A familiar story for Baltimore Ravens fans played out again on Sunday: the team couldn’t maintain a second-half lead.
After holding Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals offense to 59 total yards and zero points in the first half, the floodgates opened.
The Bengals outscored the Ravens 35-0 in the second half and gained nearly 300 yards. This isn’t the first time the Ravens have been a drastically different team from one half to the next, but they’ve done it so often it’s put them in a league of their own.
Historical Inconsistency
If the Ravens shutting out their opponent in the first half and still losing sounds familiar, it’s because they faced the same scenario the week before against the Cleveland Browns.
Last week, the Ravens took a 10-0 lead into the half and lost, just as they did this week against the Bengals after taking a 13-0 lead into the half. What the Ravens have done from one half to the next is almost unprecedented.
Ryan Paganetti, who won a Super Bowl with the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles as a quality control coach, presented a statistic that underscores the Ravens’ Jekyll-and-Hyde nature between halves.
“The Ravens are +65 in the first half and –70 in the second half this season,” Paganetti wrote on Twitter. “A 135 point swing between halves. No team this century has had a larger second-half point differential drop off through 7 games.”
From offense to defense, everyone is searching for answers on how to fix their second-half woes.
Playing to the Whistle
The biggest takeaway from the Ravens organization right now is that the team needs to be more consistent. After the game, head coach Jesse Minter said the Ravens’ issues compound as the game progresses. ESPN’s Jamison Hensley provided the clip of Minter’s answer.
“There’s a consistency level we need to find where it’s less riding the wave of momentum and more about staying even-keeled, and finding a way to have each other’s backs, and finding ways to pick each other up,” Minter said. “You can look at all three phases in the second half of completely momentum-losing type of plays, so that is what it is.”
Josh Tolentino of The Baltimore Sun tweeted about Pro Bowl defensive end Trey Hendrickson playing against his former team and the importance of the Ravens living up to a standard.
“The game isn’t over until it’s over. And we have a standard of our play,” Hendrickson said. “So, continuing to go out there and finishing the game was most important. I can’t speak for everybody else, but there is a standard to the way we should prepare, and nobody should be having these side conversations on the sidelines, if there is any.”
Early in the season, the Ravens’ biggest enemy has been themselves. Until the team solves its second-half consistency issues, their biggest opponent will remain the one in purple and black.
The Ravens Are Historically Inconsistent Between Halves