Drawing the wild card
Titans barely made the playoffs, but they could be formidable match for Jackson and the Ravens
The Tennessee Titans had to sneak into the playoffs through the back door, but they didn’t play like the lowest seed in the AFC on the way to a 20-13 victory over the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots on Saturday night at Gillette Stadium.
The wild-card Titans earned the right to play in the divisional round next weekend against the Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium —and they did it the hard way. No one should assume the game will be a formality for the Ravens, even if they will be wellrested and riding a club-record 12-game winning streak.
There is a case to be made that the Ravens would be much better off hosting the Texans, who overcame a 16-point thirdquarter deficit to eliminate the Buffalo Bills in the early game Saturday.
The Texans already have been to town, and they took a 34point beating in Week 11. The Ravens also beat the Bills during the regular season, but the Titans were not on their schedule.
That could be viewed as an advantage because Tennessee hasn’t seen Lamar Jackson and the Ravens’ revolutionary offense up close. It could also be viewed from the opposite perspective since the Ravens have not seen the new and improved Ryan Tannehill, who replaced struggling quarterback Marcus Mariota in Week 6 and came into the playoffs on quite a roll.
Tannehill completed more than 70 percent of his passes for 2,742 yards during his 11 regularseason games. He had 22 touchdown passes and four rushing TDs while throwing only six interceptions. In six of his last seven regular-season games, he had a passer rating of 130.8 or better.
Those numbers are important because the Ravens won’t have a whole lot to look at when they scout his performance from Saturday night because he shifted into game-manager mode and let his team ride a dominant performance by running back Derrick Henry to that grind-itout victory over the Pats.
Henry was simply terrific, and a good New England defense did not have an answer for him. He carried the ball 34 times for 182 yards and broke Eddie George’s Titans single-game playoff record.
“We were locked in,” Henry said in a postgame television interview. “We wanted it. It’s a great win against a great team in a hostile environment.”
Stopping Henry will be Job 1 for the Ravens defense next week, but the combination of the NFL’s leading rusher (1,540 yards during the regular season) and a hot veteran quarterback will be a serious challenge for the Ravens defense.
Presumably, Henry will have more trouble running downhill against the big Ravens runstoppers. But consider this: During the Titans’ go-ahead scoring drive at the end of the first half, Henry accounted for all 75 yards — 53 of them on the ground and 22 on one big catch and-run.
The Ravens have not played the Titans since Week 6 of last season, when Joe Flacco led them to a 21-0 victory in what would be his last win as the team’s franchise quarterback. Henry carried the ball just seven times for the Titans in that game.
It looked for awhile on Saturday like the Ravens would draw a rematch with the Texans, which would have led to some lively debate during the film study of Saturday’s suspenseful victory over the Bills.
Would they get the team that looked helpless for the first 40 minutes of the wild-card game, or the one that suddenly woke up on both sides of the ball to stage a furious comeback before winning on a 28-yard field goal by Ka’imi Fairbairn in overtime?
For that matter, would they get the DeShaun Watson who brought his team back from a 16-point deficit with a La-marvelous 20-yard touchdown run and a short touchdown pass to running back Carlos Hyde, or the quarterback who wasn’t much of a factor in that ugly 34-point loss to the Ravens in Week 11?
We’ll never know, but the Ravens probably will be happy to miss the rejuvenated defensive superstar J.J. Watt, who came back early from surgery to repair a torn pectoral and delivered a huge sack that helped shift the momentum in the game. That is, unless the Ravens and Texans end up meeting in the AFC championship game.