16 October 2023
The Ravens could not afford to blow another game a week after they fell apart in Pittsburgh, and they didn’t, scoring enough in the first half and making enough critical defensive plays in the second to come home from London with a 24-16 win over the Tennessee Titans.
Here are five things we learned from the game.
This was a critical week for the Ravens’ season, and they acted like it
The Ravens boarded their flight to London as a team in peril. Their inability to finish overmatched opponents, a trend that reached a new nadir as they unraveled against the Steelers, had fans in Baltimore apoplectic. Their 44-7 loss the last time they traveled overseas hovered as a reminder of what could happen if they showed up to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium woefully unprepared.
Coach John Harbaugh respected the possibility of a disaster that would send his team spiraling, so he treated the past week as anything but normal. The Ravens (in contrast to the Titans) flew to London on Monday, giving themselves as much time as possible to cast off jet lag and acclimate to Tottenham’s facilities. They held a 45-minute team meeting to put the travesties of Pittsburgh behind them and find a unified path forward.
Once kickoff arrived, the United Kingdom edition did not look so different from the Ravens we had seen through the first five weeks. Their offense still played more tentatively in the second half than the first, giving a struggling opponent space to rise from the mat. As firmly as their defense held on most possessions, it nearly gave up a late touchdown thanks to poor tackling. What could have been a tidy victory turned weird and messy for a while there.
This week, however, the Ravens pulled themselves back from the precipice. With Tennessee driving for a potential go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter, safety Geno Stone intercepted Ryan Tannehill to blunt their charge. Lamar Jackson drove them for two fourth-quarter field goals, eating more than 11 minutes of clock in the process. Patrick Queen made a clutch open-field tackle to ensure another empty Titans possession.
Every time Harbaugh had a chance to go for it on fourth down, he instead opted for a sure field goal from Justin Tucker, who made six (one more than he’d hit over the first five games).
These were winning plays and decisions the Ravens did not make a week earlier.
“We’re kind of looking in terms of what are we capable of becoming,” Harbaugh said. “We lost some games we should have won. We played good football in stretches, but we made mistakes. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot way too many times. … We keep improving, at some point in time you get over the top, you break out and you start winning by larger margins. That’s what we’re going to try to do.”
Was this a result of the seriousness with which they approached their transcontinental journey? Perhaps, or perhaps they were simply due not to kneecap themselves as they had against the Steelers and the Indianapolis Colts.
The upshot is they’re 4-2, again in first place in the AFC North, and they’ll be free to prepare for the very good Detroit Lions without hearing questions about their season coming undone. That’s what the Ravens bought by handling a potentially treacherous week like professionals.
The Ravens won’t get away with these second halves against top opponents
Chalk up another overpowering first half for coordinator Todd Monken’s offense, which ran 39 plays to Tennessee’s 18 and averaged 6.2 yards to the Titans’ 3.7.
On his first third down of the day, Jackson changed the call at the line of scrimmage in anticipation of pressure, flicking the ball to Nelson Agholor in the left flat for a 22-yard catch and run.
The next time he had the ball, he appeared to make another adjustment at the line on third-and-5, zipping it to Odell Beckham Jr. for a 32-yard catch and run.
Without those plays, which required Jackson thinking and throwing sharply, the Ravens might not have scored in the first quarter. From early in his career, he said his ultimate goal was to become a game commander a la Tom Brady. Monken has given Jackson latitude, and we’re seeing glimpses of the payoff every week.
That said, the same Ravens who build leads over the first 30 minutes emerge from the tunnel mysteriously tentative for the last 30. The Titans went three and out to start the second half, but instead of pressing his advantage, Jackson stopped looking downfield. The Ravens began their three third-quarter drives with a screen pass for a 3-yard loss, a 1-yard Gus Edwards run off left tackle and a 1-yard dump to Justice Hill. That’s no way to put a game away.
Does Monken have too much faith in a power game that has not worked consistently? Do we blame Jackson for the sloppy stretches that have marred otherwise good performances the last few weeks?
After the Titans kicked a field goal to make it 18-6, he fed their momentum with an interception thanks to miscommunication — that word keeps coming up — with wide receiver Rashod Bateman, who turned inside while the ball went outside. This time, Tennessee took advantage with a touchdown.
The Ravens went three and out on their next drive after Jackson missed a wide-open Beckham on second down.
He did enough to win the game down the stretch, with his runs setting up Tucker for one easy field goal and his 38-yard connection with tight Mark Andrews — “Without that play, it’s a completely different game,” Harbaugh said — facilitating another.
Six points after halftime isn’t going to cut it, however, against the Lions or the San Francisco 49ers or the Miami Dolphins, all of whom remain on the Ravens’ schedule. The balance and creativity that have served them well when they’re working off Monken’s script early in games cannot simply vanish.
The defense never allowed Tennessee to be a front-runner
More than most teams, the Titans, who grind defenses with Derrick Henry and set up play-action strikes from Tannehill, need to operate from in front.
