BALTIMORE — The Ravens finally played a complete game, smashing the previously undefeated Buffalo Bills, 35-10, on “Sunday Night Football.”

Here are five things we learned from the game:

At their best, the Ravens might be the NFL’s best

Here, finally, was the team that smashed the San Francisco 49ers on Christmas night, that embarrassed the high-octane Miami Dolphins a week later. The details weren’t identical, of course. That blur of muscle and motion wearing No. 22 wasn’t in the team photo last season. But on Sunday night in Baltimore, facing the best team in the AFC to date, the Ravens reasserted that, at their best, they’re as dominant as anyone.

They played a nearly perfect game on offense, getting the look they wanted from Buffalo’s defense on their very first play and sending Derrick Henry galloping into the night, 87 yards for a touchdown. The Ravens seized the upper hand and never relinquished it. Henry’s 199 yards and the team’s five touchdown drives, equal parts deft and punishing, will dominate the headlines. But a defense that had gained an unwanted reputation for squandering double-digit leads played just as well, flummoxing Buffalo’s great quarterback, Josh Allen, into one of his least productive games in recent memory.

There are many ways to tell this tale of all-points excellence. The Ravens averaged 7.9 yards per play to Buffalo’s 4.1 (2 yards below the Bills’ season average coming in). They held a 22-12 advantage in first downs, a 271-81 advantage in rushing yards. They hit Allen eight times. Lamar Jackson absorbed just three shots in return.

Jackson didn’t have to perform his wizard act to pull this one out. Instead, he operated the controls on a ruthlessly efficient machine, completing 13-of-18 passes and averaging 9 yards per carry as offensive coordinator Todd Monken kept the Bills on a string with every play-action, boot and draw imaginable. Yes, Henry and Jackson headlined, but there was room for a best-supporting turn from running back Justice Hill. And we can’t forget an offensive line that held up its end after taking so much (deserved) heat the first two weeks of the season.

Worries over an 0-2 start and a pair of heart-attack fourth quarters gave way to visions of how good the Ravens might become if all their parts work in unison.

“You work for moments like this,” coach John Harbaugh said afterward. “This is something we will remember.”

At the same time, he and his players wanted no part of feeling too good.

“It says a lot,” safety Kyle Hamilton said. “But at the same time, we didn’t win the Super Bowl today.”

They did not. A dangerous trip to face the Bengals, a team fighting to scrape out of an even deeper hole, awaits. A loss in their AFC North opener would throw the Ravens right back into scarier straits at 2-3.

They did, however, reintroduce us to the very real possibility that they could win the Super Bowl. The Ravens were that good.

The Ravens have found something on defense by getting more defensive backs on the field

This trend began in Dallas, with linebacker Trenton Simpson rarely playing on obvious passing downs. For two years, we got used to Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen staying on the field for almost every defensive snap. After two weeks watching opponents ravage the middle of his defense, however, first-year coordinator Zach Orr decided he needed more defensive backs.

“It’s a combination of what they do and what we want to do on defense and getting different guys out there on the field like ‘AD’ [Ar’Darius Washington and] Eddie Jackson,” Orr explained after the win over the Cowboys. “These guys are really good football players. It would be kind of criminal to keep those guys on the sidelines the whole time, but it was a mixture of both.”

Even more than Dallas’ Dak Prescott, Allen loves to spread the ball to every eligible receiver on the field, so it made sense for dime packages — six defensive backs with safety Eddie Jackson usually stepping in for Simpson — to remain integral to the Ravens’ game plan.

Allen had completed 75% of his passes and averaged 8.8 yards per attempt over Buffalo’s 3-0 start. Against Orr’s deadly dime looks, he completed 55.2% and averaged 6.2.

“I think it’s good to be able to switch up like that,” Hamilton said. “That dime package feels like it’s really good for us right now.”

They did brilliant work frustrating Allen on third down, depriving him of targets and giving pass rushers Kyle Van Noy, Odafe Oweh and David Ojabo time to get home. The Bills converted on just one of eight third downs in the first half and failed to sustain drives because of it.

This dynamic flipped on Buffalo’s first drive of the second half when the Ravens chased Allen from the pocket but watched him unleash an absurd throw just as he was about to go out of bounds — 52 yards to Khalil Shakir, who’d finally slipped behind the Baltimore secondary.

It was a play only a few quarterbacks in NFL history could have made, and it highlighted the limits of a good plan.

Would it signal the start of another defensive meltdown?

Not this time. Allen made a few more tremendous throws into tight windows, but the Ravens never made it easy on him. Orr showed a deft feel for when to blitz his defensive backs, forcing Buffalo’s franchise superstar to scurry toward the sideline, looking for targets that usually did not pop open.

Finally, the Bills tapped out, removing Allen with more than seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.

“Make no mistake, that’s a great team we just played,” he said when it was over.

Derrick Henry made Baltimore his town in prime time

The Bills left entirely too large a gap in the left side of their defensive front, and the running back heralded as “King” knew what to do with this royal gift.

Actually, that’s not the whole picture. Every man on the Ravens — from Jackson to the linemen to fullback Patrick Ricard — saw the beautiful possibility in front of them.

“We knew their defensive line was a penetrating front,” Ricard said of the look that led to Henry’s opening 87-yard touchdown. “And if we got the right look, we were gonna run it.”

