There Was A Method to Ravens' Madness Against Buccaneers
BALTIMORE — The Ravens ran the ball just seven times and Lamar Jackson attempted 30 passes in the first half against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The result was 3 points and 156 yards of offense.
The second half was a different story when the Ravens were more committed to the run.
Baltimore gashed the Buccaneers for 229 yards on 26 carries, held the ball for more than 15 minutes longer than Tampa Bay, and came away with a 27-22 victory.
The Buccaneers were dealing with several injuries in the secondary and offensive coordinator Greg Roman wanted to exploit that weakness and keep Tampa Bay from stacking the box.
The Ravens reversed the script in the second half and ran away with the victory.
Ravens coach John Harbaugh said that was the game plan the entire time.
"That was the plan; we had a plan going in in terms of how we were going to try to approach this game," Harbaugh said. "It really laid out exactly how we had anticipated, in terms of what we called, when we called it in terms of the run-pass ratio. I thought we’d do a little bit better than three points; we all thought we’d score a little bit more than three, but their defense is tough, and we couldn’t get going with first downs and getting drives extended, but that was how we planned on doing it.”
Running back Gus Edwards had another solid game and had 65 yards on 11 carries before leaving with a hamstring injury. His status is uncertain.
"It doesn’t look too bad, but we’ll know more [Friday],” Harbaugh said.
Kenyan Drake (62 yards) and Justice Hill (28 yards) also played effectively.
The Ravens are now 16-4 since 2019 under Roman when tallying at least 200 rushing yards, and their 20 such outings during that span almost double the NFL’s next-best figure ahead of Tennessee (11).
Right tackle Morgan Moses added: "You look at the first half, I think we had negative yards, and we come out and finish the game with [231 rushing yards] so it was a [heck] of a job, not only the offensive linemen but the quarterback, the running backs, the receivers blocking, the tight ends blocking, all 11 people on the field.”
