Getty Baltimore Ravens fan
The Baltimore Ravens beating the Kansas City Chiefs 36-35 on Sunday Night Football in Week 2 was a big deal for the Ravens. Lamar Jackson had previously called the Chiefs Baltimore’s “kryptonite,” and given how banged up the Ravens were heading into the prime-time matchup, Baltimore was undoubtedly an underdog prior to the game taking place. However, the John Harbaugh-led squad managed to upset the defending AFC champions on national television, and that sparked some fans to overreact to how the game played out.
While some Kansas City fans had a “sky is falling” mentality after the Chiefs defense looked helpless against the Ravens, fans of Baltimore were acting as if their team had just won the Super Bowl. Take this fan for example, who got a tattoo of the final score of the Week 2 matchup, which was grabbed from his Instagram story by Total Pro Sports:
Total Pro Sports Instagram screenshot from Total Pro Sports
Aside from the poor penmanship of the person who made the tattoo, it’s a weird flex considering it was victory very early in the regular season, with very little playoff implications attached to the win for Baltimore at this point in the season. Nevertheless, the damage is now done, so here’s to hoping that poor soul doesn’t too soon regret inking their body with a minuscule victory.
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There’s A lot to Not Like About Win for Ravens
Yes, Baltimore beating the Chiefs, who are the team to beat in the AFC, was a big win for the Ravens. But the final score doesn’t tell the entire story, which matters when projecting how Baltimore may perform for the remainder of the season.
The Ravens racked up 251 rushing yards on a Kansas City defense that entering Week 3 is the worst rushing defense in the NFL in three major categories: rushing yards allowed (404), rushing touchdowns allowed (seven), and most yards per rush allowed (6.0), per NFL on CBS. They also rank fifth-worst in the league in sacks (3) and last in pressures (10), per Pro Football Reference.
As for the Chiefs offense — Baltimore’s defense did have a couple of turnovers, one of which came late in the game on a Clyde Edwards-Helaire fumble that helped close out the win for the Ravens. But outside of those the Ravens didn’t have an answer for a Chiefs offense that scored 35 points and 405 yards of total offense. So while the crippled Ravens did beat up on one of the worst defenses in the NFL through two weeks of football, there’s a lot of football left to be played this season, which includes much better defenses than what they played against in Week 2.
“I think knowing what kind of leader Spags is, knowing the kind of leader Tyrann Mathieu is on that side of the ball, I think they’re going to get it figured out,” former Kansas City quarterback Alex Smith explained to the Arrowhead Addicts podcast regarding the Chiefs defense. “I think you do have to give a lot of credit to Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. They lost opening week. It was a must-win game for them. I don’t know if you guys saw in the locker room post-game, John Harbaugh and his comments…that was about as big as a must-win game you get in Week 2 ever in the NFL. They really had their backs up against the wall, which is crazy to say two weeks in.”