It’s always difficult when you lose a franchise QB to injury. It requires an extremely deft hand to navigate the season, specific ways to pivot the offense, and necessitates everyone else stepping up to fill the void. Well, the Ravens haven’t been able to do any of that.
We can justify mediocrity when it comes to the Bengals in a similar situation, because Zac Taylor is a terrible football coach — but John Harbaugh, the Ravens … they’re supposed to be a tight, tough, organized operation. Instead they look anything but, to the point where this team doesn’t look like it has a shot, even with Lamar Jackson back under center.
In short: Rumors of the Baltimore Ravens being good were greatly exaggerated.
There are no words for what happened against the Texans on Sunday. For the first time in memory we witnessed as M&T Bank Stadium was rendered silent, a mixture of shock and disgust. The offensive drop off to Cooper Rush at QB could have been predicted, but not the unbelievable embarrassment on defense that saw Baltimore lose 44-10 to a highly questionable Texans team that lost to the Jaguars, the Buccaneers, and really only looked good against the Tennessee Titans — one of the worst teams in the NFL.
It’s one thing to lose, but another to betray everything we knew about your team in the process. There’s a lot of pejoratives you could throw at the Ravens over the years, but “soft” has never been one of them. Calling the Ravens “Charmin Soft,” on Sunday would have been an insult to the toilet paper company known for polishing the butts of creepy bears for over 20 years.
Defensively is really where the Ravens failed on Sunday. They allowed a shameful 6.3 yards per offensive play. They were unable to stop C.J. Stroud in the passing game, got burned by Christian Kirk, Nico Collins, Dalton Schultz — if you were a receiver wearing a Texans’ uniform, you were eating.
The Ravens’ secondary has been suspect this season at the best of times, but it was the absence of a meaningful pass rush that was pronounced. Houston’s offensive line is absolute garbage, with the organization deciding to overload on receivers, rather than retool its protection in the offseason. That has resulted in Stroud being sacked 10 times, and being brought down on 7.87% of all passing downs, throwing under pressure on 18.7% of snaps.
Outside of two early sacks, Baltimore managed to only pressure Stroud four times all game. He was basically allowed to sit in a far too clear pocket and pick them apart, and Nick Chubb was running over the Ravens to complement that.
It’s astonishing to see one offensive player’s absence completely change an entire organization like this.
Baltimore has no identity without Jackson. It has no toughness. It’s as if the boss is off work and everyone else decided to goof off, except that John Harbaugh should be the one keeping this all together — not be reliant on the quarterback to set the tone and the culture.
That’s what will end up destroying this team in 2025, not Jackson simply being out — but that he’s being leaned on too much to be the tone setter this season. The other top teams in the AFC don’t have these issues. The Bills know they need to perform independent of Josh Allen. The Chiefs understand the importance of having their assignments whether or not Patrick Mahomes is cooking.
Based on what we saw Sunday we might as well pencil in the Steelers to win the AFC North by default, because the Ravens are ass.
Winner: New England Patriots
It’s probably time we accept that the Patriots are pretty damn good and are probably going to make noise this season. It’s been easy to overlook New England up to this point, but beating the Bills in Buffalo on Sunday Night Football wasn’t just a statement, but a testament to how far this team has come in a short time under Mike Vrabel.
This is an organization swinging way above its weight class. In terms of rosters strength the Pats are bad on paper. It’s weak at receiver, can’t consistently run the ball, has offensive line issues, and the talent on the defensive front isn’t anything to write home about. However, Vrabel is getting to much juice out of this orange that it’s become impossible to ignore what the Pats have been doing.
Drake Maye is playing mistake-free football, the pass rush is doing a ton of work, and the secondary is vastly underrated. This team is adept at grinding out games, and dragging teams into murky water, making things uncomfortable for them. That’s what happened to the Bills on Sunday night and Josh Allen was never able to get going, and when opportunities did present themselves, they were quickly snatched away by Christian Gonzalez.
