BALTIMORE (AP) — Jacoby Brissett is officially a Baltimore Raven.
He's walking into a bit of a crisis.
After Thursday night's 33-10 loss to Jacksonville, the Ravens have lost three straight games by at least
20 points for the first time in franchise history. The losing streak is at four overall. After Lamar Jackson and Tyler Huntley were both injured last weekend against Buffalo, Joe Fagnano was next man up at quarterback. Him having to make his first career start on a short week against the Jaguars was predictably difficult.
Now the Ravens have completed a trade for Brissett, who has started eight games this season for Arizona. He gives Baltimore more experience at the position, but it was clear again Thursday that quarterback is not the only problem the Ravens face. Brissett can certainly make Baltimore (4-5) more competitive in the coming weeks, but issues on the offensive line and in the secondary persist.
“We’ve got to make a decision over this break,” coach Jesse Minter said. “Got a little bit of a break for the guys to kind of mentally reset and come back and seek improvement really in all three phases.”
The Ravens managed only 227 yards of offense against Jacksonville, 65 of which came on a long touchdown run by Justice Hill long after the outcome had been settled.
On defense, Baltimore has allowed more than 30 points three straight games.
“It sucks losing Lamar, but we all know at the end of the day, in this league, it’s the next man up, regardless of who you are," linebacker Roquan Smith said. "Very unforgiving game. No matter who you are, what you’ve done for the game, the game will slap you in the face every day of the week and twice on Sunday. So, it’s just about us honing in on our details and doing our job.”
Baltimore has scored on its first offensive drive in five of its last six games, the lone exception being against Buffalo when Jackson went out with an injury on his first play.
The offensive line remains a concern, but with so many different player combinations, the Ravens sometimes can't even make it to the snap. Baltimore had four more false starts despite playing at home Thursday. It's not just the linemen either. Two of those were by tight ends and one was by a wide receiver.
Even before Thursday's game, the Ravens led the league with 20 false start penalties, according to nflpenalties.com.
“I just have to be better,” veteran tackle Ronnie Stanley said. "I’m trying to get off the ball as soon as I hear the quarterback, but that’s too fast, so I need to hone that back a little bit and maybe come off slower. But whatever the case, we have to be on the ball. We can’t afford to have pre-snap penalties. They stall drives and take away points from us.”
The Baltimore defense did a decent job stopping the run and forced Jacksonville into more field goals than touchdowns.
Even though Jacksonville wasn't being overly aggressive on offense, the Ravens still allowed a couple big plays in the first half. Trevor Lawrence found Nate Boerkircher behind cornerback Marlon Humphrey for 52 yards on the second play from scrimmage, setting up an early touchdown. Then Parker Washington beat safety Malaki Starks for a 50-yard TD catch shortly before halftime.
“I think when we’ve got some guys out on offense, whatever the game plan was, it kind of kills momentum to give up one early. So, that was just an explosive, a scramble drill,” Humphrey said. "Just have to play better fundamental football, and that’s kind of just been (what) I’m chasing.”
Nate Wiggins (illness) wasn't able to play, and safety Kyle Hamilton (hip) left the game. Those absences, should they linger, would make a bad situation worse defensively.
Over their last four games, the Ravens have been outscored 84-10 in the second half.
The Thursday game means Baltimore gets a little more time off before its next contest, Nov. 16 against the Los Angeles Chargers, who are currently winless. After that, the Ravens have road games against Carolina and Houston before their open date. Those are winnable, but Baltimore desperately needs its offense to wake up.
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