For eight months, the Ravens have talked about becoming a different team when the game gets tight.

They fired John Harbaugh after 18 seasons. They hired one of the brightest defensive coaches in football. They replaced both coordinators and spent the summer ending practices with situations designed to teach the exact thing Baltimore had forgotten how to do. Finish.

Jesse Minter even gave the new era a perfect slogan: “Be at our best when our best is needed.”

Then the fourth quarter against New Orleans happened, and the Ravens looked a lot like the team they were supposed to leave behind.

Baltimore led 17–9 after three quarters. The defense had just knocked the Saints backward with back-to-back sacks. Then the offense took over at the New Orleans 49 with a chance to put the game away.

Instead, everything unraveled. The Ravens went backward, gave up two touchdown drives, barely touched the ball for the rest of the afternoon, and lost 24–17 after Lamar Jackson’s last pass landed in the arms of Saints safety Julian Blackmon.

New coach. New coordinators. Same deeply annoying ending.

This was only Minter’s second game, so treating it like proof that nothing changed would be ridiculous. But eight months later, the first loss of the Minter era forced Baltimore to confront an uncomfortable question:

What if the fourth-quarter problem was never just Harbaugh?

Baltimore Had The Game Exactly Where They Wanted It

The collapse didn’t start with the controversial quarterback sneak at the goal line. It started much earlier, when the Ravens kept getting chances to take control and kept letting them slip away.

Baltimore led 14–3 after Lamar Jackson found Rashod Bateman for a 22-yard touchdown with 28 seconds left in the first half. Then the special teams unit immediately gave New Orleans life, allowing Barion Brown to rip off a 53-yard kickoff return. The Saints turned that into a field goal before halftime.

So instead of walking into the locker room up 14–3, the Ravens were sitting on a one-possession lead.

After the Saints kicked off the second half with a field goal, Baltimore responded with a 16-play drive, but a sack on third-and-10 forced them to settle for a 49-yard field goal. Then they followed that up with Trey Hendrickson and Mike Green burrying Tyler Shough on back-to-back plays, forcing a punt from the Saints’ 9-yard line.

This was the moment.

The Ravens had the ball near midfield, an eight-point lead, and Derrick Henry in the backfield. One solid drive could’ve put the Saints in a real bind. A touchdown probably ends the game. Even a field goal would’ve forced a young quarterback to put together two scoring drives against a defense that had finally started getting pressure.

Instead, Chris Moore jumped early. A screen to Henry lost three yards. Jackson took a sack. Then, on third-and-26, he threw incomplete deep for Moore.

Baltimore took over at the Saints’ 49 and somehow ended up punting from their own 35.

From there, the Ravens ran 12 plays for 27 yards while they watched New Orleans score touchdowns on their last two drives. The Saints held the ball for 12:09 in the fourth quarter. Baltimore had it for just 2:51.

The Third-And-1 Call Wasn’t Even The Worst Part

Everybody's going to remember the deep shot.

With the game tied at 17, Baltimore had a third-and-1 from their own 37. Henry was in the backfield, which made the obvious answer feel almost too obvious. Give the 247-pound future Hall of Famer the ball. Get one yard, and move the chains.

First-time NFL play caller Declan Doyle called play-action and sent Moore deep instead.

Honestly, the call itself wasn’t insane. Jackson put the ball where it needed to be, and Kool-Aid McKinstry made an excellent play to break it up. If Moore holds on, Baltimore steals roughly 35 yards and everybody spends Monday praising Doyle for having some nerve.

but the worse decision came next.

If Baltimore believed enough in aggression to hunt a huge play on third-and-1, why did they immediately punt on fourth-and-1? The Ravens paired a high-risk third-down call with the safest possible fourth-down decision. The call to take a shot only makes sense if you're willing to go for it on 4th down.

Minter peeled back the curtain on that decision a bit after the game:

The play before, it was about one-and-a-half to two [yards] on the field. Not necessarily like one or a short one. I think if we would've been under, there were definitely some thoughts about making that a two-down situation. Once it was incomplete, defensively, we'd just really come off of one bad drive. I thought we had played okay for the game. I didn't feel like we were scrambling or reeling on defense. To even risk giving them the ball at the plus-36 in a tie game didn't feel like that was the right move. But again, you look back at it, and you say, 'Maybe we should've done this and done that.'

Henry finished with 16 carries for 68 yards and a touchdown, but only five of those carries came after halftime.

Minter said New Orleans was cheating defenders down to stop the run, creating opportunities to open the offense up. That’s the entire bargain of having Henry next to Jackson. Defenses have to choose what they’re willing to expose. Baltimore saw the loaded box, and tried to punish it.

But closing football games isn’t about winning the argument over one clever call. It’s about understanding the next decision too. If the deep shot is worth taking, fourth down has to be a go before the ball is snapped.

New Orleans took the punt and kept the ball for the next 6:38.

Minter’s Defense Couldn’t Win The Downs He Was Hired To Win

This is where the loss gets a lot harder to pin on the offense.

The Saints went 8-for-15 on third down and 2-for-2 on fourth down. Before the winning touchdown, they converted five of eight third-and-longs.

Early in the third quarter, the Saints were staring at a third-and-13 from their own 36. Shough found Juwan Johnson for 25 yards. On the first touchdown drive of the fourth quarter, he hit Chris Olave for 12 yards on third-and-5, then found him completely uncovered for a 21-yard score.

The last drive was somehow even worse.

Devaughn Vele caught a short pass on third-and-6 and got stopped one yard short. Shough converted the sneak on fourth down. Olave picked up three yards on third-and-2. Then the Ravens finally caught a break when Alvin Kamara lost four yards, creating the second-and-14 situation they desperately needed.

That should’ve been the negative play that finally ended the drive.

Two snaps later, on third-and-8, Minter sent six rushers. Shough got the ball out to Johnson, who caught it short and ran right through the defense for 25 yards. Hendrickson then added a roughing-the-passer penalty.

The Saints had already lost starting left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. late in the third quarter. Instead of taking advantage of the replacement, Baltimore never sacked Shough again. New Orleans adjusted with quick throws, and the Ravens just couldn’t connect the pressure with the coverage behind it.

Minter’s explanation Monday was pretty simple: Pressure is supposed to force a quick, short throw. Then the defense has to tackle before the sticks.

Baltimore didn’t do that. The Ravens lost leverage in the flat and took bad angles all quarter.

Shough went 12-of-14 for 119 yards and a touchdown in the fourth quarter. He had just 133 passing yards through the first three quarters.

Minter didn’t just drop into some soft prevent defense and let Shough casually throw underneath all afternoon. He mixed in four-man rushes with heavier pressure. The problem was that none of it worked.

When Baltimore rushed four on Olave’s touchdown, the coverage lost him. When they brought six on third-and-8, Johnson caught the first read and ran straight through the space the blitz left open.

This Just Can't Keep Happening

The easiest explanation for Baltimore’s old collapses was Harbaugh.

And honestly, that’s part of the job. When the same team keeps falling apart in the same moments, the guy in charge has to own some of that. Bisciotti said as much in January when he fired Harbaugh:

Factually, we led the league in giving up big leads in the fourth quarter. It’s not something that winning organizations do.

By then, the list had gotten ridiculous.

Miami erased a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit in 2022. The Giants came back from 10 down later that season. Jacksonville erased a nine-point lead in the fourth. Cleveland was down by 14 with 10 minutes left in 2023 and still won. Las Vegas erased a 10-point fourth-quarter lead in Baltimore in 2024.

Last season, Buffalo scored 16 points in the final four minutes to turn a 40–25 Baltimore lead into a 41–40 loss. New England came back from 11 down. Pittsburgh scored two late touchdowns in the season finale that eliminated the Ravens and effectively ended Harbaugh’s tenure.

And it wasn’t like the coaches underneath Harbaugh stayed the same. The playbooks changed. The pressure rates changed. The coverages changed.

The endings kept looking eerily familiar.

Sunday brought the full collection of hits back. A special-teams mistake cost them three points before halftime. The offense couldn’t turn good field position into points. The defense couldn’t get off the field. A penalty wiped out a failed two-point conversion. The head coach chose to punt. Jackson threw the game-ending interception.

Even the officiating controversy felt familiar. Shough’s fourth-and-goal sneak looked short from multiple angles, but the call on the field was touchdown, and replay couldn’t prove otherwise. Baltimore had every right to be furious about the ruling.

They just don't have the right to act like that one inch decided the game.

Two Games Aren’t A Verdict On Minter

There’s a reason the Ravens hired this guy.

In two seasons running the Chargers’ defense, Minter’s unit ranked third in points allowed, seventh in yards per play, and fifth against the pass. His defenses change the picture before the snap and create pressure without having to blitz all the time. He came back to Baltimore with a stronger resume and a roster that fits what he wants to do.

Week 1 showed why the Ravens liked the fit. They beat Indianapolis 41–23, piled up 506 yards, and forced two first-half turnovers. Doyle’s offense looked creative and explosive. Minter’s defense settled in after a shaky opening drive. Baltimore looked like a contender.

One ugly quarter against New Orleans doesn’t erase all of that. The Ravens were also without Zay Flowers, Ja’Kobi Lane, Nnamdi Madubuike, and Teddye Buchanan, and Ronnie Stanley left in the third quarter. There's also the very real possibility that the Saints might be just actually better than we all thought they'd be.

Minter doesn’t deserve blame for everything that happened before he got here. But the biggest part of his job right now is proving this stuff won’t keep happening. That was part of the pitch from the moment he walked into the building.

The Ravens take on the Cowboys at 4:25 p.m. in the NFL’s first-ever game in Brazil. The game will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+.

All stats courtesy of Fantasy Points Data.

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