You can try to pin this on Ben if you want, and he did play a piss-poor game. But if we had a staff that could have put together a game plan to actually put some pressure on Mallet, he doesn't outplay Ben, no matter how bad Ben's day was. I mean, really? Mallet is on the Ravens for two goddamned weeks and comes out and is making throws all over the place? Sometimes standing in the pocket for what seemed like an eternity, while the secondary was out to lunch, letting receivers run underneath all day. That is horrible, horrible coaching, no ifs, ands, or butts about it!
The thing is... well COACHED teams can overcome those days where a star player has a bad day! The f'ing Patriots can have a damned MASH unit out there and still win. The Ravens can run out a bunch of people no one has ever heard of and make those guys look like world beaters against our starters. Why? Solid coaching staffs that know how to get the most out of the bodies on the field... something we do not do.
For example... if I'm a coach and I know that Ben is having an off day, while my RB is cutting up the Ravens for good yardage, why the HELL am I running a pass from the one yard line to begin with. Funny how, AFTER the pick that was negated by penalty, they finally figured that out and ran the damned ball.
Go ahead and make excuse and blame the one guy who is holding this sad-sack group of losers together all season and lets keep this incompetent coaching staff. Maybe we can cut our "100 million" quarterback, too, so we can finally sink to Browns-like levels. I guess if that's what it's going to take to make people realize how badly coached this team is...