I have a confession to make. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s certainly not going to be fun. But there’s such aching regret in the pit of my stomach, such inescapable remorse weighing on the very fiber of my being, that I just have to confess to this before it consumes me entirely. And if you can find it in your heart to forgive this transgression, dear reader, I promise to learn from my mistakes, to grow, to become a better version of myself.
Alas, here it goes: In the month of August, the year of our lord 2022, I was an “I’m getting heavy 2019 vibes from this team” guy…
Now feel free to hate me based on this shameful revelation–god knows I hate myself over it. But, sadly, it’s completely true. That exact phrasing did indeed escape my lips. And though I wasn’t the only one, I won’t let cowardice win out by trying to blend in with the crowd. Besides, even if there were others, I honestly may’ve been that talking point’s most enthusiastic peddler.
Because rather than hedge in any way, shape or form, I only dug myself in deeper. “Heavy packages, three TE sets…” I would annoyingly ramble on to anyone within earshot, exposing all my impure thoughts to the world. “I mean who even needs WRs, aren’t they a little overrated anyway? After all, aren’t we just taking advantage of a pretty glaring market inefficiency?” I would punctuate my sordid beliefs with equal parts hubris and condescension.
But back then I was so blissfully ignorant, so stunningly cocksure that 2022 would shape up as the Rocky II to 2019's Rocky—a similar plot structure but with a much happier ending—that it blinded me to reality. I effectively hand waved all concerns about roster construction or offensive play calling. “None of that matters,” I’d reassure myself. “We have Lamar, and Lamar will always find a way.”
Fast forward to mid December. With the Ravens sitting at 9-4 and winners of six of their last seven, a neutral, uninformed observer might be confused as to why I felt the need to confess in the first place. Just going off the record and the final scores, he might think I was basically right all along, that these Ravens are playing at or just a notch or two below their 2019 level. That they simply lost a few tight games to some playoff contenders and one up-and-coming team. That with four games to go, they’re basically a postseason lock and can start trying to ascend to the highest seeding possible.
But anyone who actually follows this team knows that my act of contrition is totally warranted. Knows that I was wrong, blatantly, unambiguously wrong, about this team from the very start. Knows that for everything that radiates off these 2022 Ravens, ‘2019 vibes’ certainly don’t.
Because in December 2019, I wasn’t sitting in the darkness of my bedroom obsessively checking the playoff standings on my phone. I wasn't anxiously awaiting every final score involving random .500 teams in the AFC. Wasn’t mapping out all the win/loss permutations of WC hopefuls, fretting over tie-breaker scenarios.
And under no circumstances in 2019 would I have mentally conceded the AFC North to a team trailing us in the standings. I wouldn’t have spent even an instant willfully deceiving myself into believing that a first round road game against a moldering Titans team is actually better than a home playoff game against the sixth seed. And then I surely, in turn, wouldn’t have been scared utterly shitless of Jacksonville stealing the AFC South out from under Tennessee’s nose.
No, fans of championship-caliber teams should salivate over the chance to play a second-year QB (regardless of his ultimate potential) making his first playoff start. But the thought of possibly having to go back to Jacksonville has me so riddled with ulcer-inducing panic that I can barely function. It got to the point where, as Lawrence orchestrated his 96-yard scoring drive on TNF, I had to watch through the slits in my fingers like it was a slasher flick. Suffice it to say, that’s not what it should feel like to root for a championship-caliber team. And that’s how I know the Ravens aren’t one, that they’re nowhere close to being the contenders they were at this point in 2019.
Most Ravens fans came to this realization a while ago, but, like usual, I was a little late to accept reality. Before the season started, I’d so thoroughly convinced myself this was a transcendent team that I was loath to let that go. Even after Miami and Buffalo, I was still chugging the Kool-Aid, insisting they’d just been wildly unlucky through the first quarter of the season. They were 2-2 after four weeks in 2019, after all, so early season growing pains were nothing to lose sleep over as far as I was concerned. But by the end of week six, I’d been completely disabused of any 2019 redux. In losing to NYG in the manner they did, I accepted that they weren’t snakebitten—they were simply bad. Or maybe not bad, but just slightly above average. And slightly above average teams lose winnable games. They choke away sure things from time to time.
