The Ravens blew a 15-point lead in a maddening, absurdly entertaining 41-40 loss to the Buffalo Bills. Here are five things we learned from the game (four of which should help buoy you as you look to the weeks ahead.)

1. Rarely has a great team tortured its own fans so routinely

Could the Ravens maybe try getting blown out?

The last time they won the Super Bowl, they lost by 30 at Houston and 17 at home against Denver. Those were demoralizing defeats, sure, but cleansing for a veteran team that knew how to look in the mirror and repair itself.

The exquisite anguish of what we witnessed Sunday night in Buffalo was something else entirely.

Anyone can see that at their best, the Ravens of Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry and Kyle Hamilton are the most fearsome engine in football.

The Bills, led by reigning NFL Most Valuable Player Josh Allen, are a splendid, resilient team looking to bury their own vexing legacy of playoff shortcomings. They did not lose once in 10 home games last season. No one will be shocked if they finally hoist the Lombardi Trophy in five months.

But for more than three quarters Sunday, these excellent Bills could not keep up with the Ravens. Impossible as it was to put a stake through Allen’s heart, Jackson came up with better answers time and again. Whether that meant handing the ball to Henry, flinging it to Zay Flowers and DeAndre Hopkins or keeping it himself, Jackson’s options felt boundless.

The Ravens scored on seven of their first eight possessions. They averaged more than nine yards per play. They had moved the ball efficiently in going 1-1 against Buffalo last season, but they hit another level this time around.

How could such a magnificent machine go off the rails with a 15-point lead and less than a quarter to go?

Ravens fans know by now how dangerous a question that is with this group.

All spring and summer, the Ravens preached not beating themselves. They implemented a new grading system for every practice, designed to reinforce ball security and minimize penalties.

When it came time to protect their advantage in Buffalo, they knew all too well the types of plays they had to avoid. And still, they did it again.

A third-down interference penalty by cornerback Nate Wiggins extended a Bills drive to cut the margin to eight. Fine. If the Ravens held onto the ball and kept moving on offense, they’d be fine.

Jackson scooted 13 yards around left end to jumpstart their next drive. All, good, right? Then he handed to Henry, who’d been so brilliant in rolling up 169 yards on 18 carries. The ball popped loose — the only turnover of the night from a guy who fumbled all of three times in 344 touches last season.

“It’s a big emphasis, especially in our room with the running backs: taking care of the football, keeping it high and tight,” Henry said. “I got lackadaisical. They made a play, but I put this loss on me.”

From there, the result seemed preordained: a quick Buffalo touchdown drive, followed by an achingly conservative three-and-out — with that potent an offense, go for it on fourth-and-3 — from the Ravens, followed by a game-winning march against an exhausted, toothless Baltimore secondary.

We just did this, right? Processing a failure by one of the team’s pillars — in January, it was tight end Mark Andrews — at a critical juncture against opportunistic Buffalo.

This defeat, unlike that one, wasn’t final. The Ravens have 16 regular-season games and probably the playoffs to go. They’ll surely suck us back in with dominant wins against strong opponents.

“We’re disappointed,” coach John Harbaugh said. “But we’ll be fine.”

That’s the sane way to look at it, of course. But this defeat was not irrelevant. It could be the difference between having to play the Bills in Buffalo instead of Baltimore in a playoff rematch. Beyond that practical consequence lies the Groundhog Day feeling that this team cannot stop finding its way back to the same pitfalls. They’re the best in the world until that inevitable, sickening moment when they’re not.

2. The Ravens’ offense really is something to see

The Bills had just cut the lead to nine with an 84-yard touchdown drive, highlighted by a spectacular 51-yard catch-and-run from Pro Bowl running back James Cook. The home team was alive and wriggling off the Ravens’ hook.

With the Baltimore offense facing third-and-10, Jackson dashed the wrong way, feeling a pair of mammoth rushers closing in.

We should have known he had the Bills precisely where he wanted them.

How many times have we seen it, this football sorcerer’s unmatched gift for spinning something beautiful out of an unhinged mess? In this case, Jackson danced free to turn a potential double-digit loss into a 19-yard first down. On the very next play, he handed to the ageless Henry, who glided away from the Buffalo defense, 46 yards to make it 40-25, Ravens.

That’s the football version of being disemboweled, and it happened to a team that is many pundits’ pick to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl next February.

What have we learned from three Ravens-Bills games over the last two seasons? That if the Ravens avoid turnovers, they’re too explosive even for the spectacular Allen to match. They’re that good.

The Ravens ran for 176 yards in their Jan. 19 playoff loss to Buffalo. They would have matched that in the first half Sunday if not for a hefty loss by Justice Hill on their last drive before the break. In Jackson and Henry, they have the two most dangerous runners in the conference, making it easier for one another with every terrifying manipulation of the defense.

When it was time for Jackson to go to the air, he found Flowers in space repeatedly and connected with his newest toy, Hopkins, for a flabbergasting one-handed touchdown grab. He didn’t even need Andrews, throwing to the veteran tight end once for five yards. This offense is so potent that some of its cool pieces will remain on the shelf every week. Poor running back Keaton Mitchell, so eager for a comeback, wasn’t even active against Buffalo.

As dispiriting as it was to watch the Ravens unravel again, it’s worth remembering that most opponents will not be able to stand up to this fusillade. If we needed reminders of why more “experts” picked the Ravens to win the Super Bowl than any other team, Jackson and Co. provided plenty.

3. Tyler Loop headlined a busy night for the Ravens’ rookie class

A pair of 15-yard losses made the first two field-goal attempts of Tyler Loop’s career more nerve-racking than they needed to be. Loop did not blink, hitting from 52 and 49 yards as a stadium full of Buffalo crazies screeched for him to fail.

