Positional grades from Baltimore Ravens win vs. Jacksonville Jaguars

Front-seven: A

Yannick Ngakoue has had this game circled on his calendar for months and he certainly showed up and rose to the occasion. By himself, he notched two sacks including a strip that teammate Derek Wolfe hoped on top of. Ngakoue has been a blur of the edge all season but just hasn’t honed in on as many sacks as he could’ve. That was not the case this week.

Ngakoue’s partner in crime, Matt Judon, also had a big play in the form of a sack in the endzone for a safety. Those were actually the first points of the game and Baltimore followed it up with a touchdown drive to make a quick 9-0 swing after a game-opening interception. Judon hasn’t been great this year, but he was up to his old tricks on that play.

The rest of the front-seven played well collectively. Patrick Queen notched his third sack on the season to go along with three more TFLs. The unit held a strong Jaguars running game to under 3.0 YPC and brought down Gardner Minshew five times. You can’t ask for better play than that.

Secondary: B-

The secondary was definitely the “worst” unit on the field, but if you got the worst part of the cake you’d still be happy you got some cake. There were some moments of frustration without Marcus Peters on the field and Marlon Humphrey had a couple of uncharacteristic headscratchers. The safety duo of DeShon Elliott and Chuck Clark remains a solid one and had some nice hits to set the tone.

When you look at the box score you’ll see that Minshew threw for 226-yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions while completing 75.9% of his passes. That’s a really solid stat line, but it doesn’t do justice to how locked down they had Minshew for the most part. His touchdowns came on flukey drives that weren’t going to change the outcome of the game.

Turnovers would’ve been nice, but you’ll take what the secondary gave you every day of the week that ends in “y”.

Special teams: B

There’s really not much more you could’ve asked from your special teams unit. Justin Tucker‘s only miss was on a 57-yard field goal, but other than that he nailed a 46-yarder and all five of his PATs. When called upon, Sam Koch was as reliable as they come. The return game was casual as usual besides a nifty 20-yard punt return from James Proche. There may only be two weeks left of the season, but I have a gut feeling that Proche is gonna take one of these to the house.

Bottom line, it was business as usual for the special teams unit. It wasn’t out of this world, but it doesn’t have to be when you get the consistency they deliver on a weekly basis.