Join the huddle. Sign up here for Ravens updates in your inbox.

The Ravens didn’t mess around, handing the ball to Derrick Henry 36 times in a 41-24 win over the Packers that kept their playoff hopes alive, at least until Sunday afternoon. Here are five things we learned from the game.

The Ravens kept it simple, stupid

When the Ravens win the opening coin toss, they almost always defer. This time, they wanted the ball and knew exactly what to do with it.

For six days, they’d heard howls of condemnation for their sidelining of Derrick Henry in the late stages of a crushing loss to the New England Patriots. On their opening drive Saturday night, Henry carried seven times for 48 yards and a touchdown.

It was a statement of no-nonsense purpose that held up over four quarters, as Henry carried a career-high 36 times for 216 yards and four touchdowns.

Coach John Harbaugh called it “one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen.”

With their game plan, Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Todd Monken effectively said: We get the message! If they were going to bow out of the playoff race, it wasn’t going to be because they failed to feed Henry. With beaming but bruised quarterback Lamar Jackson relegated to the sideline, No. 22 was the last, best option, and, hey, the Ravens didn’t screw up the obvious.

From the jump, Henry carried behind bulldozing fullback Patrick Ricard. He finished runs with visible fury, lowering his shoulder to knock would-be tacklers on their heels. A few days short of his 32nd birthday, he remains one of the sport’s awesome specimens of power, speed and will.

He was the headliner, but not the only contributor, in a ground-and-pound classic: 53 rushing attempts for 307 yards as the Ravens owned the ball and the clock.

They even kept running in their two-minute offense, with a 25-yard Tyler Huntley scamper on a quarterback draw the key play to set up a Henry touchdown just before halftime.

They ran 45 offensive plays in the first half to 14 for Green Bay. “We got punched in the mouth pretty good,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur summarized at halftime.

Pretty much.

Why didn’t we see this version of the Ravens more often over the first 15 games of the season? For all their flaws, they play this style as well as any team in the league. They came in leading the NFL in yards per attempt. Might they have won at least one more precious game if they had leaned into their core identity more consistently?

Harbaugh did not accept that premise in his postgame comments, arguing it was not the Ravens’ intent, but their execution, that changed against the Packers.

“We were intentional about committing to the run, for sure. … Maybe we were more intentional,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t get away from it, maybe, but we also had more opportunities, because we got the sticks moving.”

It was impossible to watch them pummel Green Bay and not count the what-ifs. What if the Ravens hadn’t blown that two-score lead in their opener in Buffalo? What if Isaiah Likely had held on to the ball for one more step in their home loss to the Steelers? What if they hadn’t holstered Henry while protecting that lead against New England last weekend?

This has been a disappointing year in many ways, but if even one of those what-ifs had gone a different way, the Ravens would have a good, clean chance to go to Pittsburgh and win the AFC North next weekend.

Instead, they need the Browns to get them there with an improbable win over the Steelers on Sunday afternoon in Cleveland.

There’s nothing they can do about it now other than pray, but at least they pushed back against oblivion with a powerful statement of old-school identity in one of the league’s classic venues.

Tyler Huntley did another fantastic job, but there is no quarterback controversy

It’s a debate show topic that writes itself: Are the Ravens better off with Huntley in place of Lamar Jackson?

There’s superficial evidence if you want to play that game. Huntley’s two starts have been among the team’s best performances this season, double-digit wins over the playoff-bound Packers and Chicago Bears.

The Ravens are a simpler team with Jackson’s backup at the helm, pairing quick, low-risk passes with relentless running. And, yes, that mode works well for this roster. Please don’t read that as backhanded praise of Huntley, who understands his strengths and limitations extremely well after six NFL seasons. He has thrown accurately, used his wheels astutely, moved the offense and avoided crippling mistakes. We couldn’t ask for anything more.

“A-plus. Give [Huntley] two pluses on top of that, maybe three,” Harbaugh said. “It couldn’t have been any better. … I see him execute every day in practice, but for him to make the third-down conversions, the scramble plays, the throws, the on-time throws, the accurate throws that he made to run the offense in Lambeau Field — it’s loud. In Lambeau Field, to run the offense the way he did, make the checks the way he did, get us in the plays we needed to get in, just A-plus.”

Does that mean, if next weekend’s game against Pittsburgh is meaningful and Jackson is sufficiently recovered from his back bruise, the Ravens should stick with Huntley?

No way.

Setting aside the disrespect that would imply toward the franchise’s most important player, the Ravens simply do not have as many dimensions with Huntley at quarterback. To be a great NFL offense, you have to attack downfield at some point. With the Jackson we saw early in the loss to New England, the Ravens have that capacity. With Huntley, they have to move in smaller bites.

