Ravens Bounce Back, from the Dentist’s Chair

Ravens Pass-Catchers Through Two Games

For a team as perma-bad as the Brownies, they’ve consistently had some surprisingly good units.

Joe Thomas played there for over a decade (made the Hall of Fame!), and they usually had excellent O-lines when he was there – especially when Alex Mack was also there, say 2010 to 2015.

Overlapping for most of the Thomas era, Josh Cribbs was an All-Pro return man for the Brownies in the late 00’s thru 2012.  I was at the game in 2007 when the Brownies beat the Ravens on 300+ return yards by Cribbs (245 yds KR, 61 yds PR): he was unstoppable.  Brownies kicker Phil Dawson doinked a Field Goal IN at the end of regulation.  My buddy & I got up and left: we were crossing Paca Street when a driver told us the game was still going on.  We were like, wha—?

Nick Chubb made 4 Pro Bowls there, 2019-22; the Brownies had a terrific running game with him on the team.

The last couple few years the Brownies have had a hella good defense, with Myles Garrett (another sure Hall of Famer) leading the way.

When a team has a really good defense – or a really good running game – or a really good Offensive Line – even if they’re BAD overall, it becomes surprisingly difficult to put them away.  This shouldn’t be a surprise to any fan of the pre- Joe Flacco Ravens: we watched them win plenty of games (even a Super Bowl!) behind a great defense, strong running game and (usually) a good O-line.  The Brownies have very often had one or two of those components.

That’s the weird thing about the Browns.  They’re BAD —

— but they’re actually very difficult to play against.  Games against them are tough..  I used to joke on the RSR forums that games against the Browns were like a trip to the dentist.  Tense and uncomfortable.  You can never coast to victory.  It’s always a grungy, gritty, survive & advance kind of game.

This game went just like that for the first half.   And then in the second half, as Myles Garrett said:

Myles Garrett on Cleveland’s loss to the Ravens:

“Shit’s embarrassing. … They slowly chipped away…eventually the dam broke and they just did whatever they wanted.”

via @Browns pic.twitter.com/0H02SlhjUL

— Bobby Trosset (@bobbybaltim0re) September 14, 2025

That’s extremely apt.  The Ravens kept grinding at it: a FG drive here (set up by a punt return to midfield), a TD off a short field from a blocked punt there, and took a 10-3 lead into the half.

After the half, a professional drive for another FG and a 13-3 lead.  Then Flacco got tired of being careful with the ball, unleashed a YOLO for old times’ sake, and Nate Wiggins returned it down to the Cleveland 5.  TD a couple plays later for a nice working margin of 20-3.

Game Stats

Welcome to another season of the Pass Catchers Report!  Same ol’ stuff from prior seasons here: the centrality of Yards-per-Target, my notion of a “Quality Start”, and tracking Explosive Plays.  There’s a small change to the Season Stats box, but we’ll get to that in the next section.

Here are your stats for the game:

(Data from PFR)    

Zay dominating the targets again. He has been the bell-cow receiver so far this season, and he’s really produced. In the table above, he gets the tilde of “almost” in the “Explosive Plays” column, for a 19-yarder he caught.

How about the 2 De’s (DeAndre & Devontez) ?!?!  4 targets, 4 catches, 90 yards, 3 TDs! Let’s say a little something about each of them:

The Ravens are using De’Andre Hopkins perfectly.  Just perfectly.  He’s averaging 14 snaps a game (18 last week and 10 this week), which seems ideal for keeping the 33-year-old productive all season. But then when they do put him in the game, they’re using him for “trust” throws on deeper targets.  Every throw is a difference maker in the game.

Here he talks about “motivation” after the game:

Ravens WR DeAndre Hopkins on if social media chatter motivates him:

“It doesn’t motivate me at all. What motivates me is my mom being blind, my father dying when I was six months [old]. Real things in life.” pic.twitter.com/XoUhRDMm9v

— Baltimore Banner Sports (@AllBannerSports) September 14, 2025

More of his mom:

Every time DeAndre Hopkins scores a touchdown, he finds his blind mother in the crowd, who lost her sight 17 years ago, and gives her the ball with which he scored. This is one of the most beautiful traditions in sports. pic.twitter.com/Ma0mpKEbFS

— Mr Commonsense (@fopminui) September 15, 2025

I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying!

The Tez Walker story looks like a bestseller. He had an up-&-down college career, which included moving back home to care for an aging grandmother, and feuds with the NCAA over his eligibility to play.  Steve Smith said about him last year pre-draft, that if Walker could get with a solid team and work on his craft, “next year he could take somebody’s job.”  Well, it’s next year.  The role he seems to be taking is Cris Carter’s: “All he does is catch touchdowns!”

Seriously, here’s Walker’s career stat line:

Marred a little bit by two incompletions late last season, but still: 3 catches, 3 TDs, a TD rate of 60%.

