Mike Preston: The Ravens are getting their swagger back

BALTIMORE — Those dark clouds hovering over Baltimore two weeks ago now have some light shining through them.

Baltimore went into panic mode after the Ravens opened this season with two straight losses to Kansas City and Las Vegas. But after two straight wins, including a 35-10 victory over the previously unbeaten Buffalo Bills on Sunday night at M&T Bank Stadium, a sense of calm has taken over.

The Ravens (2-2) are a .500 team in a league where a team’s future can be changed overnight or in one play. Gone are the days when a team could physically dominate like the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers or the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s.

There are no super teams anymore. Two teams remain undefeated — Minnesota and Kansas City — but how long can the Vikings remain unbeaten with Sam Darnold as the starting quarterback?

Even the league’s Superman, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, will struggle to win an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl title without speedy receivers Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and Rashee Rice, who are out for the foreseeable future because of injuries.

That’s why coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens want to remain on an even keel despite all the smooching from both the local and national media after pummeling the Bills. The Ravens have been through this before as recently as last season when they had the league’s best record before losing to the Chiefs, 17-10, in the AFC championship game in Baltimore.

“We know what’s possible, we know what we’re capable of, but we have a long way to go, and we have a lot of work to do,” Harbaugh said. “And we’re just four games in, and we have 13 more regular-season games to play. And where the season goes, it’s going to be defined by what we do in the next 13 games plus.”

Harbaugh knows how to apply the brakes.

It appears the Ravens have found an offensive identity by riding running back Derrick Henry, who ran for 151 and 199 yards the past two weeks against Dallas and Buffalo, respectively. Henry might go for more than 200 yards against a poor Bengals defense on Sunday in Cincinnati, but it’s not strictly about the Ravens being so run-oriented.

Balance is the key for Baltimore. It’s something both Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Todd Monken have spoken about several times the past two years. Quarterback Lamar Jackson has been nearly perfect in the past two games as a game manager with Henry as the primary playmaker, which has set up the play-action passing game and run-pass options.

But this will change in the postseason. Opposing defenses will crowd the line of scrimmage to take away Henry and force Jackson to beat them downfield with his arm. Can Jackson lead the Ravens to a title that way?

He hasn’t in the previous six years, but that could change. Maybe by the postseason both guards, Andrew Vorhees and Daniel Faalele, will have developed as pass blockers and give Jackson more time to throw. He’ll need it.

“Yes, we’ve got some momentum going,” Henry said. “There’s still things that we can get better at that we’re going to focus on and get better at, but it’s a long season. We got off to a great start last week, then didn’t finish the way we wanted to. We’re still progressing, still working and still looking to get better.”

Defensively, the Ravens eased some concerns against the Bills. They jumped out to a 21-3 halftime lead, but once Baltimore went three-and-out on its first offensive series of the third quarter, it seemed another late collapse was possible.

But Buffalo never mounted a serious threat after its first possession of the second half. The Ravens dominated the Bills and their small ball passing game as Buffalo finished with only 155 passing yards and 236 yards of total offense.

The Bengals will be more of a challenge for the Ravens with quarterback Joe Burrow, receivers Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase and tight end Mike Gesicki. But the win over Buffalo should give some much-needed confidence to the Ravens’ defense, which had to go through some growing pains after replacing three top assistant coaches from a year ago.

“We’re still in the building phase, still trying to get better every single week,” running back Justice Hill said. “It’s still early in the season and we’ve got a lot of great opponents coming up. We’re just going to keep stacking up good practices and good games.”

The swag is starting to build, and that’s a big part of the psyche here in Baltimore. So far, the AFC North has been disappointing and not lived up to its reputation of being the NFL’s toughest division. Pittsburgh (3-1) will eventually become a .500 team again and both Cleveland and Cincinnati have been embarrassments to the state of Ohio. That’s good for fans here, because local folks live with a chip on their shoulders from an inferiority complex being next to major cities like Washington and Philadelphia.

But after Sunday night in the beatdown of Buffalo, fans found something to get excited about again. Like the team itself, the confidence is back. The sun is starting to shine again.

Finally.

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