Looking at the upcoming schedule for the Pats they face the Saints, Titans, Browns, Jets, and Bengals before the end of November. There is a very real chance that New England could reach Thanksgiving with a 8-3 record, potentially even 9-2 if they can beat the Buccaneers. That is absolutely obscene for a team most people had written off in 2025. Stop ignoring the Pats.
We’ve been waiting this season to see which teams want to assert themselves as contenders, and for the most part this has been wide open. It’s not like the Broncos took a step to show they’re the class of the AFC or anything, but they proved for one week that they can hang with the best in the NFL — and that goes a long way to forging belief, especially in a division as wide open as the AFC West.
For three quarters the Broncos largely struggled. Bo Nix wasn’t anything special, the defense wasn’t nearly tough enough — but then Denver put it all together for one of the most impressive comebacks in franchise history. Beating Philly is tough, but dominating the fourth quarter is on an entirely other level.
Outside of Buffalo the AFC is still open for whoever wants to step up and challenge. Why not the Broncos?
Sorry, but what the heck happened there? If you told me that the Dolphins were playing the Panthers, the starting RBs would be DeVon Achane and Rico Dowdle — one RB would have over 200 yards, and the other would have fewer than 20 there would only be one accurate answer.
October started, silly season began, and Dowdle utterly dismantled Miami, averaging 9.0 yards-per-carry and setting up Carolina’s comeback win. Don’t get me wrong, Dowdle played great football, but the Dolphins should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for showing zero toughness and getting run over like that against a Panthers offensive line missing THREE players, and struggling to run the ball all year long.
Dowdle made the most of his opportunity and it was the breakout performance the Panthers needed. He now holds the franchise record for rushing yards in a single game.
I don’t blame you if this name doesn’t ring a bell, because it shouldn’t in NFL announcing circles. On Sunday FOX put one of the nation’s most-viral announcers on Dolphins vs. Panthers, taking Eric Collins who normally calls games for the Charlotte Hornets.
Collins is the ultimate sports hype man. He loses it over every play, and sprinkles in some incredible old-school style anecdotes for good measure. In the second quarter in particular he had back-to-back gems, one for each team.
“Oh… OH! He caught it on his fanny!” — In reaction to Jaylen Waddle catching the ball after falling on his butt
“Before this drive the Panthers looked worse than mustard on angel food cake” — When Carolina’s offense began to step up
There’s just something magical to having someone really excited calling a game. It was like experiencing a brand new football fan get obsessed with the sport in real time. Everyone needs more Eric Collins in their life.
After a promising start to the year it might be time to accept that the 2-3 Cardinals are headed towards another ho-hum season. If we look at their schedule up to this point, this team has narrowly beaten Carolina and New Orleans, and now lost to the 49ers, Seahawks, and Titans. Every game has been close, which is to their credit — but playing down to Tennessee was unforgivable with the talent on this Arizona team that should have hung 40 on them.
I truly don’t know where the Cardinals go from here, because they seem to be in purgatory right now where there’s nothing they can really do in order to get better or worse. Kyler Murray has been mid this season, the running game is a mess without James Conner, and defensively there’s just nothing special about Arizona.
The Cardinals will be inexorably linked to the Colts in terms of two teams hiring ex-Eagles coordinators. The Colts are soaring and shocking everyone, while the Cardinals are dead in the water.
I don’t think Glenn deserves the infamy he’s been saddled with, but here we are. The first year coach of the Jets is the first man in history to start his tenure 0-5 with the franchise. Yes, the team that has employed some legendarily bad coaches has Glenn at the mountaintop for ineptitude.
The most surprising part about the Jets is how soft they are on defense. There’s no bite, no edge. The fact this horrible offense is playing better than the defense is a testament to how bad things are, and there’s nowhere to go but down. We really might be on 0-17 watch here, folks.
