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And I’ll say that even with the shiner the San Francisco All-Star team put on the Steelers eight days ago.
The Ravens-Bengals game is a great example of why. And the perfect picture was drawn with Baltimore’s finish.
The Bengals’ offense finally started to shake its early-season slump in the second half of Sunday’s intra-division showdown, with Joe Burrow piloting a 13-play, 75-yard drive to finish the third quarter, then putting together a 16-play, 80-yard drive in the fourth quarter to cut the Baltimore lead to 27–24 with 3:28 left. With two timeouts left, that put Cincinnati in position to get the ball back.
Until, that is, the Ravens made sure the Bengals wouldn’t, slamming the door shut with six runs that chewed up 33 yards and stamped this as a vintage Baltimore win.
“That felt great,” quarterback Lamar Jackson told me over the cell as he boarded the team’s bus for the airport. “That was finally pulling off a game with the offense being on the field. The defense did a great job. All three phases did great today.”
In so many ways, a -type of win for the Ravens should serve to make everyone remember that the AFC North is going to make it hard for the Bengals to reach the rarified air they’ve lived in for the last two years. And just as Baltimore showed Cincinnati on Sunday, the Browns did the week before, with Jim Schwartz fueling a defensive rival in Cleveland that started this two-game slide for Cincy. The Steelers are still hanging around, even after last week’s events, too.
So does all this make the Ravens the favorite? Maybe it does. The Ravens, as Jackson said, really did beat the Bengals every which way. They rushed for 178 yards on 37 carries. In his second game under new coordinator Todd Monken, Jackson threw for 237 yards and a 112.8 passer rating, leading an offense that converted 9-of-14 third downs. The defense held the Bengals to 282 yards and registered a pick that the offense turned into a touchdown.
The special teams were shakier, allowing an 81-yard punt return touchdown (and Justin Tucker, believe it or not, missed a long field goal). But with John Harbaugh around, it’s hard to imagine that won’t be cleaned up before too long.
And a couple scuffling moments in that phase didn’t make this any less of a signature win.
It’s something that Jackson summed up simply, when I asked him whether that final sequence, through which the Ravens ran it when the Bengals knew they were running, was a good example of this version of Baltimore’s living up to old standards.
“The toughness has been there,” he said. “Obviously.”
So much so that now, just two weeks into the season, the Ravens may have simultaneously stamped themselves the favorite in the AFC North, and the North as the NFL’s best division.
The Browns and Steelers could bring more validation of Monday tonight.
