Lamar And Zay And Loop Lead A Wild Win: 4 Critical Takeaways As Ravens Escape Brazil

The Ravens needed Lamar Jackson to take this game over and save the general manager, who can’t build offensive lines that are any good or defenses that can close games, and prevent his rookie head coach from falling in a desperate hole after being anointed to immediately fix that defense.

So the iconic quarterback started to take off and make plays and do what he does. It’s not coaching. It’s individual, generational, brilliance.

It wasn’t about whatever madness rookie offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, was calling it was about Jackson’s legs and his arm, tossing a desperation touchdown to rookie Matthew Hibner with 90 seconds left and when the defense gave up that lead, again, and with the game tied, Jackson found Zay Flowers over the middle for 27 yards, and had the presence to call timeout with one second left. So second-year kicker Tyler Loop could drain a 56-yard field goal – his first game-winning kick of his career after missing a potential one to end last season – and give Baltimore a 34-31 win over the Cowboys at Rio’s famed Maracana Stadiun.

This game was nuts, it revealed some significant issues with a roster that is supposed to contend for a Super Bowl, and the Ravens incredibly shaky defensive psyche was exposed again one week after just suffering their 15th loss with a double-digit lead since 2019. But Jackson, improbably still not signed to a contract extension, is a unique force of football nature, and with his offensive line a failure and his rookie head coach not knowing when to call timeouts and this defense still an abject failure, Jackson rose above and Loop capped a big day for a special-teams unit that needed a bounce back.

“It’s a baby step for us,” Minter said, “but we’re never going to apologize for winning a game.”

Here are the key takeaways from this wild win that makes Baltimore 2-1, with lowly Tennessee coming to M&T Bank Stadium Sunday.

It’s All Lamar

Doyle is a massive work in progress, the offensive line is a joke, and they’re going to have to Jackson him start making any change he wants and running things more at the line of scrimmage. He is the offense. Sooner Doyle recognizes that and plays into it, the better.

The only reason the Ravens won this game is because Jackson started taking off from the pocket late with the run game suffocated and no one but Flowers able to make downfield plays in the pass game, again.

Jackson sustained drives, he spread the ball around, he avoided turnovers, he was 15/20 for 186 yards and two touchdowns and a 136.7 rating and on a day when the field stunk and the line was so inept that Derrick Henry couldn’t muster 90 yards on 26 carries against a failure run defense; Jackson ran six times for 50 yards – mostly late – and had another genius scramble negated by yet another false start on the OL.

And with seven seconds left and a drive starting at the 35 he found Flowers – who was on a rep limit coming off a hamstring injury and maximized every snap – across the middle where he does his best work and got the timeout called with 1 tick on the clock.

“Unbelievable play by Lamar and Zay,” Minter said, adding “Anything less than seven seconds it would have been really hard to do the play.”

Jackson said: “It was a get-down, timeout situation, something we’ve been practicing since camp.” And after the throw, all he was thinking about while gesturing to a timeout was: “Please see me ref, and he did.”

Another Second-Half Debacle

The Ravens suffocated Dallas in the first half, similar to the first two games of the season. Dak Prescott attempted just one pass over 13 yards in the air in first half (and that went 16 yards), he was frustrated and stubborn about using his legs to sustain drives and he shied away from taking any real shots against Minter’s zone shells.

That changed in a big way in the second half, again, and it nearly cost them the game. The tackling was quite poor, again, on third down, extending drives on third-and-long situations, Marlon Humphrey, with the highest cap hit of anyone at his position and top 10 in salary, started to get picked on in coverage and Prescott picked up chunk yards all over the place, while Dallas also ran the ball quite well against Minter’s light boxes.

In the second half, here’s how Dallas ripped them to shreds:

38 Plays 273 yards (7.2/play) 4.7/carry

Prescott: 14/23, 203 yards (8.8/att.), 1 TD 0 INT, 104.1 rating

All the talk about signing Trey Hendrickson for $30M a year and all the assets thrown at the defense, and how Minter’s been great elsewhere, but Prescott dropped back 40 times and was sacked just once and the Ravens had a 27% pressure rate in the second half. This defense has a shattered mindset and good luck fixing it now.

Dallas had three plays of 20 yards or more in the second half and 15 plays of 10 yards on more in that half.

“It’s unacceptable for us to keep putting ourselves in this position in the fourth quarter,” hybrid defender Kyle Hamilton said. “They shouldn’t have to go out three and score 30 points for us to win … It’s frustrating. Obviously, I’m happy we got the win but it’s unacceptable. Saying we’re ‘A Ravens Defense,’ whatever that means at this point, and going out and doing that … Obviously, we brought in a new staff in, so it’s on the players.”

It’s on DeCosta, going on a generation in the building and decade running the roster.

Offensive Line is Cratering

The interior remains a failure, but that’s how DeCosta designed it. He almost guaranteed it.

There were immediate A-Gap pressures as we expected after what the Saints did last week. Inside runs went absolutely nowhere including Henry getting stuffed in the backfield on a fourth-and-one. Guard John Simpson got called for two penalties at poor times early in the game and there was no way Jackson could trust them.

Center Jovaughn Gwyn kept getting caught downfield illegally and they were lucky they faced a defense as limited as Dallas, the worst at the point of attack in the NFL for several years running. Gwyn was getting mauled, he left with injury, and veteran center Ethan Pocic made his debut off Achilles surgery on a fourth-and-goal from the one and everyone between the tackles got obliterated and Henry lost three yards.

By the final drive Pocic was out with what looked like a serious knee injury (Minter said he has no updates) and rookie guard Vega Ioane, in his third NFL game, was snapping the ball with the game on the line. “Whatever it takes for the team to be successful, that his mindset,” Minter said of the rookie.

The Ravens worked the ball to the 2 and Simpson was called for another false start – they entered this game with 12 offensive penalties, in the top three in the NFL - and man it’s hard to watch this stuff sometimes. The OL had six penalties alone in this game. DeCosta is getting worse at this somehow.

Special Teams Steps Up

The Ravens blocked a field goal in this game, with corner Keyon Martin bending the edge against a tackle despite giving up maybe 100 pounds, allowing safety Keondre Jackson to slither through and get his hand on the kick. Ended up being huge, and special teams needed to rebound from last week.

And Loop got the heroes celebration he deserved, shaking off a rough summer and a terrible end to his rookie season to win the game.

“There’s been a lot of adversity since the end of last season and now,” Loop said, “and it’s been a pleasure having teammates like these.”

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