Sunday’s loss severely hampers Baltimore’s playoff chances. Steelers on tap Thursday.
Sunday, November 22, 2020: M&T BANK STADIUM, BALTIMORE – There’s no doubt about the Baltimore fans’ passionate feelings that emerge whenever the Ravens play the Pittsburgh Steelers. But throughout the team’s history, the games against the Tennessee Titans have been just as intense; most of the time, the stakes are just as high.
The tone can get just as nasty as it did Sunday. The two teams exchanged taunts and had to be restrained even before kickoff as the Titans held a pregame huddle on the Ravens’ “police badge” midfield logo, to which the players and head coach John Harbaugh took exception. The game’s climate would be chippy and combative for the rest of the day.
And, like a Ravens-Steelers contest, the actual games against the Titans have been just as fraught with peril as well, as the two teams had not only evenly split their previous 20 regular-season meetings going into Sunday’s game, but four playoff encounters as well, with each team winning twice on the other’s home field.
Following a very Steelers-esque pattern, 14 of the 24 Ravens-Titans battles have ended with one-score margins, with 11 of them decided by three or fewer points. Sunday, for the first time, the two teams went to overtime.
In other words, nothing really changed as the host Ravens, with their playoff position hanging by a thread in a crowded AFC field, lost an 11-point lead and fell to the Titans, 30-24, before an empty stadium that was again barred from admitting fans due to the latest COVID spike and the subsequent order from local officials to forbid crowds.
After the Titans (7-3) scored 14 unanswered points to take the lead with 2:18 to go, the Ravens’ Justin Tucker sent the game to an extra session with a 29-yard field goal with 15 seconds left in regulation.
Baltimore (6-4) won the overtime coin toss, but couldn’t move the ball, punted to Tennessee, and proceeded to watch quarterback Ryan Tannehill gradually move his team down the field until workhorse back Derrick Henry – who had been held in check in the first half – blew through a tired Ravens defense with a 29-yard cutback touchdown run to deal the Ravens their sixth loss in their last eight overtime games. The Ravens’ all-time overtime record also fell to 13-14-1.
The veteran defensive end Derek Wolfe, who recently had a series of strong games, pointed the finger at himself for not stopping Henry on the final play. “That last run in OT, I played the block great, and I was late on the tackle,” Wolfe said. “I have to make that play. I’ll take the heat for that. This organization has a standard here. It doesn’t matter what happened. It’s on to the next game. You got to get that one win.”
As is usually the case when the Ravens take on the Steelers, this game had importance as far as AFC playoff positioning is concerned. The Ravens had a chance to gain a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Titans that could have come in handy when it comes to both postseason seeding or even qualifying for January play at all.
The addition of a seventh playoff seed and the usual games within the AFC North Division, certainly play a role in the possible playoff fate for the Ravens. They are 2-1 in division play going into a short-turnaround prime-time road game at Pittsburgh on Thursday, which will be the franchise’s third-ever Thanksgiving appearance (November 26, 8:20 p.m.; WBAL-TV; WIYY-FM).
But the games against contenders from other AFC divisions also hold sway as to what kind of playoff road – if there is to be one – the Ravens will have to negotiate to get to Super Bowl 55 this coming February in Tampa.
Baltimore’s opportunities are rather limited in this regard.
The win over Houston in Week Two ultimately might not mean that much, as the Texans are a non-contender. The same can be said even with a victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars, who visit the Ravens in December.
In the truly important non-division games against AFC contenders, the Ravens – who likely fell out of the playoff positions with this loss – are now 1-3, with a head-to-head win over Indianapolis and losses to Tennessee, Kansas City, and a resurgent New England squad. Baltimore will have to likely rely on the conference-record tiebreaker to position itself above teams like Las Vegas, Miami, and Buffalo, a trio that is not on this year’s Ravens schedule.
Superstitious types could have argued before Sunday’s kickoff that the Ravens would have been better off with a loss to the Titans because of the stunning fact that in four playoff meetings between these teams – two each in Baltimore and Nashville – the visitors have won every time.
