Counting the win, as well as rash of injuries

Losing Dobbins for season saps offense’s big-play threat

The Ravens bounced back from a clunky first half to put away the overmatched Houston Texans, 25-9, in their season opener. Victory came at a severe cost, however, as they lost running back J.K. Dobbins for the season to a torn Achilles tendon.

Here are five things we learned from the game.

Victory didn’t feel so triumphant once the Ravens were done counting their injuries and mistakes.

The Ravens never flirted with defeat against an opponent that’s at least a few years away from competing for a playoff berth. Their defense, led by linebackers Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen, swarmed rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud. Lamar Jackson began to find his wavelength with wide receivers Zay Flowers, Odell Beckham Jr. and Rashod Bateman. They did enough on a day when other would-be contenders, including AFC North rivals Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, looked worse.

That’s the positive spin from their first game of 2023. The negative is that they’re already a wounded team, with a half-dozen of their most important players sidelined by moderate to severe injuries.

The most dispiriting of those is Dobbins’ torn Achilles, the injustice of which pushed a few teammates to the brink of tears after the game.

The worry extends to safety Marcus Williams, left tackle Ronnie Stanley and center Tyler Linderbaum. Williams will be “a while,” coach John Harbaugh said, with a pectoral injury, while Stanley suffered a sprained knee and Linderbaum a sprained ankle and are both considered week to week. The Ravens were already down a pair of Pro Bowl players in tight end Mark Andrews and cornerback Marlon Humphrey against Houston.

One week into the season, they’re not the team they were designed to be.

“That’s football, it just is,” said Harbaugh, a battle-worn realist who has watched too many seasons upended by ruptured tendons and frayed ligaments. “Everybody does the best they can.”

The Ravens still have Gus Edwards, Justice Hill and Melvin Gordon III at running back. They have played well without Dobbins before, even though none of those ball carriers is as consistent a big-play threat as he.

If anything, the serious injury to Williams might be more unsettling because the Ravens were counting on their world-class safeties to cover for a lack of elite talent behind Humphrey at cornerback.

The offensive line gave the Ravens a stable spine last season and this summer, but that’s also in jeopardy if Linderbaum, whose rare mobility fuels the run game, and Stanley, the

team’s best pass blocker, miss significant time. “Extraordinary talents,” right guard Kevin Zeitler called them.

We don’t know exactly how much time Williams, Stanley and Linderbaum will miss, but it was difficult to leave M&T Bank Stadium with anything but an uneasy feeling after watching these players disappear from the field one by one.

The football — nine first-half penalties, suspect blitz pickups, erratic ball handling from quarterback Lamar Jackson — was messy as well, but the Ravens are reasonably confident they can smooth over those mistakes with time.

They cannot will good health into existence.

J.K. Dobbins’ torn Achilles is a cruel blow to a fierce talent who can’t catch a break.

Harbaugh pulled Dobbins in for an embrace after he vaulted into the end zone for the Ravens’ first touchdown of the season.

The running back had helped set himself up with a ferocious 10-yard catch and run along the sideline, seeking contact to pick up extra ground. He’d said he was ready for a career-defining season, and here was the proof.

What devastation then for Dobbins and everyone who cares about him as he hobbled off the field after a catch near the goal line in the third quarter. He could not put weight on his ankle as he was helped to the locker room, and Harbaugh confirmed the bleak verdict after the game’s final snap.

Linebacker Patrick Queen’s voice cracked with emotion as he requested prayers for his fellow 2020 draft pick. “It hurts to see that type of stuff happen to somebody so good,” he said.

“Heartbreaking,” said Zeitler, who called Dobbins “one of the souls of the team.”

Harbaugh could only say he was “crestfallen” for the 24-year-old athlete he had just hugged in jubilation.

These men have seen many a football comrade limp off and cope with bitter disappointment. This was something worse than the norm, a rare talent coming to a career crossroads at an age when he should just be taking off.

Dobbins was in for a complicated year no matter what. He sat out the beginning of training camp as speculation swirled about his dissatisfaction with the Ravens’ unwillingness to offer him a contract extension. He had already lost all of one season and part of another to a torn knee and hamstring, and he was staring at a desolate market for stars at his position.

The only thing he could do was aim to play a full season and hope the rewards would follow.

He was sure he would do just that. After all, he had never been less than excellent when healthy enough to perform. So the news of another season-erasing injury was almost too awful to contemplate, even in a sport defined by the brutal toll it takes on its best performers.

Whatever market Dobbins anticipated next spring is probably gone. He’s facing months in operating and training rooms followed by another uneasy return to the grass over which he once accelerated with such abandon.

Todd Monken’s first game as offensive coordinator went off with plenty of (expected) hitches.

