Knee-Jerk Reactions: Texans 44 Ravens 10

The Ravens lost to the Houston Texans 44-10 in Week 5 to fall to 1-4. RSR staff react to the loss here.

Rob Shields

Pathetic.  That’s all that needs to be said.

Injuries mean a lot but this game never should have gotten out of hand.  The idea was to run it a lot, keep the defense off the field and rested. There was no innovation in the offense. Where was Tyler Huntley to run some Lamar-like run options?  They looked unprepared and had no life.

Pathetic effort in all phases.

Season isn’t over even if it looks like it but a lot has to change and health isn’t the only factor.

Derek Arnold

What can you even say at this point? The injuries excuse losing; they don’t excuse getting blown out on your home field by a team that had struggled to score all season. The defense looks slow and uninterested, the offense looks uninspired, special teams hurts more than they help, and the boneheaded penalties and mistakes just keep piling up.

There’s no question these aren’t coaching issues, but we know better than to expect any shake-ups. I had a slight bit of optimism heading into this one, for the sole reason that games like this have always been Harbs’ wheelhouse. Now it’s obvious that he’s totally lost the ability to motivate this roster.

1-5 at the bye is overwhelmingly likely. Woof.

Kevin McNelis

In our Bold Predictions column, I made a reference to The Shawshank Redemption and its quotes about how dangerous hope can be. This game was all of the Shawshank and none of the redemption.

This team now no longer has the excuse of “Sure they’ve been blown out, but those losses have come against really talented teams!” I’m not trying to sell Houston short, they’re just not in the stratosphere of teams like Detroit and Buffalo, and they just humiliated the Ravens at home.

I’ve never seen a Ravens team that looks this lost. The coaching staff looks like they’re phoning it in on play calls half the time. The players are missing assignments, with the defense looking like they don’t even know what those assignments are half the time.

It’s nice to see the few players that look like they do want it (shoutout to you, D Hop). For the most part, it looks like the squad as a whole is checked out. The prudent move would be to burn this thing down and his the reset button with just the core players remaining, words I NEVER thought I would be saying when this year started.

John Hughey

Things just appear to go from bad to worse, week after week. For the fourth time in five games this season, the Ravens defense surrendered 30+ points. They entered Week 5 extremely banged up, but that didn’t excuse the lack of will to be there. Cooper Rush was never expected to put up spectacular stat line, but the underwhelming performance both on the ground and through the air for the Ravens offense, has put them down in a 1-4 hole to begin the season. They’ve got a dangerous Rams squad next week, before entering a much needed bye week. Things need to change, and change quickly if the Ravens hope to save their season. Could we finally see some sort of coaching change during the week?

Jared Pinder

Whenever you think it can’t get worse, the 2025 Baltimore they say “hold my beer.” Yes, they had a pro bowl roster of inactives, but it goes way beyond that. Zach Orr is terrible, and water is wet. We understand this but John Harbuagh honestly needs to go. I don’t want to hear about injuries either, this team stinks and it shouldn’t be this way.

Nearly 20 years ago an injury-riddled year caused the Ravens to fire their Super Bowl-winning head coach. Now history has to repeat itself, Harbuagh has lost the locker room and they don’t deserve to have the moniker of the Ravens at this point. Orr will get fired, probably after the Rams throttle them next week, but John deserves the axe as well.

Nick Polinsky

To start the season the Ravens were odds-on favorites to win the whole thing. After five weeks they’re 1-4 with a laundry list of injuries.

As soon as the Ravens fell behind and no longer had time to establish Derrick Henry, I knew it was over. There is no way you can win these games if you don’t have a run game. The Ravens were beat in time of possession and it got ugly real quick.

Zach Orr doesn’t have much to work with at this point, but the problems began long before the injuries piled up and I feel like this has to be his last game as the Ravens defensive coordinator.

Tyler Huntley should get the start next week. At least watching when he had to replace an injured Lamar was fun.

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