Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson’s interception at the goal line Saturday night provided the game-altering moment of a season-ending 17-3 loss to the Buffalo Bills, but the play that unfolded a snap earlier might’ve served as a more apt emblem of the team’s performance.
With the ball at the Bills’ 9-yard line late in the third quarter, Jackson dropped back on second-and-goal. Wide receiver Marquise Brown came open on the left side of the field and Jackson spotted him. The problem? Buffalo sent a blitz and no blocker impeded defensive end Jerry Hughes’ path to the backfield.
Hughes darted between right tackle Tyre Phillips and running back J.K. Dobbins and bee-lined toward Jackson, forcing the signal-caller to step backwards and heave an errant pass under duress. A would-be touchdown faded into an incompletion. A few seconds later, Taron Johnson picked Jackson off and ran 101 yards to the opposite end zone for a pick-six.
Two mistakes morphed a potential tie at 10 into a 14-point deficit. And the Ravens’ offense was left to face another disappointing showing in the postseason, with another litany of missed opportunities to review.
“We just didn’t execute,” wide receiver Willie Snead said. “We didn’t execute when we needed to; we didn’t finish drives like we normally would.”
Such problems have confronted the Ravens the past three years in the playoffs, spoiling hopes of a championship run. Saturday night, Jackson, offensive coordinator Greg Roman and the rest of the franchise stepped into the offseason staring down a familiar and daunting question: How can Baltimore get its offense to play its best in the games that matter most?
The Ravens have scored more than 20 points in 34 of Jackson’s 37 career regular-season starts.
They haven’t surpassed that number in any of his four starts during the playoffs.
While each game has seen different schemes, twists and turns — and Saturday’s loss felt especially brutal, because of the pick-six and a concussion that knocked Jackson out of action a few plays later — common themes also exist.
In their past three playoff games, Baltimore has combined to score on just two of its 10 trips inside the red zone. Opposing defenses found at least occasional success against the Ravens’ top-notch running game in each outing. Jackson, an MVP pressed to make plays, has thrown an interception in each of his postseason appearances.
No Ravens players or coach said the Bills unveiled any dramatically innovative strategy Saturday night to hold the visitors to a season-low three points. If there was a fool-proof plan to thwart Jackson, defenses would use it in the regular season.
Instead, in postgame news conferences, Ravens offensive players looked inward.
“We moved the ball, we were able to do some things, [and] we had some really good plays,” tight end Mark Andrews. “We made some plays, but things just didn’t happen at the right times, and we didn’t make the plays when we needed to, and that was it.”
The sustained playoff struggles heightened scrutiny on Roman, who designed an offense that helped lift Lamar Jackson to superstardom and shattered rushing records the past two seasons.
Failures in the playoffs, though, loom over each of Roman’s accomplishments.
The Ravens’ running game stomped to a quick start Saturday, with Gus Edwards and J.K. Dobbins combining to rack up 31 yards on their first three carries (10.3 average). The Bills adjusted by packing defenders near the line of scrimmage, and Edwards and Dobbins totaled 53 yards on 17 carries (3.1 average) the rest of the way.
Buffalo’s game plan forced Jackson to take to the air. Baltimore did not make its opponents pay; Jackson finished 14 of 24 passes for 162 yards, no touchdowns and one interception.
Unlike last weekend in a win over the Titans, Jackson (nine carries for 34 yards) did not burn the Bills’ defense with a long scramble, either.
“They weren’t really doing anything special,” Snead said. “They just eliminated the run, and they tried to make us one-dimensional in the passing game, and we just didn’t take advantage of what they were giving us.”
Steve Smith, an NFL Network analyst who played receiver for the Ravens from 2014 to ’16, criticized the team’s offensive staff after the game. He said the team ran “elementary school” route combinations in the playoff loss and called for Baltimore to find a new offensive coordinator.
“Their passing game is not very complex,” Smith said. “If you want Lamar Jackson to continue to be a stellar quarterback, an MVP type of quarterback, you have to implement a second notch or a third level of the passing game that makes it a little more complicated, because it’s not very complicated. And my 6-year-old, who’s asleep right now, can probably run the offense as well.”
In the past, coach John Harbaugh has defended and praised Roman, whom the Associated Press named the NFL’s Assistant Coach of the Year in 2019.
Harbaugh’s also been a fierce supporter of Jackson and of his receivers, and yet the passing game remained inconsistent for much of the season. Baltimore might aim to acquire more pass-catching talent this season, beef up the offensive line or tweak its coaching staff, but no matter what changes, Jackson will remain the face of the franchise entering the 2021 season. He’ll be the motor of the offense.
And many see room for the 24-year-old to develop further.
“He is an elite runner, an elite passer, but there are steps he can take, better strides that he can take, and he knows that,” Snead said Saturday night. “That’s the competitor in him to want to get better each and every offseason, to fix the little things that his game needs improvement on and continue to get better as a passer. I think if he knuckles down on that part of his game and really reaches his full potential in that area, then the sky is the limit for Lamar, man. It’s just a matter of time.
“So, it’s really on him. I think this game is going to be a wake-up call for him, hopefully this offseason. So, we’ll see what he does next year.”
Jackson and Roman stand as the lightning rods who’ll attract attention in coming weeks and months. They weren’t the only factors in Saturday night’s loss, though.
Missed blocks, penalties, bad snaps and even two errant field goals kept the Ravens from piling up points. That second-down play before Jackson’s interception represented just one breakdown in a game full of them.
The Ravens outgained the Bills by 120 yards, and they’ve done the same in playoff losses in previous years but spoiled long drives or failed to start quickly or gave the ball away in each game. Since Jackson joined the team in 2018, pieces of a dynamic and historic regular-season attack have appeared in the postseason; they just haven’t come together to form a complete performance.
And as a title chase ended at Bills Stadium, the quest to find a fix began.
“We didn’t do enough,” Andrews said. “We’ll come back and work. We’re going to all work hard. This is going to be fuel for the fire, and [we’ll] be ready to go. We’ll remember it.”
Aaron Kasinitz covers the Baltimore Ravens for PennLive and can be reached at akasinitz@pennlive.com or on Twitter @AaronKazreports. Follow PennLive’s Ravens coverage on Facebook and Youtube.