BALTIMORE -- Eric DeCosta sat in the far corner of a quiet Baltimore Ravens locker room that cleared out quickly Sunday afternoon. Obscured partly by a locker stall, the team's general manager wore the look of a man who had just experienced a long and demoralizing afternoon.
DeCosta remained silent until Lamar Jackson walked over and the two embraced. DeCosta's stay in the locker room after games is typically brief, but he was clearly waiting to speak to his star quarterback, whose uncertain health is threatening to doom another season.
DeCosta and Jackson shared some words, smiled, then exited the locker room at M&T Bank Stadium together. There were plenty of telling images in the Ravens' humiliating 35-13 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, from home fans filing out after the fourth of five straight Bengals touchdowns in the fourth quarter to the look of resignation among Baltimore players.
But if you are determined to push things forward -- and what Ravens fan would want to relive one of the worst halves of football in franchise history? -- the visual of DeCosta waiting for Jackson should carry the day.
It's not even November, and the Ravens are 4-3, yet it already feels like this season hinges on Jackson returning to save a team with a wildly inconsistent offense, a defense that folds in second halves and a special teams unit unable to create big plays.
You can probably add mental toughness and resilience to the list of Ravens concerns, and you likely wouldn't get much of an argument from first-year coach Jesse Minter or many of the players, given their comments following Sunday's mess.
They all but admitted the team's propensity to melt down has gotten in their heads as they struggle to fight through adversity.
"In every game, we've proven that we're good enough to be the type of team that we want to be. And we've proven that we're bad enough to be a not very good team as well," Minter said. "There's a consistency level that 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 back and finding a way to pick each other up. You can look at really all three phases in the second half of completely momentum-losing type of plays. That is what it is."
And that's what it's been.
"I think we're just too much (in our) heads (during) the game," left tackle Ronnie Stanley said. "We have one bad drive, and they have one good drive -- we start to feel something happening in the game. For us, it's just a refocus, and just focus on our identity and what we need to do, and really just not look at the scoreboard. That's something that we talk about a lot, but I don't think that we've really put that into action."
Even by the Ravens' standards -- and this is a team that, since 2018, has now lost 18 games in which it held a double-digit lead, including two straight against division foes -- Sunday was a debacle.
Aside from some pre-snap penalties and red zone issues, the Ravens played a near-perfect first half in building a 13-0 lead behind backup quarterback Tyler Huntley. They dominated on third down on both sides of the ball, outgained the Bengals by nearly 200 yards, and held the ball for 15 minutes longer than a Cincinnati team that looked like it was still on its bye week.
In the second half, the Ravens allowed 35 unanswered points in less than 18 minutes of game time. They surrendered five consecutive touchdown drives, tying a franchise record for defensive futility with 35 points allowed in a half. Quarterback Joe Burrow looked like he was operating in seven-on-seven drills. When Ravens defenders had a chance to make a play, they whiffed.
Not to be outdone, the offense's five full second-half drives went three-and-out, stopped on downs, three-and-out, a Huntley interception and stopped on downs.
"Once momentum got away from us, it was like quicksand, and it went fast," defensive lineman Calais Campbell said. "You look up, and it's like, 'Wow, it's 35-13.'"
"Not good enough at all," added running back Derrick Henry, who was held to 45 yards on 17 carries as the run-game struggles continued. "We started off, I feel like, on a good note, getting things going, and then (it) fazed out. Two weeks straight of that. It's on us. We gotta go execute the plays, and we (aren't) doing that at all."
Over the past two weeks, against the Bengals and Cleveland Browns, the Ravens have been outscored 48-0 in the second half. Per The Associated Press, before Sunday, the last team to lead by 13 or more at halftime and lose by 20 or more was the 1950 Colts, who lost a game 55-20 to the New York Giants in which they led 20-7 at the break.
And to think Minter's rallying cry since the summer was for his team to be at its best when its best was required. Getting outscored 77-28 in the fourth quarter and 114-44 in the second half this season is concrete proof the message still hasn't gotten home.
In Sunday's second half, you'd have to look hard to find a single notable play made by a Raven in any of the three phases. Some of the breakdowns were made by the team's top players, like safety Kyle Hamilton, who bookended one of the Bengals' scoring drives with missed tackles.
"It's definitely something I'm tired of hearing as well, not just you guys, but it's about what I said, chasing that consistency, and finding that missing piece to that consistency that we're chasing," linebacker Roquan Smith said. "There's something there that's missing."
Several Ravens players said each guy needed to look in the mirror and do their part. That process already started for Henry, who described his own performance as "terrible." He had plenty of company.
Hamilton probably played one of his worst games as a Raven. Burrow picked on cornerbacks Nate Wiggins and Marlon Humphrey repeatedly in the second half. Trey Hendrickson never made a significant impact while playing against his former team, and Baltimore's second-half pass rush was about as effective as its tackling.
"Starting with me, it was just a bad effort by the defense in the second half and one that I know our guys will look at and not feel good about," Minter said. "Only we can do something about it."
While the Ravens melted down Sunday, John Harbaugh's New York Giants found a way to beat the favored Houston Texans in overtime. Todd Monken's Browns summoned more late-game magic to defeat the Tennessee Titans and improve to 5-2.
It was Harbaugh and former Ravens coordinators like Monken who frequently shouldered the blame for late-game collapses. There was hope a new coaching staff would fix the issues.
It hasn't, which probably says more about the team's current group of players than it does about the coaches. That won't protect Minter from wearing much of the blame. That's what he signed up for. It also felt reasonable to expect Minter to coax notable defensive improvement, and he hasn't done that.
This feels like an early and significant test for Minter and his staff, who have so much to fix. The offensive line remains a mess, and it could get even worse if first-round rookie guard Vega Ioane has a serious knee injury. The Ravens aren't running the football well at all, and short-yardage woes and pre-snap penalties are impacting the team at every turn.
And what, exactly, do the Ravens do well defensively and on special teams? Oh yeah, there's a collective psyche to repair, too. The second something goes wrong, the Ravens seem to wait for it to get even worse.
"We have control over that," Minter said. "That's what we need to understand is we have complete control over that mentality."
They better figure it out fast. Every other AFC North team won Sunday, leaving the Ravens in last place at 4-3. They are 0-2 in their division for the first time since 2007 and won't play another AFC North team until five days before Christmas, when they head to Pittsburgh.
In the meantime, they play two games in five days against the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars, two of the better teams in the AFC.
Jackson, the two-time league MVP, can only cover up for so much, but his return would at least represent hope.
"We don't want to give up 35 points when he's on the field or not," Campbell said. "That's just not something we want to do on defense. But obviously, he's one of the best players in football and one of the best players to ever play the game of football. When he's on the field, you feel a whole lot better."
Sunday, it was hard for the Ravens to feel much worse.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
