Pittsburgh rode a strong rushing attack (198 total yards) for most of the game but relied on passing to execute an 11-play, 80-yard drive, scoring with 56 seconds left.
-The visiting Pittsburgh Steelers forced a split of their annual series with Baltimore by notching a 16-13 road win at M&T Bank Stadium. A Kenny Pickett touchdown pass to Najee Harris gave the Steelers the lead with 56 seconds to go, and safety Minkah Fitzpatrick notched an interception on the Ravens’ last-gasp drive…
-The Ravens saw their record fall to 10-6 after winning eight of their last 11 games after a 2-2 start. The loss jeopardizes Baltimore’s contention for its seventh AFC North title (second only to Pittsburgh’s nine since the division was born in 2002). The Bengals will clinch the division if Cincinnati beats Buffalo on Monday night. The Ravens had already clinched its 14th playoff berth and 16th winning season in its 27-year history, plus its 13th year of ten or more wins. Pittsburgh, which got off to a 3-7 start this year, is now 8-8 after winning three straight and five of its last six…
-The Ravens, who fell behind the Los Angeles Chargers and into the sixth AFC playoff seed due to conference record, will have to wait until the result of Monday night’s game in Cincinnati between the Bengals and visiting Buffalo Bills to truly see what needs to be done in Week 18, the regular-season finale. But the main final-week scenario reads like this: a win in Cincinnati for the Ravens in the season’s final game will give Baltimore the AFC North crown only if the Bengals lose to the Bills on Monday…
-Pittsburgh, which has a slim chance of making the playoffs after final-week action in Week 18, also avoided playoff elimination earlier in the day when Miami lost at New England. A loss to the Ravens would have eliminated the Steelers; that happened in 1999, 2006, and 2019…
-Besides the Steelers’ possible playoff elimination, Pittsburgh needed 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.
-Tomlin’s 15 straight winning seasons at the start of a head-coaching career is an NFL record, and the Steelers’ active streak of 18 straight winning seasons, which began under former head coach Bill Cowher and one year before the team drafted quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, is the third-longest in NFL history…
-Pittsburgh leads the all-time regular-season head-to-head against Baltimore, 30-24, 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 now been 16 splits, and the Steelers have swept the Ravens on seven occasions…
-Going into this game, the Ravens had compiled a league-best 19-2 home prime-time record under head coach John Harbaugh and an 8-1 mark on Sunday nights. This game was flexed to the Sunday-night spot merely a week ago due to the AFC North’s playoff drama and the overall national appeal of the Pittsburgh-Baltimore rivalry…
-Harbaugh and Tomlin coached against each other for the 34th time, the most among active coaching tandems and the second-most in NFL history behind Green Bay’s Curly Lambeau and Chicago’s George Halas, who met each other on 49 occasions…
-Baltimore and Pittsburgh is the tandem that leads the NFL in most games decided by three or fewer points since 2008, having played 17 such games going into Sunday. Far behind in second place are San Francisco-LA Rams and LA Chargers-Kansas City, rivals that have had 11 close games against each other over that same span…
-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…
-The Steelers had turned their season around going into Sunday’s game on the strength of the improved scoring defense, holding their last five opponents (including Baltimore) to 17 points or less…
-Once again, the Ravens had to do without quarterback Lamar Jackson (knee, four straight games missed), defensive tackle Calais Campbell and cornerback Marcus Peters. Other notable inactive were edge rusher David Ojabo and tight end Nick Boyle; as a result, rookie fourth-round tight end Charlie Kolar made his team debut.
-During the game, backup corner Brandon Stephens (starting for Peters) left the game in the second quarter to get his right hand re-taped, then returned. Right tackle Morgan Moses also briefly departed in the second but came back…
-Despite another injury-filled season, the Ravens have just ten players on injured reserve at this point in the season, seven of them from the defense. Six Ravens have started every game this year, three on each side of the ball (Tyler Linderbaum, Ben Powers, Morgan Moses, Chuck Clark, Marlon Humphrey, Patrick Queen) …
-Last week’s home win over Atlanta on Christmas Eve was the coldest game in Ravens history, with a kickoff-time temperature of 17 degrees and a two-degree wind chill. Sunday night provided a stark contrast for the Pittsburgh game, with a 50-degree kickoff temperature…
-The Ravens have scored first 12 times in 16 games this year, winning eight of those games. On Sunday, Pittsburgh drew first blood on a short Chris Boswell field goal about midway through the first quarter, but the Ravens scored ten straight points to close the half to take a 10-3 intermission lead. Tight end Isaiah Likely caught a short touchdown pass to put the Ravens in front; meanwhile, Steelers kicker Chris Boswell hit the right goalpost on a 48-yard field goal try…
-Pittsburgh’s running game gained only 65 yards in its first battle with Baltimore this year but had 108 by halftime Sunday and ended the game with a 198-120 edge over the Ravens. It ended a streak of 14 straight games in which the Ravens had outrushed their opponents, a new franchise-record streak…
-It was another fast-paced, dramatic game involving the Ravens, with the first quarter breezing by in just 27 minutes and ending in just two hours and 51 minutes…
-The Ravens came into this game with 11 straight games of two or more sacks, the league’s longest current streak. Sunday against Pittsburgh, the only NFL team this year to field the same offensive line combination for the first 16 games, the streak continued with two more sacks. Going into this game, the Ravens had 44 sacks, the league’s fifth-most, marking only the third time in the last seven seasons the team has had 40 or more…
-Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley completed 14 of 21 passes for 130 yards and one touchdown with one interception and getting sacked once. He played to a passer rating of 79.5…
-Steelers first-round rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett (15-for-27, 168 yards, touchdown, two sacks, 86.7 rating) attended the University of Pittsburgh, which uses the same training facility and home stadium as the Steelers. Pickett became the third rookie signal-caller to win in Baltimore. The only two that had previously done so were Arizona’s Jake Plummer in 1997 (at Memorial Stadium) and Chicago’s Mitch Trubisky in a 2017 overtime game…
-Ravens kicker Justin Tucker marked another milestone Sunday, tying Marshal Yanda and Jonathan Ogden for fifth on the Ravens’ all-time games played list with 177. Against Pittsburgh, Tucker boomed one extra point and two field goals; this season, his career field-goal accuracy percentage has dropped from 91.7 percent to 90.4, but he is still the only kicker in league history to have surpassed the 90 mark…
-The Ravens made their fans happy by wearing their all-black alternate uniforms for this game, a combination which had seen them win seven straight – the longest current streak for any of their looks – and run up an 18-5 lifetime record going into Sunday’s game with Pittsburgh. However, the streak came to an end with Sunday’s loss…
-Baltimore’s defense had not allowed a 100-yard rusher in 24 straight games before Pittsburgh’s Najee Harris gained 111 yards on 22 carries on Sunday. 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 had been the only AFC team not to allow a 100-yard rusher this year; the Los Angeles Rams, Minnesota, and San Francisco can also make that claim in the NFC…
-The Ravens have now scored points in 335 straight games, the league’s longest current streak and just 85 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. Among current streaks, Carolina (326 games) and Pittsburgh (262) are second and third behind Baltimore…
-Next week, the regular season concludes with a pivotal game for the Ravens at division rival Cincinnati (final-week intradivisional games were made mandatory leaguewide in 2010). The game is scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday, but the league’s desire to milk every drop of playoff drama out of the schedule could force a change to 4:25 p.m. The game will likely air on CBS (WJZ-TV, Channel 13) …
-Remarkably, the game will mark the tenth time in 27 seasons that the Ravens will end the regular-season schedule against the Bengals and the eighth time in ten that the game will take place in Cincinnati. Before the in-division final-week edict went into place in 2010, the Ravens closed only the 1997 season in the Queen City; a Bengals win in Maryland grad Boomer Esiason’s final game. But the two have been frequent final-week dance partners since the 2010 change…
-Due to the Ravens’ earlier win this season at home over the Bengals, Baltimore will be going for its third sweep against Cincinnati in the last four years. The Ravens lead the all-time regular-season series, 28-25, and have eight sweeps to Cincinnati’s seven. There have been 11 splits between the teams. The Ravens have played Pittsburgh more than any other opponent (54 games) in regular season play, but the Bengals will move into a tie with next week’s game…
