The Ravens hadn't allowed a 95-yard drive on their home turf since 2001. The Lions gashed them twice on Monday night.
"You gotta dig deep on those drives," Dan Campbell said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "It doesn’t matter how tired you are. When you look across from you and you see how they feel, that’s always going to be your motivation because you know it’s working."
The first went 98 yards in 18 plays and chewed up 10:48 of clock between the first quarter and second. The second went 96 yards in seven plays, sparked by a 72-yard run by David Montgomery, and gave the Lions the lead for good in their 38-30 win. Both were demoralizing for Baltimore's defense, which wound up surrendering the second most rushing yards in regulation of John Harbaugh's 18-year tenure as head coach.
"I thought they did a good job early on stopping our run game," Jared Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "I thought we got after 'em pretty good in the second quarter through the second half ... Those two long drives speak for themselves. We ran the ball great, we really did. I thought we adjusted well with the type of runs we started calling."
As well as the Lions moved the ball in Week 2 against the Bears, the interior rushing attack wasn't up to their standard. They got it going in Week 3. The gains didn't always come in chunks, but the Lions kept pounding it until they did. It was "something knew we needed to do against that opponent," said Campbell, "to try to keep Lamar off (the field), try to keep that offense over there on the sideline."
"And man, it requires a very patient, a very disciplined (approach)," Campbell said.
The Lions rammed away with Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs on the first long drive, while Goff hit a couple key passes on third down to Sam LaPorta. They finished it by wearing the Ravens out. Six of the final eight plays were runs, including Montgomery for eight yards to the right behind Graham Glasgow, Tate Ratledge and Penei Sewell, Montgomery for 10 yards to the left behind Christian Mahogany and Taylor Decker, and Gibbs for 10 yards straight up the middle behind everyone in white.
On Montgomery's 10-yard run, both Mahogany and Ratledge took care of their blocks on the line and then picked off linebackers in the second level. The Ravens were missing their best interior defender in Nnamdi Madubuike, but the Lions were mauling nonetheless. This is how it looked for most of the last three years. The two new guards are getting quickly up to speed.
Run-blocking is as grueling as it is gratifying. As the Lions kept going back to the ground and Goff sensed his offensive linemen tiring, "I was trying to challenge them as best I could in the huddle," he said.
"I think specifically on that drive, we were running behind Penei and Tate and it was just like, 'Hey guys, keep moving ‘em, keep moving ‘em,' over and over, and then later on in the game we’re running behind Deck and Mahogany and it’s like, 'Hey guys, now it’s your turn,'" said Goff. "It was a really fun game to see those guys take a lot of pride in being able to run the ball regardless of the defense knowing we’re running the ball and knowing probably what run (was coming)."
As the Lions approached the end zone, Goff could also sense fatigue setting in for the Ravens. Montgomery eventually plowed up the middle from one yard out to put the defense out of its misery. Goff said his favorite moment of the nearly 11-minute tour de force was "probably at the end when our guys are breathing heavy, heavy, but then their D-line’s breathing even heavier."
"And you feel it," he said. "You can feel that they’re leaning on them. It’s a testament to all the work, training camp, the whole thing. Not saying that those guys over there aren’t working hard either, but it comes down to will. It’s a test of will at that point. Everyone’s tired, everyone knows we’re running the ball and you just keep on leaning on ‘em and those guys up front really did it."
The 96-yard drive only took 3:41, thanks to one of the longest runs of Montgomery's career. But just like the other, it started and ended on the ground. From his own end zone, Montgomery peeled off 11 yards behind Ratledge, Sewell and equally strong blocks from LaPorta, Brock Wright and Kalif Raymond. Then Montgomery went right through the teeth of Baltimore's defense, sprung again by the right side of the line plus LaPorta and a big-boy block by Raymond on safety Kyle Hamilton. Sewell was a hammer all night.
Out went Montgomery and in came Gibbs for five more yards up the gut, with Decker setting the left edge and Mahogany and Ratledge again surging into the second level. Joe Buck on the TV broadcast: "That Baltimore defense has gotta be winded." Troy Aikman: "The worse the field position gets for the Lions, the better they play."
Montgomery came back in on the next snap and lined up in a stack in front of LaPorta and Gibbs with Goff under center, which the Lions featured a few times throughout the game. The Ravens defended it well and eventually set up 4th and 1 on the 4. And the Lions broke out a play they've been crafting for years called Saint-Gibbs, where Goff handed it off to St. Brown who pitched it to Gibbs who dashed around the right edge untouched to the end zone to put the Lions ahead on the first play of the fourth quarter.
They didn't look back.
On the drive where the Lions put away the game, Gibbs got things going with a seven-yard run around the left edge, then four more powerful yards up the middle. Aikman: "As we've gone more to these spread offenses and teams have relied more on the pass, it's hard to run the football when the defense knows you're going to. But the Lions, as Dan Campbell often says, are built for this."
Campbell is sharp. So is his new offensive coordinator John Morton. A few plays later on 4th and 2 near midfield -- when most head coaches in the NFL would have punted with a seven-point lead and under two minutes to go -- the Lions got in a formation from which Goff guessed they had run the ball 10 or 15 times that night, "the same run over and over and over, and they were starting to lean on it."
"They were starting to anticipate that run out of the formation we were in," he said.
Naturally, they turned it into a pass. It worked brilliantly when All-Pro safety Marlon Humphrey bit at the line on a play-fake to Montgomery and allowed St. Brown to leak downfield for a 20-yard throw and catch. It was a play that the Lions "had in our back-pocket," said Goff, "waiting for the right opportunity do it, and there was no better opportunity than right there."
The Lions went back to the ground on the very next play. While Decker and Mahogany blew the Ravens off the ball on the left side and Glasgow took care of his man in the middle, Montgomery charged through a huge hole on the right opened by Ratledge and Sewell, picked up a downfield block from Jameson Williams, shed a tackle and danced into the end zone to put the game on ice.
"It was the type of game we needed to play against that opponent," Campbell said. "I thought the guys were very selfless in that regard offensively. It took all of them and, man, everybody had an hand in that."