The first play of the Monken era was a 4-yard run by Dobbins, but the Ravens went three-and-out on that opening drive, with Jackson eating a third-down sack.

On their second drive, which started on the Texans’ 36-yard line thanks to a fourthdown sack by Queen, Jackson, again under pressure, threw an interception, giving Flowers no chance to compete with cornerback Steven Nelson for the ball.

Thus began a clunky opening bow for the redesigned offense, the source of so much hope after the Ravens moved on from Monken’s predecessor, Greg Roman.

“I think that’s been really overplayed in a lot of ways, what this offense will look like or what we’ve done in the past,” Monken said three days before the game.

He knew of what he spoke. Monken did vary his looks and rotate his personnel a good bit, arraying his top three wide receivers on the same side of the field at times, going with two tight ends at others.

But the Ravens’ execution was spotty, not surprising given that many of these players were lining up together for the first time outside practice. Jackson played tentatively. On one first quarter play, he looked to hand off to Edwards, who wasn’t there, and he lost control of the ball twice. He averaged 6.3 yards per carry, mostly on scrambles, and completed 17 of 22 passes without Andrews, his most trusted target. But this was not one of Jackson’s Week 1 masterpieces.

Pressure was the Ravens’ real undoing in the first half, with almost every Houston blitz sending a free rusher into Jackson’s personal space. He completed just one pass against these all-out attacks before halftime. A smattering of boos echoed across M&T Bank Stadium after their final drive of the half went kaput.

They finally gained a foothold with a 71-yard touchdown drive to start the second half, mixing power runs with Jackson strikes to Flowers and Bateman. In those moments, we saw glimpses of what this offense could be, but the path could be jagged.

“What are we doing?” Jackson wondered at times, admitting afterward that he expected the offense to be sharper, even though he and most other starters had not played a snap in the preseason.

Zeitler said the performance was a “great wake-up call” given the Ravens’ high expectations. “I think we know that standard probably wasn’t lived up to,” he said.

The Ravens have the rare modern defense led by inside linebackers.

While the offense operated in fits and starts, plenty of Ravens defenders earned laurels. Harbaugh gleefully lampooned the preseason “concern” around second-year outside linebacker David Ojabo, who helped secure the victory with a strip sack. Cornerbacks Ronald Darby and Brandon Stephens, also the subjects of much fretting, hit hard and did a good job keeping plays in front of them.

The Ravens benefited from a rookie-tastic opening half by Stroud, who responded to pressure with ill-advised flings and needed several unplanned timeouts on third down, but they did the work to make him uncomfortable.

That effort started not with the secondary or with the edge rushers but with Smith and Queen, who combined for 27 tackles and each dropped Stroud for a sack.

Perhaps it’s difficult for pundits to project excellence for an NFL defense that’s led by a pair of inside linebackers. Gone are the days when Ray Lewis and Mike Singletary and Dick Butkus were considered some of the most valuable players in the sport. We live in an age of pass rushers and coverage aces. But coordinator Mike Macdonald’s defense transformed when Smith arrived via trade last October. The Pro Bowl linebacker is a pacesetter for everything the Ravens do in games and in practice. Queen, playing with fury as he makes his case for a rich second contract, is his worthy partner. You can’t take your eyes off them as they hunt the ball on every play.

Dameon Pierce, a fine NFL running back, finished with 38 yards on 11 carries against the defense Smith and Queen led. Stroud took 11 hits.

“Do you want to be great, or do you just want to be standard?” Queen said. “I know ‘Ro’ wants to be great, and he’s already headed there. I know I want to be great, and I’m already headed there.”

Their statistics weren’t astounding, but we saw hints of what’s to come from the Ravens’ wide receivers.

Flowers was one of the league’s most ballyhooed rookies in the preseason, and he wasted little time showing he will get open against pro defenders and leave them grasping for air with his sudden cuts and spins. He was bottled up for losses on a few quick throws to the flat, but if anything, he was more effective than expected on intermediate routes.

Bateman, in his first game back from Lisfranc surgery on his foot, was less central to the offense but caught all three balls thrown his way, including an 18-yard grab in traffic on that first touchdown drive of the second half. That’s exactly the toughness and reliability the Ravens are looking for from their 2021 first-round pick.

Beckham was quiet early aside from drawing a pair of pass-interference penalties, but he gave strong hints of how he’ll help this offense with a third-down conversion on the sideline in the third quarter and a 29-yard grab, on which he made a beautiful adjustment, to set up a field goal in the fourth quarter.

A combined 14 catches for 150 yards won’t be the talk of the league Monday morning, but the Ravens would have killed for such production from their wide receivers last season.