His moxie, grounded in meticulous process, evoked the last rookie who kicked field goals for the Ravens, 13 years ago. Justin Tucker, fresh off beating out Billy Cundiff, hit from 46, 40 and 39 yards in the 2012 season opener. From there, he became arguably the greatest kicker in NFL history.

That’s the impossible standard Loop will be measured against. And he did stumble late in the game, when he plunked an extra point off the right upright. “It was with my start to the ball,” he explained. “So, I was just back there and kind of [had] a mental lapse in the process and kind of [went], ‘Oh, here we go’ and not the smooth process we’ve been working on, and it broke.”

It’s not exactly correct to say Loop’s miss was the difference between losing and going to overtime. The Bills might have made different decisions if he’d made that extra point.

But his fallible moment is a reminder that Tucker’s greatness lay as much in his consistency on shorter kicks as in his force on long ones. Loop’s job is not to leave points on the table, and he did in Buffalo.

As for the rest of the class, safety Malaki Starks played almost every defensive snap and did better against the run than in coverage. He was picked in the first round to give the Ravens another takeaway threat on the back end but couldn’t hold onto an interception when Allen airmailed a throw on Buffalo’s first drive. That missed opportunity quickly proved to be a turning point, as Allen needed just three more plays to reach the end zone.

Linebacker Teddye Buchanan, splitting time with Trenton Simpson as Roquan Smith’s wingman, made a terrific open-field tackle late in the second quarter to hold the Bills to a field goal.

Second-round pick Mike Green was a clear No. 4 in the edge rotation and didn’t leave much imprint as a pass rusher. The Ravens expect Green to make transformative plays in games like this one, but for now, they trust Kyle Van Noy’s experience and Tavius Robinson’s sturdiness more than the rookie’s spectacular upside.

4. The Ravens might not have lost in January if they had had Zay Flowers

It became an afterthought as we spent the offseason dissecting another soul-crushing playoff loss. Yes, the Ravens turned the ball over too often in that game. Yes, they failed to take it away from the Bills. Yes, Jackson’s career-long safety blanket, Andrews, faltered with a comeback in reach.

But the Ravens played that game without their best wide receiver.

As NBC analyst and former Pro Bowl receiver Cris Collinsworth noted during Sunday night’s broadcast, Flowers is the guy opponents can’t cover.

The Baltimore offense is formidable without him, but it’s missing an element that no one else on the roster can replicate.

Flowers quickly commenced reminding us of that fact at the dawn of a new season, catching seven passes for 143 yards and a touchdown against Buffalo. He was equally dangerous streaking free down the field or turning short catches into explosive gains. Defenses also have to account for him as a running threat every time he goes in motion.

As Collinsworth suggested, Flowers is just too twitchy to bottle up for 60 minutes.

His production and target share are never going to match those of Justin Jefferson in Minnesota or Ja’Marr Chase in Cincinnati. The Ravens aren’t built that way, and Flowers doesn’t have the physical stature of a classic No. 1 receiver. But if he makes the same jump this year that he did from his rookie season to his second, he’ll challenge for a Pro Bowl spot and be one of the three most important players on the Ravens’ offense come playoff time.

5. Kyle Hamilton is worth every penny

Anxiety is inherent to the package. No. 14 fires into an opposing pass catcher like a 6-foot-4 smart missile. Then he makes a beeline for the blue medical tent or the locker room, leaving Ravens fans to wonder if this is the time he won’t come back.

But Hamilton always does, never seeming the worse for wear. He reenacted this ritual in Buffalo, breaking up a potentially dazzling third-down pass by a scrambling Allen, then jogging to the locker room flexing a wounded hand.

He was back for the start of the fourth quarter, back to being the best defensive player on the field, as he usually is. He finished with nine tackles, two passes defended and a forced fumble (that rolled out of bounds) in his first game since he signed a four-year, $100.4 million extension.

This was no banner performance for a secondary that expects to be one of the best in the league again after a wildly uneven 2024.

Jaire Alexander, the team’s new star cornerback, committed a crucial interference penalty on fourth-and-5 to give life to a Bills scoring drive. Alexander had missed most of camp with a knee injury, so his rust was understandable, but it wasn’t the debut Jackson’s confident college teammate wanted.

The team expects its 2024 first-round pick, Wiggins, to take a major step forward, but he also struggled against the Bills, as did Marlon Humphrey, coming off his fourth Pro Bowl selection in 2024.

Someone needed to step up to make a play as Allen led his team back from the brink, and that play never came.

“The offense put up 40 points,” Hamilton said. “I don’t know if there is something mentally that we have to get over or if there is a mental block, but I looked up at the scoreboard when they were about to kick the field goal, and it said they had 400 passing yards or something. I’m about to throw up on the field. It’s something that we have to get fixed, and I know that they were in two-minute mode for pretty much the whole fourth quarter, but still, we had opportunities to get off the field.”

Hamilton held himself accountable along with all the others, which is what you want from the best player on the defense. But we can acknowledge that he was the least culpable for Sunday’s failures, the one who made the most plays to cut drives short.

The Ravens are paying top dollar for Hamilton’s versatility, maturity and ferocity when he has the ball in his sights. He’s next in the line of great Ravens defenders that started with Ray Lewis and includes perhaps the finest playmaking safety in NFL history in Ed Reed. He’s a wealthy man at age 24, and Sunday’s game was evidence that his extension will be just another leaping-off point as he aims to join Lewis and Reed in Canton.