Baltimore moves into the last eight; will travel again next week.
Sunday, January 10, 2021, Nashville, TN: Rivalries come and go, evolving over time, bringing with them differing circumstances and different casts of characters. The Ravens’ franchise may only be 25 years old, but they understand this concept.
-Before there was Ben Roethlisberger, there was Steve McNair.
-Before there was Le’Veon Bell, there was Eddie George.
-Before there was much talk of the windy end of Heinz Field, the loose turf contained therein and fighting the Ohio River winds, there was the new Adelphia Coliseum, a friendly-but-rabid fan base, and the Cumberland River.
-Before the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Ravens’ first true rival, which initiated them into the NFL’s intradivisional rigors, was the Tennessee Titans.
The heated, passionate games between the Ravens and Titans cooled when they were realigned away from each other in 2002. When the expansion Houston Texans were born as the league’s 32nd team, the NFL could then easily arrange the teams into eight neat-and-clean four-team divisions, four in each conference.
With the AFC Central consigned to the dustbin of history, the Titans were placed in the brand-new AFC South Division while the Ravens were moved into the newly-christened AFC North Division. But on Sunday afternoon in Nashville, the football world got a reminder – for younger fans, a primer – on how intense games between these franchises used to be.
In front of their largest crowd of the year (14,029), the Ravens won this latest postseason installment between the two, taking a 20-13 Wild Card Weekend win at the renamed Nissan Coliseum over their hosts, advancing to the Divisional (second) round next Saturday or Sunday.
It will not be known until later on Sunday – after the final wild-card game between the Cleveland Browns and the Steelers has concluded – who the Ravens play next, on which day and time, or on which television network. But, considering the Ravens’ recent first-game playoff hex, it was a relief for Baltimore to get past the first postseason hurdle for the first time in six years and play in the Divisional round for the 11th time in franchise history.
Not only that, it means that under head coach John Harbaugh, the Ravens – a traditionally-poor regular-season road team – is 6-0 in wild-card postseason games played away from home. Harbaugh now has an NFL-record eight total road playoff wins, breaking the mark of seven he shared with Tom Coughlin and Tom Landry.
This game produced a result that is the most defining characteristic of this former NFL flashpoint: in five postseason meetings between the Ravens and Titans, the road team has won each time. In fact, Baltimore is now an NFL-best 6-0 since 2000 in road wild-card games.
Things had been intense enough during regular-season play between these two; the Titans only recently took a slight 11-10 lifetime regular-season lead by winning – you guessed it, in Baltimore – on November 22, 2020, a result that played a big part in this playoff game taking place by the Cumberland instead of the Chesapeake. But for the Ravens, their focus was on avenging last year’s 28-12 Divisional loss – yes, it was at home – to the Titans despite possessing a franchise-record 14-2 record, a club-record 12-game winning streak, and, seemingly, all the momentum a team could have.
And the fact that the Titans went on to upend the New England Patriots and take an AFC Championship Game first-half lead at Kansas City before eventually falling to a team that would win the Super Bowl proved to be little consolation for a Ravens team eager to make things right.
They did so by holding the Titans’ high-scoring offense to its lowest point total of the season.
“It feels good,” quarterback Lamar Jackson said. “Our team played great today. We finished. We finally finished. We stayed focused. We didn’t get rattled. My coaches didn’t get rattled. I threw a dumb-ass — I’m sorry — dumb interception. But we kept fighting and made it happen.”
Football is a team sport, but the man who wanted retribution more than anyone else had to be Jackson, the electrifying, multiple-record-setting Ravens quarterback and reigning league Most Valuable Player. Jackson earned another distinction by simply stepping onto the Nissan Stadium field on Sunday; he became the eighth quarterback in league history to start a postseason game in each of his first three seasons in the NFL.
The other names on that list have ties to the Ravens (Joe Flacco) as well as to a not-long-ago legendary past (Dan Marino, Bernie Kosar) and the present day as well (Andrew Luck, Andy Dalton, Russell Wilson). By losing his first two playoff games before Sunday, Jackson had come in for a lot of criticism from those who believed that he couldn’t win the big game. It looked as if he’d lose another one early on when cornerback Malcolm Butler picked off a long pass for Miles Boykin.
But what a lot of the critics seemed to forget – or maybe didn’t even know – was that the great Peyton Manning (almost certain to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year on his first ballot) was 0-3 in postseason games before his career took flight.
