Join the huddle. Sign up here for Ravens updates in your inbox.

With Lamar Jackson out of action after he took a knee to the back, the Ravens built and then squandered an 11-point lead in a 28-24 loss to the New England Patriots on Sunday night. Their playoff hopes are hanging by a thread. Here are five things we learned from the game.

When they needed him most, the Ravens left their best player on the sideline

With Jackson in street clothes and Tyler Huntley playing quarterback, every person in M&T Bank Stadium understood that Derrick Henry was the man who needed to finish off the Patriots.

The future Hall of Fame running back was more than up to the task, carrying seven times for 44 yards on a pair of touchdown drives that took the Ravens from a 13-10 deficit early in the third quarter to a 24-13 lead early in the fourth. At that point, he had 18 carries for 128 yards against a New England run defense that has crumbled over the last month without injured interior mauler Milton Williams.

Henry did not play another snap.

Just to repeat, Derrick Henry did not play another snap as the Ravens protected a lead in a game they had to win to keep their playoff hopes realistic.

After the Patriots scored to cut that lead to 24-21, Keaton Mitchell trotted out to play running back on a staggeringly important drive. The Ravens have created a nice point-counterpoint rotation with Henry and Mitchell, but on this night, the younger, shiftier back had struggled to bust free (he’d finish with 13 yards on nine carries). Mitchell carried for 4 yards on second down, putting Huntley in position to connect with DeAndre Hopkins for a first down on the next play.

Great. Surely, that gave offensive coordinator Todd Monken his chance to put Henry, one of the sport’s great closers, back in.

Nope. Mitchell ran for no gain on first down. Huntley scrambled for 3 yards on second down. Huntley threw a completion well short of the marker to gain on third down. The Ravens punted and would never again have the ball with a lead.

Coach John Harbaugh expressed his regrets afterward. “I don’t like the drive at all,” he said. “Looking back, would I rather have had Derrick starting the drive? Yes. But Derrick was kind of ready for Keaton to start that drive. … But, yes, on a game-winning drive, do I want Derrick Henry on the field? Sure.”

Words that will infuriate Ravens fans who are tired of Harbaugh describing these crucial situations as if he did not have the ultimate say.

He does not design the offense or call the plays, but he is on the headset listening to Monken’s plan, and he is the head coach, with the power to overrule. Henry would have gone in on the next play if the Ravens got a first down, Harbaugh said. Woulda, coulda, too little too late.

Henry cast no aspersions in his postgame comments. “We’ve been doing the rotation for I don’t know how many weeks,” he said. “Keaton’s doing a great job in the run game. We’re both doing the best we can. We’ve got a lot of good players, so everybody’s got to get their touches and get opportunities. Keaton’s deserving of it.”

He added that “any player would like to be able to have the ball in his hands to make plays for the team” but noted that Mitchell helped put the Bengals away the previous week.

Henry’s calm, reasoned remarks reflect his consummate professionalism. But we can say what he would not. He could have been the dominant player on the field when it was time for the Ravens to secure victory, and it was a crime he did not touch the ball.

Lamar Jackson’s brutal season reached its nadir, and in his absence, the Ravens succumbed to familiar failings

Jackson danced and danced some more. Finally, he glimpsed Zay Flowers springing loose in the middle of the field and found his leading receiver with a no-hesitation bullet. One play later, Henry glided 21 yards untouched for a game-opening touchdown.

In 2023 and 2024, we took such instances of Jackson’s third-down sorcery for granted. This year, a sore hamstring and other assorted ailments have dulled his powers.

But it was tempting, so tempting, to believe all that frustration was behind him (and us) when he began Sunday night’s must-win against the Patriots in sparkling form. He had shown flashes a week earlier in Cincinnati, and here he was in prime time, moving with élan and throwing with conviction.

“I felt great tonight,” he would say when it was all over.

Then, Patriots safety Craig Woodson drove his knee into a prone Jackson’s lower back. After gritting his teeth through one play, Jackson went to the locker. He said he took a shot of the anti-inflammatory drug Toradol and attempted a few warmup throws in the locker room.

“I just couldn’t finish the game,” he said, anguish inflecting each word as he grimaced through the injury that could put an end to perhaps his most frustrating season.

The most wondrous athlete in recent Baltimore history has not been able to get well this year, and he’s about out of time.

The Ravens rallied behind Jackson’s close friend, Huntley, only to unravel in terribly familiar fashion. Turnovers on key possessions? Check. Porous defense with a lead on the line against an elite quarterback? Check. Bizarre refusal to ride Henry? Check.

The Ravens know the script as well as their beaten-down fans, who watched them go 3-6 at home this year.

“Yes, it’s been a theme for the past couple years, honestly,” safety Kyle Hamilton said. “It’s frustrating at this point to keep having the same conversations with you guys, and I’m sure it’s frustrating on your end to keep asking these questions. It’s redundant, and [there are] no excuses at this point.”

Many fans will see this latest defeat as a closing argument for their case that the Harbaugh era has reached its natural end. The Ravens feel stuck, with a trip to the playoffs unlikely and no remedy in sight for the failures that have haunted them in too many big games.

“We didn’t do the winning things that we needed to do to win the game,” Harbaugh acknowledged.

