The Ravens had heard all the talk. The Cleveland Browns boasted the league’s toughest, stingiest, most tenacious defense. Coming into the teams’ Week 4 AFC North showdown in Cleveland, the Browns had allowed one offensive touchdown all season and their defense ranked No. 1 in nearly every key statistical category.
Yet in a span of two drives in the second quarter, the Ravens set that defense on its heels, with touchdown drives of 93 and 74 yards. And the Ravens’ defense played as if it took all that talk personally, proving to be the dominant unit in a 28-3 Ravens win on Oct. 1.
Lamar Jackson ran for two touchdowns and threw two touchdown passes to tight end Mark Andrews, and the Browns never really threatened after Jackson’s second touchdown run gave the Ravens (3-1) a 14-3 lead midway through the second quarter.
That top-ranked Browns defense looked the part in the opening period, as the Ravens’ offense scuffled for 17 yards and one first down across its first four possessions. Yet they held a 7-3 lead thanks to a 10-yard touchdown run by Jackson, which came one play after Brandon Stephens intercepted a pass and returned it 52 yards.
Jackson added another touchdown run in the second quarter, and then floated a 7-yard touchdown pass to Andrews just before halftime for a 21-3 lead.
That proved to be insurmountable against a Cleveland offense that struggled to operate without starting quarterback Deshaun Watson.
Watson was ruled out after testing out his throwing shoulder in a pregame workout. He had suffered the injury a week earlier and had been listed as questionable after being limited in practice all week. In his place, the Browns (2-2) turned to rookie fifth-round pick Dorian Thompson-Robinson to make the first start of his career. He looked the part, as the Ravens never let Thompson-Robinson get into any rhythm.
Through three quarters, the Browns totaled 90 yards of offense, and only a 53-yard field goal from Dustin Hopkins late in the first quarter stood between the Ravens and their first shutout since 2018.
Thompson-Robinson was often picking himself off the deck or pressing to try to make something happen. He finished 19-for-36 for 121 yards with three interceptions, and he was sacked four times. Fittingly, the final play of the game was an end-zone interception by Kyle Hamilton.
Here are five quick impressions of the win, which gives the Ravens sole possession of first place in the AFC North:
1. The Ravens’ defense dominated at all three levels.
It’s easy to understand if Ravens defensive players took to heart all the buzz about the Cleveland defense. As Roquan Smith said earlier in the week, Ravens defenders don’t study the other team’s defense; they are busy dissecting the offense that they will face. But they want to be the best, and if Cleveland is perceived as the best, well, they better do something to top it. In this game, they did.
The Ravens were dominant at all three levels of defense. The defensive line was disruptive, the linebackers set the edge much better than a week ago and hammered quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson when they blitzed, and the secondary made the rookie quarterback pay for his mistakes.
Defensive linemen Justin Madubuike and Broderick Washington were credited with two of the team’s four sacks, and linebacker Patrick Queen had another. Jadeveon Clowney, returning to Cleveland after two seasons there, was credited with just two tackles but came agonizingly close to a couple of sacks and left Thompson-Robinson skittish much of the afternoon. Receiver Elijah Moore’s most notable play was a 20-yard loss when linebacker Malik Harrison set the edge on a sweep by Moore and the Ravens chased down Moore trying to backtrack to make something happen.
In the back end, Brandon Stephens’ first-quarter interception off a deflected pass set up the Ravens’ first touchdown. Linebackers dropped into coverage and defensive backs neutralized receivers, leaving the Browns no opening to get back into the game. Amari Cooper, the Browns’ leading receiver, finished with one catch for 16 yards.
Some will dismiss it as a predictable performance against a rookie making his first NFL start. But the Ravens have no need to apologize. They were prepared, and maybe offended at so much buzz about the Browns’ defense. They showed, emphatically, that they can play defense, too.
2. The Ravens set the tone with their running backs.
Even after Todd Monken took over as Ravens offensive coordinator, even after they rebuilt the receiver room, head coach John Harbaugh said the team would do whatever it takes to win the game that day. Against Cleveland and its ferocious pass rush, that meant returning to their old-school roots.
The Ravens changed the tenor of the game with two sustained second-quarter scoring drives that were built from the ground up. Midway through the second quarter, the Ravens took over at their own 7-yard line with a 7-3 lead and, truth be told, trying to find some footing on offense. Their only moderately successful drive to that point had ended in a fumble when Lamar Jackson mishandled an exchange to Justice Hill.
Starting a drive at the Ravens’ 7-yard line, Gus Edwards barreled ahead for 10 yards in two plays, and Mark Andrews spun out of a tackle to turn a short pass into a 36-yard gain. Then the Ravens fed the Browns the other two running backs, with Justice Hill and Melvin Gordon totaling 44 yards on three straight running plays. The Browns’ defense hadn’t been gashed like that all season.
Two plays after Gordon ran for 22 yards on his longest gain as a Raven to that point, Jackson followed his blockers over the right side for a 2-yard touchdown and a 14-3 lead that felt bigger than 11 points given the Browns’ offensive struggles.
Then on their final drive of the first half, the Ravens running backs again set the tone. Edwards picked up 16 yards, and Jackson floated a perfectly placed pass to Gordon on a wheel route for 23 yards down the left sideline. After a penalty, Jackson escaped pressure and found Zay Flowers down the right sideline for 43 yards, the Ravens’ longest play of the game. That set up a 7-yard high-point touchdown catch by Andrews for a 21-3 lead just before halftime.
Credit to Monken: He knew, especially with All-Pro tackle Ronnie Stanley out with an injury, Jackson was not likely to enjoy a lot of time for a downfield passing game. He established the running backs as threats as receivers and banked on his team winning inside if the Browns tried to force the action off the edge.
