The Ravens pulled away from the Commanders and gifted rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels with another relentless offensive showing, beating their would-be Beltway rivals, 30-23.
Here are five things we learned from the game:
The Ravens controlled a dangerous opponent with their offense
Derrick Henry turned it into a pretty good comedy bit in the postgame locker room. Again and again, reporters tried to draw the peerless running back into gushing about the offense he has helped raise to a rarefied level. Again and again, Henry smiled gently — a spot of blood showing on his left cheek from the day’s combat — and said, “We’re trying to stay humble.”
Humility is a sensible default position for a team that won’t ultimately be judged on its accomplishments in the regular season. But we can say what Henry would not: This is one hellacious offense, capable of dictating flow even when the guys on the other sideline are moving the ball and scoring freely.
The talk coming into the game was Lamar Jackson vs. Jayden Daniels. Would the league’s newest lion match drives with the reigning NFL Most Valuable Player?
Daniels was splendid, coolly surveying enemy turf and flicking perfect spirals into spaces too small to hold a bag of groceries. At times, the Commanders’ game plan seemed to hold him back, but the rookie threw and scrambled and led his team well enough to win. It was easy to see why Washington entered first in points per game and third in yards per play.
It was just that the Commanders ran into an even more formidable machine, one their shaky defense had no hope of impeding.
That started with Jackson; it always does. He completed 20 of 26 passes for 323 yards, broke a 33-yard run and glided around left end to pick up the first down that sealed the game. But Washington actually did a good job spying on him as a runner.
This latest offensive explosion — 7.4 yards per play, 6-for-10 on third down, five straight scoring drives from early in the second quarter to midway through the fourth — was as much a testament to the treasures around Jackson as to his magical properties.
There’s Henry, of course, who seems guaranteed to bust a back-breaking run every game as long as the Ravens keep feeding him. There’s Zay Flowers, who could not be covered in the first half. And Rashod Bateman, who no longer seems invisible to his quarterback. And tight end Mark Andrews, who finally found the end zone on a day when his running buddy, Isaiah Likely, did not.
A defense plugs one crack, and another opens. The Ravens go into every game confident that the dam will break and points will flow.
“I come in feeling like any guy can have a big day,” Jackson said. “Just a pick-your-poison offense. That’s pretty much what I’ve been saying since camp when we got Derrick Henry.”
Jackson was asked if this is the most balanced offense of his career. He noted that the 2019 version, which led the league in scoring and set an all-time rushing record, also stood out. But that team didn’t have as many pass catchers to scare opponents or a big-play back as singular as Henry.
The 2024 Ravens have yet to sustain dominance on both sides of the ball, but their offense feels like the queen on every week’s chess board, perhaps a first in the history of a defense-forward franchise.
The Commanders had sprinted past their three previous opponents with 34, 42 and 38 points. On Sunday in Baltimore, they could not keep up.
Zay Flowers is a legitimate No. 1 receiver; the beauty is he doesn’t have to be all the time
A playmaker gets antsy when the ball does not touch his hands for a quarter or a half. It’s a rule as old as pro football itself.
Flowers makes magic with a football in his hands, springs open on every route in the playbook.
“Exactly the weapon we absolutely knew he was and would be and has been, to be honest with you,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said after watching the team’s 2023 first-round draft pick run amok in the first half against Washington.
The trick is that Flowers must be all that while knowing the Ravens’ offense might turn away from him for a half (he didn’t see the ball once after halftime against the Commanders) or even a whole game. That’s reality when there’s so much to be gained by feeding Henry, by throwing to Andrews and Bateman when they glide into big, empty spaces. He’s not going to see 10 targets a game like the league’s most prolific wide receivers. He has to find his contentment in the greater cause.
“You’ve got to respect all of us,” he said in describing the wonder of this Ravens offense.
Flowers began his afternoon by taking a simple pass to the flat — a play that seems to be on the Ravens’ opening-drive menu every week — 44 yards down the sideline.
It was merely his first shot in a fusillade. Jets sweeps, crossing routes, sideline patterns — it did not matter. Washington’s secondary could not keep him from finding open space. Flowers caught all nine balls thrown his way in the first half for 132 yards.
Coming on the heels of his seven-catch, 111-yard showcase against the Bengals, it was splashy evidence that he really is the playmaker the Ravens sought for their franchise quarterback.
He did not seem bothered in the least that his career-best stat line remained stuck on those totals for the last 30 minutes of a victory.
“Sometimes, the defense doesn’t allow it. Sometimes, the ball doesn’t come your way for whatever reason,” Harbaugh said. “But today, the opportunities showed up, and we had to have … Those catches had to be made. Those plays had to be made in the pass game, and Zay made them. That was the difference probably in the game.”