And that’s fine. As much as I loved every week—right up until the last one—of 2019, I’m quite aware you aren’t going to get that every season. A team can still accomplish great things even if they don’t reach those insane peaks. And as we were playing well going into the bye week, I was hoping this 2022 roster, flawed as it may be, would turn into one of those types of teams. One that found itself along the way. One that perfectly compensated for its shortcomings to become greater than the sum of its parts. One that bulldozed through its rinky-dink schedule and waltzed to a division crown. One that might even prove me wrong and show they were always significantly better than I had recently come to believe.
Then Jacksonville happened. And even before that Hail Tucker fell just short, while there was still the slightest bit of hope we might steal that game, the reality of the situation was inescapable. This team wasn’t building towards anything. They hadn't actually corrected any of their wildly evident flaws, only papered over them enough to squeak out wins against subpar opponents like TB and NO. They were hopelessly stuck in multiple ruts of their own making, without the knowhow or wherewithal to free themselves.
And it was at that point, about a week before we were set to face the hapless Broncos that I was once again struck by a strong sense of Deja Vu. But unlike in August, this one wasn't for 2019. No, by then that notion had been fitted for concrete boots and thrown in the harbor. But this new sensation was unmistakable—I was starting to feel eerily similar toward 2022 as I had toward a different season of beloved Ravens football at a similar point that year.
Journey back with me a decade, to late fall 2012. The musical world was still reeling from a Gangnam Style / Call Me Maybe 1-2 combination. Usain Bolt had just spent the summer stacking bodies in London like he was Jack the Ripper. Locally, the O's had shaken off 14 years worth of bottom-feeding rust to make the playoffs and recapture our hearts. And the Ravens, fresh off a 2011 where they went 12-4 and made the AFC Championship game, were pacing the AFC North with a 9-2 record1.
There I was, bellied up to my local corner bar the Monday after they'd secured their 9th win. And to the random assortment of professional drunks surrounding me, I offered exactly what you'd expect to hear from a fan of a team with an .820 winning percentage: "This team fucking sucks…"
Now, instinctively, I had my shackles up, ready to wholeheartedly defend what could've been considered a controversial opinion about a team with such a stellar record. But to the contrary, when I put it out there, there wasn't even the slightest bit of push back. Everyone just sort of tacitly agreed.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they lost out and completely missed the playoffs," I continued, to near universal agreement. And when fans of a 9-2 team are completely unfazed by the thought of missing the playoffs, it should tell you that record is a total sham.
But whenever discussing 2012, and it’s a topic that comes up quite frequently, I almost never hear this mentioned. And that’s understandable. Given the reverence this fanbase has for that team and especially their spectacular postseason run, it’s only natural to want to memory hole that data point. But that doesn’t make it any less true. As amazing as they were in the playoffs, they were a remarkably average regular season team. They got blown out by most good teams they faced, and simply feasted on the bad ones (7-1 against teams that finished .500 or worse). Though ‘feasted’ might be a bit of an overstatement, as they could only muster a 9-6 win against a 2-14 Chiefs team and needed a miracle play to beat the 7-9 Chargers. So while their record might’ve claimed they were an .800 team, they sure looked the part of a .200 team every time they took the field. And had the scheduling gods not smiled down on them so favorably (T-21st in the league that year), they probably would’ve been closer to 6-10 than 10-6. So thinking they’d lose their last five games to playoff contenders was hardly a far-fetched scenario.
And that was the exact same thought that popped into my head leading up to the Dec 2022 Denver game. This was before Lamar went down, mind you, but even with him in the lineup, I thought they might crap out down the stretch and wash out of the playoffs. And adding insult to injury, where the league backloaded the hardest part of the ‘12 Ravens schedule, the ‘22 Ravens were supposed to be cruising against inferior opponents between weeks 7-17. But that didn't sway my reasoning in the least. Because at the time, I didn't care who was opposite them—the Broncos, the Texans, the Towson Tigers, whoever—it’d be a waste of graphite to pencil this Ravens team in for a win against anyone. So losing out was well within the realm of possibilities, as far as I was concerned.
But luckily for this franchise and this city, I was wrong about my prediction in the bar that day. The ‘12 Ravens didn’t lose out. They dropped four of their last five, but they didn’t lose out. In their penultimate game, they traveled up to NY and smacked the shit out of the Giants. And that was a massive win for a couple reasons. First, it clinched their playoff spot and allowed them to rest some starters the last game of the season. Second, and what I’d argue is equally important, they finally played up to the lofty expectations they’d been coming up short against all season. In spite of every other game that year, in NY the Ravens finally looked like the contenders they were always supposed to be.
