It was one of the ugliest games in the history of this rivalry, but the Baltimore Ravens showed off lots to be optimistic about even in a loss.
I’m not an advocate for “moral victories” if I’m being frank. A win is a win and a loss is a loss at the end of the day. You either did enough to win or you didn’t. Maybe that’s a little pessimistic admittedly, but it’s nonetheless truthful, even if it’s hard to swallow. But as Mary Poppins once famously said, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” so maybe I should be a little more optimistic when it comes to losses.
Taking that advice into account for the most recent loss for the Baltimore Ravens makes things a little bit easier to process. Honestly? There’s a ton of positives to take from the Ravens’ Wednesday Afternoon Football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
For starters, Baltimore exposed Pittsburgh plain and simple. The Steelers brought in an offense that isn’t lacking in weapons captained by the big bad man himself, Ben Roethlisberger. That defense is terrifying, too, led by Defensive Player of the Year frontrunner T.J. Watt. The Ravens were going to be in for one helluva fight even if all its stars were playing. But that’s the thing: they weren’t.
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Baltimore was short six Pro Bowlers including Lamar Jackson as well as a slew of other players missing due to injury or COVID-19 protocol. When the game was finally set to go this roster was decimated. The team actually looked like it had been duct-taped and super-glued to hold everything together at the seams. There was simply no chance that this team could compete with any NFL team, let alone the undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers.
But that’s exactly what happened.
John Harbaugh coached a terrific game considering the circumstances he was given; you don’t lose to an undefeated team by five points on the road with your second and third-string quarterbacks playing without coaching a good game. Don Martindale also called a masterful game defensively, holding the Pittsburgh offense out of the endzone until late in the fourth quarter despite playing on short fields consistently. Guys like Marlon Humphrey played out of their minds and kept the game way closer than it should have been.
That was the best part about this game; so many guys stepped up when needed the most. Robert Griffin III was electric as a runner (not so much as a passer…) and even Trace McSorley came in and delivered the biggest pass of his life to keep the game within a touchdown. The defense clamped down when things looked dire and somehow this game never felt out-of-reach. It was remarkable, to say the least.
It was a classic “next man up” mentality that the Ravens have so famously employed in the past. “Play like a Raven” was never more evident than it was vs. Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
If Baltimore had guys like Jackson back in the lineup I don’t think this game is remotely close. This Ravens team went down to the wire against a good Steelers team and nobody would’ve been surprised if they had gotten blown out. Instead, they nearly won. At worst they got that moral victory I was talking about earlier.
Losses suck, but at least this loss gave us a lot to be positive about. Even in as big a slump as the Baltimore Ravens are in right now, the team somehow gave us hope moving forward that they can turn things back around. Here’s to a loss that somehow felt like a win!