How the Ravens beat the Chiefs with a twist on defense and doing what they do best on offense

Publish date: 2024-05-09

Lamar Jackson is 31-8 as a starter, and the Ravens have made the playoffs each of his three seasons in that role. The Ravens came into this season with expectations of being a Super Bowl contender again, but they looked vulnerable after a rocky offseason with a rash of injuries. They opened the season with an overtime loss to the Raiders on the road, then they had to play the mighty Kansas City Chiefs, whom they hadn’t beaten in three tries with Jackson at quarterback before Sunday night.

Historically, falling into a 0-2 hole is like taking a sledgehammer to your playoff chances. From 1990 to 2019, only 12 percent of 0-2 teams have reached the playoffs. The math is a bit different now with an extra game on the schedule and an extra playoff spot, but recovering from the loss of two games to start the season remains a very difficult mountain to climb.

The Ravens didn’t come into the matchup Sunday night much healthier than they did against the Raiders. The challenge was daunting. They had to stop the league’s best passing attack and do it without Marcus Peters and Jimmy Smith. They had to run the ball with consistency without their top two running backs and behind an injury-riddled offensive line.

Defensively, they pivoted from their core philosophy in hopes of slowing down the Chiefs.

“Our defensive coaches, starting with Don Martindale, came up with a tremendous game plan,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said after the game. “I talked about the offensive game plan; the defensive game plan was just as good. There were some things (the Chiefs) hadn’t seen before, certainly not from us. Many things they hadn’t seen from us that our players executed well.”

The Ravens blitz at the highest rate in the NFL, but they blitzed the Chiefs on only 18.2 percent of pass plays, according to Pro Football Focus. To put that in perspective, the Ravens blitzed the Chiefs on 49 percent of pass plays in their 2020 meeting (a 34-20 loss). Aside from the schematic disadvantages of blitzing the Chiefs, they just didn’t have enough healthy defensive backs to get into their man blitz package.

Martindale also switched up things by playing mostly zone coverage. The Chiefs did not seem prepared for this curveball, as it looked like they had a game plan that was heavy on man beaters with condensed formations, max protection two-man shot plays and rub routes.

The Ravens mostly sat in two-deep shells, but here they played Cover 3 with a three-man rush. Their plan was to make sure they always had someone on top of Tyreek Hill and to disrupt Travis Kelce at the line of scrimmage with a defender, then have that defender drop off and spy on Patrick Mahomes.

9:11 remaining in the second quarter, third-and-10

On this third-down play, they had safety DeShon Elliott play the bump-and-spy technique. Kelce wasn’t on the field, so Elliott bumped receiver Mecole Hardman at the line.

After Elliott bumped Hardman, he dropped to the middle of the field with his eyes on Mahomes, waiting for him to break the pocket.

The Chiefs ran a concept with a crosser and hitch from a condensed formation that would have worked better against man coverage, but because of the compressed splits and the deep zone defender to the side of the crosser, the Chiefs couldn’t stress the Ravens’ coverage.

No one was open initially, so Mahomes had to scramble to buy time, but when he broke the pocket, Elliott quickly closed and got into the passing lane as Mahomes tried to hit running back Darrel Williams. Elliott forced Mahomes to throw the pass later than he wanted to and it was almost intercepted.

The Ravens’ third-down defense was tremendous and held the Chiefs to 1-for-6 on third down. Overall, they didn’t shut down the Chiefs — Kansas City still put up 35 points — but the Ravens got timely stops and pitched a shutout in the fourth quarter.

Offensively, the Ravens went back to the basics. Against the Raiders, they tried to do too much schematically and got away from what had worked for them in the past. Counter runs with two pulling linemen have become the bread-and-butter of the Ravens offense, and they have different ways of running it. They’ll usually run it from a shotgun formation with the back offset to Jackson’s side, but on the play below, they ran it from the pistol.

8:52 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10

On this play, Jackson has the option to hand the ball off to the running back, who would follow the counter blocking, or he could keep the ball and follow the arc blocks by his tight end and fullback. Defensive end Chris Jones (No. 95) was the read man.

Jones stepped inside, so Jackson kept the ball and easily got outside him. Although the Chiefs’ experiment with Jones — he usually plays in the interior at defensive end — works against traditional teams, it’s not ideal against the option because Jones doesn’t have the change-of-direction ability to muddy up the read for Jackson. When Jones is at end, Jackson can pretty much keep the ball whenever he wants, unless Jones stays an extra step or two outside, because Jackson knows he can outrun Jones to the edge.

The Ravens had a numbers advantage and had each defender accounted for on the perimeter. As Jackson got outside, he had to make another sharp cut to set up his blocking on the perimeter. He was able to burst through the small gap and scamper for 21 yards.

The explosive run helped kick-start a drive that ate up more than five minutes of game clock. More important, the Ravens finished in the end zone to tie the score at 14-14.

The Ravens are mainly a run/run-option team, but I always thought they could call more run-pass options (RPOs). Offensive coordinator Greg Roman has them in the playbook but tends to stray away from them. Using them more could get Marquise Brown more involved and give second-level defenders yet another thing to think about.

11:53 remaining in the third quarter, first-and-10

The Ravens lined up in a Y-Y formation with two tight ends to the offensive right and two receivers to the left. Jackson had the option to hand the ball off to the running back running outside zone right or throw the double slant concept to the left.

The Chiefs lined up with split safeties, but with the technique that safety Daniel Sorensen (No. 49) played, the defense essentially had nine in the box.