Back in 2022, I was wrong again, thankfully. We escaped with a pair of ugly wins against Den and Pitt, all but guaranteeing a playoff spot (fingers fucking crossed, of course, because lord knows this team could still find a way to shit the bed). But it’s the second part of the NYG game that still escapes us, and it's what I desperately want to see now. Before I buy into my own clickbaity headline, before I even begin to entertain the possibility of some 2012-esque shenanigans, I want to see this team show a glimpse of the well-rounded, firing-on-all-cylinders team I thought they’d be back in August. I want to see them bring their A game for four straight goddamn quarters. I want them to dominate all three phases. I want them to break another team’s spirit so hard that it erases our memory of the first seven-eighths of the season.
And I know this type of instant metamorphosis is possible, because I watched the ‘12 squad do it. Of course, I’ve conspicuously left out some crucial details up to this point. Because to the uninformed, the night-and-day transformation in ‘12 might seem very strange–you can’t really trace the trajectory. The trend line doesn’t steadily climb week after week until it finally reaches ‘contender status.’ Nope, it flatlined for months, and then all the sudden it just spiked. For those in the know, however, the reason for the spike is obvious. They made a handful of crucial (and overdue) changes, and, after that, it was as if they became an entirely new team overnight.
And so that’s what I’m hoping to see before the end of the season—change. Significant, meaningful alterations to what they’ve been doing so far. That’s what I want. Not for them to just stack easy wins. Not for them to build on the foundation they’ve been laying the last four months. That foundation is rancid dogshit. No, I want that same flip-of-a-switch evolution we witnessed a decade ago. I want my jaw to drop when they take the field, utterly dumbfounded because they look like an entirely different ballclub.
I was praying this might even take place this weekend, but it's not in the cards. And not just because they haven't yet made any major changes that I'm aware of. But Lamar has already been ruled out, and for it to be proof of an honest-to-god total transformation, our superstar QB needs to be involved. And that's a shame, because a 5-9 team starting a rookie QB on the road would've been a golden opportunity to facilitate their butterfly-emerging-from-a-cocoon rebirth. Without him, even if they beat Atlanta by thirty, it’ll just be another cheap victory against a bad team.
Of course this is the ‘22 Ravens we’re talking about, so a demoralizing, head-scratching loss is just as likely as a cheap win. And if that happens, if this team gives us all a lump of coal for Christmas, the exact change this team so desperately needs will be crystal clear. Yes, if that’s the case, the elephant in the room, the same one I’ve been pussyfooting around with all the 2012 comparisons up, has to go.
Because for all the uncanny similarities between the two seasons–the cupcake schedule, the rock fights against the league’s cellar-dwellers, the QB contract controversy hanging over the season like a nasty fart, the division race against the Bengals–if the offense lays an egg against Atlanta, there’s another potential similarity that the flock will be demanding: Firing the underperforming Offensive Coordinator.
And we all know why. When Harbaugh pulled this same maneuver in 2012, it supercharged the offense, unleashing an unstoppable juggernaut on the rest of the playoff field. So who could blame fans for wanting to at least attempt to replicate the success from the past. For wanting to watch Lamar eviscerate defenses and storm his way to a trophy, just like Flacco did.
Personally, I’ve resisted the temptation to call for Roman’s head, so far, as I know firing an OC, 2012 notwithstanding, is not a magic wand. But, I mean, if they can’t score 20+ points against this Falcons D, I think the answer is staring us in the face. True, there’s no Jim Caldwell waiting in the wings, but the writing will be scribbled all over the fucking wall at that point. Should that happen, it’ll prove that Roman simply isn’t capable of calling four quarters of winning football for this team. That, despite all his previous success with this franchise, he can’t orchestrate an effective offense with this roster. So why not roll the dice with someone new, even if they are unproven, when the status quo is basically guaranteed to give you a one-and-done result.
But, since I honestly do like Greg Roman and think he’s a fine OC, I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. I’m hoping G-Ro is visited by the Ghost of Gameplan Future and experiences a personal awakening of his own. I’m hoping he calls a phenomenal game and they beat the Falcons by forty. I’m hoping Lamar comes back to a revitalized offensive attack, and the team mutates into what it should’ve been all year long. And if all that happens, if the fully staffed Ravens can look like a contender even just for a game, I'm ready to shed all the malaise from the regular season and party like it’s 2012 all over again.
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Really they should've been 10-1–a bullshit Off PI call in Philly cost them a game, but I digress