Wide receiver Kamar Aiken, in the first of eight games in which he'll try to fill a Steve Smith Sr.-sized hole in the Ravens offense, paced the teams with seven catches for 73 yards, but along with the rest of the offense turned in an uneven performance in Sunday's 22-20 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
"We did some things pretty well [but] there's some stuff that we need to work on," Aiken said. "There's things that we could have done better. … I can just speak of myself, I know there's two plays that come to my mind that I could have made a better play on."
The first was a drop on the opening drive that forced a Ravens punt. The second was a ball that bounced off his hands early in the second half and was intercepted. Aiken made several plays though, and quarterback Joe Flacco targeted him 14 times, a number typically reserved for Smith through the first half of the season.
Aiken and Chris Givens were the two mainstays at the receiver position — the other three receivers combined for two catches. Givens finished with four catches for 37 yards on seven targets.
Givens also caught his first touchdown, a 14-yard strike on a play he said he couldn't believe was happening.
"It was really just one of those plays where I felt like I was wide open, so I turned around in the [end] zone and Joe found me," Givens said.
Givens, who was acquired in October from the St. Louis Rams, said on a scale of 1-to-10, his rapport with Flacco is a seven. The two weren't on the same page when Flacco was intercepted on a deep pass down the sidelines in the third quarter. Givens said he was uncertain what happened on the play, while Flacco said he threw the ball away.
"With timing, we're putting in the work Tuesday through Saturday to get us to that 10," Givens said. "I feel like the way we're working and how we're doing, communicating, putting in the work, that's just going to come. That's going to come pretty fast."