Though it's only Week 1, it's hard to imagine a team will suffer a more heartbreaking loss during the 2025 NFL season than the Baltimore Ravens' stunning collapse against the Buffalo Bills.
After battling early in a showdown with major playoff seeding implications, John Harbaugh's squad took a commanding lead after the half, going up 40-25 with 11:42 to play in the fourth quarter while watching their win probability grow dangerously close to 100 percent.
And yet, for one reason or another, the Ravens took their foot off the gas, and the Bills capitalized on it, scoring 16 unanswered points, including a walk-off field goal to secure the win.
Asked about the Ravens' unsettling recent trend of losing games where they had a double-digit lead, Harbaugh noted that while his team has won plenty of similar contests, he does see the issue and wants to work on getting it fixed.
“Maybe part of it's the fact that we've been ahead a lot. We've won a lot of games, and we've had a lot of two-score leads. We've kept a lot of those, but I think we've lost six of them, if I'm not mistaken. That's too many. I don't care how many two-score leads you have. I do believe that we need to be really thoughtful of how we decide that we're going to approach those situations going forward. Let's give it some thought. Let's give some thought to our play-calling,” Harbaugh told reporters.
“Let's give some thought to our defensive play-calling. Let's give some thought to our mindset, like how we're going to talk to one another. We're two scores up. We're trying to keep a lead against Josh Allen or any of these great quarterbacks in this league. What's our mindset on defense? How are we going to approach this? How are we going to talk to one another on the sideline to try to find a way to get the win? It becomes kind of a situation, a game scenario, that we need to be really intentional about going forward.”
As a team with a reputation of never quite showing up on the grandest stage, the Ravens' loss to the Bills only adds fuel to that fire. Fortunately, because the loss came in Week 1, Baltimore has plenty of time to get back on track, work on their double-digit scoring offense, and hopefully correct those issues before the playoffs, when they could again see the Bills in Buffalo in a much more consequential contest.
