Doing a traditional good, bad and ugly post does not seem warranted when you look at the final outcome of the Baltimore Ravens game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Here’s the great, good and the less than good:
The great:
Don Martindale should get the game ball for this one. He had Joe Burrow seeing double all day long. Martindale brought his usual amount of pressure, yet he disguised it in an effective way which was a welcomed adjustment. The Bengals had no answer on offense the entire game. They had a fourth down conversion fail when the Ravens got pressure and Burrow had nobody open on a roll-out. They had turnovers and they had plenty of frustration along the way. The fact of the matter is that the Ravens did some very good things offensively but the defense was the biggest standout in this game. Whether it was a Marcus Peters interception or a Patrick Queen sack/fumble or DeShon Elliott coming for his third quarter sack, the defense dominated the day.
Can we talk about how little the Bengals accomplished on the ground today? Joe Mixon was a non-factor on the ground. So it was complete domination in this game for the purple and black defense. The formula was simple. The Bengals would get behind the chains, the Ravens would take advantage of it and pressure the rookie quarterback and Baltimore would get the ball back. Rinse, wash, repeat, it was an all day thing.
Lamar Jackson wasn’t perfect in this game, in fact he made some mistakes that he’s going to want back when he watches the tape. He did throw some dimes though, hitting Mark Andrews and Marquise Brown for first half touchdowns. Speaking of Mark Andrews, he had a great day at the office for the Baltimore offense. In just the first half, Andrews had six receptions and a touchdown. J.K. Dobbins looked great on a handful of first half touches. While there were problems to work through for the offense (we’ll get to that in a bit) the offense did more than they needed to to win this game.