This won’t be a simple thought process for owner Steve Bisciotti, whose trust in Harbaugh runs deep. He’s the only head coach Bisciotti has ever hired, and they’ve won many games. Even this season, the Ravens have gone down fighting as they’ve tried to claw back from a terrible start, hampered by repeated injuries to their franchise quarterback.

But this team entered the season as a Super Bowl favorite and will likely finish it never having gotten on track. That’s a substantial enough failure that the man in charge needs to look at every aspect of his operation and decide what’s not working.

Drake Maye’s brilliance reminded us what the Ravens were missing

As a counterpoint to Jackson’s anguished incapacitation, the Ravens had to watch Maye, a Most Valuable Player candidate in his second season, slice them to ribbons on the Patriots’ two fourth-quarter touchdown drives.

Huntley did a noble job stepping in for Jackson, but he was outgunned. When the Patriots knew he had to throw the ball, the Baltimore offense stalled. When the Ravens knew Maye had to throw the ball — New England ran for just 79 yards on 23 attempts — he killed them regardless.

Maye completed throws when he was being hit. He took what the defense gave him to keep the Patriots moving but attacked when prudent, as on a gorgeous 37-yard touchdown strike to Kyle Williams in the fourth quarter.

“It felt like we were just taking on water, taking on water, and then finally the dam broke,” Hamilton said.

Maye finished 31-for-44 for 380 yards and burnished his MVP case by engineering his (banged-up) team’s comeback in a hostile stadium.

That’s life in the NFL. It’s almost impossible to smother a big-time quarterback for four quarters. On Sunday night, the Patriots had one of those guys. The Ravens, with Jackson hurting, did not.

Trenton Simpson encapsulated the highs and lows of a defensive performance that wasn’t good enough

The Ravens, coming off an exhilarating shutout in Cincinnati, had to deal with a lineup change as Simpson stepped in for rising rookie linebacker Teddye Buchanan, who tore his ACL against the Bengals.

Simpson played a central role in some of the Ravens’ early successes against New England, using his exceptional speed to string out two plays, one a tackle for loss and the other a sack on which Maye had no choice but to step out of bounds. Simpson tackled well and helped force the Patriots into a one-dimensional attack. The problem was, once Maye started dropping back on nearly every play, he exploited Simpson’s weaknesses in coverage.

Simpson’s tools were never in question. The Ravens drafted him in the second round out of Clemson with the belief he’d slot in seamlessly after Pro Bowl linebacker Patrick Queen departed in free agency.

But Simpson couldn’t convince coaches he had mastered the intricacies of coverage and other NFL subtleties. Too often, his veteran partner, Roquan Smith, had to cover for his mistakes.

Simpson’s standing declined enough that he hemorrhaged snaps to Chris Board late last season and lost his job to Buchanan, a rookie who’d played just one season of big-time college football, at the start of this year.

To his credit, however, he played well in a more limited role, taking snaps as an outside linebacker. When Harbaugh learned Buchanan’s injury was as bad as feared, he expressed no reservations about turning to Simpson.

“He’s played great,” he said. “He played good against the run and played good against the pass in the reps he’s had. I am really not worried about it at all.”

With a high-stakes chance to show how far he has come, Simpson flashed the traits that made him a high draft pick and projected starter, along with the weaknesses that have held him back.

Even if the Ravens win in Green Bay, there’s little upside left for them to seek

There was a plausible scenario — Steelers lose in Detroit, Ravens defeat the Patriots — that would have made Saturday’s matchup against the Packers largely meaningless. With matching 8-7 records, neither the Ravens nor the Steelers could have done anything next weekend to keep their Week 18 showdown from being winner-takes-all.

Harbaugh might have considered sitting his most important players, Jackson and Hamilton, who played Sunday night on an injured ankle.

The Steelers rendered that hypothetical moot, roaring back from an early deficit to kick the fading Lions in the teeth (and holding on for dear life in the final seconds). Give Pittsburgh credit. For all its weaknesses on both sides of the ball, Mike Tomlin’s team won’t spit the bit. Few of us foresaw a journeyman running back named Kenneth Gainwell holding the Steelers’ playoff fortunes together, but they find a way.

Which means the Ravens have no choice but to win in Green Bay. Even if they do, it would likely be the equivalent of keeping a terminal patient on life support.

Ever since the Ravens started 1-5, we’ve viewed this season as a desperate quest to defy the odds and scrape into the playoffs. We haven’t talked nearly as much about what making it would mean. Would they have any chance to string together wins against quality opponents?

Nothing in the Ravens’ record — they’re not notably efficient on offense or defense, they’ve mostly beaten losing teams and rarely decisively — suggests they’re some slumbering giant.

Their mediocrity is at odds with the powerhouse we saw last season, and it’s difficult to let go of the notion that that team still lives inside this one. But, with the Steelers up two games in the AFC North and Jackson potentially out of the picture, the Ravens are out of time to find their higher form.

Even if they stare down existential peril and win at Lambeau Field, they’ll be relying on the woeful Browns to upset the Steelers.

“I expect our team to keep fighting and try to win two games,” Harbaugh said. “That’s what I expect our team to do. I know they will. I know we’ll come out fighting, because that’s what we’ve done all year.”

He’s right. The Ravens have given us no reason to think they’ll roll over in Green Bay. They’ve also given us no reason to think they can find the juggernaut within.