First the Ravens drafted a Pro Bowl receiver in Zay Flowers; now they’re developing a 4th-rounder, Tez Walker, into a dangerous deep threat.  Not the same ol’ Ravens!  Seriously, this is unprecedented (for the Ravens).

Stat o’ the Game

The stat o’ the game is – actually we have two.  First up…

Lamar Jackson’s splits by half:

In the first half Lamar was sailing passes; he threw at least three airballs.  He didn’t look right.  In the second half they used Derrick Henry just as a decoy and Lamar threw with play-action again & again.  And he was deadly!

It’s an unsung story of the game. The headlines will focus on the special teams and defense (blocked punt!  INT with big return!  Fumble scoop & score!).  But the passing game finding its rhythm is what enabled the Ravens to maintain possession and turn the great field position into touchdowns.

This is kind of where we are now with Lamar.  He didn’t play particularly well (for him), and still finished with the game with a 65% completions, almost 8 yards-per-attempt, and a Passer Rating for the game of 128.6.

The second stat o’ the game is:

Ravens total rushing yards Sunday: 45.

It’s the first time in Lamar’s entire career that the Ravens have been held under 60 yards rushing. (There was a game against the Bengals in 2021 where they were held to 39 yards rushing.  But Lamar was out with injury: Josh Johnson played QB that day.)

And they won!  Won easily, with Lamar picking apart an excellent defense and hitting big plays. A bit of a narrative buster for the Lamar haters (and Bills fans) out there.

Season Stats & Leaderboard

Now that we have two games to work with, the season stats are different from game stats. Let’s take a look.

(Data from PFR except last 2 cols)

Here’s the small change to the Season Stats box.  Last year I sorted this table by YTS. This year I’m sorting it by the counting stat version of YTS, which I’m calling aYTS for Attempts × YTS.  There’s an exhaustive, exhausting, painfully detailed explanation here; but basically think of it as “success yards.”  Volume matters, in this version of the table; it’s no longer pure efficiency.
(Which is not to say that Zay Flowers hasn’t been efficient!  See below.)

Lookit all those sexy double-digit YPT values, from DeAndre Hopkins thru Derrick Henry!  That’s what happens when you catch every damn thing thrown to you.

Rashod Bateman is a total frickin no-show this year.  What the hell??  After last season, I had him penciled-in for a big year.  (I even, ahem, drafted him on my fantasy team.)  He’s done basically nothing.  Had a drop against the Bills.

Bateman is in an interesting spot in this offense.  He’s a little miscast as a deep threat (though he separates extremely well downfield).  His best role would probably be as a Keenan Allen-type chain-mover.  But the Ravens are using Flowers in that role, and Zay is dominating.  Lamar also loves & trusts his Tight Ends in that role (though Mark Andrews hasn’t done much yet).  Meanwhile Hopkins & Walker & Tylan Wallace are producing with their big-play opportunities.  That puts a squeeze on Bateman.  This train could wind up leaving him at the station.

Flowers is 5th in the league in receiving yardage, one of only five players over 200 yards.  He’s 2nd in aYTS (behind Puka Nacua, just ahead of Ja’Marr Chase). He’s 28th in YTS.

Hopkins is #1 in the league in Yards-per-target,  and 13th in Success Rate.  That combo makes him #1 in the league(!) in YTS.  He’s 31st in aYTS, due to low volume.

Lamar is:

1st in the league in TD passes (tied with Jared Goff)
1st in TD% (again), with a big lead (over Goff)
1st in Passer Rating (again), with a solid lead (over Justin Herbert)

He is NOT 1st in Net Yards per Attempt, a stat he dominated last year.  Took too many sacks Sunday: Lamar is down to 6th in that stat (still good). Indy’s Daniel Jones is in the top stop.

Technically Lamar is also 1st in ESPN’s QBR.  But!  There’s a little hinkiness in that rating.  Some of Josh Allen’s work in Week 1 is down weighted by the QBR metric, because the Bills were down two scores in the 4th quarter – garbage time!  That seems like a flaw in the QBR stat.  Allen produced amazing stats in that situation, and on higher volume than Lamar usually gets; I suspect Allen is “really” 1st in QBR, if they get that glitch sorted.

There’s More!

This is about half of my write-up of the Browns game, or a little over.  To check out the rest, including specific ways the Ravens distanced themselves from their week one loss and a deep, DEEP dive into Lamar’s place on the Career Passer Rating list, please visit my Substack, here.  (It’s free: I’m not trying to play you like that, I’m just taking advantage of Tony L’s extreme kindness by double-posting here.)

Next Up

Jared Goff and Dan Campbell bring the Lions of Detroit to Charm City for Monday Night Football!

This is a damn fascinating matchup. I’m eager.  (And, as always, concerned.)

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