In a span of a year, the Ravens' troubles have shifted from yellow penalty flags to the red ones.
The Ravens have the second-worst success rate on replay challenges, only a season after they had been among the best.
This season, only one of coach John Harbaugh's nine challenges has been reversed. That one successful challenge came on a pass that was initially ruled incomplete to Derrick Mason at New England (Oct. 17).
Only the Cleveland Browns, who failed on all four of their challenges, rank below the Ravens. In fact, the Ravens are one of five teams (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville and Chicago) that had fewer than two successful challenges in 2010.
There have been several times when Harbaugh has made the right decision to question the call. The past two times he has thrown a red flag — Lance Moore's touchdown catch on Dec. 19 and Brian Robiskie's touchdown grab on Dec. 26 — could have gone either way.
Most teams get about half of their replay challenges right. The NFL's average success rate is 54 percent this season.
It's been a reversal of fortune for the Ravens, who had been one of the top teams in challenges. In Harbaugh's first two seasons, he threw the red flag 17 times and nine were reversed (a success rate of 52.9 percent).
The Ravens' struggles in that area have been compounded by their opponents' success. Teams have been 4-for-6 on replay challenges against the Ravens (66.7 percent) in 2010. The latest was last Sunday, when a replay showed that wide receiver Donte' Stallworth had fumbled.
Harbaugh said this week that he judges the effectiveness of the Ravens' replay challenges by a couple of factors. He looks at whether there have been any instances where the team missed throwing out the red flag (which happened last season because the coaches weren't able to see a replay quickly enough).
He also checks the number of times the Ravens have run out of challenges. Coaches can't throw out the red flag if they fail on two challenges earlier in the game or use up all of their timeouts in a half.
"Neither of those situations has come up this year," Harbaugh said. "So, all those challenges were situations that sometimes we didn't get [the expected results]. You look back and you think still they should have been overturned. But you've got to take a shot at some of those and see if you can get them overturned."
twitter.com/jamisonhensley YearNo.ReversedUpheldPct.200863350.02009116554.5201091811.1Total26101638.5TRACKING THE CHALLENGES
A look at coach John Harbaugh's replay challenges: