Tight end Mark Andrews caught a 12-yard touchdown catch early in the fourth quarter to give the Ravens a 10-point lead, but this year, that has proved to be an ominous position.
For this Ravens team, nothing has been as consistent as their ability to give up second-half leads, and sure enough, the New York Giants scored 14 points during the final 6:01 to rally for a 24-20 win against the Ravens (3-3) at MetLife Stadium on Oct. 16.
In all three of the Ravens’ losses, they have led by at least 10 points in the second half.
With the Ravens leading 20-17 and looking to milk the clock in the final four minutes, quarterback Lamar Jackson instead fielded an errant snap and, under pressure, forced an ill-advised pass toward fullback Patrick Ricard that was intercepted by safety Julian Love — the Giants’ first interception of the season.
Love’s return set up the Giants (5-1) at the Ravens’ 13-yard line with 2:50 to play. Four plays later, running back Saquon Barkley dove over the goal line for a 24-20 lead.
The Ravens still had 1:43 and all three timeouts, but on their second snap of the ensuing series, Giants rookie edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux beat right tackle Patrick Mekari and knocked the ball from Jackson’s hand. The Giants recovered the fumble, ending any last-gasp hope for a Ravens team that had the edge in play for much of the day.
Indeed, the Ravens outgained the Giants 256-90 in the first half but had only a 10-7 lead to show for it. Running back Kenyan Drake shot through a hole on the right side and went untouched for a 30-yard score, his longest run of the season, and Justin Tucker added a 34-yard field goal.
Tucker, who missed off the upright from 56 yards in the first quarter, gave the Ravens a 13-7 lead early in the third quarter when he hit from 23 yards. Giants kicker Graham Gano answered with a 34-yard field goal with 2:00 left in the third quarter, and then Andrews’ touchdown with 12:54 left extended the Ravens lead to 20-10.
As usual this year, though, that proved to be a dangerous place to be.
“We’ve done good things in all three of those games early on, even late, and we haven’t been able to close it out,” guard Kevin Zeitler said. “It’s not just one guy, or one side of the ball, it’s truly everyone. … It’s on us to get this fixed.”
Here are five quick impressions of the loss, which drops the Ravens back into a first-place tie in the AFC North with Cincinnati:
1. Lamar Jackson and the offense could not finish drives.
The interception thrown by Lamar Jackson was a terrible decision in which he was just trying to make something happen, but the game never should have been in the balance at that point.
The Ravens moved the ball up and down the field at times, but drives faltered deep in Giants territory and they were held to field goals by Justin Tucker on two key possessions. This came after the Ravens also mounted a pair of sustained drives in the first quarter, one ending with a punt from the Giants’ 42-yard line, and another with Tucker’s missed field goal off the left upright from 56 yards.
The most critical missed opportunity came early in the third quarter. Leading 10-7, the Ravens quickly marched from their own 31 to the Giants’ 5-yard line in four plays. Kenyan Drake reeled off a 21-yard gain, and tight Mark Andrews caught a pair of passes before Jackson ran 11 yards to the 5-yard line.
Despite averaging nearly 9 yards a run at that point, the Ravens opted to pass on three straight plays from the 5. On first down, Jackson threw incomplete to Devin Duvernay. His second-down pass glanced off Mark Andrews’ hands after the pass was tipped in front of Andrews. And on third down, Jackson threw incomplete at the goal line for Isaiah Likely, who argued unsuccessfully for a pass-interference flag.
“Anytime it doesn’t work, you want to go back and look at what you could’ve done,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “We had opportunities with those passes to score as well. … It goes both ways.”
In a game that stayed scoreless into the second quarter and felt taut throughout, those missed chances loomed large.
“We stopped ourselves a lot,” Jackson said. “[There were] a lot of missed opportunities out there, especially in the red zone. I feel like we should’ve put more points up. Little hiccups here and there. We’ve got to fix those, because that’s making the difference in our game.”
2. Wink Martindale got the last laugh.
For three quarters, the Ravens were getting the best of Giants defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale, who had held that same job with the Ravens for the previous four years.
Lamar Jackson (17-for-32, 210 yards) was scuffling through the air, but the Ravens’ ground game, Kenyan Drake in particular, was gashing Martindale’s defense. Drake ran untouched for a 30-yard touchdown and 7-0 Ravens lead, and led by Drake — who finished with 10 carries for 119 yards — the Ravens averaged 8.8 yards a carry. Tight end Mark Andrews got open early and often and piled up seven catches for 106 receiving yards against a defense schemed to stop him.
Even without top receiver Rashod Bateman, who missed his second straight game with a foot injury, and with a supporting cast of wide receivers that offered little production — Demarcus Robinson (3-27), Devin Duvernay (1-14) and Tylan Wallace (1-4) totaled five catches for 45 yards — the Ravens mounted sustained drives of at least 59 yards four times.
Offensive coordinator Greg Roman leaned hard on his tight ends, who were targeted on 18 of Jackson’s 32 throws, and a ground game that included several designed runs by Jackson to great effect. Jackson finished with 77 yards on seven carries.
Yet when Martindale’s defense needed to get a stop, it did. The Giants forced turnovers on the Ravens’ final two possessions, aided greatly by Jackson’s ill-advised throw toward Patrick Ricard that was intercepted by Julian Love. Then Kayvon Thibodeaux, the No. 5 overall pick in this year’s draft, stripped Jackson on what proved to be the Ravens’ final offensive snap.
