BALTIMORE – A group of Minnesota Vikings fans entering M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday morning donned T-shirts that foreshadowed another predictable outcome.

“We Always Almost Win” the shirts read.

That was again the case on Sunday, when Minnesota fell to 3-5 after taking the Baltimore Ravens into overtime and losing 34-31. For the first time in a decade, the Vikings lost after leading by 14 points in the second half, and they scored offensive touchdowns on their first two possessions for the first time all season.

“Too many negative plays, too many three-and-outs, too many second-and-longs, too many third-and-longs,” quarterback Kirk Cousins said, sounding as if he were reading off an old script. “And we find ourselves where we are.”

Nine weeks into the season, the Vikings' inadequacies have become who they are. This team appears to have hit its ceiling.

It's an offense with an abundance of talent that can’t consistently get the ball to its playmakers. The Vikings made an effort to do so early, highlighted by Justin Jefferson's 50-yard touchdown and Dalvin Cook's 90 rushing yards in the first half. Jefferson finished the game with two more catches totaling 19 yards, only one of which came in the second half. Aside from Cook’s 66-yard run in the first quarter, the Vikings’ run game resulted in 2.75 yards per rush from its star running back.

It's a defense that often operates in bend-don’t-break fashion in critical moments and routinely ends up folding. They’re a team whose in-game coaching decisions can be head-scratchers. Zimmer has been criticized this season -- and justifiably so, per analytics -- for being too conservative on several decisions, including going for it on fourth downs. He took some heat Sunday for not going for two after pulling within 31-30 with 1:06 left in regulation.

But according to ESPN’s analytics, that was the correct call. The Vikings would have needed a 55.5% chance of conversion to justify the 2-point attempt, and the estimation was a 48.3 chance of conversion.

“Yes, I thought about [2-point conversion],” Zimmer said. “But they have a heck of a kicker (Justin Tucker), and there was still a minute left. So, I thought we just needed to play some defense.”

How many times have the Vikings been here before, where they’re left parsing through the logic of predictable second-down runs and throws that sail well short of the sticks, like the third-and-18 pass that went to tight end Tyler Conklin (rather than Jefferson or Adam Thielen) for 5 yards in the fourth quarter when Minnesota was trying to mount a drive to steal back the lead?

How many times have we heard that the Vikings couldn’t do what they wanted to offensively because of the look they saw from the opposing defense? It was the reasoning once again in Week 9 for why the offense stalled after a hot start and “got away” from getting the ball to its best players.

“I think when teams play two deep and drop underneath a lot, we can get in long-yardage situations that invites them to play that,” Cousins said. “It makes it difficult to target receivers down the field on some longer passes.”

For some reason, the Vikings haven’t found a way around a common Cover-2 look. What does that say about Klint Kubiak’s playcalling ability to adjust and manufacture yards a different way? What does that say about the quarterback, whose arm and accuracy should be the catalyst behind giving his receivers a chance? What does it say about the receivers themselves? Is there no one who can run an underneath route and get open?

How many times will clock management come into question, like Zimmer’s decision to call a timeout with 1:33 left in the first half while ahead, effectively gifting the Ravens an opportunity to score, which they did to make it a one-possession game?

How many times will Zimmer say his defense was in a certain coverage because he didn’t want to give up a big play, after it proceeded to do exactly that? The 18-yard pass from Lamar Jackson to Marquise Brown on third-and-15 that allowed the Ravens to tie the score 24-24 was an indictment of that philosophy.

Some will argue that they hit their ceiling long before the fifth loss of the season. The Vikings lead the league in one-score games with seven (they’re 2-5 in those games, 1-2 in OT) and one-score losses (five) this season.

With this big of a sample size to go off, expecting dramatically different results at this point of the season isn’t likely. The offense has talked about being more aggressive. But every chance they’ve had to do so, they’ve dropped the ball.

Maybe playcalling is the root of the issue and Zimmer should reassign Kubiak to a different role, but there’s only one other person on staff who has called offensive plays -- running backs coach Kennedy Polamalu, who was the offensive coordinator at USC from 2010-12.

After the game, linebacker Eric Kendricks was asked about his message to Vikings fans who have grown weary of the way this team has underachieved all season.

“We obviously come to work and want this more than anything,” Kendricks said. “Obviously, the product isn’t shown on the field. We’re losing these really tight games over and over. But at some point, it's going to turn, you know?

“We battle every day. We come in to work on Wednesday and study our opponent. We practice hard. We care for one another in the locker room. It's just unfortunate when this keeps happening, because we do care about the fans, and we do care about winning. But you know, we have to start putting this all together.”