The read for Jackson was a little muddy. Usually, he would read the weakside linebacker on this concept, but the Chiefs had inside linebacker Anthony Hitchens lined up inside of Brown, who ran a slip route (one step slant from the slot). After the snap, the weakside linebacker and Hitchens flowed hard toward the run, and Jackson made the correct decision by pulling the ball to throw.

The Chiefs looked completely unprepared for the RPO. Brown had a lot of grass to work with and netted 27 yards after the catch and run.

Later in that drive, Jackson found Brown again for another explosive play.

9:48 remaining in the third quarter, third-and-4

The Ravens shifted running back Devonta Freeman outside to get into an empty set and as a coverage indicator. Hitchens followed Freeman outside, which clued Jackson that the defense would be in man coverage.

On third down, the Chiefs brought a Cover 0 (man-to-man with no deep safeties) blitz. The free safety had to take tight end Mark Andrews on the crosser from depth. Jackson wanted to go to Andrews early, but Andrews stumbled and Jackson had to move to his next read.

On the right, the two defenders over the bunch had to sort out which player to take because of the receivers’ compressed alignment.

Both defenders ended up jumping the underneath route, leaving Brown wide open down the middle of the field.

The Ravens were in an empty set, which meant they only had five blockers. The Chiefs brought six, so they had a free rusher. However, pass rushers have to be extra disciplined in their rush lanes against Jackson because of the threat that he’ll run. The free rusher L’Jarius Sneed might have gotten to Jackson faster if he went inside of the defensive end, but he remained outside to keep containment, which slowed him down.

The interior got pushed into Jackson’s lap, and he had to make a jump pass at an awkward angle.

TOUCHDOWN @Ravens! #RavensFlock
Lamar Jackson acha Marquise Brown LIVRINHO para anotar o TD em 42 jardas, tem muito jogo ainda no SNF! Chiefs 28 x 24 Ravens #NFLBrasil pic.twitter.com/EmguQ7DhHD

— NFL Brasil (@NFLBrasil) September 20, 2021

Jackson kept his eyes downfield despite the pressure and completed the pass for a 42-yard touchdown to cut the score to 28-24. In the fourth quarter, the Ravens had to overcome an 11-point deficit.

Baltimore got the ball back with 11:16 remaining in the game trailing 35-30 and put on an option football clinic. The Ravens ran the ball on 11 out of 14 plays and took 8:02 from the game clock. On that drive, they just called their staple run concepts, like counter bash.

5:31 remaining in the fourth quarter, third-and-5

Counter bash is the first play that defensive coordinators show to their team when defending the Ravens. If you can’t stop it against the Ravens, you’re in for a long day. At a critical juncture in the game, the Chiefs defense looked lost.

On counter bash, Jackson has the option to hand the ball off on a sweep to the running back or keep the ball and follow the counter blocking, so the roles are reversed from the first counter option concept that I included above.

Jackson read the defensive end away from the running back. The end stayed outside, so Jackson kept the ball and followed his pullers. The center blocked the defensive end, while left tackle Alejandro Villanueva looked to block a linebacker on the second level. Hitchens left the box to chase the running back, and that left no one for Villanueva to block on the second level.

With no one to block, Villanueva was able to get to the third level and block the safety. Jackson needed 5 yards to convert on third down and got 9. The Ravens scored the winning touchdown a few plays later on a 1-yard Jackson run.

With 3:14 remaining in the game, the stage was set for a Mahomes winning touchdown drive. The Chiefs moved the ball with ease to the Ravens’ 32-yard line and faced second-and-3. Kansas City was in field-goal range and looked to start bleeding the clock by running the ball.

The Chiefs struggled to run the ball against the Ravens’ sub packages throughout the night. The Chiefs’ running backs averaged 2.75 yards a carry against a defense that focused on stopping the pass.

1:26 remaining in the fourth quarter, second-and-3

Mahomes lined up under center, and the Chiefs had a simple split-zone concept called. On the crucial play, the Chiefs had a numbers advantage in the box. They had six blockers for the six defenders. Also, Hill going in jet motion caused confusion for the Ravens defensive backs.

After the snap, defensive tackle Pernell McPhee (No. 90) jumped inside of left guard Joe Thuney, making him the center’s responsibility. Thuney should have then blocked linebacker Odafe Oweh (No. 99).

However, Oweh stayed wide, hugging the left tackle’s inside hip. Thuney couldn’t close the distance to get to him, and Oweh was able to dip past him. The Chiefs’ line couldn’t get any push inside, and running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire had to cut horizontally.

When Edwards-Helaire stopped to make his cut, Oweh got a direct punch on the ball and forced a fumble. Oweh recovered it, and the Ravens ran out the clock after a gutsy fourth-down conversion on their final drive.

“It’s not perfect. It’s not pretty usually, but it’s us,” Harbaugh said after the game.

The Ravens were undermanned and had to switch up their entire defensive philosophy to slow down the Chiefs. They put the ball in Jackson’s hands and let him carry the team. Collectively, they made enough plays to finally beat the Chiefs and get their season back on track. The Ravens still have major injury issues that they’ll have to deal with, but they’re a team that finds ways to keep playing winning football. The Chiefs are often looked at as the pinnacle of modern football. They can often win with finesse behind the arm of Mahomes, but on Sunday night, they were beaten by old-school physicality.

(Top photo of Marquise Brown: Todd Olszewski / Getty Images)

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