Another Record Setting Performance for The Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens soared over Arizona Cardinals 23-17 to improve to 2-0 on the season. Lamar Jackson, the quarterback, threw and ran the Ravens to their first home victory on Sunday.
The Ravens set the tone early again with a 7 play, 94-yard drive that concluded with Lamar drawing the entire Cardinals defense off Mark Andrews for a 27-yard touchdown.
I mean he could have literally army crawled into the endzone.
OFFENSE
For the first time in as long as I can remember, the Ravens have wide receivers running down the field and are catching wide open passes. And for the most part, Lamar is hitting them.
As a QB in the NFL, it is hard to measure up to a a 324-yard, 5 touchdown, 85% completion game, trust me I’ve tried (in Madden). But Lamar did not disappoint. Jackson was not as accurate as last week, but still looked pretty damn good.
He completed a career high 24 passes, and added on 2 touchdowns to surpass, in just 2 games, his total in 7 starts in 2018. He now holds the Ravens record for most pass attempts without an interception. Oh, and his 272 passing yards and 120 rushing yards is an NFL record or something.
As for the rest of the Raven offense, Mark Andrews and Hollywood Brown were standouts nabbing 8 balls a piece in record setting performances Sunday.
Mark Andrews is the first Ravens TE, and the first Raven since Mike Wallace in 2016, to have back-to-back 100-yard receiving games. Yes, it’s early, but Andrews is showing Gronk/Kelce/Kittle potential for this budding Ravens offense.
Hollywood proved he is more than just a deep threat. His 233 receiving yards in his first 2 games are the most by any receiver since former Raven Anquan Boldin’s 279 yards in 2003. Hollywood also hauled in the most important throw of the season thus far.
A dime if I’ve ever seen one. The vote of confidence in Lamar to go out and ice the game is a very promising sign and will be influential in his development and success.
That’s enough on the offense for now.
DEFENSE
The tides are changing in Baltimore. This team is becoming more offensively oriented, and in an offense-driven league, that’s okay. This game was not terrible from a defensive standpoint by any means. But there are definite causes for concern.
Let’s start with the positives. You can’t run on us. It’s been like that since the early 2000s, and it looks to be a continuing trend in this team. The Ravens allowed a whopping 20 yards from 3 separate rushers on Sunday. David Johnson’s 1-yard rush was the sole touchdown of the afternoon for the Cardinals.
Kyler Murray hit us up for 349 yards. At points, it seemed Murray was just throwing it up there and as the camera panned, a Cardinal receiver would run under it. Christian Kirk and Larry Fitzgerald tallied 114 and 104 yards respectively.
On the plus side, the signature “bend-don’t-break” Raven defense kept them out of the endzone—well, mostly—and staved off a late comeback. However, it was the offense that put the game on ice.
We looked weak defending the pass. Plain and simple. Which, admittedly, scares me heading into Arrowhead to face Patrick Mahomes next week. If you’ve forgotten what he did to us last year, click this link. Or just turn on ESPN because I’m certain that is all they will be talking about this week.
LOOKING AHEAD
Heading into this Chiefs matchup, we have to tighten up our pass coverage. Whether that be with a sustained pass rush, that has been surprisingly good in the first two games, or simply cutting off passing lanes. And our DBs are most certainly going to have to make better plays on 50/50 balls.
Regardless, it is next to impossible to shutdown Patrick Mahomes. At the end of the day, the question remains: will this Ravens offense be able to keep up with Mahomes and the Chiefs?
OTHER THOUGHTS:
- The holding penalties have GOT to stop.
- Forget what you heard, Kyler Murray is going to be a good QB in this league.
- Although the play call was bad, I like the aggression of going for it on 4th and 3 early in the game.
- Sad to hear Ben’s season ended because when we spank the Steelers twice this year, I don’t want to hear any excuses.
- I’m laughing at the Broncos and the Joe Flacco faithfuls.
- The Dolphins faced Lamar Jackson and Tom Brady in the first 2 games. Guess which QB threw for 5 TDs.
