Here are my thoughts on the Ravens 23-20 loss against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

  • Never thought they had a chance – Call me a bad fan, but I never saw the Ravens going into Pittsburgh and winning. This team had too many injuries and Ben Roethlisberger versus the Ravens secondary was never a good match up in my mind.
  • Harbaugh sucks at clock management – I’d sell my soul to the devil to see the Ravens with three timeouts in under two minutes. Never gonna happen. At the end of the first half the Ravens had a chance to stop the Steelers deep in their own territory with just under two minutes to play if Harbs called a timeout. No such luck. I was calling for it, the announcers were calling for it, why wasn’t our coach? The team blows timeouts in costly situations and doesn’t use them when they need to use them. It’s happened all year and it hasn’t improved one bit.
  • This team has serious discipline issues – Baltimore racked up 113 penalty yards and completely self destructed in the fourth quarter. But ignoring the penalties, I’m worried about how the coaches are handling them. Haloti Ngata gets a 15 yard personal foul call and he laughs on the sideline with no one saying anything to him. Frank Walker, a guy who shouldn’t have even made this team, has a costly illegal contact call and the end of regulation and no one says squat. I’m not saying the Ravens should bench these guys, they have no one to step up, but Ngata shouldn’t be laughing about his penalty without someone at least saying something.
  • I’m glad Heap is out of the dog house – Todd Heap has four touchdowns in his past two games and I couldn’t be happier. Heap is likely nearing the end of his career and it has been great to see him come back. He was the focus on much criticism last season, started better in the first half of this season, and wrapped up 2009 strongly.
  • The Ravens still can’t beat good teams – Even though Baltimore will likely make the playoffs, they still don’t have a good enough defense to beat a good quarterback. I know that the Ravens defeated the Chargers in week 2 and the Broncos after the Bye week in week 8, but the Chargers weren’t the Chargers and the Broncos are one of the weakest playoff contenders at the moment. At the end of the day the Ravens control their own destiny, but I don’t think they are a good enough team to be a real contender and under Harbaugh they are 1-4 against the Steelers, with that one win in Baltimore against the third string quarterback.