KANSAS CITY — Unofficially, the Baltimore Ravens were a right toe away from potentially beating the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs Thursday night in their house and starting the season with an improbable victory.
But ultimately they didn’t lose the NFL’s regular-season opener, 27-20, at Arrowhead Stadium because tight end Isaiah Likely’s toe came down on the white out-of-bounds line in the back of the end zone with the clock showing zeroes. If the touchdown had counted — to a man, Ravens players were sure it would even as replays showed clear evidence to the contrary — head coach John Harbaugh had already notified his team that it was going to go for the two-point conversion and the win.
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“We’re not going to talk about emotions,” Harbaugh said after the game when asked about the wild swings over the final couple of minutes. “You’re disappointed.”
The replay reversal robbed everybody a chance to see a game-deciding play from the 2-yard line. Would Lamar Jackson, who was brilliant at times in totaling 395 yards of total offense, have kept the ball? Or would the Ravens have put the ball in the belly of their 247-pound back Derrick Henry to see if the Chiefs could stop him?
We’ll never know, but let’s forget for a second about the toe. The Ravens lost because they spent the first 59 minutes of the game repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot against an opponent that knows what to do with an opponent’s charity. The Ravens already knew that from their AFC Championship Game appearance against the Chiefs roughly seven months ago. Thursday offered another painful reminder.
“This is the worst we’ll play all season,” said middle linebacker Roquan Smith. “I can promise you that.”
The Ravens were THIS CLOSE to scoring the game-tying touchdown 👀#Kickoff2024 pic.twitter.com/08KjTVFHQZ
— NFL (@NFL) September 6, 2024
That comment was echoed by many Ravens, including Likely, who added a twist.
“I’d say this is probably the worst game we’re going to play all year, so if this is the best that they’ve got, good luck in the postseason,” he said.
The Ravens as a team, and Jackson in particular, showed a grit that should serve them well over the next four months of the regular season. Trailing by double digits early in the third quarter and again early in the fourth, the Ravens kept coming and pushed the Chiefs to the brink. After a tired defense stopped Patrick Mahomes late in the fourth quarter and forced a punt, the Ravens ultimately took three shots to the end zone from the 10-yard line in the game’s final 20 seconds and didn’t complete any of them.
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Because it was the final play, Likely’s near touchdown could easily stand as the team’s lead lament. However, on the play before, Jackson hurried and missed a wide-open Zay Flowers in the back of the end zone.
“I was ticked off about that, because if I held onto it a bit more, I would’ve just fired it to Zay for the touchdown,” Jackson said.
Neither the Ravens nor Jackson have anything to prove when it comes to playing with toughness and resilience. Been there, done that. Those have been characteristics of Harbaugh’s teams for a decade and a half. Nobody could question their effort from Thursday night, but the occasion called for more, and that’s where the Ravens fell short.
What the Ravens have to show, particularly against the AFC’s other heavyweights, is that they can clean up their mistakes and consistently execute when their best is required. Far too many times in recent seasons, the biggest thing holding the Ravens back has been themselves. Far too often, the Ravens have gotten buried under bad mistakes and untimely penalties.
One game isn’t enough to make a sweeping declaration about this year’s team. That would be unfair, particularly when most of the team’s starters didn’t play in the preseason. Thursday also represented the first regular-season game for defensive coordinator Zach Orr and several of his assistants. Some mistakes and rust had to be expected, and there was plenty of that.
But one game is enough to be a cautionary tale for the rest of the season. The Ravens have a lot to clean up in all three facets. Special teams aren’t exempt either, not after Justin Tucker missed a 53-yard field goal in the second quarter.
“Any time you have self-inflicted wounds, it’s going to be tough to try to overcome, especially with a team like this that’s very good and very sound and (capitalizes) on opposing teams’ mistakes,” said Henry, who announced his presence as a Raven with a bruising 5-yard touchdown run on the Ravens’ first possession. “We’ve just got to learn from it — first game — get those miscues out the way and be better the next time out there.”
