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Jones: Ravens strayed from their identity against Chiefs, and paid the price

Published

2 years ago

January 30, 2024

Jones: Ravens strayed from their identity against Chiefs, and paid the price

BALTIMORE — Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs put their championship-caliber mettle on display once again Sunday, knocking off the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens 17-10 in the AFC title game.

Reid, Patrick Mahomes and company are headed for their fourth Super Bowl in six seasons not because they boasted a prolific offensive attack or breathtaking fireworks display. No, they punched their ticket to Las Vegas because Reid and his staff won their chess match with John Harbaugh and his Ravens assistants and positioned their squad to pull off the grittiest victory of this budding dynasty’s history.

The Chiefs, long known for lighting up scoreboards with dizzying and dazzling heroics from Mahomes, didn’t even score in Sunday’s second half. Instead, they drew heavily on experience and also leaned on the most dominant defense Kansas City has fielded in the last six seasons. That defense delivered a performance that largely neutralized presumed NFL MVP Lamar Jackson and one of the league’s most imposing offensive attacks of the 2023 season.

But as a whole, the Ravens found themselves on the losing end after succumbing to pressure early and failing to overcome crippling mistakes late.

Well aware of how the Ravens are constructed and how they like to attack offensively (with a strong run game that ensures balance and paves the way for an improved passing attack), the Chiefs understood the importance of a fast start. They brought the pressure early to force Baltimore into a quick three-and-out and then delivered as impressive an offensive display as they have all postseason: a 10-play, 86-yard scoring drive, capped by a 19-yard Mahomes pass to Travis Kelce. With that, the Chiefs extended their streak of game-opening touchdown drives to eight straight playoff contests.

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The Ravens did respond with a touchdown of their own — a highlight-worthy Jackson escape and 30-yard strike to Zay Flowers. But the Chiefs came right back with a methodical 16-play, 75-yard drive that gobbled up 9:02 of clock.

Mahomes couldn’t miss, completing 11 straight passes to start the game. Kelce was as unguardable as ever. And that Chiefs defense that this season morphed from serviceable to dominant kept the pressure coming and delivered a strip-sack and recovery at the Baltimore 33-yard line.

And just like that, the Ravens found themselves on high alert.

Punt, touchdown, fumble was not the desired tone setter for Baltimore early in the first half. The Ravens’ defense had yielded game-opening touchdown drives only twice in its last 26 games, and until Kelce’s touchdown catch, Baltimore’s second-year star safety Kyle Hamilton had never surrendered a touchdown to a tight end as a pro.

The scoreboard may have read 14-7, but as Baltimore found itself in unfamiliar territory, the deficit felt far larger. And that’s when the Ravens committed their mortal sin.

Overwhelmed by the ease with which the Chiefs had scored, they went into panic mode. On defense, they momentarily lost their poise while committing life-giving personal fouls. And offensively, they got suckered into believing they had slipped into a far larger hole than they were actually in. As a result, they abandoned their bread-and-butter and tried to adapt a style of play for which they are not built.

After dominating on the ground all season long, the Ravens opted for a pass-heavy attack far too early.

For the rest of the second quarter, the Ravens ran the ball just twice (once on an off-schedule play by Jackson). For the remainder of the game, they ran the ball only seven more times. The league’s leading rushing team — a unit that averaged 156.5 rushing yards per game while boasting the most balanced offense in the NFL — turned one-dimensional and finished with only 81 ground yards, never regaining control in a very winnable game.

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The Ravens trailed only 17-7 at halftime. Yet they came out in the second half with the same frantic feel and approach as if they trailed by a heftier margin. They kept gunning even though their defense was keeping them in the game and the Chiefs off the scoreboard.

“It was just that kind of a game, I’d say,” Harbaugh said of the season-low 16 rushing attempts. “That’s just how it played out.”

The absence of a run game meant Baltimore’s offense never regained the rhythm that carried it so often this season. And the lack of balance eased pressure on the Chiefs’ defense because it allowed Kansas City’s pass-rushers to pin back their ears and come after Jackson. Meanwhile, when the quarterback wasn’t getting hit, a familiar problem — a lack of consistency in the receiving department — cropped up for the Ravens.