We cannot ignore the reality that Huntley went into Saturday’s game with a 6-9 record in NFL starts and an 81.3 career passer rating. Jackson is 76-30 with a 101.9 rating. These two pals from South Florida aren’t operating on the same plane of existence.

Now, if Jackson is too banged up to play anywhere near his best, that’s a different story. Huntley has done enough to make the Ravens believe they could win in Pittsburgh with him as the starter. He has made a convincing case that they should trust him to be Jackson’s backup beyond this season.

Let’s avoid leaping from that happy development into the realm of the ridiculous.

We saw more alarming signs from a pass defense that faltered against the Patriots

With Jordan Love unable to clear concussion protocol, the Packers had to start Malik Willis at quarterback. That had to be an easier assignment than Most Valuable Player candidate Drake Maye, who had torched the Ravens on two consecutive drives to lead the Patriots’ comeback. Right?

Well, no.

On Green Bay’s first offensive snap, Romeo Doubs beat cornerback Nate Wiggins, who was playing off him, to snare a beautiful 40-yard bomb from Willis. After a pair of dumb Packers penalties, Christian Watson sprinted from the slot to get behind safety Kyle Hamilton for a 39-yard touchdown catch. Two plays, and the Ravens’ 7-0 lead was gone.

The Packers continued sabotaging themselves. They failed to convert a fourth-down attempt in their own territory after an awkward snap exchange led Willis to be stuffed on third down. The next time Green Bay had the ball, a mistimed shotgun snap hit Willis in the face and Ravens outside linebacker Mike Green recovered.

The Ravens made field goals after each of those miscues. What they did not do was unlock the secret to limiting Willis’ efficiency.

“We were a little on our heels,” Harbaugh acknowledged. “We were a little discombobulated there, and it was shocking, and we were all kind of shocked by it.”

On Green Bay’s first drive of the second half, the Ravens, protecting a 27-14 lead, could not keep Willis in the pocket, giving him time to dance until receivers popped open for 30- and 31-yard gains.

The lack of discipline from key members of the secondary — Hamilton and Wiggins but also Marlon Humphrey and Alohi Gilman — was troubling.

The Ravens’ offense proved to be their best defense as they kept the ball out of Willis’ hands. But they can’t feel good about a backup completing 18 of 21 passes for 288 yards as he moved his offense at 8.3 yards per clip.

It was enough to make us wonder if all the progress that culminated with the 24-0 shutout in Cincinnati was illusory.

That Travis Jones extension continues to look like some of the best news from this season

Jones can no longer be pigeonholed as an interior mauler who simply occupies blockers. He was the Ravens’ most dynamic pass rusher in their loss to New England. Against the Packers, he finished with 1 1/2 of the team’s two sacks and would have made it 2 1/2 had he not whiffed on tackling the elusive Willis after an electric charge up the middle.

Hamilton is the team’s defensive MVP, but the taciturn Jones has made a push since he signed that $40.5 million contract extension in early December. He entered Saturday with the seventh-highest Pro Football Focus grade of 128 defensive lineman and will probably move up based on his latest stellar outing. He received no Pro Bowl recognition. Don’t be surprised if that changes in 2026.

Which Ravens have played better this season than last? Reporters who cover the team have debated this point, agreeing that the list is short. At age 26, Jones might be the best answer. Fans should be delighted that he will anchor the defensive line at a reasonable cost for the next several years.

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

Relying on a three-win team that ranks 31st in the league in scoring is no way to live. But the Ravens have no choice. They have to believe the Browns can slow Pittsburgh’s late-season momentum.

If there’s hope, it’s not to be found in the box score from Pittsburgh’s 23-9 win over Cleveland in October. Aaron Rodgers dissected the Browns’ normally fearsome defense for an efficient 235 yards and two touchdowns. The Steelers, not exactly the Steel Curtain of old, held that execrable Browns offense to 65 rushing yards. They never trailed in the game.

The good news? Only the San Francisco 49ers have blown the Browns out in Cleveland this year. Just last weekend, the Browns had a real chance to upset the Bills, outgaining Buffalo. Their defense, fourth in the league in pressure rate and allowing just 4.7 yards per play, is stingy enough to keep them in any game.

You just know Myles Garrett would love to set the single-season sack record (he needs one more) against a divisional nemesis. “That’d be a great one to put a picture on the wall with,” he told Cleveland reporters last week.

Pittsburgh, playing its best football of the season behind an accurate Rodgers and a rejuvenated running game, is rightly favored. But it would be surprising to see the Steelers run away from the Browns. They lost in Cleveland last season and the year before that and the year before that. As long as the game stays close, you never know.

Do the Ravens deserve such a reprieve after all the chances they’ve tossed away? Perhaps not, but it’s not as far-fetched as it might sound.