Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A Win is a Win

So it may not have been very pretty last night, but the Baltimore Ravens pulled out a victory, sweeping the season series against the Cleveland Browns. The Ravens offense struggled throughout the night, as the Ravens defense was able to pitch a shut-out, their first shut-out since week 12 of the 2006 season, when they dominated the Pittsburgh Steelers in a 27-0 victory.

The defense only allowed 160 total yards to the Brady Quinn driven Browns offense, forcing two turnovers, one of which was returned for a touchdown by Dawan Landry. The often invisible Chris Carr happened to be in the right place as the right time as he added the other pick. I was very impressed with the defense, but then again, it was the Browns, who are arguably the worst team in the NFL. We'll see what happens this upcoming week as Peyton Manning and the Colts visit M&T Bank Stadium.

The offense was quite worrisome, as we were only able to score one offensive touchdown, by none other than Ray Rice, who seems to be the lone bright spot on this Ravens offense lately. Joe Flacco shows some good plays throughout the last few games, but overall, has struggled the last three games. Flacco has not broken the 200 yard passing mark since week six against the Vikings.

And as for the special teams unit... I don't know how else to say this, except that Steve Hauschka is gone. He just misses too many kicks, and isn't even booting the ball on kickoffs. I would be surprised if he is kicking for the Ravens come Sunday.

So as the Ravens have improved to 5-4, they still have a long road ahead of them, which starts this week with the undefeated Colts. Let's hope that the defense can make Peyton Manning even resemble Brady Quinn, but I'm not betting on that one.

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