When the Ravens got blown out by the Bills on Sunday, it wasn’t just another ugly loss. It was the latest reminder that Baltimore’s second-half defense has been a mess, and the people around the league noticed.
The Bills rolled to a 36-10 win, averaged 7.5 yards per play in the second half, and never had Josh Allen under real pressure. That came after a game in which the Ravens’ lack of pass protection and shaky play-calling helped contribute to three quarterbacks getting injured in roughly a 12-play stretch, an unusually chaotic sequence that only added to the frustration.
The bigger issue, though, is that this was supposed to be the fix. Baltimore cleaned house on the coaching side, brought in Jesse Minter as head coach and defensive play caller, and then made a major swing for Trey Hendrickson, handing him $60 million over two years after first backing away from a deal for Maxx Crosby. Minter called Hendrickson his “closer,” but the way things have played out, that label has aged badly.
Around the league, there was already skepticism about Hendrickson’s market because of his recent injury history and the way his Bengals tenure ended with holdouts, hold-ins and limited impact. Baltimore’s handling of the Crosby situation only added to the noise.
After Sunday night’s loss, one NFL general manager summed it up in one word: “Karma,” he noted from how they handled Crosby. A longtime NFL head coach watching the game said the same thing: “Karma is real,” he noted.
Whatever word you want to use, Year 1 with Hendrickson has been a disaster.
He has disappeared in the fourth quarter all season, and by Week 9, the year is basically over. Anything he does from here on out will come in garbage time. Instead of closing games, Baltimore has kept finding new ways to lose them, including a string of second-half collapses that have become a familiar theme.
Hendrickson has not delivered the kind of impact Baltimore paid for. He got hurt in his first game with the Ravens, his production dipped, he later missed time after a surgical procedure, and he has just as many sacks as Roquan Smith - two. He has not produced a defining moment, and in his so-called revenge game against the Bengals, he was completely neutralized.
The numbers back up the split in his performance. Hendrickson is producing a pass-rush rate near 21% in the first half of games.
In the fourth quarter, he has only five pressures on 43 pass-rush reps, which works out to 12%. Baltimore has just three fourth-quarter sacks as a team, with Ethan Burke, safety Malaki Starks and Tavius Robinson listed there, though Robinson is on IR.
That’s why the Ravens may need to rethink how they use him. He has been effective early, but not late, and the injury history makes a lighter workload make sense.
The Ravens rank 27th in pressure rate as a team in the fourth quarter, and Hendrickson is not changing games in those spots. He may need to be treated like a designated pass rusher, no matter what Baltimore paid.
Wink Martindale, who knows Hendrickson well from his time with the Bengals and helped create the defense Minter is running, put it bluntly on the show: “Going against him when he was with the Bengals I think he is a very good pass rusher, and that's it,” Martindale told me on the show. “That's what he is.
I think he's a third down, second-and-long type guy because he wants to get to the quarterback. The problem is, when they're playing in these games, especially with (backup) Snoop (Huntley) at quarterback, they've got the whole playbook that they're facing.
“They're not getting leads where people have to throw the ball to get back in the game. And when you get selfish, and you're rushing a passer on a run play, it exposes players.
And that's what I'm seeing. That's what I'm seeing with him.”
Baltimore also has to reckon with how it built the rest of the front. DeCosta used a second-round pick on edge run defender Zion Young instead of addressing the center spot, despite having a chance to do so. The result is a roster that still needs help, and a pass rusher who looks much more like a specialist than the every-down force Baltimore wanted.
The Ravens are getting pushed around more, not less, and the league is starting to adjust accordingly. The idea of Hendrickson as a game-closing weapon has already faded. The Ravens aren’t getting $10 million of value out of him this year, let alone $30 million, and they’re stuck with the contract next season too.
Turns out Baltimore started getting De Costa-ed before the season even began.
In Other News...
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Jesse Minter Sounds Off As Ravens Collapse Keeps Getting Worse
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Head coach Jesse Minter did not hide his frustration afterward, pointing specifically to the second half as the part of the performance that fell short. He acknowledged the challenge of the current situation, but the bigger concern now is how quickly the Ravens can steady themselves before the seasons problems keep compounding. [Read more 🡒]