Help from Steelers gives Baltimore a “win-and-in” opportunity next Sunday.
Sunday, December 27, 2020: M&T BANK STADIUM, BALTIMORE – The post-Christmas carnage is something with which we are all familiar. Wrapping paper strewn everywhere. Unwashed dishes stacked high in the kitchen sink. The sparse, random sounds of contented youngsters who just made off with an envied haul of presents. If fans had been allowed, that’s what the stadium would have looked and felt like after Sunday’s 27-13 Ravens blowout of the visiting New York Giants in Baltimore’s 200th lifetime home game and 399th regular-season contest.
However, since the stadium was again empty, the Ravens had to play the role of the toy-laden kids on Christmas morning, making do with plowing through another overmatched December opponent on their way to what they hope will be the 13th-lifetime playoff berth, not to mention the seventh wild-card spot, in franchise history. It would also mark the team’s third straight postseason appearance, following AFC North titles in 2018 and 2019 and fourth playoff trip over the last seven years.
The 25th Ravens regular season ends next Sunday with a playoff position on the line. Baltimore will travel to Cincinnati for its 200th-lifetime road game and 400th overall tilt to play the AFC North Division rival Bengals (January 3, 2021, 1 p.m.)
Unlike last year, when the Ravens ran away with the AFC North courtesy of a team-record 12-game winning streak, Sunday’s win over the Giants and the upcoming clash with the Bengals certainly carry a great deal of importance. Baltimore (10-5), having clinched its 12th season with double-digit victories, is in its seemingly-customary position of having to fight for a playoff spot even though both the AFC and NFC are advancing seven teams to the postseason instead of the usual six.
And despite the extra playoff berth, the AFC is particularly crowded with eight teams having ten or more wins for the first time in conference history (since 1970). The NFC has pulled off that feat only once, in 1991.
(A complete look at the AFC playoff picture is at the bottom of this article.)
This is a case where the schedule did the Ravens a bit of a disservice since the element that had been keeping them out of the coveted spots was their record in conference games. With five losses, Baltimore was one defeat behind the seventh-seeded Miami Dolphins in that regard, and beating the NFC-based Giants did nothing to enhance their standing in that category.
At first, it appeared that winning any tiebreaker over the Dolphins is the only way the Ravens could have leapfrogged them since Baltimore has the security of knowing it has head-to-head tiebreaker edges over both the Cleveland Browns and Indianapolis Colts, who held the other two wild-card spots going into the weekend. The Ravens and Dolphins did not meet this season.
Pittsburgh rallied to top Indianapolis, 28-24, and Cleveland fell to the New York Jets, 23-16. Those outcomes put Baltimore into the sixth spot in the AFC playoff field, dropped the Browns from fifth to seventh, and put Indianapolis on the outside looking in. Miami rose from seventh to fifth on the strength of its Saturday-night last-second win at Las Vegas, eliminating the Raiders.
Translated, a win at Cincinnati next week puts the Ravens into the postseason. Their fate is, finally, in their own hands. However, the Ravens – seemingly always with a laser-focused mindset – didn’t pay much attention to any permutations.
“I peeked at the score(s) a few times,” cornerback Anthony Averett said. “Our main focus was on this game here.” Head coach John Harbaugh agreed. “We really haven’t been focused on that at all,” he said of the playoff scenarios. “We needed to take care of us, and we still need to do that.”
However, a Baltimore loss to New York (5-10) would have been disastrous, so the Ravens had to hold serve and keep their overall record at a level from which they still could make the desired jump into the playoff spots with a win at Cincinnati next week.
If the Ravens beat the outclassed Bengals – a cautionary note: the Ravens do have a losing record in the Queen City (9-15) – Baltimore would then avoid the embarrassment of becoming only the third team under this current playoff format to go 11-5 and miss the playoffs, following the 1985 Denver Broncos and the 2008 New England Patriots.
Ever since the Ravens’ midseason 1-4 slump and multiple postponements of games against Pittsburgh and Dallas (five combined) due to a COVID-19 outbreak that put two dozen players on the reserve list, forcing them to miss some playing time, the squad has been resurrected despite the organization getting hit with a $250,000 fine this weekend. And this is where the schedule did play a role in the Ravens’ renaissance. The team got stronger as the opposition got weaker.
It certainly helped that Baltimore got to play two home games against teams from football’s worst division (NFC East); not only that, neither the Dallas Cowboys nor the Giants have ever beaten the Ravens in Charm City. For New York’s part, it had lost in visits here in 2004 and 2012 by an overwhelming combined score of 70-28. The franchise known as ‘Big Blue’ felt small once again on Sunday in their latest visit to Charm City, falling to a third straight loss by the Chesapeake Bay and seeing the point deficit balloon to 97-41.
