Let’s look back at the Cincinnati Bengals close loss to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 11 and observe some notable takeaways from the game.
As we’ve seen them do in most of their matchups this season (beyond the blowouts to elite squads), the Cincinnati Bengals found themselves in a close contest at the end. They had a great chance to pull out a win and sweep their rivals from Baltimore.
Unfortunately for them, the Bengals were unable to make the clutch plays that were inherent to their excellent 4-1 start to the season, falling in disappointing fashion to the Ravens by a 24-21 margin to now sit at 5-5 on the year.
Here’s how the game was decided and what we can take away from the loss.
The Legs of Lamar and Gus
Entering this game, the Ravens had to be planning on a heavy dose of running the ball. While they’ve been just average on the ground overall (17th in Football Outsiders rush offense DVOA), they had multiple factors which would suggest a high-dose ground attack would be the way to go against Cincinnati.
Start with the opponent: the Bengals have been historically terrible on defense, with them arguably being worse at defending the run than in any other area (No. 30 in rush defense DVOA before this game). Past that, due to injuries befalling Joe Flacco, the Ravens were forced to start rookie quarterback — a player whose rushing ability played a major part in his college success — with their season on the line.
What ended up happening was the best-case scenario for Baltimore in every sense imaginable.
The Ravens didn’t just run the ball here; they ran early, often, endlessly and with authority. By the end, the team had garnered 265 rushing yards on nearly five yards per carry, with two different players eclipsing 100 yards individually. Those two were Lamar Jackson and Gus Edwards.
Jackson was the beginning of it all. To open the game, he led the team on an 11-play drive which consisted of exclusively rushing attempts; it spanned 75 yards and reached the end zone, with Jackson handling five of those rushes himself for 46 yards. He attacked in a variety of ways, keeping an already-overmatched Cincinnati linebacking corps on their heels.
Between scrambles, read-options, and QB delays they had little hope of stopping him (they had two sacks, but just one of his actual rush attempts went negative). At the end, his totals led the team: 27 carries for 117 yards, with three 10+ yard rushes and 10 five-plus-yard rushes making up the majority of his total.
Somehow, Edwards may have been even more impressive
. The rookie came in with a meager 64 rushing yards in his career, but put up nearly double that in this game alone. He was integral in Baltimore continuously picking up decent chunks of yardage (eleven 5+ yard rushes), and no player made more key pickups than him in the second half. Edwards had four 10+ yard rushes after halftime, picked up a touchdown, ran for a two-point conversion, and would’ve sealed the game a drive sooner had it not been for a penalty by one of his teammates.
In a close contest, the play of these two made all the difference.