A trip to the AFC championship game — and possibly the Super Bowl — slipped through the Baltimore Ravens’ collective fingers.
Star quarterback Lamar Jackson lamented a litany of self-inflicted wounds during his team’s 27-25 playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills, on a dreary Sunday night in western New York that’ll haunt the Ravens for evermore.
Buffalo won the turnover battle, 3-0, wiping out Baltimore’s massive edge in total yards, 416-273.
Jackson blamed himself for an interception and a second quarter fumble in Bills territory that Buffalo cashed in for a touchdown.
“Tonight — the turnovers. We can’t have that s–t, you know? And that’s why we lost the game,” he told reporters. “As you could see, (we were) moving the ball wonderfully. Hold on to the f—ing ball. Sorry for my language.”
The night came to a painful end for Baltimore when the Ravens scored a late TD, drawing them within a 2-point conversion of tying it with 1:33 remaining.
And the Ravens appeared to design and execute the right play as Jackson lofted an easy toss to atar tight end Mark Andrews, who had lost a key fumble earlier in the fourth quarter.
The ball fluttered into the veteran’s breadbasket but he squeezed it too soon, as the pigskin fell harmlessly to the frozen Orchard Park turf.
Despite Jackson’s harsh critique of his team, he and coach John Harbaugh refused to blame Andrews for his two key errors.
“I’m not going to put that on Mark,” Jackson said. “He’s been battling all season. He’s been doing all the great things all season. It don’t always go our way.”
Andrews is one of the team’s most respected players. Last year he jumped into action on a Southwest Airlines flight, helping a woman in a medical emergency.
“We wouldn’t be here without Mark Andrews,” Harbaugh said. “Mark will handle it fantastically like he always does because he’s a high character person, he’s a tough person and he’s a good person.”
