Welcome to the Ravens Reality Check, where we take the national hot takes about the the Baltimore Ravens and flip them over to see if they’ve been overcooked.
There’s a lot to digest about this extremely up-and-down Ravens performance, but in the eyes of the national media, Baltimore’s role in its 28-25 victory feels immaterial, or even not recognized at all. There has been a lot more said about their opponent, the Dallas Cowboys, a team that networks are compelled to discuss ad nauseam.
1. Derrick Henry should have been a Cowboy!
There has been a lot of discourse about signing Derrick Henry, but you won’t hear Ravens GM Eric DeCosta’s name attached to any of it. Instead of lauding DeCosta for signing the 30-year-old back who piled up 151 yards and two touchdowns on 25 carries, a lot of the conversation has been about who didn’t sign him — starting with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
The Ravens signed Henry to a two-year, $16 million deal this spring (admittedly, I expressed skepticism at the time but have since warmed to the signing). The Cowboys signed receiver CeeDee Lamb and quarterback Dak Prescott to massive contracts shortly before the season began. Jones put himself in the line of fire, saying after the game: “We couldn’t afford him. We can’t make that all fit. That’s as simple as that.”
ESPN’s Mike Greenberg was withering: “If they had decided to treat the offseason like it began before Sept. 1, they could have easily have afforded Derrick Henry — and a lot of other pieces. So what you saw on display yesterday was a team that during this offseason got worse and more expensive, which is bad management. It is bad ownership and bad leadership, from a football standpoint.”
Not arguing with the take itself, but if you’re going to talk about who didn’t sign Derrick Henry, you might also talk about who did. There is plenty to discuss, including how the Ravens improved their offensive line play with a group of maligned starters, how Lamar Jackson’s running paired well with Henry’s bruising style, and how Henry created for himself downfield after clearing the initial blockers.
But Cowboys-centric talking heads didn’t devote much time (or really any) to it. Instead, there were a lot of hypotheticals getting tossed around like defenders facing a Henry stiff-arm. Shannon Sharpe pointed out that Henry trains in Dallas, and wondered if the Cowboys even asked after Henry: “At the end of the day, it’s all about Jerry’s ego.” Can you blame his ego if every Monday morning all the conversation is about him?
On the upshot, Henry was Tom Brady’s “LFG” player of the game. The first-year broadcaster told Henry, “I’ve almost lost my voice watching you tote that thing down the field.” If you listened to Brady do commentary for three hours on Sunday, you might have wished it had happened.
2. The Cowboys didn’t do enough to win!
Maybe it’s merciful that the Ravens aren’t being targeted in the discourse. Instead of getting picked on for a near-collapse on the road when they led 28-6 in the fourth quarter, the focus was largely on the softness of the Cowboys — especially wide receiver Lamb, whom the Fox broadcast showed many times sulking on the sideline.
ESPN’s Tedy Bruschi noted that Brady’s commentary — which unsurprisingly focused on his famous comeback down 28-3 in Super Bowl LI — about how to chip away at a big lead didn’t seem to match the body language of the Cowboys: “It was so strange to me to see their faces and the mentality. It was all wrong. … They do not understand ‘next play’ at all!”
This seemed to avoid the fact that the Cowboys did manage to score 19 points against the Ravens defense in the fourth quarter and were a Lamar Jackson run away from getting the ball back. After Baltimore coughed up the game against the Raiders a week before, you’d think there would be substantial discussion about how the NFL’s best defense last season has regressed. Not so much.
“Everybody understands this about the Cowboys now,” NBC’s Jason Garrett said, taking a shot at his former employer. “They’re not a physical football team.”
The Ravens were more physical, undoubtedly, but ahead of a big Sunday Night Football game against the Buffalo Bills, they didn’t have to face much scrutiny about another letdown.
3. The special teams have not been special!
Echoing my colleague Giana Han’s takeaway from Sunday afternoon in her instant analysis, FTN’s Aaron Schatz pointed out that the Ravens aren’t meeting their typical high standard in the third phase of the game. The Ravens have ranked top-10 in DVOA since 2012 — what you’d expect from a team coached by a former special teams coordinator — but this year are just 25th, and that doesn’t even count the onside kick that they missed in the fourth quarter.
We’ve now seen this special teams unit play for three weeks, and there just haven’t been many advantages gained in that area. Justin Tucker is 5-for-8 on field goals, and he missed a 46-yarder that just a few years ago would have been a chip shot for one of the best kickers in NFL history. Jordan Stout had a bounce-back game, but last week got dinged by Ravens coach John Harbaugh for shanking a critical punt against Las Vegas. There hasn’t been a breakout return on a kick or a punt.
Umm, Ravens? What’s going on? Are special teams still a signature of this franchise? You’d expect them to get back to business sometime soon, but three weeks in, it’s unfortunately easy to identify where they’ve fallen short.
