With the win, the Ravens clinched a playoff spot, their 14th in twenty-seven seasons.
-The Baltimore Ravens turned in a workmanlike effort in record Charm City cold and turned back the visiting Atlanta Falcons, 17-9. The Ravens raised their record to 10-5, keeping themselves in contention for their seventh AFC North title (second only to Pittsburgh’s nine). The team has already clinched its 16th winning season in its 27-year history and its 13th year of ten or more wins…
-The Ravens are now 4-0 lifetime on Christmas Eve, the only NFL team to have never lost on December 24…
-Thanks to the New York Jets Thursday night loss to Jacksonville and New England’s Saturday defeat to Cincinnati, the Ravens’ win over Atlanta clinched Baltimore’s 14th playoff berth in its 27-season history, the fourth in the last five years. The team is currently the No. 5 seed in the AFC…
The visiting Falcons (5-10), surprisingly still alive in a mediocre NFC South Division race, fell out of a three-way tie for second by losing for the third time in as many games in Baltimore. Atlanta hasn’t beaten the Ravens since a Thursday-night home game in 2011. Overall, the Falcons have now lost four straight and seven of their last eight games, and when Carolina and New Orleans also won Saturday, the Falcons found themselves eliminated from the playoff race…
-The usual perception is that preseason results have no bearing on the regular season. Yet, the Ravens have won every preseason game since the start of 2016 (an NFL-record run of 23 straight); in that span, the Ravens have been to the playoffs four times, narrowly missing twice…
-One week after being activated for the first time all season and playing five snaps, Ravens rookie edge rusher David Ojabo was de-activated Saturday. Also out healthy were running back Kenyan Drake, guard Ben Cleveland, and rookie tight end Charlie Kolar. Injured absences were quarterback Lamar Jackson, defensive tackle Calais Campbell, and cornerback Marcus Peters…
-During the game, the Ravens stayed relatively healthy. Safety and first-round rookie Kyle Hamilton did leave the game in the third quarter with an undisclosed injury but quickly returned…
-By virtue of the two-degree wind chill reading at kickoff time, this was the coldest game in Ravens history…
-The Ravens have scored the first 11 times in 15 games this year, thanks to a 21-yard field goal in the first quarter…
-Coming into Saturday, the team hadn’t gotten a wide receiver touchdown since Week Eight, and a wideout hadn’t notched a receiving score since Week Three. DeMarcus Robinson ended that streak with a six-yard leaping touchdown grab in the east end, the team’s first touchdown overall in eight quarters, tied for 2022’s longest streak in the league with Detroit. Robinson came into the game as the only available Ravens wideout with more than 13 catches this year…
-For the first time all year, someone other than the now-injured two-time Pro Bowl pick Devin Duvernay returned punts for Baltimore. James Proche ran back two punts for 14 yards…
-Atlanta had gotten the NFC South’s only win over an AFC North team going into the weekend, beating Cleveland. But the AFC North was 13-1 going into the Christmas period. New Orleans did rally to beat the Browns on Saturday to get another win for that division…
-It was the 14th straight game in which the Ravens have outrushed their opponent, a new franchise-record streak. However, with a running game that statistically is almost as good as Baltimore’s, Atlanta ran 28 straight plays between the end of the second quarter and the start of the third, including a team season-high 17-play drive. The drives resulted in two field goals…
-The Ravens continue to play fast-paced games and come in under the league average. Saturday’s game against Atlanta took a mere two hours and 57 minutes to complete…
-The Ravens came into this game with ten straight contests of two or more sacks, the league’s longest current streak. Saturday against Atlanta, the streak continued with two more sacks…
-Even though Atlanta has allowed an NFL-high five opening-drive touchdowns, the Ravens did not score a first-drive touchdown for the 11th straight game…
-Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley completed nine of 17 passes for 115 yards and a touchdown. He was not sacked once during the game…
-Falcons quarterback Desmond Ridder completed 22 of 33 throws for 218 yards. Ridder, who threw 43 touchdown passes in college at Cincinnati (third-most in FBS history), failed to become the third rookie signal-caller to win in Baltimore. The only two that have done so are Arizona’s Jake Plummer in 1997 (at Memorial Stadium) and Chicago’s Mitch Trubisky in a 2017 overtime game…
-A week after having a two-miss game for the first time in four years, Ravens kicker Justin Tucker, who struggled with the wind in warmups, saw his streak of 33 straight made field-goal kicks at home end with a blocked 55-yarder late in the first quarter. It was the second straight week where Tucker had a kick blocked, a career first. Tucker has had three kicks blocked this season…
-The Ravens led at halftime, 14-3, having committed no penalties against the league’s second-least-penalized squad. The Ravens have allowed 105 first-half points all year, the second-fewest in the league (San Francisco, 100)…
-The Ravens wore the seldom-used combination of black jerseys and purple pants on the field for this game, a combination in which the team is now 3-0 all-time…
-Baltimore’s defense has not allowed a 100-yard rusher in 24 straight games. The Ravens once had a 50-game defensive streak preventing such rushing performances between 1999-2001, a run broken by Cincinnati running back Corey Dillon. Baltimore outrushed Atlanta on Saturday, 184-115…
-The Ravens have now scored points in 334 straight games, the league’s longest current streak and 86 short of the NFL record set by San Francisco (1977-2004). The Ravens haven’t been shut out since Week 2 in 2002, a home-opening, 25-0 defeat at the hands of that year’s eventual Super Bowl champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers…
-Next week, the 2023 calendar year begins with a Sunday New Year’s Day game and the home finale against the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers (1 p.m., CBS, WIYY-FM), who need to avoid one more loss down the stretch to keep alive head coach Mike Tomlin’s streak of never having a losing season at the helm. Tomlin, the former Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator, got the Pittsburgh job in 2007, one year before the Ravens hired John Harbaugh…
-Pittsburgh leads the all-time regular-season head-to-head against Baltimore, 29-24, but the Ravens, who won at Pittsburgh in early December 16-14, will be going for their fifth-lifetime sweep of Pittsburgh (2006, 2011, 2015, 2019). There have been 15 splits, and the Steelers have swept the Ravens on seven occasions…