Indeed, the traveling Titans seemed to have the upper hand going into Sunday, what with the banged-up Ravens featuring just one healthy tight end, three top-flight corners available, and only four defensive linemen ready to go at midweek. The team’s injured-reserve list had swelled to include three wide receivers, two offensive tackles, and a staggering five corners.
For any team, an ever-changing lineup will eventually lead to a lack of continuity and on-field cohesion.
Going into Sunday, there had only been nine Ravens to start all of the season’s previous nine games, four on offense (quarterback Lamar Jackson, linemen Matt Skura, Bradley Bozeman and Orlando Brown, Jr.) and five on defense (safeties Chuck Clark and Deshon Elliott, cornerback Marcus Peters, linebackers Patrick Queen and Matthew Judon).
The offensive line underwent a further upheaval Sunday against the Titans with Skura’s benching, who has had problems with shotgun snapping the past two weeks. The Ravens deployed their fifth line combination in ten games, with Patrick Mekari at center, Ben Powers at right guard, and DJ Fluker at right tackle, after needing just two alignments over the entire 2019 season.
Looming just ahead on this rocky road were the Titans and big, strong Heisman Trophy-winning running back Henry, whose 195-yard effort at Baltimore in last winter’s playoff game represents the best single-game individual rushing performance the Ravens have ever allowed in team history.
Henry’s effort barely surpassed Hall of Fame back Terrell Davis’ 194-yard gashing of a porous Baltimore defense in Denver during the team’s 1996 debut season, and the Titans needed another such game from him if they were to stop a 1-3 slide that came on the heels of a 5-0 start to the season.
That slide had the Titans sitting in eighth place in the AFC, just one notch behind the Ravens and the rest of the crowded seven-seed playoff field.
The Ravens’ run defense, one that had allowed over 165 yards per game on the ground in games the past two years when nose tackle Brandon Williams wasn’t playing, had to deal with the absences of both Williams (ankle) and defensive end Calais Campbell (calf).
But inside linebacker LJ Fort (finger) did return, and the entire unit’s play seemed to go up several notches. Henry was effectively bottled up before halftime, gaining only 35 yards as the Ravens seemed to go away from a running back rotation to rely on JK Dobbins.
The second-round rookie from Ohio State gained 70 yards on 15 carries and scored on a two-yard touchdown run. Dobbins also rushed in a two-point conversion on his way to a 57-yard half and a 14-10 Ravens lead.
But a Ravens defensive unit that allowed 173 rushing yards to New England the previous week seemed to tire over the final two quarters as Henry got his second-half act together, finishing with 133 yards on 28 carries.
A bigger key for the visitors was Tannehill working the ball downfield to top receivers AJ Brown and Corey Davis, both of whom were blanked before halftime but combined for nine catches and 175 yards the rest of the game.
After Jackson (17-for-29, 186 yards, touchdown, interception, one sack, 74.8 rating) extended the Ravens’ lead to 21-10 with a 31-yard touchdown pass to tight end Mark Andrews (96 yards, five catches), the Titans quickly got downfield when Davis burned Marcus Peters for a 50-yard gain to the Baltimore 7. That set up a Stephen Gostkowski field goal, and two Henry runs totaling 35 yards led to another three-pointer; the Ravens lead was down to five.
At that point, the Ravens still had converted six straight third-down plays against one of the league’s worst third-down defenses. Better yet, a potent Titans red-zone offense was 1-for-4 on touchdowns, a testimony to how well the Ravens defense was holding back Tennessee.
But catches from Brown and Davis gained 47 yards on a subsequent 90-yard drive that ended when Brown caught a pass in the flat, broke tackles from Peters, Chuck Clark, Patrick Queen, and Marlon Humphrey to score from 14 yards out and give Tennessee a 24-21 lead with 2:18 to go.
“We didn’t tackle very well at the end of the game at all,” Harbaugh said.
Tucker’s field goal and the start of overtime followed, but two passes to Davis and one to Brown set up Henry’s game-winning run.
The game ended with such swift suddenness, and it was far beyond the Ravens and Titans to agitate each other any further. “We just can’t put 60 minutes together as a football team,” Wolfe said. “I don’t know what it is.”
In the Ravens’ case, their playoff stock has dropped so low. It has obviously provided enough agitation for themselves.