That’s because the Ravens weren’t so charming or hospitable, sacking newly-healthy quarterback Daniel Jones six times (11 sacks in the last two games), holding the Giants to just 24 minutes of possession, allowing only one third-down conversion in ten tries, and yielding a mere 269 yards of total offense.
Among the Ravens’ sacks were the first for a rookie backup defensive tackle Justin Madabuike and two from inside linebacker and special-teamer Chris Board.
Speaking of offense, Baltimore got balanced running from Gus Edwards (85 yards, 15 carries), quarterback Lamar Jackson (80, 13), and rookie JK Dobbins (77, 11, touchdown), who was hurt late in the game (chest). Jackson completed 17 of 26 passes for 183 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions or sacks, and played to a 111.5 passer rating. And all told, the Ravens ran the ball 40 times and passed it on 26 occasions.
It certainly wasn’t a perfect game. After committing just four penalties in each of their last two games, Baltimore got sloppy again with ten flags for 65 yards. Five of them came on one second-half series that began when Justice Hill roughed the New York punter; the 15-play drive, a record this year for a Ravens’ opponent, ended in a Giants touchdown. But by then, the damage had been done.
The Ravens scored on all four first-half drives – they lasted 13, ten, 13, and ten plays – and rang up a 20-3 halftime lead before cruising to their 97th straight win when leading by 14 or more, the league’s longest current streak.
Baltimore is now 7-2 when scoring first in 2020, and this marked the third straight game the Ravens have scored 20 or more first-half points.
Of course, the run game had a lot to do with that, gaining over 100 yards for a 38th straight game, five shy of Pittsburgh’s record set between 1974-77. In fact, the Ravens got 249 rush yards, the league-leading fifth time the team has broken 200 rush yards in a game this year.
Dobbins got into the Ravens’ record books with a first-quarter two-yard touchdown, his team-rookie-record seventh this year, and his fifth straight game with a score. It also continued a streak of 13 straight red-zone touchdowns for Baltimore, one that would be broken in the second quarter as they had to settle for two Justin Tucker field goals.
Giants kicker Graham Gano, who began his NFL career as a Ravens’ training-camp backup to Tucker, kicked two field goals to run his streak to 29 straight, tying Josh Brown for the New York franchise record.
In the second half, the Ravens’ depleted secondary nearly reached perilous depths with injuries to safety Deshon Elliott (hand) and cornerback Marlon Humphrey (knee), but both returned the game. However, center Patrick Mekari left (back) and didn’t return, forcing ex-starter Matt Skura back into the action. Mekari’s injury doesn’t look to be serious.
But the Ravens have certainly taken this stretch drive seriously, to the point where they are the ones holding the wheel and sitting in the driver’s seat.
It’s the only kind of Christmas present for which anyone in town could have hoped.
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UPDATED AFC PLAYOFF STANDINGS
Here’s how the AFC playoff race currently stands. Teams are listed by seed, team, overall record, division record, and conference record, followed by their remaining regular-season opponents.
(Note: All games will be played Sunday afternoons unless otherwise noted.)
DIVISION LEADERS
z-1. Kansas City, 14-1, 4-1, 10-1, LA Chargers
y-2. Pittsburgh, 12-3, 4-1, 9-2, at Cleveland
y-3. Buffalo, 11-3, 4-0, 8-2, at New England (Monday night), Miami
4. Tennessee, 10-4, 4-1, 7-4, at Green Bay (Sunday night), at Houston
WILD-CARD SPOTS
5. Miami, 10-5, 3-2, 7-4, at Buffalo
6. Baltimore, 10-5, 3-2, 6-5, at Cincinnati
7. Cleveland, 10-5, 2-3, 6-5, Pittsburgh
OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: Indianapolis
ALSO ALIVE: None
ELIMINATED: Las Vegas, New England, Denver, Los Angeles Chargers, Cincinnati, Houston, New York Jets, Jacksonville
CURRENT FIRST-ROUND MATCHUPS: Cleveland at Pittsburgh, Baltimore at Buffalo, Miami at Tennessee
FIRST-ROUND BYE: Kansas City
x – clinched a playoff berth
y – clinched the division title
z – clinched home-field advantage throughout AFC playoffs
NOTE: In the Divisional (second) round, the top seed will play the lowest surviving seed from Wild Card Weekend.
