THANK YOU!
thanks to the "hurrdurr derrick henry turned earl thomas into a lead blocker" meme everyone thinks derrick henry is the sole reason we lost, paired with lamar jackson apparently being the worlds biggest choke artist.
fact is this: the offense lost this game, there should be no question about it for anyone who watched. Early turnover, turnover on downs next drive, and bam were down 14-0 and the titans with their gameplan can coast with ease. Henry got most of his yards on 2 runs and was pedestrian aside from that, theres a reason he did nothing vs the chiefs and i promise it isnt because the chiefs defense is better than the ravens. IF that ball bounces harmlessly off of andrews and onto the turf, and the ravens go ahead and take a field goal, force the titans to play on a long field, and then come back and score another field goal, frankly the game probably begins to spiral out of control VERY quickly for the titans, but the exact opposite happened, lamar stumbled off the bus, andrews was hobbled, ingram was hobbled, we abandoned the run, receivers werent getting open and dropping balls, game over by halftime.
also, the ravens run defense struggled ALL YEAR, they were gashed on the edges every time they faced a RB with some speed or a well coached run game. eric didnt go beef up the trenches because of derrick henry, he did it because of nick chubb, joe mixon, raheem mostert, devin singletary, and leveon bell also.
And look, I'm not saying the Ravens did great against Henry, because they didn't.
But there is not a sane, rationale person on this planet who watches that game and thinks we lost because Henry bulldozed us. Look at the scoring drives. Look at the turnovers. Look at the field position.
Like since we're clearly just going to the Box Score (which is bad analysis), look at the damn box score:
We had 2x as many first downs
We ran 40 MORE PLAYS. 40 MORE PLAYS.
We outgained them by 230 yards
While they had 217 rushing yards, which is a ton, we had 185. It wasn't even a landslide in rushing
We had a better YPC than they did (6.4 vs 5.9)
We had the ball for over 4 minutes longer. So even after all those running plays, the Titans didn't even win time of possession
So look at that and tell me who won the game?
Except there's four stats that matter:
Turnovers: Titans 0, Ravens 3
Red Zone Efficiency : Titans 3/3, Ravens 1/4
4th Down Efficiency: Ravens 0/4... 0 for freaking 4
# of possessions starting on opponent side of field: Titans 3, Ravens 0
The Ravens had ZERO drives that began beyond their own 30 yard line.
This isn't rocket science folks.