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The best thing you could say about Lamar Jackson’s past three weeks was that the Ravens’ star quarterback was winning. So that’s what John Harbaugh went with.

What about Jackson’s flagging accuracy? “Finding ways to win the game, that’s what counts, that’s what matters,” the Ravens coach said last week, “and I think Lamar did a great job in both of those games of playing that kind of winning football.”

How about his mounting injury toll? “Well, I feel like Lamar is playing winning football in games that you have to find a way to do what’s required to win the game,” Harbaugh said Tuesday.

On Thursday, winning football became losing football, Jackson’s erratic form having curdled into something barely digestible and almost comprehensible. In a 32-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals at M&T Bank Stadium that ended the Ravens’ five-game winning streak and brief tie atop the AFC North, Jackson had one of his worst performances in recent memory, renewing concerns about the offense’s viability during a season-defining stretch.

The two-time NFL Most Valuable Player had costly turnovers — two fumbles and an unlucky interception. He had costly presnap issues, struggling to solve the Bengals’ recurring, heavy-pressure “Cover 0” looks. He had costly misses, his overthrows and underthrows raising questions about his fundamentals amid a string of lower-body injuries. Against a defense that entered Week 13 on track to be one of the worst in league history, Jackson looked overmatched and unprepared.

“The level of frustration — I’m ticked off,” Jackson said after finishing 17-for-32 for 246 yards and rushing six times for 27 yards. “It’s not even frustrating, I’m just mad because, like I said, we can’t have that. And the turnovers are a big part of winning, losing games. Turning the ball over, giving them an extra possession, this is the outcome.”

The Ravens (6-6) finished with five turnovers, their most since Jackson’s arrival in 2018, and a handful of other self-inflicted miseries. Tight end Isaiah Likely was a yard away from a 44-yard catch-and-run score in the second quarter — he fumbled the ball out of the side of the end zone instead, turning a touchdown into a touchback. Wide receiver Zay Flowers had a 36-yard touchdown catch six minutes later — until an official deemed he’d pushed off, earning a pass interference penalty. The Ravens had the Bengals (4-8) facing third-and-9 in field goal range twice in the third quarter — and gave up touchdown passes to quarterback Joe Burrow on both.

But the game swung mostly on Jackson’s performance, as it so often has in this series. Last year, he bedeviled the Bengals and outgunned Burrow in two shootout wins, accounting for 726 yards of total offense, eight touchdowns and just one turnover.

On Thursday, Jackson was not the best quarterback on the field. He could not summon his force-multiplier abilities. The game’s three most impactful plays in terms of win probability, according to analytics website RBSDM.com, all came on grave mistakes he was party to.

Late in the first quarter, with the Ravens leading 7-3 after an opening-drive touchdown, Bengals defensive end Joseph Ossai slipped through the right side of the Ravens’ offensive line. Jackson felt pressure, tried to scramble to his left, away from the heat, then watched as Ossai jarred the ball loose from behind, Jackson’s fifth fumble this year. Cincinnati recovered the bouncing ball at the Ravens’ 2. The Ravens’ win probability sank from 82% to 70%. (A defensive stand promptly turned away the Bengals at the goal line.)

Late in the second quarter, with the Bengals ahead 9-7 and the Ravens looking for a quick score before halftime, Jackson took a shotgun snap and a deep drop. He said he saw Flowers running a post route against a “Cover 2” defense, a good way to beat a two-high zone.

But, as Jackson wound up to throw, doubt crept in: Was there a linebacker dropping into the middle-of-the-field window Flowers was running to? Jackson tried to pull the ball back. He lost the ball again. The Bengals recovered it again. The Ravens’ win probability plummeted from 61% to 45%. Cincinnati would go on to tack on another field goal.

“I didn’t want to just throw it blindly,” said Jackson, who finished without a touchdown pass for the third straight game, a career-long drought.

The game’s most impactful play came early in the fourth quarter, with the Ravens trailing 26-14 but finally back in the red zone. On third-and-9, the Bengals were showing “Cover 0,” an all-out-blitz look with no deep safeties that had already ended one promising second-quarter drive with an unblocked sack.

On paper, Jackson had a solution: He would motion Likely over, into the pass protection, just before the snap, freezing Likely’s defender in coverage and giving the offense another blocker.

In practice, the play worked out differently. Likely was steamrolled by defensive end Myles Murphy, who got a hand up as Jackson targeted tight end Mark Andrews on a crosser for what should’ve been a touchdown pass. Jackson’s ball ricocheted off Murphy’s hand, fluttered into the air and fell comfortably into the grasp of rookie linebacker Demetrius Knight Jr. The Ravens’ win probability cratered, slipping from 23% to 7%. They never again reached the red zone.

“When you turn the ball over as much as we did tonight, that’s the story of the game,” said Harbaugh, whose Ravens finished with five turnovers for the first time since 2013. “We just can’t do it. You can’t do it if you want to win football games.”

Thursday night was supposed to be a get-right game in Baltimore. Jackson was coming back from a toe injury that surfaced in Sunday’s ugly win over the New York Jets and that sidelined him at Monday’s walk-through practice, but the Bengals’ defensive issues were more pronounced. All season long, they’d struggled to tackle, struggled to rush the passer, struggled to stop tight ends. Opponents had scored on nearly half of their drives against Cincinnati, the NFL’s highest rate.

The Ravens, mired in an offensive morass since Week 10, could not level up. Instead, they played down to the Bengals’ level. They converted three of their 10 third-down opportunities, allowed three sacks and scored on just two of their 12 drives (excluding a kneel-down). Their 39% success rate was the lowest of any offense that’s faced Cincinnati this season, according to RBSDM.com. Yes, worse than the Cleveland Browns.

“Not enough production,” left tackle Ronnie Stanley said. “We weren’t finishing the drives. Too many mistakes. A lot of the things that we’ve been battling.”

The Ravens will go only as far as Jackson takes them. Even Thursday, there were glimmers of hope for the offense’s final five weeks of the regular season. He looked quicker, more elusive, more confident about beating second-level defenders to the edge. He threw a couple of downfield strikes.

But, as new flaws (ball security) rise to the surface for Jackson, old problems (accuracy) come and go. Asked whether this season’s hamstring, knee, ankle and toe injuries have compromised his throwing mechanics — he finished under 60% for the fourth straight game Thursday — Jackson shook his head.

“No, I’ve been throwing like that all this time,” he said. “I just have to be consistent.”

The playoffs are still within reach for Jackson and the Ravens. According to The New York Times’ playoff simulator, they have about 73% odds of winning the AFC North ahead of their crucial Week 14 meeting with the Pittsburgh Steelers (6-5), who face the Buffalo Bills on Sunday.

But a third straight division title requires winning football. Jackson has long been the most crucial ingredient in that formula for success, the Ravens’ biggest reason for optimism. Safety Kyle Hamilton on Thursday likened the pressure and expectations around Jackson to those around LeBron James.

Teammates, at least publicly, said they still trust Jackson with the ball in his hands. But too often the offense can slog through stretches that feel like an experiment with an unstable variable. The Ravens will need Jackson to get right, and fast. They saw how wrong things can turn when he’s not.

“People are quick to criticize and jump to conclusions,” Hamilton said. “But you have a tough two-, three-game stretch, and you don’t really get any leeway there if you’re Lamar Jackson. He doesn’t care about any of that. He’s just trying to do what’s best for this team, so we can win football games. I know that, I see it on a daily basis, and I know he’ll get it right. I’m not worried about that at all.”