The final 36 hours of Shohei Ohtani’s free agency think the Ravens’ Week 14 win against the Rams was wild.
The Ravens were lucky and unlucky, outstanding and terrible, puzzling and predictable all in the span of 62 minutes and change. There was more than a fair amount to not like. John Harbaugh in particular can be quite reasonably criticized, both for his decision to punt on fourth-and-inches from his own 37 in the fourth quarter and far less debatably for whatever in the world he was doing when he tossed a challenge flag like he was Phillip Wellman throwing a rosin bag on a play that could not be challenged.
The Ravens seemed wholly uninterested in committing to the run despite quite sloppy conditions, the deep ball was an absolute adventure and the defense was far leakier than usual.
And yet they beat one of the hotter teams in football and improved to 10-3 on the season. And aside from Kyle Hamilton’s status, that’s the only thing that matters. In fact, it’s probably a bit bigger than that. There would be a reasonable inclination for Ravens fans to feel like this was the type of win that they should apologize for afterward, but that misses what made this one significant.
As I see it, this was the first “playoff win” the Ravens recorded this season and should prove particularly beneficial with even more playoff-caliber wins moving forward.
While the season obviously wouldn’t have been over if the Ravens lost to the Rams, the bye week provided a shift in focus from “making the playoffs” to “getting the No. 1 seed.” With the Jaguars and Chiefs’ losses last week (even before additional losses this week), the picture was clear for the Ravens. We used the term “control their destiny” ad nauseam throughout the past week. But the only way to actually control destiny in football is … to control it.
Every game the rest of the way carries an additional weight for a Ravens core that, we have to be honest, (mostly) does not know how to win a Super Bowl. Not everyone, of course. Odell Beckham Jr., Kyle Van Noy, Ronald Darby and Justin Tucker are among those who have — and obviously the head coach has — but the overwhelming majority of the group has not. It’s the unspoken part of all of this, right? There’s one playoff win for Lamar Jackson and zero for a number of other players on this team.
The Ravens need to go through games like this. They need to feel this type of pressure. They need to face good teams who are desperate to win and push them. They need to prove to themselves that they can win in those circumstances.
What the win against the Rams did more specifically was prove that the Ravens can find more ways to win when things aren’t going their way. They lost time of possession by seven minutes, they lost the turnover battle and they had more than twice as many penalty yards as a team lead by a healthy, future Hall of Fame, Super Bowl-winning quarterback and one of the best receivers in football and … they won.
They won a game on a day when their defense wasn’t dominant. They won when Marlon Humphrey was … really un-Marlon Humphrey-like. They won on a day when they gave up a go-ahead scoring drive in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter AND another scoring drive after that. They won when a missed call turned what should have been an incomplete pass into a sack and left them faced with a third-and-17 with 1:17 left in the game
And from a very good win, the go-ahead drive Lamar Jackson authored might have been the best part. He was 7-for-10 for 82 combined yards on the drive. He made one of the best throws of the season on third-and-17, connecting with Zay Flowers for the touchdown. He then made an even better throw on the two-point conversion attempt to Flowers, who also came through in a big way after some struggles earlier in the game.
Given the importance of every game the rest of the way in terms of locking up the No. 1 seed, it is in the conversation of the best drives of the Jackson era.
The Ravens need to be sharper, players and coaches alike. If the Rams were desperate, the Jaguars (playing at home in front of a foaming-at-the-mouth prime-time crowd) might as well be Eva Longoria and Teri Hatcher after back-to-back losses. The Ravens can’t afford lapses moving forward.
But don’t dismiss the significance of this one. Hopefully it continues to help the Ravens as they’re in more of these situations moving forward.
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