CINCINNATI — One team lost, but both won Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium.
Because even though Ray Rice propelled the Baltimore Ravens to a spot the team has coveted for years, the Cincinnati Bengals still made the playoffs.
So while Baltimore will have its week off, the Bengals will be in Houston next weekend playing the Texans in a wild-card game.
It was a weird resolution to a game that seemed important at 4:14 p.m., but three hours later had wound up anticlimactic as both teams realized they were playoff-bound.
The Ravens at long last earned a home playoff game and a bye week by winning the AFC North with a 24-16 victory. They showed four plays into the game that they were not in the Queen City to admire Roebling’s bridge.
That’s when Rice ran right behind blocks by guard Marshal Yanda and fullback Vonta Leach. A few seconds later Rice was rambling 70 yards for a touchdown that gave Baltimore a 7-0 lead with the game just 2:02 old.
The Ravens extended that lead to 17-3. And when the Bengals cut the deficit to four — and had the ball at the Ravens’ 43-yard-line with 7:26 left — Baltimore turned to its star players.
Terrell Suggs forced Jermaine Gresham to fumble a screen pass, and three plays later Rice again sliced through the line — Leach did a number on Rey Maualuga — for a 51-yard score.
Rice might be small, but he runs as hard and as craftily as any back in the league. He carried the Ravens, just as he carried them almost all season, finishing with 1,364 yards rushing and 698 receiving to lead the league with 2,062 all-purpose yards. Nobody else went more than 2,000.
“I’ve always been a big Ray Rice and offensive line fan” Suggs said. “When they’re good, we’re great.”
Rice’s five-carry game in a loss in Seattle on Nov. 13 was a touchstone for Baltimore, as the team decided after the loss it ought to make better use of its talented back.
Rice ran for 805 yards and averaged 22 carries in the final seven games. Included was a 204-yard effort against Cleveland, as well as Sunday’s 191-yard shredding of Cincinnati, which started the game as the league’s sixth-best run defense. Rice finished just shy of 100 yards more than the Bengals were giving up all season (96.9).
Talk of league MVP rightfully centers on guys like Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers and New Orleans' Drew Brees, but Rice might be worth considering. He led a 12-win team in rushing (1,364 yards) and receiving (76 catches, 704 yards).
The week off was a goal the Ravens had hoped to achieve all season. Thanks to two wins over Pittsburgh, they now have it, and will host either Houston, Denver or Pittsburgh in the first playoff game in Baltimore since 2006.
Rice gives the Ravens a good chance, but the flip side is if the Ravens face a team that can stop Rice, Baltimore will have to turn the ball over to Joe Flacco. He was Baltimore’s unknown when the season started. He remains the team's unknown as the postseason starts.
Cincinnati competed, but in the end the Bengals made the playoffs thanks to the fact that the New York Jets, Denver and Oakland all lost. Those results knocked the Jets and Raiders from the wild card race and gave the AFC West title to Denver, which stormed into the postseason by losing to Kansas City 7-3.
“The football gods were with us,” said Bengals cornerback Nate Clements. (Smart alecks may insert a Tim Tebow line here.)
The Bengals' only win against a team with a winning record came over Tennessee, and the Titans matched Cincinnati’s 9-7 record. But that last-minute win was the one that gave the Bengals the tiebreaker.
Cincinnati clearly exceeded expectations with a rookie quarterback — Andy Dalton is the first rookie not drafted in the first round to start 16 games — as well as a rookie receiver in A.J. Green. But the Bengals go to Houston, which also has a rookie quarterback in T.J. Yates. Yates and the Texans beat the Bengals in the final seconds in Cincinnati on Dec. 11. There’s no reason to think the rematch will not be just as close.
Cincinnati won’t be given much of a chance to advance in the playoffs, but it wasn’t given much of a chance to make the playoffs. Strange things can happen, and the experience can only benefit one of the youngest teams in the league.
Rarely can a winner and loser feel satisfied. But Baltimore earned what it wanted, and Cincinnati got what it wanted. Welcome to the NFL, where a season that started with a lockout ended with teams on each end of the score looking forward to the next weekend.
