Defensively, the Ravens are determined to look in the mirror until they like what they see.
Losing a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter and giving up 41 points to the Buffalo Bills in Week 1 is still fresh in the minds of players and coaches. The subpar performance has led to some frank conversations, and Pro Bowl cornerback Marlon Humphrey said Head Coach John Harbaugh and Defensive Coordinator Zach Orr have delivered strong messages.
"Z.O. made it very clear," Humphrey said. "We're not going to be repeat offenders. It's not going to be a situation where somebody's been doing something wrong and nothing gets said. If you're doing things right, you're going to play. If you're not doing things right, you're not going to play."
Baltimore will enter Sunday's home opener against the Cleveland Browns after giving up the most points and total yards (497) in the NFL during Week 1. The Ravens don't want a repeat of last season, when they started 0-2, allowed too many big plays, and didn't iron out their defensive issues until the second half of the season.
Following Wednesday's practice, Humphrey said Harbaugh had an emphatic message during a meeting this week.
"He said we're just not mature enough as a team yet," Humphrey said. "It's very clear we've got great players on both sides of the ball, but defensively, we have to work on our maturity, too. It doesn't matter what our offense is doing. We have to go up there and win the game, and, right now, our maturity level, sadly, when we get in those situations, it's just not enough."
The Ravens have five players on defense who were Pro Bowlers last season - Humphrey, Roquan Smith, Kyle Hamilton, Nnadmi Madubuike, and Kyle Van Noy. However, Humphrey believes there are times when the Ravens are so eager to make a play, they try to do things individually rather than collectively.
"I think everyone wants to make a play," Humphrey said. "Do your job, and if the play comes to you, it comes to you. Working on that maturity comes in practice.
"We're in the perfect calls for a lot of the things that happened, and we didn't execute the calls properly. That's why the loss hurt so bad, because we knew exactly what they were going to do in a couple different situations, and all 11 guys couldn't get together."
Outside linebacker Odafe Oweh said the intensity level of the defense dropped after Baltimore took its 15-point lead against the Bills. That mistake proved costly against a quarterback of Josh Allen's caliber, who threw for 397 yards, 251 of which came in the fourth quarter, and rallied Buffalo to victory.
"We took our foot off the gas," Oweh said. "We knew how much we don't like the team, how much we wanted to really dominate them coming into the game. That's why we started beating them out a lot. But we got complacent. We thought we had already won the game way too early, and we took our foot off the gas. That's a good team. You can't do stuff like that."
The defensive players met for dinner this week, something they had planned even before the Buffalo game. But instead of celebrating a victory, the conversation turned to what went wrong and how to fix it.
"I don't need to express what was said, but things were talked about," Van Noy said. "We have to turn the page and focus on the Browns and make sure that we don't start like last year. 1-1 sounds a lot better than 0-2."
Humphrey talked this summer about establishing the Ravens’ defensive identity early and forcing more turnovers. Instead, Baltimore didn't have a takeaway in Week 1 and surrendered the most points in the NFL.
That wasn't the defensive start the Ravens expected, but they still have 16 games left to fix things. Humphrey doesn't want to wait. He's expecting to see a change Sunday against the Browns.
"The current problem on the team is the defense," Humphrey said. "I think we're together. I think we flushed last week, and we're onto things ahead."