The Ravens played it straight on defense and took a modest step forward
A proud defense left Cincinnati licking its wounds after Joe Burrow threw for 391 yards and five touchdowns. The Ravens escaped with an overtime victory because their offense was brilliant and they pulled out a pair of clutch stops, but they knew it was not a sustainable winning formula.
They brought in former defensive coordinator Dean Pees as “another set of eyes,” a sure sign they were shaken by how many gouges the Bengals had inflicted. Would they shore up their coverage in time for Daniels, the newest comet streaking across the NFL sky?
The answer proved to be a mixed bag. The Ravens sent few all-out attacks at the rookie, preferring to rush four and keep most of their defenders back in coverage. They didn’t want Daniels dancing outside as a runner, and they didn’t want him connecting on deep shots. That part of their plan worked as he ran for just 22 yards and did not complete a pass longer than 28.
Daniels did find success, however, taking his scalpel to the soft belly of the Ravens’ defense. He’s an unusually decisive thrower for his experience level and connected four times each with venerable tight end Zach Ertz and shifty running back Auston Ekeler. He made magic with his top wide receiver, Terry McLaurin, defying tight coverage to drop the ball in his hands for two touchdowns and a key third-down conversion.
“He’s the truth, for sure,” Ravens linebacker Roquan Smith said.
Daniels hit on 24 of 35 passes for 269 yards and two touchdowns, with no turnovers. Not Burrow numbers, but efficient enough that the Ravens won’t come out of the game feeling they’ve solved all their issues.
They can take solace in knowing they executed a winning game plan designed by coordinator Zach Orr, a target of considerable fan ire coming off the Bengals game.
“I felt like we definitely took a step forward,” Smith said. “I feel like there are always plays throughout each and every game throughout the league … We’re chasing perfection, but we’re humans, at the end of the day.”
The Ravens ‘didn’t blink’ after doing the Commanders a few favors early
The Ravens started the afternoon like a favorite that wanted to keep its upstart opponent too close for comfort.
On their first drive, Jackson led Andrews a yard too far, and the ball bounced off the tight end’s hands into the arms of Washington cornerback Mike Sainristil. An accurate throw would have put the Ravens on the cusp of an opening touchdown. Instead, they handed Daniels exceptional field position.
With the Ravens knocking on the door to the red zone on their next drive, center Tyler Linderbaum lost his handle on a shotgun snap. Jackson recovered, allowing Justin Tucker to kick a 45-yard field goal. But they had averaged 7.2 yards per play on their first two drives and had three points to show for it, not the start they needed against a frisky opponent.
Such mishaps might have signaled deeper trouble for previous versions of the Ravens, especially given that rookie right tackle Roger Rosengarten allowed Jackson to be flattened deep in Baltimore territory the next time they had the ball. But this team has such faith that it will move the ball and score that those wasted drives ultimately vanished in the wash.
“When we’re watching film, [we’re] going to get on each other, like, ‘That was some B.S. right there,’” Jackson said. “But we [were] good. We didn’t blink at all. We [are going to] get an opportunity. We just got to put points on the board.”
Their offense scored on its next five drives and ran out the clock on the sixth.
Travis Jones was a one-man wall
Jones answered the first three questions he faced in the postgame locker room with a single sentence before making it to two on answer No. 4.
The third-year defensive tackle has never been loose with his words, and that’s not about to change just because he’s the immovable object at the heart of the Ravens’ defense.
We’ll let a a more loquacious teammate, Smith, say it for him: “The guy is an animal, as we all know. Just, sometimes, the sacks, you may not see them, but his presence throughout the game and just the impact that he had throughout the game is not taken for granted.”
Jones came in to the weekend with the seventh-highest grade of any defensive tackle, according to Pro Football Focus, but as Smith noted, he came in with no sacks and one tackle for loss to show for his dominance. That’s the nature of a position that’s more about eating up blockers and closing off holes than rolling up stats.
Against Washington, however, Jones got to set the table and eat his supper, sacking Daniels and enveloping Ekeler for a 1-yard loss in the first half and for no gain in the second. When the Ravens attempted to mount a goal-line stand later in the second half, he seemed to cave in the entire Commanders offensive line by himself.
Many of us tabbed Jones as the most likely breakout candidate on the Ravens’ defense, and he’s more than living up to that billing. The Ravens are the first team ever to outrush opponents by at least 100 yards in the first six games of the season. Henry and Jackson have a lot to do with that statistic, but so does the 6-foot-4, 338-pound mammoth on the other side of the ball.
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