A few lapses in the second half aside, the Ravens never let them.
Tennessee has two guys who scare you in Henry and wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. They combined for 33 yards in the first half, with the Ravens doing stellar work denying Henry his preferred outside lanes.
The officials handed the Titans points on their first drive, flagging Ravens safety Marcus Williams for a 22-yard pass interference penalty after Hopkins bowled into him. But Tennessee managed just one more first down before halftime.
Williams, who didn’t look himself a week earlier in his first game back from a pectoral injury, made a terrific play to break up a downfield throw on the Titans’ last drive of the half. Queen, always an effective blitzer and now flat-out the team’s best pass rusher, followed up by dropping Tannehill for a 9-yard loss on third down. That stop allowed the Ravens, who knew the Titans would get the ball to start the third quarter, to pad their lead to 18-3.
Henry eventually broke a 63-yard run out of Wildcat formation, only possible because of a bizarre roughing call on Ravens nose tackle Michael Pierce, who had made routine contact with Tannehill’s torso.
Tennessee scored again on its next possession, taking advantage of Jackson’s interception in his own territory and a helmet-to-helmet shot that got safety Kyle Hamilton ejected (his intent did not appear vicious; the resulting hit was).
Just when the lead seemed to be slipping from their grasp, Stone made arguably the most important play of the game with his interception.
Defensive tackle Justin Madubuike continued his recent surge with a pair of sacks and four quarterback hits. The Ravens roughed up Tannehill for three quarters, and he had to hand the offense to Malik Willis, who has yet to prove he’s steady enough to win a tight game. Queen stepped up with another critical play in the fourth quarter, shedding a blocker to drop Willis when he appeared on his way to scrambling for a first down.
Aside from the penalties he drew, Hopkins never did get untracked, catching one pass on five targets.
Whatever doubts we want to raise about the Ravens’ trajectory, their defense has played well enough to win every week this season.
The Ravens can’t count on power running to build and protect leads
Though still a top-10 running offense, the Ravens came in averaging 4.5 yards per carry, which would be their lowest mark since 2018. We saw more of the same against Tennessee’s rugged front as they averaged 3.6 yards on 39 carries.
More specifically, their top short-yardage option, Edwards, is averaging 3.9 yards per attempt after never averaging below 5 in any previous season.
The problem is two-pronged. Edwards came in averaging a career-low 2.46 yards after contact per attempt, per Pro Football Focus. He’s also being hit earlier than before thanks to so-so blocking.
On the Ravens’ first drive, Edwards was stuffed for no gain on third-and-1 when his blocking on the left side — Ronnie Stanley was the chief culprit — broke down completely.
In the second quarter, they had first-and-goal from the 6-yard-line after Devin Duvernay’s 70-yard punt return and could not punch the ball in on three straight runs. Jackson tried to keep it on third down but was dropped for a 4-yard loss by Titans linebacker Harold Landry, who’d discarded a block by fullback Patrick Ricard.
At the start of the fourth quarter, they reached second-and-goal at Tennessee’s 4-yard-line and again failed to reach the end zone with a pair of runs, one by Edwards and one by Jackson. Again, their attempts to use a motioning Ricard as their sledgehammer did not work.
The Ravens had been very good in the red zone through five games, scoring touchdowns on 72.2% of their possessions, third best in the league. But they converted on just one of five trips in London. Their inability to gain meaningful yards on first down — players said the slippery turf did not help — also contributed to their stagnant third quarter.
For years, the Ravens have defaulted to bully ball when protecting a lead, and perhaps they will again if their starting offensive line can stay healthy. Right now, that tool isn’t so much in their bag.
Want to laud a quiet hero? Thank Geno Stone.
It’s possible we haven’t talked enough about how well the Ravens have defended through a storm of injuries to their secondary. Brandon Stephens is starting to receive the laurels he deserves for becoming a legitimate cornerback after he began the summer as a reserve safety.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to say enough good things about Stone, whom the Ravens re-signed in March. Teammates gushed about how prepared he was to step in for Williams last season. Stone proudly treats every week of practice as if he’s going to start, whether he expects to play a defensive snap or not. It’s a discipline he learned as an overlooked recruit and an underestimated draft prospect.
He had to be a binding agent for the defense again Sunday. Williams left with a hamstring injury. Hamilton was ejected. Stone was the top safety left standing, and he made the play that turned the tide back toward the Ravens. He always excelled at knowing where to be; now, he’s making more plays on the ball.
“Geno Stone, how well has he played this year?” Harbaugh marveled afterward.
Pro Football Focus had him graded as the fourth best coverage safety in the league coming into the game, so word is getting around.
“It just goes to show how deep we are as a team,” said Hamilton, who was disappointed to be ejected but did not quarrel with the call after the game.
Week 7
Lions at Ravens
Sunday, 1 p.m.
TV: Chs. 45, 5
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
Line: Ravens by 2 1/2
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