Why the Kansas City Chiefs win over the Baltimore Ravens was so important
The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens 33-28 on Sunday. While all wins count the same in the standings, this was a big win for several reasons.
It wasn’t always pretty, but the Kansas City Chiefs had their biggest win of the young season on Sunday when they beat the Baltimore Ravens 33-28 in their home opener at Arrowhead Stadium. The win moved the Chiefs to 3-0 on the season but it was their first win against a team that is widely viewed as a playoff-caliber team.
This matchup went beyond just expectations for this season though, as the Ravens gave the Chiefs all they could handle in 2018 when K.C. needed a Patrick Mahomes miracle pass and overtime to beat them. Throw in some offensive injuries for the Chiefs and just how well Raven’s quarterback Lamar Jackson had played so far this season, and you had the makings of one of the Chiefs toughest match ups of the entire season.
The Ravens came out and tried to make a statement early (more on that in a minute) and then added some late scores to make things close, but for most of this game the Chiefs were firmly in the driver’s seat. If you want to nitpick the Chiefs on a win over a playoff-caliber opponent, I suppose you could. They certainly weren’t perfect in this game.
The two biggest complaints that I had was that they didn’t put the game completely out of reach when they had a chance. As has happened numerous times in Andy Reid’s tenure, the Chiefs built a sizable lead but then allowed their opponent to stick around instead of just putting a foot on their throat. The Chiefs had a 17 point lead at two different points in the game but couldn’t quite finish things until a nice third down conversion with under two minutes to go allowed them to finally take the victory formation.
The second complaint is that the run defense continues to have some issues. They allowed 32 carries for 203 yards and 4 rushing touchdowns. That’s a 6.3 yards per carry average. Not great. Now, to their credit, the Ravens offense is hard to defend because of Lamar Jackson’s skill set. There were some defensive highlights (more on that later too), but the Chiefs need to sure up the run defense going forward as they are now allowing 6.2 yards per carry on the season through three games.
Those two negatives aside, this was a really important win for the Chiefs where they showed a few different things that will hopefully serve them well as they continue their quest for that elusive Super Bowl.
Let’s start with how the Chiefs responded to the way the Ravens came out and tried to take control of the game.