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With everyone spent, and jubilation washing over the victorious locker room, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh stood in front of his team with a bunch of game balls to hand out.
That first ball went to head strength coach Scott Elliott. Sunday’s marathon 41–38 win over the Cincinnati Bengals took place with temperatures in the 80s and the humidity that often accompanies the Cincinnati riverfront, with the Paycor Stadium turf baking under the sun. Going on the road to win this one wouldn’t have been easy for Baltimore in regulation. It took a little (or a lot) extra, from just about everyone, to go another round in a classic AFC North heavyweight fight.
“The idea that we were going to be stronger at the end,” Harbaugh told me over the phone on his way out of the stadium. “It was hot out. It was . This turf, October, it was 85 degrees, it was hot. We’re going no-huddle. Our guys are puking. It was tough, and our guys executed in that scenario. It’s the strength coach, but really it’s giving a game ball to all the guys for the way they practice and train throughout the week.”
As for that other game ball? Derrick Henry wouldn’t even let Harbaugh hand it out.
In postgame, the coach mentioned to his star tailback, one of Sunday’s heroes, that he’d be getting it after scoring his 100th career touchdown in the first quarter and hitting 10,000 career rushing yards in the second quarter. Only Jim Brown, Emmitt Smith, LaDainian Tomlinson and Emmitt Smith have reached those twin milestones as fast as Henry—Sunday was his 124th career game—and Harbaugh wanted to recognize it.
But the jackhammer of a tailback wasn’t having it. Not on this day.
“He said, ‘No, no, no. This is a team win. This is a team win. Don’t do that,’” Harbaugh says. “He didn’t want me to say anything about it. That’s how he’s been.”
Five games into the season, it’s really how all of the Ravens have been.
It would have been easy for doubt to creep in after back-to-back losses to start the season—one on the road to the Kansas City Chiefs, and the other at home to the Las Vegas Raiders—that followed last year’s devastating finale in the AFC title game. Similarly, it’d have been easy for the Ravens to chalk up Sunday to facing a red-hot Bengals offense, with Cincinnati taking 10-point leads on three separate occasions in the second half.
Instead, Harbaugh’s group kept swinging, and eventually, it was the Bengals who found themselves on the canvas. And when it was over, to Harbaugh, there were so many people, Henry and Elliott among them, that personified what it took to gut out his sort of win. The result should give the Ravens, reborn at 3–2, a puncher’s chance at getting back to where they were a year ago—and maybe even further.
