Late TD seals victory as Baltimore now has the latest off-week since ‘01.
SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, CA, Sunday, November 26, 2023: Sunday night, the Baltimore Ravens lived out the dreams of working people everywhere. The team eased into its bye-week vacation on the heels of a West Coast trip that seemed like a half-day at work, a gradual, systemic 20-10 pounding of the host and slumping Los Angeles Chargers before 70,240 SoFi Stadium fans.
The score might seem close at first glance, but with four turnovers, a steady, pounding run game (197 yards), three sacks, constant pocket pressure, and domination on both lines of scrimmage, the Ravens never truly lost control of this game.
It marked the Ravens’ fourth straight win over the Chargers and ninth in 14 lifetime meetings. Baltimore has not lost to the Chargers since a 34-33 home loss in 2014. When the teams met out west in 2018, the game occurred at a small soccer stadium in Carson, California. Between San Diego, Carson, and Los Angeles, the Ravens are now 5-4 on the road against the Chargers, having won on their last three trips out west.
With the Ravens (9-3), winners of six of their last seven games, still holding on to the top AFC playoff seed at the season’s two-thirds mark, they now head into a bye week that was scheduled in December for the first time since Baltimore had back-to-back scheduled December off-weeks in 2000 and 2001. In the latter season, the Ravens and all NFL teams were forced to take Week Two off due to the league’s postponement of that entire week of games after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Those games were moved to the first week of January, one week after the regular season had been scheduled to be completed.
Ironically, the Ravens returned from the 2000 bye to wallop the then-San Diego Chargers at home and clinch their first-ever playoff berth on the way to the team’s first of two Super Bowl titles.
The Ravens will return from this year’s bye week to take on their second straight Los Angeles-based team, playing host to the Rams at M&T Bank Stadium (Sunday, December 10, 1 p.m.; WBFF-TV, WIYY-FM). In a scheduling oddity, Baltimore is one of three teams coming off its bye to play the Rams this year; Washington and Dallas are the others. The Ravens franchise has historically had a great deal of post-bye success. Following bye weeks, the Ravens are currently on a two-game winning streak and have taken six of their last seven post-bye games, losing in that stretch only in 2020, when they fell to the Pittsburgh Steelers at home. Under head coach John Harbaugh, the Ravens are 12-3 coming out of the off-week; in the team’s entire history, Baltimore is 19-8 in its first game after a scheduled bye.
Those records don’t include two unscheduled byes, the 2001 bye, as mentioned earlier because of 9/11, and the one that took place seven years later, the Ravens saw their Week Two game at Houston wiped out due to Hurricane Ike. That forced them to take an early bye – playing the game against the Texans on their previously scheduled November off-week – and play 18 consecutive weeks, a streak that ended with an AFC Championship Game loss at Pittsburgh.
The stretch was much more strenuous than Sunday night’s game against the host Chargers (4-7), a team with potent skill-position talent on offense but one that ranks near the league’s cellar in many defensive categories, which has contributed to an 0-5 record in games decided by three or fewer points. But on Sunday, their current losing streak reached three. It was also a situation tailor-made for a fully healthy Ravens offense coming into full flower. Speaking of flowers, Ravens rookie wideout and first-round pick Zay Flowers has already authored the best rookie wideout season in team history with 53 receptions, three more than Torrey Smith’s 50 in 2011.
Flowers (team-high five catches) would give the visitors their first points, beating coverage over the middle of the end zone to complete a 12-play, six-minute-plus drive with a three-yard score. He ended the game as he started it, running in a 37-yard end-around to seal the victory with 1:36 left in an overall brilliant individual effort.
Dealing with the Ravens’ offense had to be tough enough; moreover, the Chargers came into this game having allowed a league-high 31 passes of 25 or more yards and an NFL-worst 26 completions per game while yielding 291 pass yards per contest. That’s why it was incumbent upon the home team to get off to a fast start before the Ravens’ defense got into a rhythm. The Chargers did just that, riding quarterback Justin Herbert’s arm (3-for-4 on the first possession) on a drive from their own 25 to the Ravens’ 5-yard line before a curious roughness call on a Chargers offensive lineman during a play that saw Ravens safety Geno Stone hit Herbert out of bounds, yet avoid a flag.
Cameron Dicker salvaged the drive for the Chargers with a 39-yard field goal for the game’s first points nearly six minutes into the game, but the Ravens had to feel as if they dodged a bullet early in what turned out to be a somewhat even statistical opening 15 minutes. They would administer one of their own when the second quarter began, as a typical 2023 Ravens possession took shape.
