When the Baltimore Ravens beat the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football, it was not just your average NFL victory. It was like they had just won a playoff game. A graphic on Sunday Night Football pretty much summed up how the previous games had gone. The Chiefs had won four straight games against the Ravens. The Chiefs were Baltimore’s Kryptonite, and until they beat them, many people wondered if they could win the AFC and ever beat the Chiefs.
It almost looked like the Chiefs were headed for their fifth straight victory against the Ravens. Chiefs running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire received the handoff from Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and Helaire was about to get yardage for Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker to end the game with a field goal from a shorter distance. Then Ravens rookie defensive end Jayson Oweh made the play of the game; he forced the ball out of Helaire’s hands and recovered the fumble. The Ravens tried to run out the clock after that.
Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh knew they had a golden opportunity to seal the deal against the Chiefs when it was 4th & 1 inside their fifty-yard line. Most coaches would have punted the ball because that is the safe move, but with Patrick Mahomes’s history and talent, it was the right decision to try to win the game right then and there.
One of the best coaches in the game, Harbaugh, asked his players if they wanted to go for it. They said yes, and they went for it and converted it.
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson understood how important this victory was for the Baltimore Ravens and spoke about it after the game. He knew it was just a regular-season game at the end of the day, but saying you can do something and actually doing something are two different things. It was a sigh of relief for them to get this victory finally.
“It feels good to get that monkey off of our back.” “We’ve got to move on to Detroit now. We didn’t win the Super Bowl yet; it’s just one game. We’ve got to keep staying focused,” said Jackson.
The Ravens are one of the best teams in the NFL. They have all the pieces to make a run to the Super Bowl in February in Los Angeles and ultimately win it. They have an elite quarterback, solid defense, a great running game, and a great head coach who has won a Super Bowl before. That is how you succeed in the postseason, especially on the road, if that is necessary.
The Chiefs are still the team to beat in the AFC, and it will be that way as long as Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are together. However, the Ravens finally beat the Chiefs for the first time in the Lamar Jackson era, and that will give them confidence moving forward that they can beat the Chiefs when it matters most.
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Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
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