You never really win the game in Cleveland. You just don’t lose it. And the Browns had begun to show signs of life in the five weeks since the Ravens beat them during the short week in late September. They had won two of the previous three games, beating Cincinnati and San Diego at home to crawl back to a 2-6 record.
The Ravens dominated the first quarter, holding Brandon Weeden and the Browns offense to a pair of three-and-out series while Flacco led a pair of touchdown drives the other way to earn a 14-0 early lead.
Then, suddenly, it felt like the Ravens went to sleep, allowing the Browns to control the clock and march down the field, kicking field goals on three consecutive possessions while Flacco and the offense couldn’t get a first down. Sam Koch was called on to punt on seven consecutive possessions heading into the fourth quarter. The offense was lifeless. The Ravens had surrendered five Phil Dawson field goals along the way and were now trailing 15-14 with 8:48 remaining in the game and needed to find some way to score or suffer the indignity of a loss to lowly Cleveland.
Suddenly, Flacco and the offense came to life as the Browns home crowd got energized sensing an upset of hated Baltimore on a cold, gray, typically Lake Erie kind of day. Flacco hit Anquan Boldin for a 21-yard gain. Flacco then got hit late by Browns safety T.J. Ward and that advanced the ball 15 more yards, past midfield. Rice and Bernard Pierce took turns running the ball before Flacco hit Torrey Smith on the right side in open space. Smith put a double move on cornerback Joe Haden, and sprinted past the rest of the secondary into the end zone to put the Ravens up by five. A Flacco pass to Boldin for a two-point conversion made the score 22-15.
The Ravens locked it down on defense on the next drive, frustrating Weeden on four straight plays. Flacco took over the ball deep in Cleveland territory, Tucker soon booted a 43-yard field goal and Baltimore snuck out of Cleveland once again with an ugly 25-15 win, which made it 10 in a row in the Harbaugh-Flacco-Rice era since 2008.
“We’ve never been fancy, we’ve never been a pretty kind of team,” Rice said after the win. “I think the way we are winning games is just the way we continue to win. We always find ourselves at the top at the end. I’m not saying that to be blunt about it, but as far as Ravens football, we’ve never been a fancy group. We’ve never been the group that our wins, quite frankly, are pretty. Some of them are, when you’re blowing people out. But not too many games are blowouts in this league. So when you’re 6-2, there’s just no complaining about it. You just go ahead.”
It was a scare, no question about it. But when it mattered, Flacco and the offense marched down the field and won the game after what felt like two hours of loitering. The time of possession wasn’t as lopsided as it had been recently and none of the statistical ugliness from previous defensive efforts was apparent. But nothing happened in Cleveland to adjust the perception that the Ravens were a sputtering, lucky to win, 6-2 team. It was a lackluster 30 minutes in the middle of the game on both sides of the ball for Baltimore.
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If you wanted victories, the Ravens had those. If you wanted consistent football, as Harbaugh would’ve preferred, you’d have to keep searching. “We’re 6-2 after eight games, and we’ve forced the issue in the first half of the season with our use of the no-huddle offense,” Harbaugh said. “It has given us another element in our attack. But, we’re still the Ravens in other aspects of our game. We’re physical. We try to play fast. We believe we can sustain long drives, especially as the weather gets tougher for offenses. On defense, we’re not where we want to be in stopping the run, but we’ve been pretty good with our red zone play. We like the way our special teams are playing and believe we’ll get more big plays as the season progresses. What we do know is the NFL is hard every week, and you have to be good and tough to win. It’s never easy.”
It certainly wasn’t easy in Cleveland. The Ravens returned home to prepare for the visiting Oakland Raiders, another struggling franchise that entered the game 3-5 but had won two of their last three against Jacksonville and in Kansas City.
In addition to the defensive injuries, the offensive line suddenly started to struggle with health. The day after the Cleveland game, Harbaugh began his press conference with an injury report that included Marshal Yanda and Bobbie Williams. Left tackle Bryant McKinnie played a bit in the Houston game, but was buried so far on the depth chart that you needed a milk carton to find him. And this was two weeks after the Kelechi Osemele scare in Houston. Second-year player Jah Reid, who could play tackle or guard, saw some action against the Browns and was complimented by Harbaugh.