Again and again, Jackson dropped back to throw, but struggled to find an open receiver. Aside from Flowers, who finished the game with five catches on eight targets for 115 yards and a touchdown, Baltimore’s receivers struggled greatly to get any separation. Running back Justice Hill was the second-leading receiver with four catches, and not until the fourth quarter did Odell Beckham Jr. manage to get involved (three catches for 22 yards).

“We could’ve ran the ball,” Jackson said. “But we were just down and just trying to get the ball downfield. You’ve got to make something happen.”

Zay Flowers had a touchdown catch Sunday but also a costly fumble. (Geoff Burke / USA Today)

Even while one-dimensional, the Ravens did have a chance. To open the fourth quarter, they reached the shadow of the Kansas City goal line on a five-play, 78-yard drive highlighted by a 54-yard throw to Flowers. But that possession painfully ended with a fumble as Kansas City’s L’Jarius Sneed punched the ball from Flowers’ grasp as the receiver dove for the end zone after an 8-yard catch.

And on the next possession, after reaching the Kansas City 25, Jackson threw an interception into triple coverage while trying to connect with tight end Isaiah Likely.

A Justin Tucker 43-yard field goal with 2:38 left cut the deficit to a touchdown, but the Ravens came no closer.

The Chiefs didn’t score in the second half, but they didn’t really have to. They did just enough offensively to spell their dominant defense and run precious minutes off the clock: five minutes here, two minutes there, another four there. By game’s end, they had won the time of possession battle 37:30 to 22:30.

The defeat represents a lost opportunity for the Ravens, even though the game never felt as close as the score might indicate. Jackson and his teammates lamented that they managed just one touchdown, and they’ll spend the offseason replaying costly miscues. It’s impossible to avoid wondering if a more patient approach would have better benefitted the Ravens while helping them find a better offensive flow throughout the game.

“You would like to use the saying of ‘I would love to have this back or have this play back,’ but you can’t get those plays back,” right tackle Morgan Moses said. “You have to learn from them and move forward. And you know, it’s not over. Anytime you have a quarterback like Lamar, you have the opportunity to play in games like this again.”

This one will sting for a while, however, especially because of how it ended.

The 2023 season was a year of change and growth in Baltimore, and perhaps the Ravens can build on that. But Sunday, as they aimed for their ultimate goal, they strayed from their identity when pressure reached its highest point and never recovered.

(Top photo: Rob Carr / Getty Images)

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US figure skating power couple makes history with record breaking seventh national championship

Published

38 minutes ago

January 11, 2026

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US figure skating power couple makes history with record breaking seventh national championship

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U.S. figure skating stars Madison Chock and Evan Bates made history on Saturday with their record-setting seventh U.S. Figure Skating title in their final competition before the Milan Cortina Olympics.

The three-time reigning world champions, performing a flamenco-style dance to a version of the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black” from the dystopian sci-fi Western show “Westworld,” produced a season-best free skate and finished with 228.87 points.

“The feeling that we got from the audience today was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before,” Chock said.

Madison Chock and Evan Bates of United States perform during ISU World Figure Skating Championships – Boston, at TD Garden, on March 28, 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Jurij Kodrun – International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)

They’ll be the heavy favorites to win gold next month in Italy.

“I felt so much love and joy,” Chock continued, “and I’m so grateful for this moment.”

U.S. Figure Skating will announce its selections on Sunday.

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik were second with 213.65 points and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko were third with 206.95, making those two pairs the likely choices to join Chock and Bates on the American squad for the upcoming Winter Games.

The men’s medals also were to be decided on Saturday, though two-time world champion Ilia Malinin had built such a lead after his short program that the self-styled “Quad God” would have to stumble mightily to miss out on a fourth consecutive title.

