Top Takeaways from Ravens commanding win over Texans: Defense dominates

The Baltimore Ravens continued to look like the cream of the NFL crop in Week Two after they followed up their dominating win in their season opener with another landslide victory over the Houston Texans on the road 33-16 this past Sunday.

This was a rematch of a Week 11 game from last season when the two teams met in Baltimore and even though the Texans scored more than doubled their messily seven points from that rough outing, they still didn’t fare much better as the Ravens made more plays than their hosts for most of the day on both sides of the ball.

Here is one of the top takeaways that I observed in the Ravens Week Two win:

Defense continues to dominate

The Ravens defense was swarming to the ball, making plays on the ball, and harassing Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson all game long. Their run defense bounced back from a leaky performance against the Browns in Week One by limiting Texans running back David Johnson for just 34 yards and bottling up their running game as a whole to 51 net yards in Week Two.

The last time these two teams faced off, the pass rush brought down Watson for a whopping seven sacks. Even though they were three sacks shy of last year’s total with four on Sunday, they hit Houston’s star signal-caller a staggering 13 times and pressured him relentlessly from start to finish.

As great as the pass rush looked in this game, the stars of the day on the defensive side of the ball were the Ravens’ pair of First Team All-Pro corners, Marcus Peters and Marlon Humphrey. They not only blanked the Texans top receiver, Will Fuller, and held him without a single catch or target, they both came up with game-changing turnovers that swung the momentum in the Ravens favor in the first half and Baltimore didn’t give it back the rest of the way.

After star slot corner Tavon Young left the game in the first quarter with a knee injury, Humphrey moved inside to the nickel spot and it didn’t take long for him to make his presence felt. In the second quarter, he forced a fumble by punching the ball out of the grasp of Texans’ slot receiver Keke Coutee and the loose ball was picked up by linebacker LJ Fort and returned 22 yards for a touchdown.

Head Coach John Harbaugh called the play “the momentum turner in the game” and a few plays later, Peters added even more fuel to the fire by recording his first turnover of the season in breathtaking fashion. The renowned ballhawk made an incredibly athletic diving interception of a pass thrown by Watson where he came off the underneath receiver to make an even bigger play further down the field.

“It’s the kind of interception that only he can make,” Harbaugh said. “You can’t coach what he saw there and how he handled that play. That was pretty remarkable.”

Watson was so impressed by the play that after the game he asked Peters what he saw on the interception he threw to him.

“I was asking him about it, if he knew what was coming or if he read my eyes,” Watson said. “He just kind of said…he’d rather give up the checkdown play. He made a hell of a play.”

In addition to their splash plays, Humphrey finished the game with seven total tackles (second most on the team) and half a sack (first of his career) and Peters finished with three total tackles and a pair of pass deflections (most on the team).

Some of the other defensive standouts from Sundays big win over the Texans include rookie inside linebacker Patrick Queen, safety Chuck Clark, outside linebacker Tyus Bowser, defensive end Calais Campbell and safety DeShon Elliott.

Queen was flying all around field and led the team in total tackles for the second week in a row with nine. Clark was all over the field and recorded six tackles and a half a sack. Bowser who logged three solo tackles, a sack and two quarterback hits in his homecoming to the city he played his college ball. Campbell recorded five total tackles, including one for loss and his first sack as a Raven. Elliott who continued to shine in his new starting role, was menace on blitzes, and finished with four tackles, including one for loss and his first career sack.

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