Gus Edwards in the first half of Sunday’s game carried the ball only once, and picked up 15 yards on that play. That was hard to understand. Why were the run-oriented Ravens so quick to abandon what they’d been doing all year?
It was baffling. The Ravens led the league in rushing in the regular season, and they were playing at home against a defense that was only 18th at stopping it. But there was no real effort to establish any kind of ground game. Kansas City got an early touchdown, and that seemed to frazzle the Ravens away from playing their usual game. Buffalo had some success running the ball against Kansas City a week ago, but the Ravens never really even tried.
Edwards was on the field for only a third of their plays; he finished with 20 yards on 3 carries. Justice Hill was instead their primary running game; he carried 3 times for 3 yards and added 4 receptions for 34 yards on 7 targets. Dalvin Cook popped a nice run late in the Houston game but didn’t even get on the field.
Kansas City was the better team – give credit where credit is due. But it should have been a closer game. The Ravens let them off the hook by mismanaging their offensive play. (They held up better defensively, allowing only 17 points.)
Below see the rushing stats for Baltimore’s running backs. Just 6 carries for 23 yards. In all of their other meaningful games (they held out some regulars in Week 18 against Pittsburgh) they ran for over 100 yards.
| BALTIMORE'S RUNNING BACKS, GAME-BY-GAME | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opponents | No | Yds | Avg | Lg | TD |
| Houston | 30 | 101 | 3.4 | 14 | 3 |
| at Cincinnati | 33 | 157 | 4.8 | 20 | 1 |
| Indianapolis | 36 | 184 | 5.1 | 16 | 2 |
| at Cleveland | 30 | 129 | 4.3 | 22 | 2 |
| at Pittsburgh | 25 | 125 | 5.0 | 26 | 1 |
| at Tennessee | 37 | 138 | 3.7 | 12 | 0 |
| Detroit | 27 | 146 | 5.4 | 27 | 2 |
| at Arizona | 28 | 112 | 4.0 | 13 | 3 |
| Seattle | 37 | 290 | 7.8 | 60 | 3 |
| Cleveland | 24 | 106 | 4.4 | 39t | 2 |
| Cincinnati | 30 | 150 | 5.0 | 26 | 2 |
| at LA Chargers | 33 | 160 | 4.8 | 29 | 0 |
| LA Rams | 26 | 139 | 5.3 | 27 | 0 |
| at Jacksonville | 42 | 251 | 6.0 | 24 | 1 |
| at San Francisco | 26 | 102 | 3.9 | 30 | 1 |
| Miami | 31 | 161 | 5.2 | 41 | 2 |
| Pittsburgh | 17 | 66 | 3.9 | 29 | 0 |
| Houston | 31 | 129 | 4.2 | 19 | 0 |
| Kansas City | 6 | 23 | 3.8 | 15 | 0 |
—Ian Allan