Passes to backup tight end Isaiah Likely and Odell Beckham, Jr. got the Ravens out to their own 45. When play resumed, Lamar Jackson found Beckham and Keaton Mitchell to get the ball to the Chargers’ 27. From there, Rashod Bateman made a leaping third-and-long catch at the 14, and Justice Hill ran the ball twice for first-and-goal at the 3. The easy flip to Flowers followed, and Baltimore had its lead.
The Ravens showed their completeness as a team when the Chargers got the ball back, getting a combined Justin Madabuike/Travis Jones sack – Madabuike’s ninth straight game with at least a share of a sack – and two straight plays by rangy safety Kyle Hamilton, a pass breakup deep and an alert tackle on a third-and-17 screen pass to force a quick three-and-out.
Los Angeles didn’t even get that far on its next possession, as top receiver Keenan Allen got stripped by Ja’DaVeon Clowney after his first catch of the night. Backup defensive end Brent Urban fell on the fumble at the Chargers’ 34.
It was the home team’s ninth giveaway of the season, a league-low, and it was ironic that it happened to Allen, the league’s most-targeted receiver and a probable future Hall of Famer who had five or more catches in each of his previous four-lifetime games against the Ravens. Yet, in last week’s loss, Allen did have three of the team’s six dropped passes.
Legendary pass rusher Khalil Mack got his 12th sack of the year on Jackson, beating fullback Patrick Ricard and right tackle Morgan Moses. However, the Ravens still cashed in the turnover and stretched their lead to seven points on Justin Tucker’s 42-yard field goal. As of that moment, the Ravens had 64 points off turnovers this season, the league’s third-most.
Even though the Chargers had been careful with the ball all season, linebacker Patrick Queen forced all-around back Austin Ekeler – who had scored in three of his last four games – to put the ball on the ground, where nose tackle Michael Pierce recovered it at the Los Angeles 47.
The Ravens’ halftime lead was small at just 10-3, but it felt larger due to their 12-5 first-down edge, five-minute possession advantage, and a 160-107 bulge in total yardage. The Ravens’ defense stopped the Chargers’ NFL-record streak of 48 straight games with a first-half touchdown. Then, the Ravens opened the second half in style; Hill took a third-and-short carry 18 yards to the Los Angeles 29 before Tucker finished it off with a 48-yard three-pointer to make it 13-3 with just over four minutes elapsed in the third.
The vise-like grip on the game the Ravens already held to that point would only tighten as a 25-second three-and-out – punctuated by plenty of booing from the home fans – was followed by a 29-yard Keaton Mitchell burst and a second-and-22 Nelson Agholor catch that set up Gus Edwards’ fourth-down plunge. Mitchell gained a team-high 64 yards on nine carries in a game that saw six different Ravens carry the ball.
No points came from that drive, but the Ravens punted their hosts back to their own 15, from which the Chargers labored even to reach midfield as the third quarter wound down. Corner Brandon Stephens, responsible for covering Allen most of the night, defended a couple of passes on a series that saw the Chargers attempt to go up-tempo and get the Raven defense off-balance.
But even though the Ravens led after three quarters for a 12th straight game to open a season – tied for the third-longest such streak in NFL history – the Chargers still drove to the Baltimore red zone as the fourth began. However, Clowney put a stop to the budding threat with a strip-sack of Herbert and a fumble recovery, the Ravens’ fourth forced turnover of the night.
Herbert then assumed self-responsibility for his team’s offense, rumbling 35 yards down the left sideline to the Ravens’ 18; he had run for a career-high 73 yards last week. After getting first-and-goal at the Baltimore 5, Herbert hit Everett in the end zone (he bulled over Marcus Williams from three yards out) to cut the Ravens’ lead to 13-10 with 8:32 left.
A run-dominated drive led by Mitchell and Edwards took roughly five minutes off the clock and seemingly sealed the game with 2:57 to go, but Tucker’s 44-yard wide-left kick marked his fourth missed field-goal try of the year and first inside 45 yards. With the miss, Tucker’s career accuracy rate dipped below 90 percent, temporarily ceding the all-time mark to Atlanta’s Younghoe Koo.
After that, the Chargers never seriously threatened the Ravens’ goal line, even before Flowers applied the coup de grace with his final touchdown run. By then, the mistake-prone Chargers had sealed their fate in a game that would serve as the Ravens’ only activity in a 23-day span, thanks to their previous Thursday-nighter and the upcoming bye.
In turn, the Ravens could afford to punch the clock, hit the road early, and revel in the knowledge that they lead the AFC with a 9-3 record.