Those two second-quarter drives, coupled with the Ravens’ stifling defensive effort, essentially decided the game.
3. The Ravens’ next men up delivered yet again.
Without question, Cleveland missing quarterback Deshaun Watson and All-Pro running back Nick Chubb massively shifted the axis of the Browns’ offense. But the Ravens will shed no tears, considering they were minus their top running back, two top receivers, their All-Pro left tackle, three outside linebackers, their All-Pro cornerback and a starting safety. That’s conservatively at least seven starters.
Head coach John Harbaugh says the next men up are there because they can play if called upon, and in this game, those players delivered. That includes Brandon Stephens, a former college cornerback at SMU who was viewed as a safety when the Ravens drafted him. But when the cornerbacks started dropping this summer, the team asked him to go out and cover the boundary, and he has been a vital part of their 3-1 start. He had one of the biggest plays of this game, grabbing a deflected pass and returning it 52 yards to set up the Ravens’ first touchdown.
It includes Arthur Maulet, not even close to the Ravens’ first option at nickel back, but a veteran forced into action who tipped the pass that Stephens intercepted.
It includes linebacker Kyle Van Noy, signed just days earlier and then pressed into duty to help a desperately short-handed outside linebacker group that was missing three top players in Odafe Oweh, Tyus Bowser and David Ojabo.
Van Noy, called “a ferocious player” by Harbaugh after several battles in which his Ravens team faced Van Noy’s Patriots teams, officially had just one quarterback hit and one pass defensed but was far more disruptive than that.
It also includes Jadeveon Clowney, who like Van Noy was out there this summer waiting for the right opportunity, when the Ravens and his former coach, Ravens defensive line coach Anthony Weaver, came calling. As with Van Noy, Clowney’s official total of two tackles doesn’t indicate how he was a menace to the Browns offense.
It includes Gus Edwards, who became the team’s top running back after J.K. Dobbins sustained a season-ending Achilles injury. Edwards finished with modest totals — 15 carries for 48 yards — but he helped set the tone on two touchdown drives in the second quarter.
It also includes Melvin Gordon, a veteran who might have bristled at being let go in the final cutdown, but has since been in uniform three times for the team and had two of the Ravens’ longest plays in this game.
It even includes backup tackles Patrick Mekari and Daniel Faalele, who clearly struggled at times to contain the tenacious Browns pass rush led by Myles Garrett. But without Ronnie Stanley, who missed the game with a knee injury, and veteran Morgan Moses, who left with a shoulder injury, where would the Ravens be without Mekari and Faalele?
And there are others, too. General manager Eric DeCosta and his staff have a constantly updated file on players who can be signed to fill in, and during the grind of a 17-game season, those moves matter. With the Ravens’ injury situation such as it is, that was apparent in this game.
4. Lamar Jackson faced that Browns defense and didn’t blink.
If anyone would be rattled by the tenacious reputation of the Browns top-rated defense, it figured to be Lamar Jackson, who took the field knowing he was missing his blind-side left tackle in Ronnie Stanley.
But there seems to be little that rattles Jackson, and a top-ranked Browns defense didn’t, either. Jackson is supremely confident and will always trust that he can make a play with his arm or his legs against anything any defense wants to throw at him. For the first time in his career, he ran and threw for two touchdowns in the same game.
To be sure, he and the Ravens were frustrated early, but it quickly became apparent that the Ravens planned to negate the Browns’ vaunted pass rush with quick, short passes. Jackson worked the ball to his running backs and to his security blanket, tight end Mark Andrews, and he didn’t wait for the downfield passes to develop. The only deep ball he threw was a 43-yard improvised heave to Zay Flowers.
Jackson finished 15-for-19 for 186 yards, proving once again that the 300-yard passing game isn’t nearly the standard-bearer that winning the game is. Jackson’s detractors want to point to the lack of a downfield passing game and a hypothetical limitation that creates. The Ravens just point to another win, and the fact that Jackson is 48-17 as a starter. Only Patrick Mahomes (56-16) is better since Jackson became the starter midway through the 2018 season.
If anyone thought Jackson and the Ravens would shrink against a defense considered the best in the league, they didn’t consider all the ways Jackson can stay a step ahead.
5. The Ravens can take a decisive AFC North step in Pittsburgh next week.
When the schedule came out, the Ravens knew they were staring at a daunting early-season stretch with three AFC North road games in a span of four weeks. Injuries only made that task more challenging, but the Ravens twice have already risen to it.
The Ravens played their most complete game of the season in winning at Cincinnati, 27-24, and now they have also secured a road win against a Cleveland team that was missing both All-Pro running back Nick Chubb and Deshaun Watson.
They move on to Pittsburgh next week in a game, that, remarkably, will play second fiddle in Baltimore considering the Orioles will be hosting Game 2 of the American League Division Series the same day.
But if the Ravens can win at Pittsburgh, they will be sitting atop the AFC North at 4-1, with a 3-0 divisional mark and all those wins on the road. And the rest of the division looks to be in disarray, with both the Steelers and Bengals getting thumped in surprising fashion in Week 4. Pittsburgh was trounced, 30-6, by Houston, and quarterback Kenny Pickett suffered a potentially serious knee injury. Cincinnati lost 27-3 to Tennessee, and something clearly isn’t right with Joe Burrow. At this point, the Ravens appear to be the only team in the division with a healthy starting quarterback.
Yes, it’s early, but a 4-1 record, with three divisional wins on the road, would represent about as big a divisional edge five weeks into the season as any team could hope for.
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