BALTIMORE -- In the classic film “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Alec Baldwin’s character snarls, “Coffee is for closers.” With that in mind, the Patriots should be looking elsewhere for their caffeine this week.

On Sunday night against the Ravens, the Patriots had a nine-point lead and the football midway through the fourth quarter. They had disarmed a rowdy Baltimore crowd, put 30 points on the board against a once-great Ravens defense and kept a level head in the face of some brutal calls from the replacement referees.

But they couldn’t close. Down the stretch, it was a perfect storm of suck: Bad calls, injuries and a suddenly revitalized home crowd all came into play. As solid as the defense had looked for the first quarter-plus, it looked lost at times in the final quarter. To make matters wor the offense that had run so smoothly for the better part of the first half couldn’t gain any consistency in the fourth. In the end, the Ravens took advantage, putting up 10 fourth-quarter points and escaping with a 31-30 win.

In the fourth quarter, New England was a lesser team, and it showed in the box score: the Patriots’ defense held the Ravens without a point or a first down for the duration of the first quarter, while Baltimore managed just 21 yards from scrimmage in that span. Ray Rice had nine yards from scrimmage. Compare that with the fact that the Ravens had 12 first downs, 13 points and a staggering 183 yards from scrimmage in the fourth quarter, and Rice had 64 yards from scrimmage in that stretch.

Meanwhile, the Patriots’ offense wasn’t much better. In the first quarter, New England had 151 yards from scrimmage, 13 points and six first downs while quarterback Tom Brady had 123 yards passing. In the fourth, the Patriots could muster just three points, 37 yards from scrimmage and three first downs not as a result of penalties. In the final quarter, Brady had 41 yards passing.

Both New England and Baltimore spent the evening pushing the limit when it came to penalties, trying to find out how far they could go before the replacement refs would throw a flag. And the Patriots, traditionally one of the league’s most disciplined teams, were hit with 10 penalties. (It was the first time New England had double digits in penalties since Nov. 14, 2010 when the Patriots had 10 penalties for 113 yards in a 39-26 win over the Steelers in Pittsburgh.) While the bad calls stood out, it was the splits between the beginning and the end of the game for the Patriots that were truly remarkable.

“We did enough good things to put ourselves in a good position -- ahead in the fourth quarter and all that,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said on Monday. “But we just couldn’t do all the things we need to do at the end of the game to win it, and that’s disappointing. We work awfully hard on those things and we just came up short. I have to do a better job; we all have to do a better job.”

Much of it came as a result of missed opportunities. Cornerback Devin McCourty dropped a pair of potential interceptions that would have changed the course of the game. The New England defense couldn’t get off the field when it mattered -- over the final 11 minutes, the Ravens faced just one third-down situation. And the Patriots stalled out in the Baltimore red zone on two occasions, settling for field goals instead of touchdowns in the first and fourth quarter.

“There were numerous plays,” Belichick said. “Again, I don’t want to take anything away from Baltimore. They made a lot of good plays too. They have good players and good coaches and I’m not saying it was our undoing, but we have to do a better job. When we have opportunities, we have to do a better job of that. We have to coach better, we have to play better. But there’s no single play that I could point to.”

In the fourth quarter, one of the things that led to their demise was their inability to successfully execute their four-minute offense. Hoping to grind down the Ravens’ defense, chew up the clock and move the chains, New England had -4 yards on the ground in the fourth quarter, with the longest run coming when Ridley went off left guard for a three-yard gain with just over two minutes left in regulation. 

“We had a chance to win it,” Brady said. “We just didn’t play well when we need to. Certainly, we’ve got to play our best when it means the most, and we need to start winning close games.”

On the heels of a two-point loss to the Cardinals the week before, it’s combined to make a difficult start to the season for New England.

“Collectively, we’re a couple plays short of having a couple more wins, but we don’t,” Belichick said. “We have to do a better job.”