The Ravens finished the game with third-stringer Anthony Brown at quarterback but ran with enough fury and created enough turnovers to hold the Steelers at bay, 16-14, in Pittsburgh. Although they’re struggling to score, they have won six of seven and retain their tiebreaker advantage over the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC North.
Players of the game
RB J.K. Dobbins: Dobbins had not played since Week 6 after deciding to have a cleanup procedure on his surgically repaired knee but returned with a vengeance against the Steelers, breaking a 44-yard run in the first quarter, scoring the Ravens’ only touchdown and finishing with 120 yards on 15 carries. He brought a big-play dimension back to a running attack that had struggled the previous week.
LB Roquan Smith: Smith led the way on defense again with a sack that knocked Steelers starting quarterback Kenny Pickett from the game, a red-zone interception, two passes defended and a team-high six tackles. In just five games with the Ravens, he has raised the ceiling of a defense that was already trending in the right direction.
LT Ronnie Stanley: Stanley also returned to the lineup, in his case after missing two games with an ankle injury, and did not miss a beat. His pass blocking was excellent as usual, and his pulling helped clear the way for Dobbins and Gus Edwards as the Ravens dominated the Steelers on the ground.
Snap-count analysis
Safety Marcus Williams played 54 of the team’s 55 defensive snaps in his first game since Week 5. Geno Stone, who had been on the field almost every down in his absence, played just one defensive snap. Nickel back Kyle Hamilton played 91% of the team’s defensive snaps, easily his highest of the season, while Brandon Stephens did not play a single defensive snap. Defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald continued his recent trend by giving veterans Jason Pierre-Paul and Justin Houston more work on the edge than 2021 first-round pick Odafe Oweh.
J.K. Dobbins played the most snaps of any running back in his first game since Week 6, while Gus Edwards played four more snaps than he did in Week 13. They left just 11 offensive snaps for Kenyan Drake and two for Justice Hill. With the Ravens embracing a power game to beat the Steelers, fullback Patrick Ricard and tight end Josh Oliver played 20 and 18 more offensive snaps, respectively, than they did the previous week against the Denver Broncos. Conversely, wide receivers Devin Duvernay and Demarcus Robinson combined for just 72 offensive snaps, down from 123 against Denver. Trystan Colon and Ben Cleveland rotated in place of injured Kevin Zeitler at right guard, but Colon started and played 33 more offensive snaps.
Number crunch
39: Total points scored by the Ravens over their past three wins.
23: Turnovers forced by the Ravens defense after they forced 15 all of last season.
12: Consecutive games in which the Ravens have outrushed their opponents.
8: Yards per carry for J.K. Dobbins, who averaged 3.5 in his first four games of the season.
Quote of the day
Coach John Harbaugh on the Ravens’ running dominance: “The running game was it. The running game was what we needed in this game, and 215 yards, a bunch of yards on the final drive there — I think it was a seven-minute-and-55-second drive in the fourth quarter, mostly on the back of the run game. J.K. [Dobbins] had 120 yards. [He was] just running good and not just J.K. Let’s look at Gus [Edwards], too. Let’s look at that last first down, the two runs that Gus had. Those were tremendous runs. Getting it, he came around there on the 34-power like a freight train coming through there; it was really well-blocked. So that probably was as heroic a play as any, that series right there to get the first down and salt the game away. I’m probably as proud of those three plays as any in the whole game.”
Next up
Cleveland Browns at FirstEnergy Stadium, Saturday, Dec. 17, 4:30 p.m.
The Browns went down quietly, 23-10 to the Bengals, to drop to 5-8 on the season. Quarterback Deshaun Watson, he of the $230-million guaranteed contract, has played poorly in both his starts for Cleveland after coming off an 11-game suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy. The Browns lost 23-20 in Baltimore in Week 7, with the Ravens defense piling up five sacks and forcing two fumbles
Ravens offensive snap counts
Ben Powers G 61
Morgan Moses T 61
Ronnie Stanley T 61
Tyler Linderbaum C 61
Mark Andrews TE 54
Trystan Colon G 47
Patrick Ricard FB 45
Josh Oliver TE 42
Tyler Huntley QB 38
Demarcus Robinson WR 37
Devin Duvernay WR 35
J.K. Dobbins RB 26
Anthony Brown QB 23
Gus Edwards RB 21
Isaiah Likely TE 16
Ben Cleveland G 14
DeSean Jackson WR 11
Kenyan Drake RB 11
James Proche WR 4
Justice Hill RB 2
Ravens defensive snap counts
Chuck Clark SS 55
Marlon Humphrey CB 55
Marcus Peters CB 54
Marcus Williams FS 54
Roquan Smith LB 52
Kyle Hamilton FS 50
Patrick Queen LB 50
Tyus Bowser LB 37
Calais Campbell DE 36
Jason Pierre-Paul DE 34
Justin Madubuike DT 30
Justin Houston LB 26
Broderick Washington DT 20
Odafe Oweh LB 19
Travis Jones DT 16
Brent Urban DE 11
Ar’Darius Washington FS 5
Geno Stone SS 1
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Source: Berkshire mont
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