The U.S. also has qualified the maximum of three men’s spots for the Winter Games, and competition is tight between second-place Tomoko Hiwatashi, fan favorite Jason Brown, Andrew Torgashev and Maxim Naumov to round out the nationals podium.

The last time Chock and Bates competed in the Olympics in 2022 in Beijing, they watched their gold initially go to an opponent who was later disqualified for doping violations.

Chock and Bates initially had to settle for team silver with their American teammates on the podium at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Team Russia and Kamila Valieva, who was 15 at the time, stood above them with their gold medals.

It wasn’t until the end of January 2024, when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) found Valieva guilty of an anti-doping rule violation, when Chock, Bates and the U.S. were declared the rightful 2022 gold medalists.

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Madison Chock and Evan Bates compete in championship ice dance at the U.S. figure skating championships Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance, during an anti-doping test at the Russian Figure Skating Championships in December 2021. She was suspended for four years and stripped of all competitive results since that date.

Chock and Bates spoke about what their message to Valieva would be today during an interview at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee media summit in October.

“It’s hard to, I think, imagine what a 15-year-old has gone through and under that kind of situation,” Bates said. “And I know how stressful it is, being an elite athlete as an adult, as a 36-year-old. And I think that grace should be given to humans across the board. And we can never really know the full situation, at least from our point of view. … I genuinely don’t know what I would say to her.”

Chock added, “I would just wish her well like as I would. I think life is short. And, at the end of the day, we’re all human just going through our own human experience together. And regardless of what someone has or hasn’t done and how it has affected you, I think it’s important to remember we’re humans as a collective, and we’re all here for this, our one moment on earth, at the same time. And I just wish people to have healthy, happy lives, full of people that love them.”

Chock and Bates had to wait more than two years after the initial Olympics to get their rightful gold medals, and they were finally presented with them during a ceremony at the Paris Olympics last summer.

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Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the USA perform in the Gala Exhibition during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final Nagoya at IG Arena on December 07, 2025 in Nagoya, Japan. (Atsushi Tomura – International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)

Chock, Bates and teammates Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell, Alexa Knierim and Vincent Zhou were given a specialized gold medal ceremony to receive the medals in front of more than 13,000 fans.

Chock and Bates became the first ice dancers to win three consecutive world championships in nearly three decades in March when they defeated Canadian rivals Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for Fox News Digital covering critical political and cultural issues in sports, with an investigative lens. Jackson’s reporting has been cited in federal government actions related to the enforcement of Title IX, and in legacy media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and ESPN.com.

Sports

Eric Dailey Jr. and Trent Perry power UCLA to victory over Maryland

Published

1 hour ago

January 11, 2026

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Eric Dailey Jr. and Trent Perry power UCLA to victory over Maryland

Dave Roberts tossed T-shirts to fans. The students were back out in bunches. UCLA traded in its recent first-half troubles for a big lead.

It was sort of fun to be a Bruin again Saturday at Pauley Pavilion.

On an evening the team honored Roberts, the Dodgers manager and former Bruins outfielder who triumphantly hoisted the World Series trophy over his head during a timeout as fans roared, it was possible to forget about UCLA’s troubles for a few hours.

The Bruins’ 67-55 victory over Maryland was a needed reprieve for a team aching over its defense, not to mention a two-game losing streak that was comfortably snapped despite the Terrapins grabbing one offensive rebound after another.

Maryland (7-9, 0-5) finished with an absurd 20 offensive rebounds, leading to 24 second-chance points, and it still wasn’t enough to make the final minutes a worry for UCLA (11-5, 3-2) after a 6-0 push put the game away.

Forward Eric Dailey Jr. ensured that things didn’t go awry for the Bruins, nearly logging a double-double with 15 points and nine rebounds. Trent Perry (16 points, six rebounds) hit a clutch corner three-pointer with a little less than six minutes left after Maryland had closed to within five points.

Maryland’s inability to make baskets — the Terrapins shot 30.3% overall and 18.2% from three-point range — was forced in part by some active defense, notably from UCLA’s Steven Jamerson II. The backup center had perhaps his best across-the-board showing as a Bruin, finishing with eight points, five rebounds, three assists, two blocks and one steal in 22 minutes.

