Nov. 8—Maybe the New Orleans Saints never got the memo about daylight saving time.

The home team looked like it expected to play at some other time in a Monday night loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the Caesars Superdome. Its offense looked as out of sync as it has all season; its defense could not fully slow down a Ravens team missing its top receiver, its top tight end and its top two running backs. It all added up to a 27-13 loss that felt like the football equivalent of hitting the snooze button for three hours.

“They beat us tonight,” Saints coach Dennis Allen said. “They beat us in a lot of different areas.”

Indeed the Ravens did, in just about every way that matters. The Ravens outgained the Saints 319-243; they held a more than 15-minute time of possession advantage (37:47 to 22:13); they crushed the Saints situationally, converting 60% of their third downs to the Saints 27.3%; they forced a turnover and the Saints did not.

It was a different type of loss than the others the Saints have endured this season.

Earlier this season, the Saints showed some pluck while managing to find ways to beat themselves. This was the other way around. Baltimore thoroughly thumped New Orleans on its home turf. Different, but it counts the same as the other losses, which have piled up in a 3-6 start to the season.

In a vacuum, the effort from the Saints defense might’ve been enough on some nights. Then again, the Ravens might’ve recognized they didn’t need to do much, other than bleed the clock and turn things back over to their defense.

A Saints offense that had been a strength of the team for the last several weeks was utterly punchless Monday night. Six of their first eight drives lasted four plays or less. When it came down to keeping drives alive on third down, they often failed to account for the Ravens’ pass rush.

“We got beat today,” quarterback Andy Dalton said. “They deserved to win this one.”

On the rare occasions they did drive deep into Baltimore territory, the Saints couldn’t find a finishing touch, settling for field goals on their two red-zone possessions.

Despite all of that, New Orleans still technically had a chance in the game’s final quarter. The defense had slowed the bleeding, limiting Baltimore to a pair of secondhalf field goals. If the Saints could just find a spark, they still had a chance, trailing by 14 midway through the fourth quarter.

But there was Ravens defensive tackle Brent Urban, on the Saints first play in search of that spark, snuffing out hope when he batted Dalton’s pass at the line of scrimmage. The ball fluttered into linebacker Justin Houston’s hands for an interception.

Three plays later, the Ravens took a 27-6 lead on running back Kenyon Drake’s second touchdown of the game. Most of the Saints’ fans had already left the building at that point, allowing the Baltimore faithful to freely chant to the tune of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”

Dalton threw a late 41-yard touchdown pass to Juwan Johnson during garbage time, giving him a somewhat deceiving final statistical line (19 of 29, 210 yards), but he spent the majority of the game looking rattled by the Ravens pass rush.

Baltimore dropped Dalton four times, matching the number of times Dalton he’d been sacked in his first five starts combined. Three of those sacks killed possessions on third down; the other nearly resulted in a fumble.

Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, meanwhile, was much more impressive than his final stat line would suggest. He threw for 133 yards and rushed for 82, but he spent much of his night escaping the Saints’ rush and hitting his receivers for big third-down conversions.

“We just didn’t make enough plays,” Saints safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “They made more than we made.”

Jackson is the type of undeniable talent that can carry a team when injuries wreak havoc. Monday night, in prime time, he represented the stark difference between the teams.

Jackson wasted little time. The Ravens took the early lead on their second series, grinding out an 11-play, 76-yard drive. They finished the drive off with a 24-yard scoring strike from Jackson to rookie tight end Isaiah Likely with the help of some deception.

On the touchdown, Jackson cradled the ball and ran to his right behind a swarm of blockers, appearing to set up a quarterback sweep. The Saints defense zeroed in on the superstar quarterback and lost track of Likely, who hauled in the pass for the easy touchdown.

That one pass covered more yards than did any of the Saints’ first four drives.

Dalton hit rookie wideout Chris Olave for a 15-yard gain on the first play from scrimmage, but that great start was fool’s gold. The Saints didn’t pick up another first down until less than two minutes remained in the first half.

The Ravens defense put the clamps on a Saints’ ground attack that came into Monday night averaging 159 yards per game in its last five games, but Baltimore held Alvin Kamara and the New Orleans offense to just 16 yards on the ground in the first half and 48 total.

With that part taken care of, the Ravens teed off on Dalton. The Saints, who hadn’t given up a sack since Week 6, allowed critical third-down pressure early, with Ravens rushers either forcing rushed incompletions or dragging Dalton down for drive-killing sacks.

“When you’ve got a team like this that has the different pressure packages that they’ve got, when you get in these third and long situations, they kind of pin their ears back and rush the passer,” Dalton said. “We made it hard on ourselves because we weren’t able to run the ball.”