Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr: ‘We’ve definitely got to finish better’
OWINGS MILLS — The Ravens’ late-game woes continued Monday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
After containing the Tanpa Bay’s offense after the Buccaneers got off to a strong start, Baltimore allowed 21 points in the final quarter in the 41-31 victory. These breakdowns have been an issue throughout the season and defensive coordinator Zachary Orr is determined to fix the problems.
“It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. And our players did a hell of a job from, really, the second quarter all the way through that fourth quarter, and then the fourth quarter was terrible, and that’s what everybody is going to talk about – rightfully so,” Orr said. “So, we’ve definitely got to finish better. It’s something that we have to do if we want to be the team that we want to be. We have to finish and close out games on defense.
“But we’ll look at it now – this is, what, Week 8 – and just kind of like I said, it’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. We’re looking [at] finishing strong the rest of the season, especially in the fourth quarter.”
In Week 2, The Ravens blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead in a 26-23 loss to the Raiders at home. The following week, Baltimore appeared to be coasting with a 22-point cushion in the fourth quarter against the Dallas Cowboys. However, the Ravens committed several miscues that let Dallas nearly erase that lead, but they held on for the 28-25 victory.
The Ravens also allowed 14 fourth-quarter points to the Bengals in Week 5 and 10 points to the Washington Commanders the next week. Baltimore won both of those games, but coach John Harbaugh said the team needs to stop making late-game breakdowns.
“You have to close people out,” Harbaugh said.
The defense has not been the only culprit in some of these fourth-quarter collapses. The Ravens are the only team in the NFL to allow two successful onside kicks. Those miscues happened against the Cowboys and Buccaneers and led to touchdowns.
Harbaugh and special teams coach Chris Horton said the team is evaluating how it handles onside kicks.
“We’ve got to get it right the first time,” Horton said. “I think we know what to do; we’ve just got to execute in that situation. We understand those are high-leverage situations, and I think maybe moving some pieces around [and] putting guys in different spots will really give us that ability to take care of that. Other than that, that’s really it. I don’t think it’s a problem where there’s like this big old fire.
“And it’s happened twice against us, but there are ways that I truly believe that if we just execute the play like we’ve done the second time on both of these onside kicks, we’d be fine. We’ve got to get it done the first time.”
In addition, the offense had a critical turnover against Tampa Bay when Zay Flowers couldn’t handle a poorly thrown backward pass from quarterback Lamar Jackson that was ruled a fumble and the Buccaneers recovered. Baker Mayfield threw an 11-yard touchdown to Rachaad White that pulled the Buccaneers to within 34-18.
Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken said the gaffe was too costly.
“It’s bad football. It put them back in the game,” Monken said. “There’s no other way to put it; it can’t happen. Not with me who’s running it or us doing it – it’s just bad football. That’s what gave them life. They may say differently on that side, but if we just took a knee three times and punted it, we would’ve been better off than that. That’s an obvious; it can’t happen.”