Ravens Halt Titans

There was no top seed in this postseason for the Baltimore Ravens. There will be no repeat league MVP award for quarterback Lamar Jackson. But in a season that has been all about perseverance, Jackson and the Ravens hung in and crafted a playoff breakthrough Sunday.

The first postseason victory of Jackson’s NFL career came as he and the Ravens erased an early deficit and beat the Tennessee Titans, 20-13, in a first-round AFC playoff encounter in Nashville.

“I knew we had the capability of doing that,” Jackson said in a postgame video news conference. “There’s always going to be naysayers no matter what.”

The fifth-seeded Ravens advanced to a conference semifinal next weekend at either Kansas City or Buffalo, depending on the outcome of Sunday night’s Browns-Steelers game in Pittsburgh.

Ravens Coach John Harbaugh, who has a Super Bowl triumph on his résumé, said it might have been the best win with which he has been associated.

“It had so much meaning for our guys and for us together, the things that we’ve been through together this year and how our guys have responded and how our leaders have led and how our guys have stuck together,” Harbaugh said in a postgame video conference.

Jackson had a touchdown on an electrifying 48-yard dash on a second-quarter scramble as the Ravens scored 17 straight points after trailing 10-0.

“That’s one of the best runs I’ve ever seen,” Harbaugh said. “It’s the best run I’ve ever seen by a quarterback. … We needed points at that point. It got us back in the game. … It made me feel a lot better, I can tell you that.”

Tailback J.K. Dobbins provided a third-quarter touchdown run. Jackson finished with 136 rushing yards, along with 179 passing yards on 17-for-24 accuracy.

Baltimore’s defense did much of the rest. Titans tailback Derrick Henry, coming off the eighth 2,000-yard rushing season in NFL history, ran for only 40 yards on 18 carries.

“It wasn’t good enough,” Titans Coach Mike Vrabel said. “It wasn’t good enough as a team. That’s how it goes sometimes. … Nobody let anybody down.”

Defensive end Derek Wolfe said of the Ravens’ approach against Henry: “Physical, physical, physical. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill threw a first-quarter touchdown pass to wide receiver A.J. Brown on a fade pattern, leaving the Ravens wishing for an offensive pass interference call on Brown for a shove of cornerback Marlon Humphrey. Tennessee, the conference’s fourth seed as the AFC South champ, couldn’t reach the end zone otherwise, settling for two field goals by Stephen Gostkowski.

“We won the division, hosted a home playoff game,” Vrabel said. “It wasn’t good enough today.”

The Ravens had been 0-2 in Jackson’s two previous playoff starts. The first loss came to the Los Angeles Chargers at home at the end of the 2018 season, when Jackson was a rookie. That was one thing. Last year’s defeat to the Titans was something else entirely. The Ravens were the AFC’s No. 1 seed. Jackson was about to be named the MVP. But it was the Titans, stunningly, who advanced to last season’s AFC title game, which they lost at Kansas City.