The passing game was hurt when Bryant was scratched in pregame due to COVID.
Tuesday, December 8, 2020, M&T BANK STADIUM, BALTIMORE– Society may not yet be back to normal, but what about the Baltimore Ravens? Has normalcy come in the nick of time?
The final month of the National Football League’s 101st and most turbulent regular season will answer that question. But, for now, the 25-year-old Ravens seem to have returned to displaying a youthful pep in their step. That’s what fans saw during Tuesday night’s workmanlike 34-17 win over the visiting Dallas Cowboys.
Thanks to the COVID crisis, the game marked only the fourth NFL game to be played on a Tuesday since 1946, but the second one this season following the Tennessee-Buffalo game earlier this year.
As a result, the 2020 campaign will be the first in NFL history to have games played on each day of the week. There is even a game scheduled for Christmas Day, which falls on Friday this year.
Due mostly to a 294-yard rushing effort – the fourth-best in team history – the Ravens put a halt to their first three-game losing streak since 2018. In the process, their ninth straight win over NFC opposition maintained ninth place in the AFC playoff rankings, two spots below the playoff field with four regular-season games remaining.
The Ravens got themselves back into a run-oriented rhythm against the league’s bottom-ranked run defense. Baltimore ran all over the Cowboys – whose lifetime record in Baltimore dropped to 0-4 – and eventually wore them down. It started when Lamar Jackson ran for a 37-yard touchdown – the longest scoring run for a quarterback allowed by Dallas in the team’s history – to give the Ravens a 7-3 lead.
It was a precursor of things to come for a Ravens team that would run the ball 37 times and attempt to pass it on just 17 plays–the kind of stick-to-it run game that usually works for this team. Baltimore broke the 100-yard team rushing barrier for a 35th straight game, the third-longest streak in league history.
While the still-rusty Ravens defense allowed Dallas 32 minutes of possession time, the Cowboys realistically had no time to rally as the Ravens slowly pulled away. It also didn’t help that kicker Greg Zuerlein, who used to have one of the strongest, most accurate legs in the league, missed three field goals.
Marquee back Ezekiel Elliott was held to 77 yards on 18 carries as his underachieving season–hampered by a battered offensive line– continues. Elliott has just one 100-yard game this season. But the rushing picture was different on the other side of the field. Gus Edwards led the Ravens with 101 yards, Jackson chipped in with 94, and JK Dobbins added 71.
The passing game was generally on target, too. Jackson, who played to a 101.8 passer rating, found Miles Boykin and Maurice Brown with pinpoint touchdown passes. Boykin hadn’t even been targeted in four weeks before his catch.
The performance was a welcome relief for a squad that had been decimated by the pandemic. The Ravens’ roster is getting back to its normal size as a slew of players, including quarterback Lamar Jackson, finished their quarantine periods. After a stretch that saw positive tests for ten straight days, the Ravens were able to bring back 11 players off the COVID list over a four-day period.
On Monday, a COVID list that had 23 Ravens on it at one point was down to just five active-roster players — wide receiver Willie Snead, tight end Mark Andrews, tackle Will Holden, linebacker Matthew Judon, and safety Geno Stone. Three of those players – Andrews, Judon, and Snead – were not available to face Dallas but could be available next week. Andrews has now missed two straight games.
But on the flip side, about 40 minutes before kickoff, former Cowboys receiving great Dez Bryant tested positive for COVID and was a last-second inactive. Bryant promptly announced that his season was over but later retracted that statement at halftime of the game. “Yea, I’m going to go ahead and call it a quit for the rest of the season… I can’t deal with this,” Bryant tweeted shortly after the news was announced.
Head coach John Harbaugh was caught a bit off-guard by Bryant’s reaction. “The timing of this thing was a crazy kind of deal,” Harbaugh said. “(General manager) Eric (DeCosta) came down and told me that Dez had an inconclusive test, and we had to wait on that. The league told us we couldn’t bring a player up if he tested positive and, if he tested positive, he couldn’t play.”
But Bryant’s absence was more of a news story than a factor in the outcome of Tuesday’s game. To avoid its first four-game losing streak since 2016, Baltimore did what it had to do, that is, buckle down and take care of business. And it did despite playing with its seventh different offensive-line combination of the year (rookie Tyre Phillips started at right tackle).
With the much-needed win, all eyes are now on the Cleveland Browns. While Baltimore was going through its COVID-19 troubles, the Browns have moved past the Ravens into second place in the AFC North standings. During that stretch, Baltimore lost three straight, plus four of five games overall, since their bye week.
In a Monday night game, the 7-5 Ravens will face the 9-3 Browns on December 14, 8:15 p.m., in a game that ESPN will televise.
It will be an opportunity for the Ravens to register a season sweep over their Ohio rivals. And despite having an outstanding year, the Browns have floundered against the league’s elite teams (save against the Titans). The question now is whether the Ravens are still one of those elite teams. If so, a win next Monday will mean normalcy has returned.
