“On that play it was just total will, man,” Rice said. “Once I made the first guy miss, then I cut back across the grain then I had seen that the defense had to flip their hips. Then I just kept eyeing the first down. I looked and said, “Should I keep running to the sideline or should I just keep trying to get up field? And that’s what I did. I just kept trying to get up the field. I left it in the hands of the officials, and I’m not going to say they owed us one, but I’m glad we came out on top. My momentum was just going forward.”
Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers was succinct in his opinion. “He didn’t get the first down,” Rivers said sternly. “They just didn’t have a view to overturn it. I don’t think anybody in the stadium thinks he got it. I don’t think Ray Rice thinks he got it.”
Flacco was asked why he chose to dump the ball at all, probably the lowest percentage play possible, making Rice run almost 30 yards to keep the game alive. “I didn’t want to throw the ball down the field aimlessly and just have it land on the field,” Flacco said. “If Torrey could’ve stopped in his route, maybe I could’ve thrown it to him. Hey, I didn’t think it was a good shot, but it was our best shot, putting the ball in Ray’s hands and hoping he could create something.”
“I’ve been around a lot of teams,” Rice said. “This team has the will to win. We always believe. You know what? Not one guy ever said, “Good game, it’s over.” There wasn’t one chirp about that. We firmly believed we were going to get that first down no matter what. You can sense when you feel like another team took the life out of you. But not with this team –we’ve got a will to win.”
Harbaugh rode his emotions and his faith in the postgame euphoria of such an astonishing win. “I just know we have a football team with the biggest hearts I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I don’t want to go overboard, but how can you not? When things were looking the most difficult, when we weren’t getting first downs, when we couldn’t move the ball, we never got down. Never! Not one guy on the sideline was pointing a finger or getting down on somebody else.
“Before the game Ray Lewis talked about hope, faith, and love. We talked about those three things that bind a football team together and bind people together with each other and with their creator. There’s something special going on with this football team that’s special and miraculous and I couldn’t be any more proud of them or being a part of it.
“And if we hadn’t pulled it off that belief and faith would still be there. We’ve come through those kinds of games before. To see it pay off in that kind of success is more of a validation of faith and trust in one another and in God. I don’t want to say that too much because people don’t want to hear it, but it’s a big part of who we are as a team.”
Down 10 points with less than five minutes remaining in San Diego and the Ravens won? By converting a 4th & 29? Who’s to argue with the use of the word “miracle” in this circumstance? Certainly no one with a purple heart.
Lost in the 4th & 29 madness and the circle around Rice were two other unsung heroes who made huge contributions on winning plays – Boldin, who made the most impressive block of the year by obliterating Weddle to spring Rice to the first down, and Tucker, whose pair of 38-yard field goals with the game in the balance was exactly the psychological tonic anyone associated with the Ravens needed after the Billy Cundiff debacle back in January. The Ravens clearly had a kicker they could count on to win games.
“It probably is fair to say that [he’s unflappable],” Harbaugh said. “He’s got a great head, as we say. Justin is really smart, and he’s tough. He’s a detail guy – the technique. He’s meticulous in the way he goes about his work, and he’s got talent. We’re really pleased, but the story is still to be written, as they say.”
After the game, in the cramped tunnels under Qualcomm Stadium, players and equipment were scurrying in every direction. The Chargers were 4-7, devastated following such an unkind loss, and the Ravens were about to board a happy six-hour flight east.
One guy who wouldn’t be making that flight was former Ravens linebacker Jarret Johnson, who stopped by the Ravens locker room to catch up with old friends. Johnson left Baltimore seven months earlier not because he wanted to but because he had to leave. The way the NFL’s salary cap and free agency work, it’s sometimes unkind to veteran guys like Johnson. The Chargers had more cap room, more of a positional need and financial value for his skill set so Johnson took his lunch pail west to San Diego. Earlier in the week, he sent Rice a text that read: “Guys, you better bring your game faces.” Now, he and Rice exchanged a postgame hug, and everyone was still disputing the spot of the ball on 4th & 29.
It was harder to guess who missed who more? The Ravens certainly missed everything about the incredibly popular “Double J,” who they could’ve used in their defense in 2012. And from the look of Johnson’s smiles and the genuine affection with his former teammates, Johnson wished he were getting on that flight 9-2 and coming back to Baltimore with his Ravens.
It’s hard saying goodbye to success, especially with people who you love and who you’ve shared all of those memories with over the years. Johnson couldn’t say how much he missed the Ravens, but you could tell that he did. Baltimore is a special place to play football. Not that Johnson needed a reminder of that because he knew.
Flacco put the unlikely win into perspective on the way out of the stadium.
“We played 55 minutes of ugly football,” he said. “But this team knows how to win. It wasn’t perfect. It never is but when you grind one out in the end like that it just says you’re a tough football team.
“I don’t think if we had lost the game it would have been the biggest deal in the world. But this was a huge opportunity for us to keep that spread [in the AFC North] and really take a leap forward in the division and conference. In fact, if we take care of our business the rest of the way, this will be a defining moment.”
Clearly, he was onto something.
