GREEN BAY, Wisc. — The Baltimore Ravens will know around 4 p.m. ET Sunday whether their victory Saturday night has significant meaning, or if it was just one final tantalizing reminder of their potential when they commit to Derrick Henry and the running game and don’t make back-breaking mistakes.
For now, and for a team that hasn’t had a ton of things to feel good about in recent weeks, their 41-24 victory over the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field earned them a few hours to celebrate and a reprieve from talking about the health of their starting quarterback and future of their head coach.
In a turn-back-the-clock performance against the playoff-bound and banged-up Packers, who couldn’t hold up against the Ravens’ physicality, Henry powered his way to one of the best efforts of his future Hall of Fame career. Tyler Huntley played another strong game in his second start in place of the ailing Lamar Jackson. The much-maligned offensive line had its finest three hours of the season.
And the Ravens, despite a season that has tested them in so many ways and left them on the verge of playoff extinction, showed they still have plenty of fight left. That was exemplified on each of Henry’s 36 punishing runs.
“It was just a heart-defining win, is what that was, the type of win that makes you proud to be a Raven, makes you proud to be with these guys every single day, starting with Derrick Henry and Tyler Huntley and everybody else that led the way to this victory,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “I just think the belief on this football team is at a level that I’ve never really seen before, because we’ve been through a lot.
“It just makes my heart soar to see that and to see how these guys respond, how they’re there for one another, how they fight for one another, how they run the ball for one another. That’s what a team should be.”
The Ravens, however, know the good sentiment could all be temporary. To still be in the playoff mix heading into Week 18 and to have a chance to win the AFC North, they Ravens need the Cleveland Browns (3-12) to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers (9-6) Sunday at 1 p.m. If they do, the Ravens (8-8) will play the Steelers in a winner-take-all matchup next weekend at Acrisure Stadium.
If the Steelers beat the Browns, the Ravens will officially be eliminated from the playoffs, cementing this as one of the most disappointing regular seasons in franchise history and rendering the Week 18 rematch with Pittsburgh void of major playoff ramifications. It would mark the first time since 2021 that the Ravens have fallen short of the postseason. It would also force the organization to confront some difficult offseason decisions, starting with the future of Harbaugh, the team’s 18th-year head coach.
But those topics didn’t come up in the visiting locker room and interview room at historic Lambeau Field late Saturday. Instead, Huntley, who was with the Browns during training camp and became close with rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders, talked about ending his news conference early so he could call Sanders and offer him encouragement. Huntley did his part, leading the Ravens to arguably their two most impressive wins of the season: Week 8 against Chicago and Saturday night.
“It was a must-win, and we got it done,” Huntley said.
Now, he needs his good buddy, Sanders, to come through. Players like Henry and tight end Mark Andrews acknowledged that they’d be praying for a Browns win that they desperately need.
“I’ll be watching and praying, for sure,” Henry said. “I’m going to pray as soon as I get on the plane, when I get home in the morning, when I wake up, and hopefully we get blessed for the opportunity to have to play for something in Week 18. At the end of the day, we’re still going to focus on finishing out the season strong, but we do need a little favor from Cleveland. We know what’s at stake, the position that we’re in, but we have to enjoy this one, for sure.”
It certainly has to be an uneasy feeling for the Ravens to be depending on the last-place Browns to save their season. However, it beats the alternative, which would have been leaving Green Bay Saturday night knowing they had no playoff life at all.
The Ravens played Saturday night like they desperately wanted to avoid that feeling, which begs the question: Where has that version of the team been all year?
Offensive coordinator Todd Monken committed to the run from the jump and never deviated from it. Henry, who astoundingly didn’t play a single snap on the final two drives of last week’s 28-24 loss to the New England Patriots, which Harbaugh and Monken heard about all week, had a career-high 36 carries and cashed them in to the tune of 216 yards and four touchdowns.
During the pregame prayer, Henry challenged his teammates to play freely and stick together, acknowledging the hardships the Ravens have faced this year. He then went out and pulverized the Packers’ run defense. He had five more carries than he’s ever had in his decade-long career. Yet, the venerable 31-year-old still had the energy to don a Styrofoam cheese grater on his head on the sideline late in the fourth quarter and do a little dance in the postgame locker room.
“One of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen,” Harbaugh said.
The Ravens outgained the Packers 307-79 on the ground. They won the time of possession battle 40:16 to 19:44, and they ran 74 plays to Green Bay’s 44. They went 10-of-14 on third down and scored points on seven of their eight full drives.
If Henry wasn’t powering through Packers tacklers — did you see him shove cornerback Carrington Valentine 3 yards upfield on that fourth-quarter run? — Huntley was finding open receivers or using his legs to create plays. He completed 16 of 20 passes for 107 yards and a touchdown and ran the ball eight times for 60 yards.
He ran the two-minute drill brilliantly late in the second quarter and led a touchdown drive that maintained some separation from the Packers in a first half that Baltimore dominated. He then put the exclamation point on the victory by hitting Zay Flowers for a 10-yard score on third-and-goal at the 10:10 mark of the fourth quarter.
Huntley proved to be the perfect complement to Henry on Saturday as the Ravens scored their most points since they also put up 41 against Cleveland in Week 2. They started the game with back-to-back 13-play touchdown drives. They ended it with 12- and 10-play touchdown drives.
“We were intentional about committing to the run, for sure. I’m not going to downgrade that,” Harbaugh said when asked what lent itself to the run-heavy game plan more than in previous weeks. “It was like a main deal, but it was the week before, and it was a week before that, and it was a week before that, too, so we probably did a better job of it. … Maybe we were more intentional. Maybe we didn’t get away from it, but we also had more opportunities, because we got the sticks moving. We weren’t in third-and-long very often, so that was good.”
Even with the Ravens’ pass defense repeatedly springing leaks and struggling to contain Packers QB Malik Willis before he exited the game in the fourth quarter with a recurring shoulder injury, this was a beatdown. This was the type of game the Ravens insist they were built to play, and yet they haven’t done it enough this year.
“We kind of set the tone pretty early with the run game the first couple drives,” said center Tyler Linderbaum. “We’ve done that at certain points this year, but all four quarters, I don’t think we’ve done that all year.”
If the Browns can’t pull an upset Sunday, the Ravens’ performance will almost certainly be remembered as a classic case of “too little, too late.” But nobody wanted to hear that Saturday night.
The Ravens still had hope. We’ll know late Sunday afternoon whether that remains the case.
“We have a bunch of fighters in this room (and) in this organization that refused to give up,” Andrews said. “Obviously, this isn’t the spot that we wanted to be. I’m definitely going to be tuning in and watching and rooting the Browns on, and that’s all I can hope for at this point. Wherever the cards may fall, I’m just proud of these guys.”