“It was crazy,” Flacco said. “We called four verticals and I started to step up in the pocket, and I kept my eye on the depth of the safety at that point. I felt I had maybe a shot of getting it over them. At that point in the game you don’t have any timeouts – you have to go a pretty decent length. You have to start taking shots at some point, and it happened to work out.
“You have to get a little bit lucky, and it worked out. We were able to take a shot, and everybody came through when that one opportunity kind of arose. I just ran for a couple of yards and I’m thinking, ‘Man I should have just thrown the ball away because at least the clock would have stopped.’ We kept going and going and all of a sudden that happened. There is no real way to explain it. The opportunity arose and guys made plays.”
Harbaugh hadn’t seen that kind of a miracle play since, well…since San Diego seven weeks earlier.
“It’s almost like backyard football and that’s part of the game,” Harbaugh said. “And Joe [Flacco] scrambles out of there and they get a little pressure on him and he puts the ball down the field, really on the money, which is a great throw on the run. [WR] Jacoby Jones kept pressing the deep route. He didn’t slow down. He kept getting deep. We’re always telling our guys to keep pressing the deep route and beat the ball to the spot. I think maybe different judgments were made on the track of the ball, and Jacoby was the guy that made the right judgment on the track of the ball on the run.”
After Justin Tucker nailed the extra point, a deflated and frozen crowd in Denver buckled up for overtime and sudden death playoff football, sitting on the edge of their suddenly colder than before seats.
It was no better on the Ravens bench where the heated benches ran out of fuel late in the 3rd quarter. The Broncos side had the same issue. The Gatorade on the benches had frozen solid. “I went over after Justin made the kick to get a water and all I got was a slushy,” Harbaugh. “Just what I needed when it was two degrees – a slushy!”
The depth of the freeze was stunning in its constant bite on the field. And once the sun went down it got even worse. Ravens guard Marshal Yanda, known as one of the most rugged and tough of the group of original “Mighty Men” from 2008 and the man who encouraged his teammates to “Embrace The Grind” during the preseason with T-shirts, squirted his face and beard so much with water earlier in the game that he became a bit of a walking icicle. The cold didn’t seem to bother Yanda, who was raised on a farm in Iowa. He was so legendarily tough that he once bet his teammates that he could be hit with a taser gun and walk away. He won the bet. This ice block that had formed across his chest and his jersey – one teammate said he looked like an igloo – actually drew the attention of the officials at one point until they realized it was simply ice crystallizing on his body and exterior. It also insured that Denver defenders couldn’t get a grip on him. They literally slid off.
The Ravens got the ball first in overtime and Flacco moved the chains three times before taking a third down sack, the only one the offensive line allowed all day, and Koch punted. The Ravens defense held serve, but a towering Colquitt punt pinned the Ravens deep at 6, where there was very little room to work and a delay of game penalty moved them to the 3.
With 6:01 left in overtime, Flacco showed his bravado while in shotgun from the middle of the end zone, hitting Pitta deep on the right side with a pinpoint laser for a 24-yard gain that got Ravens out of the hole. Three plays later, Koch would punt, but his 52-yard kick combined with the clutch Pitta catch had flipped the field.
This time, it was Denver who would start at their 7, and five plays later, Peyton Manning did the unthinkable. On a 2nd and 6 from the 38, Manning threw underneath for Stokley, but Graham once again read the play and stole the ball at the Denver 45. The Ravens were in business.
Flacco and the offense only needed about 10 yards to attempt a game winning field goal.
The Ravens allowed the first overtime to end because they wanted to reverse the field for a potential game-winning field goal by Tucker. But they still needed more yards, and Rice would provide them on the next play with an 11-yard run.
As Ray Lewis was saying the Lord’s Prayer on the sideline, Tucker was practicing his task in the thin Denver air. As he lined up to kick this 47-yard kick to win the game and send the Ravens to New England for the AFC Championship Game, everyone seemed more nervous than Tucker.
“I always feel good about going out on the field,” Tucker said afterward. “Not a lot of people get to do this – this is a heck of a lot of fun. More than anything I try to cherish every opportunity I get and more than anything trust our routine, trust what [long snapper] Morgan [Cox] and [holder] Sam [Koch] are able to do, trust that everybody is able to hold their blocks, and from there on out it is a piece of cake for me.”
As it sailed over the crossbar and into the netting, Flacco was the first one to grab Tucker and hoist him into the air in victory. Soon the Rays – Rice and Lewis – were on the ground, surrounded by cameras, sobbing uncontrollably in the cold as the quieted Denver crowd quickly exited the stadium with their season suffering a sad, sick ending.
“We got each other,” Rice said to Lewis between tears.
“For life,” Lewis screamed, sobbing uncontrollably. “Let’s get them home!’
When it was over – a miracle, come-from-behind 38-35 win in double overtime – many were immediately calling it one of the greatest NFL games ever played. It certainly was the most dramatic game with the highest stakes in Baltimore Ravens history.
Lewis turned to the sky for divine intervention. “When Justin got ready to kick that field goal, I just dropped my head and starting recited our Father’s prayer, and started to simply say, “No weapon formed against us shall prosper.” Because now is God’s will,” Lewis said. “When it’s his will, you can never see the beginning of it, you can only see the end of it. That’s why I brought my team together at halftime. I wanted all of us to touch and agree and repeat that: “No weapon formed against us shall prosper.” No matter what happened – when that kickoff return went back – we never wavered. We claimed victory on our sideline. If you learn nothing else about the game of sports, is that when you make up your mind to do something collectively as people, anything is possible, when everybody buys in. You can’t have wavering spirits because it’s going to take away from the energy. For what we did today, I applaud my team.”
