Baltimore comes back from 14 down, tops Vikings, 34-31.
Sunday, November 7, 2021, M&T BANK STADIUM, BALTIMORE – The two most predominantly purple teams in the NFL met again Sunday. This time, the overriding color wasn’t white. That’s how it was eight years ago when the Minnesota Vikings last visited the Ravens. A bizarre afternoon that turned into the only true ‘snow game,’ home or away, in Baltimore’s relatively-short franchise history. Many games have featured snow flurries, but that was the only one so far that included falling, accumulating snow, and white-out-type conditions.
In that one, six fourth-quarter lead changes, five of them in the last 2:10, culminated in a last-second Joe Flacco-to-Marlon Brown nine-yard touchdown pass on the back boundary of the stadium’s west end zone, resulting in a 29-26 Ravens victory.
No flakes fell this time, but the inconsistent Vikings’ spirits are probably lower than temperatures in a blizzard following the Ravens’ latest post-bye success, a come-from-behind 34-31 overtime victory before 70,599 fans that ran the hosts’ AFC North Division-leading record to 6-2 near the season’s halfway point and dropped the Vikings’ log to 3-5.
Justin Tucker nailed a 36-yard field goal with 20 seconds left in overtime to win, his 18th career game-winning kick and second this year following his NFL-record 66-yard boot in Detroit in Week Three.
This year, close games have been the order of the day. Sunday’s contest was the Ravens’ third overtime game of the year with two wins.
“I’m not thinking about going to overtime every week. Oh my God,” quarterback Lamar Jackson said. “… I’d rather not play from behind, but we’re a team of fighters.” That includes starting safety DeShon Elliott who was lost for the season when he suffered a torn pectoral muscle. “That’s a major loss for us,” Harbaugh said.
Minnesota has fought through some heart-stopping afternoons as well. It has led at one point in all five of its losses this season, and the Vikings held a 14-point lead at two junctures in this game before the Ravens’ offense finally got in sync.
With the loss, Minnesota fell to 0-4 this year against teams with winning records, and its five losses have come by a total of 18 points. The Vikings are 1-3 on the road, with that win coming, ironically, in overtime at Carolina.
Even though the NFC is seen as stronger than the AFC this season with more dominance at the top, the Vikings are now 0-3 against the North with only Pittsburgh left to play. Meanwhile, the Ravens are 2-0 versus the NFC North, and overall, they have done very well against the opposite conference. Sunday’s victory was the Ravens’ 60th win over an NFC squad in team history and the second this season. Games remain at Chicago and home against Green Bay and the Los Angeles Rams.
But that’s the future. On this day, Jackson rushed for 120 yards, his tenth 100-yard rushing game, tying him with Michael Vick for the most by a quarterback in league history. He also threw three touchdown passes with two interceptions and played to an 88.1 rating. And Jackson is now 12-0 against NFC teams, the longest active streak for any quarterback and the fifth-longest in NFL history. Jackson also raised his record to 25-2 when making his debut against teams he had never played before, a Super Bowl-era record.
The charismatic Ravens quarterback had been 0-6 when trailing by double-digit margins before this year. This year he has won three games in response. Jackson also notched his 45th straight game with either a rush or pass touchdown, the league’s longest current streak, and has surpassed 100 total scores for his career. He got help from running backs Le’Veon Bell and Davonta Freeman, who contributed 127 yards, about 100 more than the position had contributed against Cincinnati before the bye. Also, Harbaugh ran his record against the opposite conference to 35-19.
For this year’s team, consistency has been hard to find in certain areas, such as tackling, running the ball with players not expected to be on the roster, and covering opposing receivers. The same faults were exposed early in this game, and the Vikings took advantage with a Cousins 50-yard touchdown pass to Justin Jefferson and a Dalvin Cook 66-yard run that set up another score in a 17-point blitz that gave the Vikings an early 17-3 lead.
Going into this game, the Ravens had allowed 40 plays of 20 or more yards, tied for second-most in the league. Cousins, who was 2-0 against the Ravens before this game, held a perfect 158.3 passer rating after one quarter, and it held steady, ending at 104.3 for the game. But after Minnesota’s two early touchdown drives – replete with many third-down conversions after missing on 12 of 13 such plays against Dallas last week – they had just two first downs over its next several series as the Ravens slowly worked their way back into the game.
They got a little help from the Vikings on a pass interference call on a ball intended for Rashod Bateman – the first one that benefitted the Ravens all year – and it set up Freeman’s five-yard scoring catch in the right flat to cut Minnesota’s lead to 17-10 at the half. The Vikings answered back with a 98-yard kick-return score from Kene Nwangwu to open the second half and stretch the lead to 14 again. Only the Ravens’ second kick-return score allowed since 2011, and incredibly, the sixth kick-return score in games between these two teams at M&T Bank Stadium.
Undaunted, the Ravens then ran off 21 unanswered points against the tiring Vikings. Fullback Pat Ricard had a 22-yard catch-and-run play that set up his own one-yard right-flag scoring catch to bring the Ravens to within 24-17. Following that, Marquise Brown’s 18-yard screenplay – a Ravens rarity – on third-and-15 got the Ravens close enough to score on Devin Duvernay’s one-handed, sliding, five-yard touchdown that tied the game at 24 with 9:19 to go in the fourth quarter.
The game-tying drive was the Ravens’ longest by time (over ten minutes) in more than twenty years, taking 18 plays to complete. The long-moribund running game then took over.
Castoff Bell ran four times for 21 yards on the next drive, including the final yard into the end zone, to give the Ravens their first lead of the day at 31-24 with 3:29 remaining. But the Vikings quickly drove 75 yards in ten plays, converting a fourth-down chance on the way, and Kirk Cousins found Adam Thielen with a one-yard score to again even things up at the 1:03 mark.
Brown gathered in a 20-yard pass to start the extra session for the Ravens, who had won the overtime coin toss. But Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr made an extraordinary athletic play, tipping a ball to himself for an interception at the Ravens’ 42. A field goal would win the game at that point. But Marlon Humphrey tipped away a pivotal pass to force a Vikings punt. Despite two penalties, Brown’s 13-yard reception and Bell’s 12-yard run were enough to put Tucker in position for his game-winning game kick and his usual homespun post-game wisdom.
Despite the Ravens’ post-bye schedule looking considerably tougher – the team has the league’s second-hardest total schedule this year, based on 2020 records of their 2021 opponents – Baltimore has at least has been more than able to play the first resumption game with a great deal of success, as it did Sunday against the Vikings.
With a fifth win in their last six post-bye games, Baltimore’s record in games immediately after the off-week is now 18-8 (.692), second-best among all AFC teams behind league-best Denver (23-9, .718). Both at 22-10 (.687), Dallas and Philadelphia shared the NFC’s best post-bye marks going into 2021.
The Ravens will have five road games in seven weeks after this game against the Vikings – including four AFC North games, three of them on the road – a stretch the franchise has had to endure at least twice before in team history, including the start of their eventual 2000 championship campaign. The odyssey begins with a nationally-televised game on a short turnaround Thursday night at Miami against the Dolphins (Thursday, November 11, 8:20 p.m.).
The Ravens have won the last three meetings against Miami – most notably, a 59-10 Week One blowout in 2019, the franchise’s largest single-game point total – and have fallen to the Dolphins just once since 2007. That was the year Miami got a long overtime touchdown pass against Baltimore to get its first win of the season after beginning the campaign with 13 straight losses.
This year, Thursday’s game will also be the fourth of the Ravens’ five prime-time games and the third under-the-lights contest in franchise history.
It won’t be snowing, either … just like today.