Henry burst into open ground, eventually hitting 21.29 mph, fourth fastest by a ball carrier this year, per the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. That’s pretty great for anyone, supernatural for a 30-year-old man with more than 2,000 NFL carries under his belt and 247 pounds of muscle packed on his frame.

But that’s what the Ravens bet on when they signed Henry in the offseason. “Kind of a unicorn, to be honest, with his combination of speed, power, durability,” general manager Eric DeCosta said at Henry’s introductory news conference back in March. “He’s won wherever he’s been, and those kinds of guys are rare. We’ve had some here in Baltimore. They are just different from everybody else, and I think Derrick is a good example of that.”

Remove his 87-yard bolt to glory and Henry still ran for 112 yards on 23 carries as the centerpiece of a ground attack that’s averaging 220 yards per game and 6.4 yards per carry. In a league that has reacquainted itself with loving the run, Jackson and Henry remain out ahead of the pack. Over the past two games, we have glimpsed their terrifying potential.

Henry is problematic enough for a defense when he’s just ramming into hopelessly outmuscled safeties and linebackers. The joy of watching him, though, is knowing that on a few carries a game, the edge is going to give way and he’s going to launch down the sideline, looking to flatten any man who strays into his path. He’s a very good power back but a great big-play back. The Ravens have not had anyone nearly like him since apex Jamal Lewis. You pair him with the most dangerous running quarterback of all time, and it’s just silly.

The Ravens again picked the right combination on their offensive line

With left guard Andrew Vorhees sidelined by an ankle injury, the Ravens turned to the line they trusted most — Patrick Mekari filling in for Vorhees, rookie Roger Rosengarten taking Mekari’s usual right tackle spot — against a Buffalo front that came in tied for fifth in the league in sacks.

For the second straight week, they pushed the right buttons, with their line clearing the way for 146 rushing yards on 14 attempts in the first half and keeping Jackson untouched in the pocket as they built a 21-3 lead. It was a tribute to Monken’s game plan, which put Jackson in advantageous positions with play-action and quick throws to Henry and Hill. On some dropbacks, however, he had as long as he could ever want to probe downfield, and that’s a tribute to a blocking unit that was in critics’ crosshairs after the Ravens’ opening losses to the Chiefs and Raiders.

Great as Henry was, he averaged 5.5 yards before contact, per Pro Football Focus, a measure of the terrific lanes he was provided.

“I just think they took a lot of heat during the season,” Henry said of his blockers. “They didn’t complain [and] went back to work and kept improving. I told them, ‘I go as they go.’ [We’re] all tied in together. When they’re getting criticized, then I’m with them. I’m just proud of them, and they’ve been playing [their] butts off.”

The Bills felt it. “They had our numbers tonight,” Buffalo linebacker Baylon Spector said. “They came out and out-physicalled us and dominated on the line of scrimmage.”

Mekari has saved the Ravens many a time over the past six seasons with his rare ability to handle left tackle one week, center the next. For all his precious versatility, one thing he hadn’t done much was play left guard. But Harbaugh and his staff just trust the guy.

“Mekari going from right tackle to guard like that and playing the way he did, these are the things that make a difference,” Harbaugh said.

Rosengarten did his part in his first NFL start, but what about left tackle Ronnie Stanley, who’s finally healthy enough to deliver week-to-week excellence sans fanfare?

The unit wasn’t perfect against Buffalo. Mekari and Rosengarten were whistled for holds, Stanley for a false start.

“We’re far away from where we want to be,” center Tyler Linderbaum said. “But we’re on the right track.”

Six hard years in, Justice Hill is an essential part of the Ravens’ offense

Hill made one of the biggest plays of the game when he caught a pass in the flat on third-and-7 with the Ravens driving late in the third quarter. He could have been tackled short of a first down. Instead, he spun away from a Buffalo defender and sprinted 17 yards. Jackson faked to him and ran the other way for a 9-yard score on the next play. Hill’s fierce effort was the difference between a 40-yard field goal attempt by Justin Tucker and a touchdown that pushed the Ravens’ lead to 28-10.

“That goes unnoticed, but that was a spectacular third down, for him to make a guy miss and get up the field,” Jackson said.

Less than two weeks ago, the Ravens signed Hill to a third contract with the team, an eventuality that would have sounded impossible back when he tore his Achilles tendon in 2020, coming off an unremarkable rookie season. Those who’ve known Hill as one of the kindest, hardest-working souls in the organization could not help but smile.

“I’m a Raven,” he said after the ink was dry. “I’ve been here six years, and there’s no place I would rather be.”

At this point, Hill’s story has transcended admirable perseverance. He’s a hugely important part of the Ravens’ offense, the pass-catching, draw-taking, tackle-shaking complement to Henry’s speed and power. He’s a better player in Year 6 than he was in any of the previous five.

Against the Bills, he caught all six passes thrown his way for a team-high 78 yards. He looked like a wide receiver pulling in Jackson’s lovely 19-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter. He also ripped off gains on a pair of draws designed to take advantage of Buffalo’s over-eager front.

“I’m just really glad we got him re-signed before he broke out in the last two games,” Harbaugh said.

Week 5

Ravens at Bengals

Sunday, 1 p.m. ET

TV: CBS

Line: Ravens by 2 1/2

____

©2024 The Baltimore Sun. Visit at baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.