Tied with Bengals and Browns for the division lead, Baltimore returns home after consecutive road victories for Monday Night Football v. Colts.
Sunday, October 3, 2021, Denver, CO: One possible reason given for the Baltimore Ravens’ demolition of their 2019 schedule was the constant home-away-home-away nature of it.
Consecutive games either at M&T Bank Stadium or away from home did not exist for that squad, only the fourth time in post-merger NFL history (since 1970) that had happened for any team. It may have been a root cause for the team’s club-record 12-game winning streak and franchise-best 14-2 record.
Sunday, the Ravens were in Denver to play a second straight road game for only the second time since that magical season. But what has been even rarer is to see the Ravens win both games in such a situation.
But that’s exactly what they did in a game that featured a more workmanlike, blue-collar effort with no last-second, spine-tingling finish.
The Ravens parlayed that no-frills style of football into a 23-7 win over the Broncos, taking back-to-back road games for the first time since beating Cleveland and Jacksonville in Weeks Two and Three of the 2016 season, raising their record to 3-1 in the process and hanging on to a share of the AFC North Division lead.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson (22-for-37, 316 yards, touchdown, three sacks, 96.2 rating), notching the second 300-yard passing game of his career and first since Week One at Miami in 2019. He also ran for 28 yards.
But Latavius Murray’s 58 yards led the team as the Ravens barely broke the 100-yard rush barrier for an NFL-record-tying 43rd straight game. Jackson put the team over the top with five yards on the game’s final play; Pittsburgh shares the record with 43 from 1974-77.
Jackson put the Ravens over the century mark at game’s end instead of taking a knee, but the club wanted the streak to continue.
“One hundred percent my call,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “That’s one of those things that are meaningful. As a head coach, I think you do that for your players, and you do that for your coaches. It’s something they’ll remember for the rest of your lives.”
Jackson has shown plenty of improvement in his passing game this year in response to constant scrutiny about it. He has gotten more time to throw, which helped him Sunday as he targeted eight different receivers, including 2020 sixth-round pick James Proche, who had his best game as a Raven with 74 yards on five catches.
But the game turned out to be a redemption story for former first-rounder Marquise Brown, who gathered in four catches for 91 yards, including a highlight-reel 49-yard dive that helped snap the sluggish Ravens to life; Baltimore used that play to go on to score 23 unanswered points – the Broncos hadn’t allowed more than 13 in any game this year – and cruise to the win.
Defensively, the Ravens – who had allowed more points through three weeks than any team in franchise history – were very aggressive against quarterbacks Drew Lock and Teddy Bridgewater, one of the league’s most accurate passers who was knocked out after a Tyus Bowser second-quarter hit.
Bowser had two of the Ravens’ five sacks, with Justin Madabuike, Justin Houston, and Odafe Oweh getting the others. Baltimore forced seven straight Denver punts at one point and got 11 quarterback hits in the game. It also forced Denver into a 3-for-14 third-down performance.
The consecutive road wins in Detroit and Denver mark only the eighth time the Ravens have won away from home for two straight weeks, also doing so in 1997, 2000 (twice), 2001, 2008, 2012, and 2016. The Ravens made the playoffs in five of those six seasons and won both of their Super Bowl titles.
The 76,490 Empower Field at Mile High fans who saw this game, perhaps still mindful of the Ravens’ spine-tingling double-overtime win there in the 2012 Divisional playoff round, had to know it was coming despite Baltimore’s historically below-par reputation away from home.
Denver is a place where the altitude and loud crowd have traditionally given visitors a rough time. Speaking of rough, the Ravens have historically had plenty of troubles in road games during their quarter-century history, posting a lifetime 89-114 record (.438).
But the team’s road fortunes have been revived under Harbaugh; the victory in Denver lifted his career road record a bit further over the break-even mark; he is now 54-52 away from M&T Bank Stadium.
Baltimore can set aside its road concerns for at least the next month as it returns home to face the Indianapolis Colts in a rare Monday-night home game (Monday, October 11, 8:15 p.m.). Indianapolis got its first 2021 win only last week at Miami.
The Ravens have played only eight Monday-night home games in 25 full seasons, winning five of them. One of the three losses occurred just last year against Kansas City, but the sight of the home fans – having freshly returned this year after the COVID-induced ban in 2020 – will undoubtedly be welcomed, not to mention frequently.
The Ravens will play their next four games before their purple-clad crowd over five weeks surrounding the team’s October 31 bye.
But while Halloween might be scary for some, the Ravens proved to be unfazed by the usually-intimidating Denver home-field environment while getting their 15th road win in their last 19 such games. It’s an organizational trait that goes back a long way.
That’s because Denver is not only the site of the team’s aforementioned dramatic playoff win over the Broncos, but it is one of five stadiums where the Ravens were the first visitors to beat the hosts in a regular-season game after it opened.
The others are located in Washington, Pittsburgh, Nashville, and East Rutherford, New Jersey (MetLife Stadium).
In the lifetime head-to-head series, the Broncos were also one of three teams tied with Baltimore (Seattle, Minnesota). Going into Sunday’s game, the Ravens and Denver had split 12 regular-season meetings.
With the win, the Ravens now have lifetime advantages over 20 of the other 31 National Football League teams and are trailing in the series to nine other clubs. Baltimore can add to that figure if it breaks its 3-3 tie with Minnesota in its favor; the Vikings visit M&T Bank Stadium on November 7, just after the Ravens’ bye.
That game against the Vikings will also mark the last in the Ravens’ upcoming extended home stretch that ends with a run of five road games in seven weeks, the schedule’s toughest portion that doesn’t end until the day after Christmas.
But the Ravens have had five away contests in seven weeks at least twice before in their history; the first instance, in 2000, was right at the season’s start and proved to be the springboard to the first of the team’s two Super Bowl championships.
When it has needed to perform well in clutch road situations, the Ravens have belied their under-.500 record and come through under the kind of heart-stopping, pressurized situations that have characterized their 2021 season so far.
They did so again Sunday against a Broncos team that was one of two remaining AFC unbeaten squads – Las Vegas, who defeated Baltimore in overtime in Week One, was the other – and had soundly beaten three outclassed and winless teams (Jacksonville, New York Jets, and Giants) in the process.
While getting off to its first 3-0 start since 2016 when it won its first four games, Denver won by a combined score of 76-26 – the team’s plus-50 point differential was the league’s best going into Sunday; it was Baltimore that led that category in 2020 – notching a shutout over the Jets in last week’s home opener. But the Ravens would end any notion of recent history repeating itself against their injury-riddled hosts.
The Broncos were missing seven starters, including both starting guards, which led to the Ravens’ revived pass rush; it had five sacks going into the game before doubling their total in one day.
That’s because Baltimore is getting healthier, what with nose tackle Brandon Williams, Madabuike, and Houston all coming off the COVID-19 reserve list; only outside linebacker Jaylon Ferguson remains there. Cornerback Jimmy Smith also appeared fully recovered from an ankle ailment.
Also, seldom-seen receivers Miles Boykin and Rashod Bateman – the latter being the team’s first-round pick this year – have finally recovered from respective hamstring and groin problems and have practiced all week.
Even with a league-high 15 players on injured reserve, the Ravens have had seven players start the first three games on offense and eight more on defense, a stunning amount of stability for a team as banged-up as this one has been. It’s just that few would have given running back Ty’Son Williams and cornerback Anthony Averett much of a chance of being among that first-string core group.
While both have turned in respectable performances, Williams was supplanted in the backfield corps by former Pittsburgh Steeler standout Le’Veon Bell, signed to a practice-squad contract as the season began. Sunday marked his first action in a Baltimore uniform.
Bell gained 11 yards on four carries, while Williams was deactivated after only five snaps last week and fumbling twice this year.
But kicker Justin Tucker, who was rumored to be trying a new-record 70-yard field goal in the thin Denver air, still hit another milestone, reaching 300 career field goals faster than any kicker in NFL history (148 games). The previous record was held by New England’s Stephen Gostkowski (167).
By the time Tucker’s 20-yard chip shot – after a grueling 15-play, six-minute drive put the game away – the Ravens had notched a rare second straight road win and a seventh straight in October, traditionally the franchise’s worst month (43-52). Baltimore hasn’t lost an October game since 2018.
Most importantly, the Ravens could simply fly home, but the team plane in mothballs and not worry about having to use it again for a good, long while.
