He played on many good teams in the late 90s-early '00s and his D's were usually very highly ranked then come big games down the stretch and playoff games they'd fold. Lewis only led Bal to one Super Bowl but that's 1 more than Zach ever played in and even after they tore down the SB D they rebuilt around Ray and won 2 more division titles.
In 2000 Baltimore was 14th in points scored scoring 333 points, in Miami in '99 their O scored 326- was it the extra 7 points that put Baltimore over the hump? In '00 Miami scored 323, in '01 344, '02 378 so they had O's as good as Baltimore's '00 offense yet never came close to an AFC Title Game. A week after Miami lost at oak 27-0 the Ravens went into Oakland and held the Raiders to 3 points. That's actually a common theme.
Playoff losses for Miami, points allowed by D and what their opponent di the following week:
1997: lost 17-3, the next week NE scored just 6 points. I cannot fault their D for this loss.
1998: lost 38-3 at Denver, the next week Den was held to 23 and that was w/ 6 turnovers they forced against the Jets.
1999: Lost to Jax 62-7, the next week Jax lost at home 33-14.
2000: Lost to oak 27-0, the next week Oak scores 3 in a 16-3 loss.
2001: Lost to Ray and the Ravens 20-3(Ray's D was facing an O that was 8th in the NFL scoring 344 points while Zach's D faced the 18th ranked O sthat scored 303 points), The Ravens lost the next week 27-10.
zach and his D's had multiple chances to make a mark in January but they very rarely played well while Ray led his team to a Super Bowl title and won a SB MVP.
You do realize our offense only scored a total of 15 points in those games thats 5 points a game. If an offense is constantly going three and out no defense will win a game for anybody. Ray Lewis would have done no better in a dolphin uniform with offensive performances like that. If your offense does not move the ball after a while any defense will fold.
I will go over these games you mention
1997 versus NE
Our leading rusher had 22 yards and Marino had a dreadful day 17 of 43 2 int
Our defense held Bledose to 139 yards passing and under 4 yards a carry
We held to 7 points a half time
lost 17-3
1998 versus Denver
Ran into a very good Denver team and nobody stopped Terrel Davis in the playoffs
Offense was not good once again. Marino 2 int and our leading rusher had 14 yards. If offense had played better the score would have been very differant and defense would have been on field less.
1999 versus Jacksonville
Defense played very good previous week versus Seattle
We got beat bad and I think this performance was a combination of many things.
Our offense turned the ball over 7 times, established no running game 10 yards was our high. we gained 131 total yards. Dan marino did not have his first completion until the team was down 38-0.
Our defense was not good but the score is quite bloated due to how inept our offense was.
An alltime low.
2000
Beat a pretty good Indy team previous week
Held them to 17 points when they had been averaging much more
versus Oakland
First touchdown was a pick six by Jay Fielder for 90 yards
Defense held Gannon to 143 yards
and thier leading rusher only had 56 yards
On the other hand Fielder threw 3 picks no tds and our leading rusher
had 12 yards. Yea the defense is to blame for this one lol.
2001
versus Balt
we held Balt to 7 points in first half , unfortunately they held us to 3 for game.
We passed for 122 yards and fielder was our leading rusher with 16 yards
1 int.
Our defense was not great in this one, baltimore ran real well but no defense can win with that type of offensive performance.
Baltimore might not have been an offensive juggernaught when they won but they did not turn the ball over much and had a consistent run game.
We had arguably the worst offensive performances of any team that made the playoffs and our running game was horrid in all those losses.
There is always much more to a game than a box score and if you examine those games closer our offense never gave our defense a chance.