It was the kind of late-game defensive spark that has been wholly absent for the Ravens this season. And for Martindale, who essentially became the fall guy after the Ravens’ 8-9 injury-ravaged 2021 season, it had to be a sweet feeling trotting across the field after the game.
3. Penalties doomed the Ravens all day.
The Ravens entered this game having committed just 23 penalties, the third-fewest in the league, but they committed 10 in this game, and a couple of them proved especially costly.
Midway through the third quarter, Giants quarterback Daniel Jones connected with Saquon Barkley on third-and-5, but he was stopped a yard shy of the first down. The Giants would have been faced with fourth-and-1 from the Ravens’ 40.
Instead, Ravens linebacker Odafe Oweh was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after he appeared to tussle with former Raven Ben Bredeson. That handed the Giants a first down, and they proceeded to drive inside the Ravens’ 10-yard line before Calais Campbell recorded a big third-down sack and Graham Gano kicked a 34-yard field goal to trim the Ravens lead to 13-10.
Would the Giants have gone for the first down on fourth-and-1? Would the Ravens have stopped them if they did? We’ll never know, because Oweh losing his cool essentially handed the Giants the first down and valuable yardage.
Another huge penalty came just before Jackson’s disastrous interception. Leading 20-17, the Ravens faced third-and-1 from their own 44 with 3:04 to play. Jackson kept on a sneak off left guard and gained 2 yards. With the first down, the Ravens were in position to run the clock at least to the two-minute warning, or force the Giants to use their timeouts.
But on the play, the Ravens were called for an illegal formation, backing them up into a third-and-6 situation. Tyler Linderbaum’s shotgun snap then eluded Jackson, who was not ready for it and said it came early. After scooping up the ball and scrambling away from trouble, Jackson made the disastrous decision to force a pass toward Patrick Ricard that was intercepted.
The Ravens also put themselves behind the chains with four false starts in the first half — two by Ricard and two by Morgan Moses, who left the game with a heel injury and did not return. Marcus Peters was also called for pass interference in the end zone on third-and-6 that negated an interception and set up the Giants at the 1-yard line, and Barkley scored the go-ahead touchdown on the next play.
4. Kenyan Drake has entered the running back conversation again.
The return of J.K. Dobbins three weeks ago generated headlines, but it also generated a seat on the bench for Kenyan Drake, who became the odd man out in a three-man running back rotation. With Dobbins back, and with Justice Hill contributing on special teams, the Ravens opted to go with Dobbins, Hill and Mike Davis as the three running backs in uniform in Weeks 3 and 4. Drake was relegated to a healthy scratch.
To that point, Drake, a seven-year veteran signed by the Ravens in late August after being released by the Las Vegas Raiders, had done little to refute that. In his first two games with the Ravens, he had carried 17 times for 39 yards. But with Hill sidelined by a hamstring injury, Drake was back in uniform, and his role became even more prominent after Dobbins was sidelined in this game by tightness in his knee, according to head coach John Harbaugh. Dobbins finished with 15 yards on seven carries.
Drake ran untouched off right tackle — aided by a huge, channel-opening block by pulling guard Ben Powers — for a 30-yard touchdown and 7-0 Ravens lead. He reeled off another 30-yard run later in the game, and added a 21-yard run on a drive that ended with a field goal.
Drake, who had totaled 65 rushing yards for the Ravens this year, nearly doubled that with 10 carries for 119 yards — the eighth 100-yard game of his career and his first since he was with Arizona in 2020.
Drake, though, said the loss tempered the enthusiasm for his performance.
“It’s a team game, so any individual accolade is kind of on the back burner when it comes to the ultimate goal, which is winning the game,” he said. “I was running through holes, and I wasn’t getting touched until the second level, so you have to give your hats off to the boys up front.”
The Ravens are expected to get Gus Edwards back in the next week or two, so the running back room figures to get more crowded and more competitive. But Hill’s injury has lingered, and Dobbins’ tightness in his knee bears watching. After being essentially shoved to the sideline a few weeks ago, Drake has declared that he wants to remain in the conversation.
5. The defensive line deserved better.
On the Giants’ first offensive snap, quarterback Daniel Jones dropped back and was buried by Ravens rookie defensive tackle Travis Jones for Travis Jones’ first career sack. That set the tone for what was a dominant performance by the defensive line, especially early.
Running back Saquon Barkley entered the game ranked second in the league overall (533 yards) and 10th in yards per carry, but he finished the first half with 14 yards on six carries. Travis Jones, Justin Madubuike, Broderick Washington and Calais Campbell repeatedly won one-on-one battles in the trenches and essentially took away the Giants’ running game for long stretches.
Their play up front stifled the Giants and gave the offense a chance to build a sizeable lead that never materialized.
Barkley had a couple of series in the second half where he started to find a groove, but he finished with 83 hard-earned yards on 22 carries, and the Giants overall averaged 2.7 yards a run. The Ravens recorded four sacks, and three of them came from the defensive interior — one each from Jones, Madubuike and Campbell — and that group recorded all five of the team’s quarterback hits.
The Ravens this year have appeared to be susceptible to the run, and coming into this game they had allowed 4.95 yards a carry, which ranked 26th best in the league. That figured to be a dangerous proposition against Barkley and the Giants, but the line play was good enough to win.
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