It would have been easy to predict Jackson’s passes would take flight against a Titans team that allowed 36 passing scores during the regular season, tied for the most ever by any playoff team. But Jackson, the first quarterback to have consecutive 1000-yard rushing seasons, also used his and his teammates’ legs – authors of a league-record 1337-yard rushing spurt over the past five games, including a club-record 404 last week in Cincinnati – to take off to the higher ground.
With Jackson leading the way with 136 yards on 16 carries, the Ravens – who had averaged over 267 yards per game during their five-game winning streak that preceded this game – added 236 on the ground against the Titans as Baltimore came from a ten-point deficit to win a game for the first time in four years. The Ravens, in fact, were the only team in the league to have not achieved such a feat that over that span.
Jackson got a game ball for his efforts.
John Harbaugh: We gave the game ball to Lamar and really the whole team for just having his back. It’s significant just because of what type of game it was and how hard-fought it was. Nobody even blinked. This is the best win I’ve ever been associated with.
Jackson’s biggest highlight was a 48-yard touchdown run on third-and-9 that tied the game at 10-all in the second quarter.
In fact, the Ravens – who held the Titans to minus-7 yards in the second quarter – would score 17 unanswered points after falling behind early, 10-0, and being held scoreless in the first quarter for only the second time all season; the first was at New England.
Jackson’s run not only drew the teams even, but it was also the second-longest postseason touchdown run by a quarterback, surpassed by Colin Kaepernick, who ran in a 56-yard score for San Francisco over Green Bay in 2012.
Kaepernick and Jackson (17-for-24, 179 yards, interception, five sacks, 74.8 rating) both have had Greg Roman as an offensive coordinator, and the Ravens’ identity was in full force Sunday with 64 plays, 35 on the ground and 29 through the air (including five sacks allowed).
Speaking of running attacks, it was naturally imperative for the Ravens to stop 2000-yard rusher and former Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry, who set a Ravens opponent single-game record last year’s playoff meeting with 195 yards.
That should ring a bell with Ravens fans; Baltimore had to stop another 2000-yard rusher, Chris Johnson, in a 2008 postseason game at Nashville (his big season came the following year, but he did have 1228 yards in ‘08).
After gaining 72 yards on 11 carries with an early touchdown, Johnson incurred an ankle injury after being tackled by safety Ed Reed, forcing the Titans to turn to a slower, heavier, less explosive LenDale White only manage 45 yards on 15 attempts.
But despite the 195-yard game and his 29-yard overtime game-winning run at Baltimore in November, Henry had only rung up six carries of ten or more yards against the Ravens in his last two games against them. He usually throws his big frame into the line repeatedly until the dam breaks, and he reels off a big-play run.
Henry’s longest run Sunday was for a mere eight yards, as he finished with only 40 yards on 18 carries. Part of the reason for that was the Ravens holding the ball for 33:38 of possession time and going seven-for-13 on third down.
The figurative dam was never broken by Henry; instead, it was fortified by the Ravens’ now-healthy presences of nose tackle Brandon Williams and defensive tackle Calais Campbell, who were not on the field for the November game. Defensive end Derek Wolfe was also there; he grades out as one of the NFL’s best run stoppers.
Wolfe blamed himself for missing a Henry cutback on his overtime game-winning run in November, but he and his teammates did a tremendous job setting the edge and not letting Henry get loose. Wolfe had six tackles and a sack, while veteran Pernell McPhee had one of his best games as a Raven, accumulating five solo tackles and six total stops.
And while tight end Mark Andrews (41 yards, four catches) was seen to be a key to this game, given the Titans’ propensity to poorly defend tight ends, drop-plagued wideout Marquise Brown responded with his best game in two seasons, gathering in 109 yards on seven catches.
Things got a little dicey towards the end, as Justin Tucker’s wide-right 52-yard field-goal try snapped a string of 48 straight fourth-quarter/overtime successful kicks. But a Marcus Peters interception sealed the win.
After the pickoff, Baltimore committed a needless penalty when several of its players stomped on the Titans’ midfield logo, revenge for what Tennessee’s players did before the November game at M&T Bank Stadium.
“This is an emotional football game,” Wolfe said. “Sometimes, you act out of emotion. It wasn’t disrespecting. It was more about team unity.”
It was about a full-circle passion play… one that, for the Ravens, has played itself out just as often in Nashville as in Pittsburgh.
