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The first two weeks of the season were uncomfortable. Well, really just the second week. The Ravens played well in Kansas City and lost by a toe. It only mattered significantly when coupled with an unfathomable home loss to the Raiders the following week. And in that moment, there was real reason to wonder about whether it was possible things might come undone.
This was the year when the regular season was supposed to be uneventful. It was supposed to be almost irrelevant. The only storyline that was supposed to be relevant for the Ravens this season was whether they’d finally be able to break through in the playoffs. We can get back to that now.
The Baltimore Ravens comfortably beat one of the better teams in the NFL (the Washington Commanders) in Week 6. They were never truly pushed. It was never in significant peril. It will go down as a one-score win, but that’s only because the Ravens chose not to score any points on the final drive. They punted just once (!) in the entire game. They never trailed. It was an emphatic performance and yet, it was also somehow completely humdrum! The most significant emotion that could be felt after the game was “box checked.”
There’s nothing to fight about! There are no coaches to fire! The only thing worth being mad about is that somehow there isn’t anyone involved with professional football broadcasting that can let broadcasters know that there is no “beltway” between Washington and Baltimore and therefore there can be no “Battle of the Beltway.” That’s it.
I mean, sure, it was fun. Lamar Jackson was great. We should say that again. Lamar Jackson was great. Lamar Jackson is so good at football that the country tends to need to make up nonsensical narratives in order to get attention. Jayden Daniels looks like a damn good football player and there’s reason to believe he will be good for a long time. But it’s wildly unfair that we’re forcing comparisons to Lamar Jackson at this early point in Daniels’ career.
Because Lamar Jackson is truly great. And was truly great … again … against a very good team … again. Because that’s what Lamar Jackson has done for the bulk of his career.
Derrick Henry looked like prime Mariano Rivera in his closing role. Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman looked like the 1-2 punch that the Ravens believed they could be, even though many of us doubted. Mark Andrews looked like Mark Andrews again. Justin Tucker continued to make us wonder who that masked man was that showed up for the first three weeks of the season.
But yeah, it was … all kinda ho-hum.
Which is a testament to how good the Ravens are. The Ravens are so good that they could have a performance like this and none of us are particularly interested in throwing a parade about it. It’s why the Raiders game was so alarming. It was just so unlike them. This is the team we expected it to be.
Well, the defense still needs to get better. The pass defense isn’t as bad as some of the numbers have made it out to be. Adjusted for schedule, it’s more “middle of the road” than bad. And you can win a Super Bowl with a middle-of-the-road defense (see the 2012 Ravens, despite how history seems to think the story was about the defense). Marcus Williams will continue to be under the microscope. There’s an issue there. And Roquan Smith hasn’t fully looked like Roquan Smith to this point of the season.
Still, the front continues to make plays when they’re needed. This secondary has the personnel to be get better this season. Maybe that’s the area where the team will look to make an addition before the deadline.
Perhaps even more importantly, the Ravens have won their last three games in which they had double-digit second-half leads. That’s progress!
The postseason question remains. That was the defining question about this team coming into the year and now that the ship has been righted it comes right back into picture. Hopefully there’s no reason to have any other conversation the rest of the way. I’m completely fine with ho-hum.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox