Holding an insurmountable 23-7 lead late in Sunday’s Week 4 game at Denver, most would have expected Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson to take a knee. But instead of coming out in the victory formation, the Ravens surprisingly ran another play with Jackson scrambling for five yards on a QB keeper.
That pushed Baltimore over the century mark in rushing yards, keeping alive their record streak of 43 straight games with at least 100 yards rushing. The Broncos coaching staff seemed taken aback, flabbergasted the Ravens would risk injury by running another play instead of bleeding out the clock as most teams would have.
Anyone who’s ever played Madden knows how tempting it can be to run up the score, but padding your stats at the expense of good sportsmanship is much easier to pull off on Xbox than in real life. When asked of the incident in Monday’s press conference, Broncos coach Vic Fangio was still fuming, calling the stunt “bulls---.”
“I thought it was kind of bulls---, but I expected it from them,” said Fangio, still harboring plenty of resentment almost 24 hours later. “Thirty-seven years in pro ball I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Not only did the Ravens snap Denver’s three-game winning streak, but they also flouted one of the league’s unwritten rules, taking a flamethrower to football etiquette in pursuit of an obscure milestone. But according to Fangio, that’s simply how the Ravens conduct business. “I just know how they operate,” said Fangio, who served as both a defensive assistant and linebackers coach under John Harbaugh in Baltimore over a decade ago. “That’s just their mode of operation there. Player safety is secondary.”
Harbaugh defended his decision after the game, calling the Ravens’ streak of 100-yard rushing games “meaningful.” However, his starting quarterback didn't seem to share that opinion. “I’m not going to lie. I don’t really care about the record,” Jackson admitted to ESPN’s Jamison Hensley. “I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about winning the game.”
The Broncos and Ravens aren’t scheduled to play again this season, though if the AFC rivals end up meeting in the playoffs (their last postseason encounter was a doozy, requiring two overtimes and plenty of Joe Flacco heroics to decide a winner), it would be riveting television.
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