Ravens wide receiver Zay Flowers did not sustain a long-term knee injury in the Week 18 win over Cleveland, but whether he plays again this season could depend on his teammates and coaches.
On Monday, head coach John Harbaugh described Flowers as “day to day” with the right knee injury suffered in the 35-10 win, but his availability for Saturday’s wild-card tilt with Pittsburgh appears to be in serious doubt. Last week, Flowers became the first wide receiver in franchise history to make the Pro Bowl after catching 74 passes for 1,059 yards and four touchdowns in only his second season.
“It’s not a season-ending injury, so it’s just going to be day to day trying to do everything he can do to get back as soon as he can,” Harbaugh said. “We’ll see where that takes us.”
Flowers’ potential absence against the Steelers is not what the Ravens had in mind as they aim to make a run to advance to the Super Bowl for the first time in 12 years and avenge the disappointment of last year’s AFC title game loss to Kansas City. Fortunately, star quarterback Lamar Jackson still has former first-round wide receiver Rashod Bateman, who posted career highs with nine touchdown catches and 756 receiving yards in 17 games this season. With Flowers exiting in the second quarter of Saturday’s game, Bateman caught five passes for a game-high 76 yards and a touchdown.
Jackson also has a healthy Mark Andrews, which is something that couldn’t be said at this time last year when the three-time Pro Bowl tight end was still recovering from a severe ankle injury. Though able to return to play in the AFC Championship, Andrews wasn’t close to 100% and caught only two passes for 15 yards in 18 snaps.
The seventh-year tight end concluded the 2024 regular season with a career-high 11 touchdown catches and one in each of the last six games, a franchise record. Of Ravens players with at least 25 targets this season, Andrews owns the highest receiving success rate, speaking to how valuable he remains on third downs and inside the red zone for the league’s No. 1 offense.
“Mark’s playing at a really high level for sure. He’s been playing well all year,” Harbaugh said. He’s made some plays, running fast. He’s got to be one of the fastest tight ends in the league — he’s just got to be. His ability to get open and make contested catches really showed up in this last game. He made some phenomenal catches. … And then Lamar’s trust in Mark, of course. All those things.”
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As for the health of the rest of the team entering the first round of the playoffs, backup running back Justice Hill is on track to play against the Steelers. After sitting out Week 17 with a concussion, Hill was unable to proceed through the protocol last week because of a lingering illness, which prompted him being ruled out for the finale. Harbaugh said last week that Hill’s concussion symptoms had already subsided.
Left guard Patrick Mekari also missed substantial practice time with an illness, which led to him playing only the first six offensive snaps against the Browns before the Ravens pivoted to the combination of Andrew Vorhees and Ben Cleveland for the remainder of the game.
“They’re trending well. They were [dealing with] illness at the end [of last week],” Harbaugh said. “Patrick played. I just felt like I wanted to help him. He would have played [more], believe me. He wanted to play. Justice wanted to play too, but he wasn’t as close at Patrick. Those guys will be much stronger this week than they were last week.”
