In 2024, we have no room for context.
Going into their Week 11 matchup, the Ravens were 1-7 against the Steelers in the 2020s. The Steelers were their kryptonite. They had their number. They owned the rivalry. Choose your desired catchphrase, regurgitate it ad nauseam. Ignore anything that doesn’t fit the narrative.
The Steelers’ run of success against the Ravens since 2020 had been far more “anomaly” than “annihilation.” The series had been marked by meaningless Week 18 games, backup quarterbacks and a Wednesday afternoon COVID-impacted game that was farce-ier than Netflix’s Friday Night Fights.
Recognizing Lamar Jackson’s 1-3 personal record against the Steelers as a form of “kryptonite” required conveniently ignoring how the two-time MVP was the highest-graded quarterback (according to Pro Football Focus) in Week 5 of the 2023 season but was betrayed by all of his receivers choosing to drop the ball simultaneously.
That context is difficult to pass along in a TikTok clip. So for the most part, we conveniently ignored it in the lead-up to the Week 11 matchup between the teams. We just rode with the original premise. Those of us who thought the context was relevant were left screaming into a void.
Truth be told, I genuinely believed the anomaly couldn’t continue. I genuinely believed that the way Jackson and the offense in general were performing had become impervious to the opponent. After all, the Broncos were a top-five defense and they were run over by this offense. The Bills have been one of the league’s better defenses in recent years and they couldn’t provide even a speed bump.
About that.
There’s no getting around how dreadful this particular loss to the Steelers was. You don’t need the reminder. The penalties, the turnovers, the Justin Tucker of it all. It was an unmitigated disaster. Somehow, it was still a game the Ravens had a chance to tie with a two-point conversion late, but that’s not fully the point. It was like so many games in Pittsburgh — not just for the Ravens, to be fair. The characteristic of the season (the penalties and the kicking issues) met the totally uncharacteristic (the offense stumbling while the defense stepped up).
It was a Pittsburgh voodoo special. No one does it quite like Mike Tomlin. The Steelers aren’t the better team but they were sure as hell the better team … particularly within the margins. They make you come to them and bring the worst out of you. It’s remarkable.
But the Ravens deserve as much of the criticism as the Steelers do the praise. The Ravens know what’s coming every time they face the Steelers (particularly in Pittsburgh) and it still somehow happens anyway. For some Ravens fans, that’s a reflection of coaching. And in the world where “the buck stops here,” that’s true. How much of this particular result is on coaching? I don’t know. They’re sure as hell not encouraging anyone to jump offsides or commit holding penalties or miss kicks.
It’s fair to second- or third- or 178th-guess the call on the two-point conversion, of course. It’s very difficult to stomach the idea of not having Derrick Henry on the field at least as a threat or not calling a run-pass option in that spot. But that one play isn’t the story of the game.
I think Tomlin is a better coach than Harbaugh, but I don’t know that it was the story of what happened in this game. I don’t think Payton Wilson getting the ball from Justice Hill at the literal last nanosecond possible to turn a huge play into a turnover is about coaching. I don’t think Patrick Queen almost certainly ripping the ball away from Isaiah Likely AFTER Likely’s forearm was down — but there not being a camera angle to definitively show that — is a coaching issue.
What I do know is that no matter how it happened, John Harbaugh has to wear it. And Lamar Jackson has to wear it. Wins and losses are worn by coaches and quarterbacks. That’s the way this whole thing works. And the reality is that Harbaugh and Jackson have a Pittsburgh Steelers problem … on top of their Kansas City Chiefs problem.
It makes the Dec. 21 game the most important in recent memory for Harbaugh and Jackson. It becomes a potentially defining game for the duo. If the Steelers and Chiefs continue to trip up the Ravens and prevent them from making a Super Bowl run this season, calls for change — at head coach obviously, because the quarterback is going nowhere — will be warranted. This is their scarlet letter at the moment.
The other games matter, too. The Ravens certainly can’t spend the next few weeks singularly obsessing about the Steelers only to lose to back-to-back NFC East opponents ahead of the next matchup. But the organization needs to obsess about the matchup in general. They should hire consultants whose specific jobs are to help prepare them for the Steelers and Chiefs in December (and potentially in January), and I’m not remotely kidding.
This is their reality. The Steelers aren’t as good as the Ravens. But they have the Ravens’ number at the moment. And for John Harbaugh in particular, it cannot continue.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox