The Baltimore Ravens have been trying to convince their fans for years that they are a premier organization despite mustering one meaningful playoff run in all of Lamar Jackson’s 20s and despite churning through coordinators and since Eric DeCosta took over as general manager and despite missing the playoffs last year and looking like an afterthought by Halloween this year.

Terms like “Play Like a Raven” and all of their claims about their “winning culture” are landing with a thud both with fans and a growing number of former star players and coaches lashing out at this regime on social media and on “The Daily Flock Show” (Wink Martindale and Marvin Lewis, for starters).  They have the NFL’s worst projected 2027 salary cap situation and a remarkably-bloated payroll in which most of their highest-paid players are their least productive players.

It’s a total mess,  their 4-5 record flatters them (they had arguably the easiest schedule in the NFL the first six weeks), and they have four straight losses (outscored 117-43); they have scored 14 points or less in four straight games for the first time ever, while allowing 33 or more in three straight. The idea that Jackson is going to come back from a consecutive major injuries and try to rescue them in mid December given his dubious contract situation (quite a bind DeCosta put the franchise in), strikes the NFL at large as truly laughable.

It’s hard to find much to be bullish on nine games into a new staff that lacked any semblance of what any Super Bowl coaching staff would ever look like (it actually has more in common with tanking Miami than any in the NFL), working for a front office that scapegoated a slew of former coaches only for its roster to be utterly exposed for yet another year.

Front Office: F-

Yeah, John Harbaugh had to go because the message had worn out, but the league knew Jesse Mintner was almost certain to get this job, no one with former head coaching experience was a part of their finalists and now the Ravens are the worst second-half team in the NFL – that’s coaching and that’s on DeCosta and Sashi Brown who oversaw this, and owner Steve Bisciotti who gave them free reign.

Brown said when Minter was hired: “We're at an important time for our locker room. We know we have the talent to go out and pursue championships now. When we set out to find our new coach, we wanted to make sure that we were very serious about bringing a great leader, but also a great person to this organization, to our locker room, and we found that in Jesse Minter, ”

The locker room is a bigger disaster than ever, Minter was openly wondering who his leaders were by October, he has made zero adjustments to change games or the direction of the season. The roster is bad, keeping Marlon Humphrey for $19.3M instead of paying him $4M to go away was always kinda nuts (we tried to help them in April), running a $370M payroll with almost no playmakers on either side of the ball is a bitter pill for fans and doubling down on a bad situation by sending a second-round pick for a concussed offensive lineman was silly in real-time.

Jesse Minter: D

The injuries are tough but this is an attrition sport.  He was billed as a defensive savant who would fix their coverages and bring the best out of a secondary literally loaded with DeCosta’s first-round picks. They have the second-worst opposer passer rating in the second half and his dime coverages were destroyed by bad QBs and the one thing he couldn’t do was blow a double-digit second half lead in his first home game given that DeCosta’s rosters have made a nasty habit of doing it and it was a big reason why Harbaugh and former defensive coordinator Zach Orr were fired.

We all know how that played out against the lowly Saint and then got way too close for comfort against the lowly Titans.

Minter has been demonstrably worse than Orr was last year The lack of second-half adjustments has been staggering and the fact that he allowed an offensive staff with zero coaches with a proven coordinator pedigree to be constructed around him was a big fail. The fact he has a 4-5 record is keeping him from an F but the reality is, he is so overmatched trying to be an NFL head coach he has turned into one of the worst defensive coordinators in the NFL (the fact the Chargers defense he left is markedly better than this one in Baltimore should be giving the honchos in The Castle significant pause).

He needed more help all along and it was clear after 3-4 games he was over his head and Martindale and'or Lewis should have been on this staff.

Offense: D

It was an A with Jackson against really bad teams for a few weeks, but it’s been a total failure without him and when we are heading to Week 10 on what was supposed to be a loaded Super Bowl team and literally two people on offense are meeting or exceeding expectations (Zay Flowers and rookie guard Vega Ioane), that's a D at best.

Flowers is somehow more of a one-man show now more than ever. No one else on the team has 300 receiving yards, no one else gets YAC and the Ravens have produced 10 total points in the second half the last four weeks. Rookie coordinator Declan Doyle needs to get out of the press box and down to the sideline and someone needs to tell him that trying to script the entire game before it starts isn’t the answer, either.

Oh, and Derrick Henry is averaging a ridiculous 3.4 yards/carry the last four weeks and the run game is cooked with Jackson making it go. The decision to give Mark Andrews the money Isaiah Likely wouldn't take before hitting the open market would be enough to get DeCosta fired in a truly competitive front office but the owner claims he "bats .800" with transactions, so whatever.

Defense: F

None of their highest-paid players are performing anywhere close to how they are being paid.  They are already making excuses for Hendrickson’s staggering lack of fourth-quarter production after anointing him THE CLOSER. Even Kyle Hamilton has had a muted presence, he hasn’t been deployed to help a limp pass rush enough and hasn’t showed up in the pass game hardly at all.

Minter was supposed to be the guy to develop all these draft picks. After proving he can lead the NFL in second-half points allowed through nine weeks he needs to show that TJ Tampa can be a starting corner and figure out if Trenton Simpson or Teddye Buchanan can wear the green dot next season and get second-round pick Zion Young on the field much more. This was supposed to be the group that hit the ground running with Minter running a defense very close to Mike Macdonald’s Baltimore defense that led the NFL in points allowed, sacks and takeaways in 2023.

Special Teams: C-

The Ravens have been on the look for a weapon in the return game for years … that continues. They continue to succumb to silly penalties on teams at the worst times. With an undrafted rookie QB playing on a badly taped ankle on a short week in the rain against the NFL’s second-best scoring defense they failed to provide field position.

Oh, Tyler Loop, a 2025 draft pick, has yet to establish himself as an NFL kicker – on field goals or kickoffs – and was probably getting benched for Jake Moody if he didn’t hurt his groin. The rookie punter will be a work in progress. This was an area in which Harbaugh, a former special teams coach, took a lot of heat but it remains an area of concern.

Subscribe To "The Daily Flock" On YouTube For Urgent Ravens Conversations: