BALTIMORE — To truly appreciate the Baltimore Ravens’ 23-10 win over the New York Jets Sunday, you probably need to go back more than a month to the last time they were playing a game at M&T Bank Stadium.
The Ravens needed to beat the Chicago Bears that day to avoid a 1-6 start. There was no talk of the playoffs or of first place in the AFC North. The Ravens trailed the Pittsburgh Steelers by three games, so such talk would have been a waste of breath. The Ravens simply needed to win a game to prevent their season from reaching the hopeless stage.
They prevailed that day behind backup quarterback Tyler Huntley — and they haven’t stopped winning.
On Sunday, they persevered through an ugly first half, during which the offense was booed by the home crowd on multiple occasions, and took control of the game against the downtrodden Jets with two third-quarter Derrick Henry touchdown runs. The defense closed the deal by forcing two fourth-quarter turnovers.
“It’s not always pretty,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “I don’t know how many times in the last however many years we’ve had wins like this where we’ve gotten up here and said, ‘It’s not pretty, it’s not perfect, but it’s us.’ It’s competing and fighting.”
Harbaugh is correct. This one was neither smooth nor aesthetically pleasing. That’s exemplified by the fact that the Ravens’ most valuable player Sunday may have been punter Jordan Stout. Otherwise, it was a difficult watch at times. The Ravens had just 72 yards of total offense in the first half, averaged a paltry 3.0 yards per play and didn’t convert any of their five third-down opportunities.
But style points mean nothing in the NFL, and the end result was plenty effective for a Ravens team that has now won five straight games.
“I find satisfaction in the win,” said wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. “It’s the NFL, and the other team gets paid as well. Of course, you want to go out there and blow a team out, but a win is a win, so it doesn’t matter.”
At 6-5, the Ravens are over .500 for the first time this season. Most improbable of all, they learned as they celebrated the victory in their locker room that the Steelers had been beaten by the Bears, meaning that Baltimore had ascended into first place in the AFC North. The Ravens and Steelers are both 6-5 with two games remaining against one another over the final five weeks of the regular season.
The turnaround is nowhere near complete, but in just five weeks, the Ravens went from the AFC basement to having an opportunity to take firm control of the division by beating the Cincinnati Bengals and Steelers at home over the next two weeks. That counts for something and is worth a muted celebration, even with Sunday’s effort doing nothing to quell the long-term concerns about this team and the health of quarterback Lamar Jackson.
“It feels great,” said Jackson. “Wish we were in a better situation. Five in a row, and we have to just keep it going. It’s a tough division, tough league. Like I said, we just have to keep going.”
As the Ravens exited M&T Bank Stadium late Sunday afternoon, knowing they’d be back in a matter of days for a Thanksgiving night game against the Bengals, there was a sense that the regular season, now 2.5 months old, is just getting started. With five straight wins, the Ravens have earned the right to feel that way. They have dug themselves out of a 1-5 hole. By game’s end, The Athletic’s NFL Playoff Simulator had the Ravens with an 89 percent chance of making the playoffs and hosting a wild-card game.
They also must understand how quickly their season can shift back to the edge of the abyss. Beat the Bengals and Steelers over the next two weeks, and then take care of Cincinnati on the road in Week 15, and the Ravens will be in firm control of the AFC North.
Yet, if they lose two of those games, maybe even one — and that’s plenty conceivable with the way the offense is playing at the moment — the Ravens will shift right back to desperation mode ahead of a rigorous final three-game stretch that has them hosting the AFC-best New England Patriots (10-2) and then finishing with road games against the Green Bay Packers (7-3-1) and Steelers.
“You only can just focus on going forward in the moment right now,” said Ravens middle linebacker Roquan Smith, who 30 minutes after the game was already talking about heading home and turning on tape of the Bengals. “That’s something that we’ve been prioritizing like, ‘Hey, it’s the moment right now. Forget what has happened. You remember it, but you can’t focus on it or dwell on it.’ We just know we control our destiny. But we knew that weeks ago, regardless of the spot that we were in.
“So, that’s what it’s all about, and we’ve just got to continue to play our brand of football week in and week out.”
The defense certainly has done its part. Fairly maligned during the 1-5 start, the Ravens have held six consecutive opponents to under 20 points. That they’ve faced a number of struggling offenses during that stretch — and the Tyrod Taylor-led Jets certainly qualify — certainty is part of the equation. But it wasn’t too long ago when the Ravens defense was struggling mightily, too.
However, they are suddenly getting some timely stops — Baltimore sandwiched a fourth-down stop in Jets territory around the two Henry touchdown runs — and forcing turnovers.
Baltimore has forced 10 turnovers over its five-game winning streak, and cornerback Marlon Humphrey’s strip of Breece Hall inside the Ravens’ 5-yard line with the Jets primed to cut into a 20-10 lead at the midpoint of the fourth quarter was arguably the biggest play on Sunday.
“We’ve been (almost) lights out,” said trade acquisition Dre’Mont Jones, who had 1.5 sacks in his first home game as a Raven. “It’s been creating turnovers, getting pressure on the quarterback, getting hits, getting sacks, stopping the run. Everybody is doing their part. D-line, we’re knocking things back, and the back end is covering, so it’s complementary football going on right now.”
The Ravens, though, are still waiting for their high-powered offense to re-emerge. That didn’t happen on Sunday. The Ravens had their fourth straight slow start. Baltimore’s two scoring drives in the third quarter were aided by two Jets’ pass interference penalties on third-and-long. The second touchdown drive started at the Jets’ 42.
Otherwise, it was a slog offensively despite facing the NFL’s 20th-ranked defense. Baltimore again wasn’t great in the red zone, scoring touchdowns on 2-of-5 trips. The Ravens averaged just 2.9 yards on the ground on 34 carries. Jackson wasn’t sharp at all, either, as he completed just 13 of 23 passes for 153 yards and compiled a 76.9 passer rating.
“We need to execute better,” Jackson said. “We just have to put points on the board. Our defense has played ‘lights out’ for the last few weeks. (We) started to play well in Miami, but the last few weeks, I feel like we need to put points on the board and execute drives.”
Jackson, who has missed practices with knee and ankle injuries since returning from a three-game absence for a hamstring strain, again downplayed the impact of injuries on his play. He said he’s healthy enough to “be able to do what I do.” However, the noise about the two-time MVP not being healthy will only get louder with his performance on Sunday.
Jackson again didn’t look entirely comfortable. He missed a few open receivers, and he didn’t look elusive when he did run the ball. It’s a continuation of what he’s shown over the past couple of weeks.
“Utmost confidence in Lamar Jackson. I always will,” Harbaugh said. “He’s my guy, he’s our guy, he’s our quarterback. Lamar is doing what he needs to do. He is winning football games. The pretty games will be there. They’ll be there for Lamar Jackson, you can bet on that. But I’m really proud of him and the way he’s fighting to win football games.”
To his credit, Jackson hasn’t forced things and made crushing mistakes. The Ravens have just two offensive turnovers during the five-game winning streak, and both were Jackson interceptions against the Cleveland Browns last week that deflected off of offensive teammates.
Still, if the Ravens are going anywhere this season, if they are even going to beat the Bengals and Steelers over the next two weeks, they need their offense and their quarterback to play much better than they did Sunday. The Ravens’ ceiling isn’t very high with their star quarterback and talent-packed offense being ordinary and playing well for a quarter here and there.
There was an acknowledgement of that on Sunday, even as the players celebrated how far they’ve already come. The Ravens are in first place, but it’s going to take a lot more than what they’ve shown in recent weeks to stay there.
“While winning is great, to reach our goal, we need to be better,” said left tackle Ronnie Stanley.