All-Pro tight end Mark Andrews went to the locker room early. Rashod Bateman joined him later. Gus Edwards also went out with a hamstring injury. Despite losing all three of those playmakers, the Ravens rolled to four scores on four offensive possessions in the second half and pulled away to a 27-22 win against the host Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Oct. 27.
Early in the game, the Ravens (5-3) looked very much like a team playing for the second time in five days. They finished the first quarter with 16 yards of offense — 22 on the opening play, a pass from Lamar Jackson to Andrews — and then minus-6 on the other 11.
Their only points of the half came after Jordan Stout’s punt glanced off Tampa Bay’s Dee Delaney, and Kevon Seymour recovered the fumble for the Ravens at the Bucs’ 6-yard line. Despite facing Tampa Bay’s 31st-ranked red zone defense, the Ravens couldn’t find the end zone and were held to a field goal.
Jackson and the Ravens had one other threat in the first half, but they opted to keep the offense on the field on fourth-and-2 from the Bucs’ 10-yard line, and Jackson threw incomplete to Demarcus Robinson in the end zone. Kicker Justin Tucker did get on the field later; his 61-yard field-goal attempt on the final play of the half was blocked — a fitting end to a miserable first half.
The Buccaneers (3-5), who had lost four of their previous five games, scored a touchdown on their opening drive and looked confident and inspired early en route to a 10-3 halftime lead. But the Ravens withstood that opening salvo and the defense stiffened and left Tom Brady frustrated much of the night.
In the second half, the Ravens found their rhythm and gradually wore down the Buccaneers’ defense with three long touchdown drives. Kenyan Drake’s 5-yard touchdown catch from Jackson tied the game at 10, and then Jackson hit rookie tight end Isaiah Likely with a 10-yard score that gave the Ravens the lead for good late in the third quarter.
Devin Duvernay added a 15-yard touchdown on a jet sweep in the fourth quarter for his fifth touchdown of the season — tying Andrews for the team lead — and the Bucs’ last-gasp effort at a comeback ended when Likely pounced on an onside-kick attempt with 49 seconds left.
Here are five quick impressions of the win, which gives the Ravens their first two-game winning streak this season:
1. The Ravens remembered their offensive identity after halftime.
The Buccaneers were missing several starters in their secondary, so maybe that explains offensive coordinator Greg Roman’s approach in the first half. Roman, architect of one of the most prolific run offenses in the league throughout the past four years, got away from that run game almost completely.
In the first half, the Ravens called 32 pass plays (two were sacks), and just seven runs. They left Gus Edwards on the sideline when they had first-and-goal at the 6, a week after he had two touchdown runs inside the 10-yard line. Determined to exploit the Buccaneers’ shortcoming, the Ravens veered from what they do best.
Jackson looked out of rhythm in the first half, understandable given that he lost his top two targets in tight end Mark Andrews (shoulder) and wide receiver Rashod Bateman (foot). Jackson, who hadn’t thrown more than 32 passes in any game this season, threw 30 in the first half alone, completing 19, for 144 yards.
When the second half began, it was as if Roman remembered that the Ravens are best when they are running the ball. After running just seven times in the first half, the Ravens ran six times on their opening drive of the second half. Jackson ran for 25 on the first play, and Edwards and Kenyan Drake chipped in as well. Drake then caught a 5-yard swing pass for a touchdown to tie the game at 10.
On their next possession, they attacked much the same way. Edwards, Drake and Justice Hill all contributed on an 11-play, 80-yard drive that lasted nearly seven minutes and began to wear down the Bucs’ defense, which had lost linebacker Shaquil Barrett to injury by that point.
The next drive — which ended with a 15-yard jet sweep touchdown run by Devin Duvernay — was more of the same, and begged the question: Where was this in the first half? In the second half, the Ravens piled up 204 rushing yards on 26 carries, an average of 7.8 yards a rush.
They won this game by getting back to what they do best.
2. Training camp Isaiah Likely is back, and just in time.
Rookie tight end Isaiah Likely was the breakout star of training camp, with catches all over the field one day after another. Then in the regular-season opener, the fourth-round pick from Coastal Carolina dropped a couple of catchable balls and he slipped into the background, heard from only rarely during the next month. Through six games, Likely had totaled 10 catches for 104 yards.
But with All-Pro Mark Andrews leaving early with a shoulder injury, someone had to step forward, and Likely answered the call. Likely finished with six catches for a team-high 77 yards and his first career touchdown, a 10-yard score that gave the Ravens the lead for good late in the third quarter. He also had a 17-yard catch earlier in that drive.
