Ravens Loss Shows How Much Is Up for Grabs in AFC North

The Baltimore Ravens' possession of the top spot in the AFC North was a short-lived affair, one that ended with a 27-24 loss on Sunday to the Cincinnati Bengals. The Ravens have now been swept by the Bengals and are 2-2 in the division.

The divisional win-loss record matters heavily for the Ravens. The division is tight, with all of its four teams boasting a better-than-.500 record. Three teams, including the Ravens, have two divisional losses, while the Bengals, who have only played the Ravens in the AFC North thus far, are a spotless 2-0.

Baltimore has just two AFC North matchups remaining this season, with a road game against the Pittsburgh Steelers coming up on Sunday night and a home game against the Cleveland Browns to close out the year. In between are other challenging contests, such as a road game against the New Orleans Saints in Week 12 followed by a home game against the San Diego Chargers.

The AFC North is up for grabs, and nothing illustrates that as well in Week 8 than the Ravens' loss to the Bengals. 

The game was an example of how little mistakes and missteps can lead to a loss. And in the AFC North, when little mistakes and missteps lead to a loss, they can change the course of a season. The Ravens seemed to have the division in hand—just defeat the Bengals in Week 8 and follow that up with a win over the Steelers in Week 9 and ownership of the toughest division's top spot would be theirs.

Both the Ravens and Bengals turned the ball over twice in the contest, with Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco's throwing two interceptions and Cincinnati quarterback Andy Dalton's throwing one and fumbling the ball away once. 

All four of those four turnovers resulted in points. The Bengals scored a touchdown and then a field goal on Flacco's two interceptions, which happened on back-to-back possessions, while the Ravens had a touchdown on Dalton's fumble and a field goal after the interception.

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However, there was another Ravens turnover that was truly the team's first big misstep of the game—a turnover on downs on 4th-and-goal at the Bengals' 1-yard line. Instead of taking the sure-thing points via a Justin Tucker field goal (he's missed just three all year), the Ravens threw a pass to Kamar Aiken that went incomplete.

While going for it on 4th-and-1 at the 1-yard line is not a bad decision, the choice of play—the pass to an undrafted rookie who ranks seventh in Ravens receiving yards—was baffling. An 18-play, 89-yard drive yielded Baltimore zero points. All that sound and fury, signifying nothing, down 7-0 on the road, is not a good start to the day.

That choice to not attempt the field goal haunts even more with the Ravens having lost by three points. Hindsight is 20/20, yes, but had the Ravens scored those three points there could have been overtime and another chance to win the game. 

Al Behrman/Associated Press

Nothing about the AFC North has made much sense this year. The Bengals opened the year 3-0 before losing two games and tying one after the bye, opening things up for the Ravens to ascend. In that span, the Ravens won two games and lost one, with both wins being of the convincing double-digit variety.

Meanwhile, the Browns, who had a bye in Week 4 just as the Bengals did, had two wins and a loss before defeating the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 8. One of those wins was quite convincing—a 31-10 defeat of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Steelers too had two wins and a loss between Weeks 5 and 7 and then came up big against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 8, defeating them 51-34. The Colts, mind you, had five straight wins before that loss, two of which came over the Ravens and the Bengals.

That's how tight things are in this division and how difficult it is to make sense of who could come away as its leader once Week 17 wraps. The second half of the season will be crucial for all four teams. The Ravens being 2-2 against their AFC North counterparts hurts them even more at present than the Bengals' tie with the Carolina Panthers.

Team	Overall Record	AFC North Record
Cincinnati Bengals	4-2-1	2-0
Baltimore Ravens	5-3	2-2
Pittsburgh Steelers	5-3	1-2
Cleveland Browns	4-3	1-2

We have seen the Ravens play very good football this year with only a little bad peppered in. They didn't play terribly against the Bengals in Week 8, but they didn't do enough to win. There were the two turnovers, which can dash any team's hopes of winning. 

The Bengals also turned the ball over twice, however, so that doesn't entirely explain the Ravens' loss. Instead, there were failures of execution that ultimately doomed them. The choice to pass to Aiken rather than kick the field goal is just one example.

Another is how the passing game struggled, particularly in the second half. Flacco threw 34 passes on the day, with 18 attempts in the first half and 16 in the second. In the first half, he completed 10 of those 18 passes; in the second, he completed only seven, ending the day with a completion percentage of 50, 195 yards and no passing scores.

Torrey Smith was conspicuously absent from the passing offense. After two redemptive weeks in which he caught seven of 10 passes thrown to him for 132 yards and three touchdowns, he had no targets against the Bengals. Though he did leave at one point while being tested for a possible concussion, he did return. 

Steve Smith Sr. was also conspicuous in the game and not for a positive reason. With under a minute left to play and the Ravens down by three points, Flacco targeted Smith Sr. deep. He caught the pass but shoved Bengals safety George Iloka down in the process. What would have been a game-winning touchdown thus yielded a drive-killing offensive pass-interference penalty.

Plays like this are major turning points in games. But in a tight division, plays like this can be turning points in the season. Smith's penalty, the pass to Aiken, Flacco's low completion percentage—one of these things changes and the Bengals could be 4-3-1, the Ravens 6-3.

The good news is that there is still a lot of season left for the Ravens. The bad news is that the same can be said for the other three teams in the AFC North. The division hinges on the little things right now, so the Ravens have to work doubly hard to prevent the little things that led to their loss on Sunday going forward. The margin for error is extremely slim.