by the WR. He also didn’t scramble on opportunities that he could’ve. He also didn’t look to house that 4th and 1 play like he would’ve in 2019.

So Lamar didn’t have a great game, but it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t even average. It was solid to above average. He played well enough to win the game against a non top 5 defense and Mahomes. Zay played well enough to win the game if it were a team like Miami that would’ve likely given up the TD.

This was the worst loss in franchise history IMO. Or at least it sits right there with 2011’s “team of destiny” whereby it felt like everything was going right for that team as well. Only we won the ring the following season and so the sting of that loss didn’t permeate as deep as it might’ve otherwise. But this season was no questions asked the best team in Ravens history. It had the leaders, the veterans, it had the plays and big moments… like Lamar LITERALLY completed a pass to HIMSELF for crying out loud… and yet that was it? If the Ravens sees another one of these next season, Harbaugh needs to be replaced. He’s a great coach, but just like Philly got it done without Reid, Harbaugh is just at a point where he’s not getting it done and motivating the team and getting them right for the big moments. He’s too much of a players coach now perhaps. New blood might be necessary.

All year long Ravens twitter insisted that "this team is different" and "2019 is history. it doesn't mean anything!"

and yet...here we are...different team, same exact result for how we got eliminated by a far inferior team. This one stings almost as much as the Cundiff loss did, but we'll have to see next year how this team responds.

I do agree that if we don't get it done next year, we just have to move on from Harbaugh. I refuse to believe that 2 completely different coordinators chose to abandon our identity in the exact same way without input from Harbaugh.

[wackywabbit]

On 1/29/2024 at 7:45 PM, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

All year long Ravens twitter insisted that "this team is different" and "2019 is history. it doesn't mean anything!"

and yet...here we are...different team, same exact result for how we got eliminated by a far inferior team. This one stings almost as much as the Cundiff loss did, but we'll have to see next year how this team responds.

I do agree that if we don't get it done next year, we just have to move on from Harbaugh. I refuse to believe that 2 completely different coordinators chose to abandon our identity in the exact same way without input from Harbaugh.

It doesn't work like that. There is no "different" team. There was nothing "different" in the sense you are talking about of the 2000 or 2012 teams. It is all positioning for an outcome with effective randomness in the playoffs.