Jackson’s legs, Andrews’ hands, pace Ravens’ playmaking effort.
Sunday, September 15, 2019, M&T BANK STADIUM, BALTIMORE – Ravens fans are a paranoid lot, believing their team doesn’t get the respect it deserves from the NFL head office. But let’s face it. The schedule-making computer at the league’s Park Avenue headquarters in New York is an unfeeling, static entity. It granted Baltimore two season-opening games against teams that are widely perceived as the NFL’s worst clubs.
It’s a scenario that fit perfectly with the Ravens’ propensity to get off to strong September starts.
Going into Sunday’s home opener against the Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore was 26-12 (.684) in September games (17-2 at home) under head coach John Harbaugh and 49-30 (.620) during the season’s first month in franchise history. Traditionally, September is the team’s strongest month.
The Ravens, true to form, have taken care of business over the first two weeks, blowing out Miami on the road in Week One and getting timely plays on offense, while outlasting the hapless Cardinals, 23-17, before 70,126 delirious fans.
Easy schedule or not, the bottom line is that the Ravens are 2-0 for only the eighth time in their 24-season history. But it’s the third time they’ve done it in the last four seasons. And if they pull off a big road win against the Kansas City Chiefs next week, they will be perfect through three weeks for just the fourth time (2006, 2009, 2016).
But on this Sunday, the Ravens took on rookie sensation and top overall draft pick Kyler Murray, who seemed rattled in the early going by a purple-clad crowd. For all of Murray’s talents, as well as his “Air Raid” scheme that utilizes four or more receivers a majority of the time (they deployed it on 58 snaps last week in the home opener against Detroit), Murray is still a rookie, and first-year signal-callers had lost 15 of 17 starts in Baltimore since the Ravens were born in 1996.
The list of greenhorn losers in Baltimore, which now includes Murray, is long and includes both Peyton and Eli Manning, the latter of whom was famously held to a 0.0 passer rating when he visited with the New York Giants in 2004.
The diminutive Murray saw the Ravens ran their record in home openers to 17-7, winning their last four straight and 12 of their previous 14. But Murray forced the Ravens’ top-ranked defense to bend without breaking, completing 25 of 40 passes for 349 yards, getting hit nine times and sacked on three occasions, but playing to a 90.5 passer rating.
Murray showed the league last week what kind of character he has, completing 20 of 29 passes in the second half of the rally against Detroit. , but the Ravens’ much-maligned pass rush managed to bother him often. The Ravens’ always-stout run defense, one that allowed Miami to run for just 21 yards on 12 carries, held David Johnson to 14 yards on seven carries.
On the other side of the ball, Cardinals’ edge rushers Chandler Jones and Terrell Suggs (the Ravens’ all-time sack leader and tops among active sack artists) could only manage four tackles and no sacks.
The Cardinals did get to the quarterback twice. Despite that, Lamar Jackson ran for 120 yards on 16 carries after just three carries last week. He also hit on 24 of 37 passes for 272 yards and two scores.
Then his fake allowed tight end Mark Andrews (personal-best 112 yards, eight catches) to be wide open on the right sideline for a 27-yard touchdown pass into the west (Russell St.) end zone for the game’s first points.
Murray answered back, hitting Christian Kirk (114 yards, six catches) behind Ravens cornerback Anthony Averett for a 37-yard throw that set up a Zane Gonzalez field goal. The Ravens could have pinned the Cardinals further back with a punt, but opted to go for it and failed at the Cards’ 43.
But a resolute Jackson recovered from a sack to drive the Ravens 60 yards in nine plays, running for 16 yards himself, to set up Justin Tucker’s 33-yard field goal early in the second quarter for a 10-3 lead. However, Kirk got another big catch, this one over Brandon Carr, to put Gonzalez in position for a 22-yard kick that cut the margin to four.
One thing that hampered the Cardinals early–despite Murray’s early quick-tempo success–was the fact that they couldn’t run the ball in the red zone, even with stalwart back Johnson in tow.
For its part, the Ravens’ offense seemed temporarily banged up when Mark Ingram and receiver Miles Boykin had to leave the game briefly. They would both return, and Jackson probably didn’t need them. Jackson found Andrews for 25 more yards and Ingram for 20 before zeroing in on his other tight end, Hayden Hurst, for a one-yard touchdown to cap off an 85-yard, nine-play drive that extended the lead to 17-6 at the half.
It was Jackson’s seventh touchdown pass over the season’s first two weeks, a Ravens franchise first. The Ravens set another new team record with 82 points in Weeks One and Two, breaking a record set last year.
Andrews capped off a second straight 100-yard receiving game–the first Raven to do that since Mike Wallace three years ago. An Andrews catch was part of a big nine-minute drive that ended the third quarter; Justin Tucker’s 28-yard field goal as the fourth quarter began made it 20-9.
Tucker would later kick a 51-yarder, but Arizona kept it close as Murray found future Hall of Famer Larry Fitzgerald (104 yards, five catches) for a 40-yard throw to set up a field goal. He then hit the venerable receiver for 54 more to set up Johnson’s one-yard touchdown and a two-point conversion to cut the lead to three points.
But Jackson, facing third-and-11, hit Brown with a 40-yard tight-window throw along the sideline to seal the game, as the Cardinals had used their two remaining timeouts on previous plays.
Next for the Ravens and their 12th-easiest in the league is a much tougher opponent–the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium (Sunday, Sept. 22, 1 p.m.; WJZ-TV, WIYY-FM). It’s a game that will bring many worries to those paranoid Baltimore fans…and with good reason, too.
