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---, 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 star 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 criticism 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."
Andrews' failed 2-point grab put him on the shortlist of the most notable drops in NFL history.
- Dallas tight end Jackie Smith was wide open in the end zone when Roger Staubach's pass hit him in the numbers and fell incomplete during the Pittsburgh Steelers' 35-31 Super Bowl win in 1979.
- Wes Welker, one of the favorite targets of all-time great QB Tom Brady, dropped a key pass in the New York Giants' 21-17 upset of New England in the 2012 title game. The flub famously led to Brady's then-wife, Gisele Bündchen, to rant after the game: “My husband cannot f---ing throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can’t believe they dropped the ball so many times.”
- A wounded-duck pass appeared to float easily into the arms of San Francisco 49ers safety Jaquiski Tartt for a clinching interception of the NFC title game of 2022. But he dropped it, opening a door for the Los Angeles Rams to win the game and then the Super Bowl two weeks later.
Andrews was not available for comment Sunday after the game.