UCLA guard Trent Perry, left, collides with Maryland guard Andre Mills while battling for a defensive rebound in the first half Saturday.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

His top highlight came on an offensive rebound he snagged while falling out of bounds and saved by flinging a pass to Perry for a three-pointer. UCLA would have won with even greater ease had it not made just 18 of 27 free throws (67%).

There were moments it was easy to forget the Bruins were playing without guard Skyy Clark (hamstring) and forward Brandon Williams (lower-leg injury). Both players are considered day to day, meaning they could return soon.

Maryland could relate to being shorthanded. The Terrapins were missing star center Pharrel Payne, who remained sidelined because of a knee injury. Forward Elijah Saunders led Maryland with 17 points.

It wasn’t nearly enough given the Bruins looked a bit more like the team they need to be.

Sports

Falcons hire franchise legend Matt Ryan to major front office role

Published

13 hours ago

January 10, 2026

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Falcons hire franchise legend Matt Ryan to major front office role

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The Atlanta Falcons have added one of the team’s greatest players to its front office.

The Falcons announced on Saturday that former quarterback Matt Ryan, who spent the first 14 years of his 15-year NFL career with the team after being drafted third overall in 2008, will be president of football on Saturday. The 40-year-old Ryan, who holds team records for passing yards, touchdowns and wins, will assume the new role immediately.

Ryan will report directly to owner Arthur Blank and collaborate with president and CEO Greg Beadles to ensure the alignment of the business and football areas of the organization.

Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) on the sideline before he is inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor at halftime of a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, on Oct. 3, 2024. (Brett Davis/Imagn Images)

“Throughout his remarkable 14-year career in Atlanta, Matt’s leadership, attention to detail, knowledge of the game and unrelenting drive to win made him the most successful player in our franchise’s history,” Blank said in a statement.

“I am confident those same qualities will be a tremendous benefit to our organization as he steps into this new role. From his playing days to his time as an analyst at CBS, Matt has always been a student of the game, and he brings an astute understanding of today’s NFL, as well as unique knowledge of our organization and this market. I have full confidence and trust in Matt as we strive to deliver a championship caliber team for Atlanta and Falcons fans everywhere.”

The Falcons fired head coach Raheem Morris on Sunday after back-to-back 8-9 seasons. The Falcons had won their last four games, leading some to believe Morris might be afforded a third season, but Blank had other plans.

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CBS Sports broadcaster Matt Ryan before a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado, on Nov. 16, 2025. (Ron Chenoy/Imagn Images)

The Falcons also fired general manager Terry Fontenot after five seasons on Sunday. Ryan will be fully involved in the team’s search for the Falcons’ next head coach and general manager.

“Arthur gave me the chance of a lifetime almost twenty years ago, and he’s done it again today,” Ryan said in a statement.

“While I appreciate the time I had with the Colts and with CBS, I’ve always been a Falcon. It feels great to be home. I could not be more excited, grateful, or humbled by this new opportunity. I began my career with a singular goal: to do right by the Blank family, the Falcons organization, the City of Atlanta, and especially our fans. My commitment to the success of this franchise has not changed. I’m beyond ready to help write a new chapter of excellence.”

Ryan has spent the last three seasons as a member of the CBS Sports team as an analyst.

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Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) passes the ball against the Buffalo Bills during the second half at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York, on Jan. 2, 2022. (Rich Barnes/USA TODAY Sports)

“I want to thank the incredible team at CBS Sports. I loved my three years there and I am truly grateful for their support in pursuing this opportunity. The CBS Sports culture is amazing, and I have made teammates and friends for life,” Ryan said in a statement.

Ryan, who was drafted out of Boston College, played with the Falcons for 14 seasons and holds many franchise records, including passing yards (59,735), attempts (8,003), completions (5,242), passing touchdowns (367), passer rating (94.6), completion percentage (65.5) and 300-yard games (73).

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Ryan Canfield is a digital production assistant for Fox News Digital.