Derrick Henry announced his presence with a bruising 5-yard touchdown run on the Ravens’ first possession. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
The Ravens have nine days before their next game, a Week 2 matchup at home against the Las Vegas Raiders, but they also have plenty to clean up. As a team, they were assessed seven penalties for 64 yards, and quite a few of them helped prolong the Chiefs’ drives or contributed to stopping a Ravens’ possession.
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If you ask the players, several of those penalties shouldn’t have been called. Left tackle Ronnie Stanley didn’t hide his displeasure after he was flagged three times for illegal formation — the Ravens were called for it four times — after the league made that infraction a point of emphasis this season.
“I would even go as far to say, I was lining up more in front of what I used to do in years past because of the emphasis,” Stanley said. “That was something we knew about in training camp and we were working on it as linemen. We have refs at practice all the time. It’s never been an issue.”
Stanley took it even further, saying he felt referee Shawn Hochuli’s crew was making an example out of him and not flagging Chiefs tackles Kingsley Suamataia and Jawaan Taylor for doing the same thing.
“The way it was going through the game, I really feel like they were just trying to make an example and they chose me to be the one to do that,” he said. “As far as I saw, they weren’t doing it on both sides of the ball and I know that I was lined up in a good position the majority of those calls they made. But we’ll go back and watch the film and we’ll make sure of it and we’ll send it in.
“If it’s that egregious that they are making those calls and they shouldn’t be, they should be held accountable.”
There were other costly penalties. An offensive pass interference call on Rashod Bateman in the second quarter created a second-and-long rather than a third-and-one, and the Ravens ultimately turned the ball over on that drive when Flowers was stopped on a fourth-and-three. A roughing-the-passer penalty on Nnamdi Madubuike gave the Chiefs a first down deep in Baltimore territory early in the third quarter and they scored a touchdown two plays later. A holding penalty on center Tyler Linderbaum wiped away a 29-yard run by Jackson late in the third quarter.
“It’s very frustrating, because we’re busting our behinds out there,” Jackson said. “We’re trying to win the game at the end of the day. It’s like, every time we had a big play, there was a flag down. We can’t be having that.”
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And then there were turnovers and communication issues defensively. Jackson was strip sacked by Chris Jones, who beat rookie Roger Rosengarten, deep in Baltimore territory, leading to a Chiefs’ field goal. The Chiefs ultimately scored the game-winning touchdown when rookie Xavier Worthy capitalized on a coverage bust — Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey thought he had help and he didn’t — to catch a Mahomes pass and waltz into the end zone uncontested. The Ravens were forced to blow two timeouts in the third quarter because they didn’t have the right defensive personnel on the field.
“We just had some issues with the substitutions back and forth,” Harbaugh said. “We did have some communication problems. That’s something that we’ll have to iron out for sure. We can be better with that; we will be better with that.”
Ultimately, the Ravens had a good number of things to feel good about. Jackson was brilliant at times, totaling 395 yards of offense and a touchdown. The highly scrutinized offensive line had some issues, but more often than not, particularly late in the game, it did enough to give Jackson a chance. Even without the final catch, young tight end Likely had one of the best games of his career with nine catches for 111 yards and a touchdown.
RASHOD BATEMAN. RAVENS NOT DONE.
📺: #Kickoff2024 on NBC/Peaco*ck
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/sjaDkrIpYT— NFL (@NFL) September 6, 2024
Defensively, Smith intercepted Mahomes once. And the unit got off the field late to give Baltimore’s offense a chance. But when it comes down to it, the Ravens’ chances to win shouldn’t have come down to a last-gasp throw to the end zone and the hope that Likely got two feet — or one toe — in bounds. But the Ravens made sure it did.
“A lot of the things that happened were self-inflicted, but hats off to those guys,” Smith said. “They made us pay for it, and hey, it’s a game of inches.”
(Top photo: Kevin Sabitus / Getty Images)
Jeff Zrebiec is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Baltimore Ravens. Before joining The Athletic in 2018, he spent the previous 18 years as a writer for The Baltimore Sun, 13 of them on the Orioles or Ravens beats. The New Jersey native is a graduate of Loyola University in Baltimore. Follow Jeff on Twitter @jeffzrebiec
