Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Baltimore’s ball security was not up to par in the AFC Championship Game.
If you told Baltimore Ravens fans that their team would hold Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs offense to 17 points in the AFC Championship Game, they probably would have taken it. Even with the benefit of hindsight, you wouldn’t blame them if they did.
The numbers, after all, should have worked in Baltimore’s favor in that scenario.
In games in which they held their opponent to fewer than three touchdowns, they were 11-2 this season; one of those losses came when they rested their starters in the regular season finale vs. Pittsburgh. Likewise, the Chiefs and their offense were a mere 3-6 in that same hypothetical setting: low-scoring games were not their forte in 2023.
As the football gods have shown time and again, however, past precedent means little to them. That is especially true when it comes to the NFL playoffs.
You either perform, or you feel the consequences. On Sunday, in front of a sellout crowd at M&T Bank Stadium and with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, the Ravens felt them.
It didn’t have to be this way, though. Kansas City scored only those aforementioned 17 points and was out-gained both in total yards and yards per play. This performance could very well have been enough for the top-seeded Ravens, but their offense had other much more painful plans.
Instead of playing the complementary role that got Baltimore to the AFC title game in the first place, the unit committed the cardinal sin of postseason football: it just kept wasting opportunities.
Nothing illustrates this more clearly than a look at turnovers. Whereas the Chiefs played a clean game in that regard, the Ravens turned the ball over three times.
First up was a Lamar Jackson fumble on a strip sack in the second quarter. In a one-touchdown game, the giveaway gifted the Chiefs the ball at the Baltimore 33.
Credit where credit is due: the Ravens defense managed to rise to the occasion after that fumble, and to keep points off the board. The group stopped Kansas City on a 4th-and-1 for a turnover on downs.
Unfortunately for Baltimore’s Super Bowl aspirations, there were only so many chances it would be able to afford its offense. And one after the other they went to waste — none more dramatically than Zay Flowers losing a fumble in the fourth quarter while trying to reach the ball across the goal line.
In a literal game of inches, they were not on his side on this play.
Even with the rookie wideout getting the ball punched out about 12 inches short of the end zone, Baltimore was still alive later in the final period. But when Lamar Jackson threw an interception in the end zone with 6:54 left in the game, the proverbial fat lady started to sing on the Ravens’ season.
The damage caused by those three turnovers simply was too much for the Ravens to overcome, even with their defense playing a solid game down the stretch. The final two in particular, however, thwarted Baltimore’s hopes at a comeback, and contributed greatly to them finishing the game with only 10 points — tying their lowest output of the season after they had averaged 28.7 over their first 18 games this year.
“We’re mad,” Lamar Jackson said after the game. “Offense, we didn’t put anything on the board. We scored once. That’s not like us. We drove the ball down the field. That’s cool, but we got to put points on the board. But I feel like my team’s just angry, not frustrated. We’re just angry. We know how hard we worked to get here.”
The Ravens had their chances to score more points than they ultimately did, but failed to do so due to an excruciating lack of ball security and an inability to finish drives. The football gods punished them for that, and banished them to the couch to watch the Chiefs play the 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII.
