Sunday Night Football in Kansas City couldn’t have started and ended worse for John Harbaugh. He entered the game with four starters down and exited with twice as many on the list, with a side of decade-long streak up in the flames. But the worst of it came in the third quarter.

During their first drive past halftime, as the Ravens trailed 10-27, QB Lamar Jackson took the snap on 3rd & 3 at KC 12. But when he dropped back for a handoff, Chiefs defensive end George Karlaftis sacked him good. It was the QB’s third one for the day. But the real punch in the gut arrived minutes later when Jackson limped off the field and never returned. Reports soon revealed that he had suffered a hamstring injury.

While Coach Harbaugh refused to elaborate on the play that injured his star player, he did hint at its seriousness. “There’s nothing that looks like it’s [going to be] season-ending, by any stretch, for anybody,” the coach said during the post-game presser. “But we’ll have to look at those injuries tomorrow and see where we’re at going forward.”

While Harbaugh’s update doesn’t call for a panic button, the concern still lingers. After the game, Jackson wasn’t made available to the media. Additionally, ESPN’s Jeff Darlington observed that watching the QB limp off suggested his absence to be more than precautionary.

If Jackson does end up missing a game following Monday’s evaluation, it will be his first since 2022. The QB had missed the final five regular-season games due to a knee injury back then, which resulted in 2-3 for the team. The Ravens, however, would like to avoid that scenario now. Any amount of time Lamar’s out is a full-blown crisis for this team.

The Ravens already have the league’s worst defense, coughing up an ugly 32 points a game. The QB was the duct tape holding this thing together, almost single-handedly putting up 30 a night. Before he limped off, Lamar was doing Lamar things. 722 yards, 9 TDs, and zero picks coming in, plus another 147 yards and a score tonight. In his absence, the onus falls on Cooper Rush.

The backup QB is expected to start for the Ravens if the 2x MVP doesn’t return. Rush has a career record of 9-5 as a starter and arrives as one of the most consistent QB backups. He says he has gotten more comfortable by the day in Baltimore after spending seven years with the Cowboys. “I’m really trying to show my current team I’m doing well,” he had said during the preseason. On Sunday, he kind of did. Rush completed nine of his 13 passes for 40 yards following Jackson’s exit. 

But this isn’t the only position of concern for Harbaugh. The Ravens saw the injury list shoot up to nine by the end of Sunday night:

•  Roquan Smith (hamstring)
•  Marlon Humphrey (calf)
• Nate Wiggins (elbow)
• Ronnie Stanley (ankle)
• Nnamdi Madubuike (neck)
• Broderick Washington (ankle)
•  Kyle Van Noy (hamstring)
•  Travis Jones (knee)

The chaos of the night led the Ravens to drop to 1-3 for the first time since 2015. The team had failed to make the playoffs after that, and if the injury bug keeps up either, Harbaugh cannot hope for much either. Moreover, his concerns don’t end with injuries and defensive lapses.

John Harbaugh calls out the locker room

The Ravens still have 13 games remaining to salvage their season and avoid repeating the disappointing campaign of 2015, but the worries seem to be never-ending for the team. Speaking about the delay-of-game penalties, Harbaugh said, “That’s really out of character for us… That’s surprising, but we’ve got to deal with it.”

He’s not wrong; this team absolutely shot itself in the foot. Early in the second quarter, they somehow racked up two delay-of-game flags on the same drive, wiping out plays and killing any momentum. By halftime, they had six penalties for 56 yards, three of them pre-snap mistakes that cost 15 yards on one brutal sequence.

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The worst part? This isn’t some random blip. Pre-snap screwups have haunted Baltimore for years. Here we are, even though they spent camp tinkering with cadences and extra reps to clean it up, finally. Same old Ravens, still beating themselves before the ball’s even snapped. There are way too many fixes that need to be done.