Perhaps Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills got exposed by a better team on Sunday night and their undefeated run is now a thing of the past.
The Bills struggled from the opening kickoff on SNF in Baltimore and found themselves getting punched in the mouth and on the wrong side of a blowout at M&T Bank Stadium. The Baltimore Ravens, behind yet another explosive performance from Derrick Henry, cruised to a dominant 35-10 shellacking to hand the Bills their first blemish of the year.
“The Bills are a great team,” Henry said. “They’ve been hitting on all cylinders. We played a great game against them tonight. We were the better team tonight, but I’m sure they’ll fix things the next coming up weeks. We’re just focused on being 1-0 this week.”
The Ravens imposed their will and set the tone on the first play of the game. Henry made history. He was the beneficiary of some outstanding blocking and broke into the secondary. Henry is a mammoth of a man at 247 pounds for a running back, but also has the gift of being one of the fastest players in the NFL, and even though he has hit the bench mark of 30 years-of-age, which is usually the age of demarcation for most tailbacks, and with the heaviest workload in the league over the past few years, no one had a chance to catch him.
Henry went 87 yards for the touchdown and the longest run in the Ravens franchise history, and his third from at least 85 yards in his career. With that, Henry became the only player in NFL history to have the longest run for two different franchises. His 99-yard run for the Tennessee Titans is tied for the longest in NFL history.
Embed from Getty ImagesHenry was not even close to being done yet, find pay dirt again on a 5-yard pass from Lamar Jackson early in the second quarter and the Ravens led 14-3. The Bills looked like the best team in the NFL and were fantastic for three weeks to start the season while they were playing cupcakes, but suddenly, in Week 4, when they had to step up in weight class, they were unable to keep up with the Ravens.
Jackson threw for two touchdowns and rushed for another.
“If he gets into the secondary, he’s pretty much gone, and it’s hard to catch him because he’s fast,” Jackson said of Henry. “He’s not just a powerful back.”
A couple of punts did not help. The Bills punted on fourth-and-2 from the 50-yardline in the first quarter, and fourth-and-1 from their own 39 in the second quarter when they trailed by 11 points. It left you shaking your head and it made no sense for Bills coach Sean McDermott to punt in either spot, and it clearly hurt his team’s chances of staying in the game. The Ravens came away with touchdowns after each of those punts.
McDermott went away from his usual game plan of being aggressive and has not been that conservative on fourth down this season, but like his team as a whole, he seemed unprepared and overwhelmed by the Ravens on Sunday night.
The Bills started the second half with momentum. Josh Allen put on full display why he is a MVP candidate and had a spectacular downfield pass to Khalil Shakir while he was falling out of bounds, and that gained 52 yards and set up a touchdown. The Bills regained possession of the ball right away, but Allen’s arm was hit by Kyle Van Noy on a throw. It was a fumble that the Ravens jumped on and recovered, and soon after Jackson scored on a 9-yard touchdown run to put the Ravens back ahead by 18 points.
“They came out with urgency and whooped our butt,” said Allen, who was replaced by backup Mitch Trubisky in the fourth. “Not everything was bad in this game. I don’t want us to come away from this thinking we’re the worst. Lot to learn from. I’m glad this happened early in the season so we can correct things.”
No one is perfect and even when Henry made a mistake it turned out well. After Henry had a 38-yard run to set up the Ravens inside the 5, he was loose with the ball and fumbled on his way into the end zone. But fullback Patrick Ricard recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown, which was the seventh of his career and Baltimore led 35-10.
One of the obvious reasons the Ravens started 0-2 was that in Week 2, they stopped feeding the beast, ‘King Henry’ in the fourth quarter and that allowed Gardner Minshew and the Las Vegas Raiders to come back from a 10-point deficit and beat them. Since then, Henry has punished the Cowboys, who he was linked to in the off season and then the Bills. It did not take coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens too long to figure out that Henry is a bell cow and can handle as many carries as anyone gives him, and they will be a better offense as a result.
The Ravens had the best team in the regular season in 2023, but nobody like Henry. In an AFC championship game loss to the eventual champions Kansas City Chiefs, they went away from the running game that was a staple of their offense and that was a big reason they lost. That will not be he case this time around if the Ravens find themselves in a similar situation. Henry is a future first ballot Hall of Famer, and the Ravens are a much different team with him in their backfield.
Josh Allen went 16-of-29 for 180 yards in the loss for Buffalo. James Cook added 39 rushing yards on nine carries, and Khalil Shakir had 62 receiving yards on four catches.
Jackson did not have to be Superman and went 13-of-18 for 156 yards and threw two touchdowns. He ran in another touchdown and had 54 rushing yards on six carries. Henry finished with 199 yards on the ground and two total touchdowns. Justice Hill had 78 yards and a score on six catches, also.
The Bills travel to ‘H Town’ to take on CJ Stroud and the Houston Texans on Sunday.
The Ravens are on the road for a critical Week 5 division game against Joe Borrow and the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