Likely also made a key block on Devin Duvernay’s 15-yard touchdown run, and he fell on the Bucs’ last-gasp onside-kick attempt, securing the win for the Ravens. For the first time in the regular season, Likely looked like the player who dominated training camp, and with Andrews in street clothes on the sideline, his emergence came just in time.
Credit also goes to Demarcus Robinson, who matched Likely’s six catches and became a vital part of the passing attack with Rashod Bateman (foot) hobbled. Robinson totaled 64 yards — his highest total in 34 games — including a key 15-yard catch on a bubble screen in which he danced around defenders on third-and-9, extending a drive that ended two plays later with Likely’s touchdown catch.
3. The Ravens extended Tom Brady’s misery this season.
Tom Brady has been so ridiculously good for so ridiculously long that the idea of him scuffling seems like a totally foreign concept. Yet he and the Bucs came into this game reeling, with four losses in five games, and while the Ravens surrendered a touchdown on the Bucs’ opening drive, they clamped down thereafter. Brady and the Bucs were forced to punt on five straight drives in the second and third quarters, and more than once he left the field looking visibly frustrated.
Credit each level of the Ravens’ defense for that. Brady gets the ball out as fast as anyone, but more than once he was flushed from the pocket because he couldn’t find anyone open. The Ravens got a lot of push inside, with Justin Madubuike recording a sack, and Broderick Washington batting down two passes. Justin Houston recorded sacks on back-to-back plays for the second week in a row, and Odafe Oweh hit Brady once.
Brady finished 26-for-44 for 325 yards and one touchdown, and he did connect on a 51-yard pass play to Mike Evans against Marlon Humphrey. But truth be told, Brady’s numbers should have been worse; Humphrey, Marcus Peters and Chuck Clark all got their hands on passes that could have been interceptions but instead bounced away incomplete.
Still, the Ravens came into this game knowing they needed to contain Brady, and for the most part, they did.
4. The Ravens’ rookie class delivered.
Isaiah Likely was one of the stars of the game, but overall it was a strong night for the Ravens’ rookie draft class. Rookie center Tyler Linderbaum was beaten early by Tampa Bay’s Vita Vea for a sack, but Linderbaum was also at the heart of the Ravens’ rushing success in the second half. More than once, Linderbaum reached the second level and erased a Bucs linebacker to give more room to Gus Edwards or Kenyan Drake. On one play when the pile had stopped moving, here came Linderbaum from 5 yards away, pushing the entire pile forward as the whistle sounded.
Rookie safety Kyle Hamilton made a nice play at the goal line, extending his long arms to break up a pass intended for tight end Cade Otton. It looked much like the plays Hamilton made against Likely during 1-on-1 drills on the Ravens practice fields in training camp. Hamilton also had coverage on an early third-down incompletion Brady threw in the end zone. Hamilton got off to rough start this year, with communication problems that proved costly in early-season collapses, but he is playing with more confidence the past couple of weeks and appears to be regaining the trust of defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald.
The Ravens also got contributions from Pepe Williams (five tackles, second-most on the team) and defensive lineman Travis Jones, who batted down a Brady pass, along with Likely and Stout, who averaged 52.5 yards on four punts and, like Hamilton, is trending upward after a slow start this season.
Veterans joke that rookies don’t really feel the short-week pain nearly as much as older players. Maybe there’s some truth to that, because some of the Ravens’ youngest players were also some of their most important in this game.
5. The banged-up Ravens will benefit from the upcoming schedule.
The Ravens not only get to enjoy a mini-bye this weekend with the Thursday night win in hand, but then they don’t play until next Monday night (Nov. 7) and follow that with their bye week. From now until Nov. 20, they play just one game. That will be a welcome respite for a team that came out of this game with major injury questions.
John Harbaugh said after the game that All-Pro tight end Mark Andrews’ shoulder injury was not serious, and that wide receiver Rashod Bateman had tweaked the foot injury that has been bothering him much of the past month. He said he would know more tomorrow on the status of running back Gus Edwards, who suffered a hamstring injury.
Linebacker Josh Bynes (quad) and defensive end Calais Campbell (illness) both missed this game, and cornerback Marlon Humphrey is dealing with a hamstring injury that he played through in this game. That will be a crowded training room the next few weeks, but the Ravens are fortunate that they play just once in the next 23 days.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox